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The 'Little Geek'

It was as a young teenager that Roubini discovered his interest in economics.

"I was already a little geek by the age of 14 or 15," he said.

After graduating college in Italy, Roubini moved to the United States to pursue a h.D. at Harvard University, where he studied under noted economists Jeffrey Sachs and Lawrence Summers, who later served as Treasury Secretary under President Clinton and has been named as a candidate to fill that post again in the Barack Obama administration.

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Roubini began his own teaching career at Yale University, where he worked as an assistant professor before transferring to become a tenured professor at NYU's Stern School of Business. For two years, he left his NYU post for D.C., first to work at the White House Council of Economic Advisers and then to join Summers at the Treasury Department.

Along the way, he started an economics blog that grew to become a full-blown business: In addition to its economic analysis subscription service, RGE Monitor -- short for Roubini Global Economics -- advises private and public sector clients around the world.

Today, RGE business accounts for much of Roubini's global travels -- "In the next few weeks I'm going to be traveling to France, Germany, Switzerland and Spain and spending Thanksgiving in Russia, of all places," he said recently -- which he balances against his NYU teaching schedule, economic conferences, speaking engagements and, last but not least, a busy social calendar.

Though Roubini works 12 hours a day, the great thing about New York, he said, is that after work there's always a gallery opening, a museum event, a dinner party or a banquet to attend.

But his social outings have recently garnered Roubini some unwelcome media attention that has evolved into a bizarre feud with the editor of a gossip Web site.