Global Crisis ‘Vastly Worse’ Than 1930s, Taleb Says

Global Crisis ‘Vastly Worse’ Than 1930s, Taleb Says
By Shiyin Chen and Liza Lin

May 7 (Bloomberg) — The current global crisis is “vastly worse” than the 1930s because financial systems and economies worldwide have become more interdependent, “Black Swan” author Nassim Nicholas Taleb said.

“This is the most difficult period of humanity that we’re going through today because governments have no control,” Taleb, 49, told a conference in Singapore today. “Navigating the world is much harder than in the 1930s.”

The International Monetary Fund last month slashed its world economic growth forecasts and said the global recession will be deeper than previously predicted as financial markets take longer to stabilize. Nouriel Roubini, 51, the New York University professor who predicted the crisis, told Bloomberg News yesterday that analysts expecting the U.S. economy to rebound in the third and fourth quarter were “too optimistic.”

“Certainly the rate of economic contraction is slowing down from the freefall of the last two quarters,” Roubini said. “We are going to have negative growth to the end of the year and next year the recovery is going to be weak.”

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke told lawmakers May 5 that the central bank expects U.S. economic activity “to bottom out, then to turn up later this year.” Another shock to the financial system would undercut that forecast, he added.

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