Roubini Sees 40% Chance Of Double-Dip; Volcker Predicts 'Prolonged' Unemployment

Former Federal Reserve chairman Paul Volcker and economist Nouriel Roubini seem equally pessimistic about a U.S. economic recovery.

"This has not been an ordinary recession," Volcker, who chairs the president's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, said in a Toronto speech Thursday, according to Bloomberg, and he added that it's "very difficult to find a sector in the American economy that has any spark to it."

Roubini, chairman and co-founder of Roubini Global Economics, expressed a similarly bleak outlook, reiterating his belief that there's a 40 percent chance the economy could slip into another recession, Market Watch reports. Even without a double dip, it will feel like the economy is in a recession, he added. Roubini, whom the New York Times has labeled "Dr. Doom," and who in 2006 predicted the housing crisis, first tweeted the double-dip probability in August and stuck to that belief in September.

In response to a prolonged economic slump, strategists at HSBC have dubbed European nations, the U.K., the U.S. and Japan "heavily indebted industrialized countries," or HIICs, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month. The thesis behind the designation is that developed countries are starting to behave like emerging ones. Arianna's book Third World America is currently on the NYT best seller list.

The unemployment rate for September will be announced Friday morning. Goldman Sachs chief U.S. economist Jan Hatzius, who is famously pessimistic, doesn't think the number will be good.