Stagflation, deglobalization, populism, climate change, pandemics and new technologies of the future reshaping the 2020s.

Roubini has correctly assessed both the downside risks and threats to the global economy as well as the upsides deriving from the ongoing technological innovations.

In his 2022 book “Megathreats: Ten Dangerous Trends That Imperil Our Future And How To Survive Them” he correctly predicted that the long regime of Great Moderation followed by the post-GFC Secular Stagnation was over. Instead, powerful forces would lead to a return to stagflation (inflation above target and growth below potential) or what he referred to a Secular Stagflation.

Even before the return to power of Donald Trump in 2025 Roubini identified forces that would cause higher inflation and lower growth: deglobalization, protectionism and sharp restrictions to labor migration, a geopolitical depression and the rise of new forms of warfare – such as cyber warfare – leading to global fragmentation, high levels of private and public debt leading to debt crises and monetization of deficits that would be inflationary, the corrosive stagflationary effects of global climate change and serious pandemics, the backlash against liberal democracy and democratic capitalism and the rise to power of populist regimes driven by both economic insecurity and income/wealth inequality.

Those predictions of Megathreats have clearly materialized since the Covid crisis and its aftermath.
In the Megathreats book Roubini also considered the possibility of more positive trends that over the medium-longer term could lead to a Secular Boom driven by the new technologies of the future, starting with AI, Machine Learning and related new tech innovations. In the book – published before the launch of OpenAI’s ChatGPT – Roubini predicted that GenAI will come soon and revolutionize computing and the economy; he also predicted the rise of new sources of clean energy – such as fusion that could together with other forms of clean tech address the serious issue of global climate change.

Since the publication of Megathreats Roubini emphasized that if humanity can address these threats via sound policies and the new technologies of the future a new regime of Secular Boom may follow the Secular Stagflation that emerged in the 2020s.