'Dr. Doom' economist predicts second Great Depression without massive government stimulus

Economist Nouriel Roubini, who earned the nickname "Dr. Doom" for his accurate predictions about the 2008 global financial crisis, believes that the United States will enter into a second Great Depression unless the government acts now to inject money into the economy.

In an interview with Yahoo News, Roubini said that the government should send out $1,000 checks immediately to every American to help them pay for their material needs during a time when mass layoffs are looming.

"It doesn’t matter if you’re young, old, employed, unemployed, student, formerly employed, partially employed, hourly worker, contractor, gig, or small business," the New York University economist explained to Yahoo News. "Everybody needs at $1,000 or otherwise we’ll end up in the Great Depression at this point."

Roubini said that the very best we can hope for at this point is a "very severe, but short, recession" in the wake of the pandemic, which has shut down nonessential businesses in major cities across the United States. He said that the best the U.S. could hope for was containing the virus and then having the start of a recovery at the end of the year.

"But if we have the monetary easing we have right now, if we control the pandemics by doing systematic quarantines, maybe by June-July the pandemic is stopped, and maybe by the fourth quarter of this year we are going to have an economic recovery," he said.