Famed economist and professor at New York University Nouriel Roubini stated in an interview with Australia’s ABC on Thursday, that the global economy is facing a “perfect storm” of rising interest rates, high inflation, and the prospect of a recession in 2023, which is likely to hit the presently employed hardest of all.

Nicknamed “Dr Doom” after being one of the first economists to correctly predict the 2008-2009 financial crisis, Roubini has been warning of a coming stagflationary debt crisis for months, predicting it will combine the worst elements of the 1970’s stagflation with the 2008 debt crisis.

Roubini said, “I do believe that a stagflationary crisis is going to emerge this year,” noting that in advanced economies, the debt ratio was only 100% of GDP in the 1970’s while at present it is 420% of GDP, in private and public debt.

He explained, “So, in this case, if we have those shocks to, say, oil prices, not only do you get inflation, not only do you get recession and stagflation, but you get what I call a great stagflationary debt crisis, because with interest rates so high, then that [debt] ratio has become unsustainable.”

He went on to predict that all of this would require the Federal Reserve and other central banks in other nations to continue hiking interest rates, even as their economies continued to spiral into recession.

He added, “I think that the Fed funds rate will have to be certainly above 6% to achieve a 2% inflation target. But if you raise interest rates to 6% then you’re going to have a real hard landing.”

This, he predicted, would produce a harsh correction in stocks, drive bond yields higher, widen credit spreads for private sector debt, and eventually would produce severe financial distress.

He went on, “That financial distress is going to make the recession more severe, and a more severe recession by having a contraction of income and output is going to increase the number of defaults by households, businesses, corporates, and even some financial institutions and some governments in poor countries that have serious debt problems.”

He added that those who are presently employed would be hit the hardest by the crisis, including even those who managed to keep their jobs, noting, “Stagflation is the worst of all worlds for workers.”