Dr. Doom relents

Economist Nouriel Roubini, the guy who has been scarily prescient about the recession (and has made sure everyone knows), now says that the just-completed first quarter will be the worst of it. Roubini tells Henry Blodget at Tech Ticker that the recession will last through 2009, and then there will be a very slow recovery in 2010 - so slow that most of us won't notice much improvement. (Keep in mind that economists generally believe that the jobless rate will remain stubbornly high well into next year.) Roubini is also pretty glum about the stock market - he doesn't expect the recent gains to last. So he's not exactly upbeat, but at least he's not sounding apocalyptic.