Word: pessimistic
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...Those are fighting words to John Derbyshire, a proud pessimist crusading against America's penchant for smiley-faced self-deception. The National Review writer and self-described "conservative gloominary" leads readers on a bleak tour of modern life, bemoaning the state of our society and culture (the '00s are the first decade without a living novelist featured on TIME's cover, he laments). Derbyshire's no fan of liberalism, but his main targets are the utopian fantasies of both parties and the notion that humanity can patch the flaws that led us to this woeful state to begin with. Embracing...
...comfortable with cell-phone banking as they are with bartering - might be an indication of a country on the move. Kenya is changing. Last year's violence hastened the emergence of a highly critical civil-society movement which has become a sobering force in Kenyan politics. And even a pessimist would have to admit that the unity government has disbanded the discredited election commission, set up a committee of experts to propose constitutional reform and begun work on reforming constituency boundaries and establishing a truth, justice and reconciliation commission...
...Facts are important too, and some think Geithner and the government are fudging them. Nouriel Roubini, the hard-headed pessimist who foresaw the financial crisis, wrote Tuesday in the Wall Street Journal that the overall positive message of the stress tests "would be good news if it were credible," but it's not. He points to the recent IMF report that estimated $2.7 trillion in U.S. loan and security losses, and his own estimate of $3.6 trillion for the same potential losses. "The financial system is currently near insolvency," he concluded. Bernanke disputes the numbers, saying banks have "taken significant...
Economist Nouriel Roubini, chairman of New York City - based research firm RGE Monitor, earned the nickname "Dr. Doom" by warning as early as 2005 that America's speculative housing boom could trigger an economic crisis. At the time, he was dismissed by many as a perpetual pessimist. Today, he's a sought-after analyst and a popular guest on financial-news programs and websites - and he's as gloomy as ever. Over breakfast in Hong Kong recently, the New York University professor talked with TIME's Michael Schuman about the perils that lie ahead if governments do not do more...
...raging debate about the largest American banks is whether their stock market values should be zero. Economist Nouriel Roubini, the most highly paid pessimist in the world, recently said that U.S. banks are "insolvent" and credit crisis write-downs will total $3.6 trillion. That is a great deal more than has been taken as losses by financial firms to date...