Nouriel Roubini blames the Fed

Nouriel Roubini is everywhere! You have to wonder if he's starting to make odd requests for his media appearances like asking for a bowl of M&Ms with one color removed.

Last night, he was on the Nightly Business Report and was asked a very simple question, "Who or what is the major culprit of this financial crisis?" Here's his simple reply:

First of all the Fed kept interest rates too low for too long and created the housing bubble. Secondly the Fed and the other regulators were asleep at the wheel and allowed all these toxic mortgages to be created without controlling it. Three, there was plenty of greed and excessive risk taking on Wall Street. And four, the rating agencies had major conflicts of interest because they were being paid by those that were supposed to be rating. So the blame is to be shared by many different culprits.

It is quite clear there is plenty of blame to go around but, interestingly, the first two of the four culprits mentioned by the world's most in-demand economist were the Federal Reserve.

The entire transcript is available here.

The New York University economics professor and founder of RGE Monitor (how does he find time to teach these days?) was also on Bloomberg video this morning predicting a very long and painful recession dead ahead.

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This simple search on "Roubini" at Bloomberg shows the extent of Nouriel's omnipresence - a total of ten references in just the last few days.