Partying Like It's 2009

Apparently, it's not all doom & gloom for "Dr. Doom". Below are a few excerpts from Helaine Olen's profile of him in this month's Portfolio ("The Prime of Nouriel Roubini").

It’s Saturday night. A stream of young fashionistas and other assorted Manhattan scenesters pours into a fashionable Tribeca building. They’re all headed for the loft of a middle-aged economist—a man whose name would hardly have registered with anyone but the most obsessive CNBC watcher a few years ago. A doorman on duty surveys the scene and rolls his eyes. “Another Roubini party,” he mutters.

[...]

Bad times have certainly been good for Roubini’s social life. For years, he has been a manic host of everything from small dinner parties to big bashes. The soirees are more crowded of late, attracting everyone from members of the hedge-fund set to a former Miss Ukraine and propelling the bachelor economist onto the tabloid gossip pages. (He has become a New York Post regular, and CNBC often plays disco music when he appears on the air.)

Roubini’s partying side may have remained below the media radar but for his energetic use of Facebook. He kept his profile on the social-networking site open to the general public until a few months ago, something more privacy-minded users typically choose not to do. On his profile, he said he was single and interested in meeting women, and he posted photos of himself hamming it up with females who look two or three decades younger than he is.

[...]

“I’m a serious professional economist. I live in New York and have a social life,” Roubini says. “I have book parties and social dinners. And, you know, people will take pictures of you with your friends, and there are some attractive women. It doesn’t mean I go out with them. They’re my friends. I have nothing to hide.” When I send him a thank-you email, I can’t resist adding, “If you ask me, the deep mystery at the center of your life is why you would want to subject your apartment to that sort of abuse.” He quickly wrote back, “I do not subject my apt. to abuse. It is nice to have friends over, and I have a housekeeper that cleans up everything afterward.”

Still, Roubini can’t help himself: After [gossip website] Gawker cheekily noted that both he and dating columnist Julia Allison were going to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, he made sure to be photographed with her there. Gawker’s dry comment: “Nouriel Roubini partying with intellectual peers.” Roubini’s response to me: “She’s a very smart cookie. Very smart. She can intelligently discuss lots of things.”

The photo above of Roubini and a few of his party guests accompanied the article in Portfolio.