Brad DeLong, who has an excellent memory, notes one of Nouriel Roubini's gloom and doom scenarios didn't come to pass:

Roubini and Setser, February 2005 http://tinyurl.com/dl20090207: [In the early 2000s] The Federal Reserve responded aggressively to the sharp falls in US equity markets, and the Bush Administration added a massive fiscal stimulus to the Fed’s monetary stimulus: as Ken Rogoff (2003) has noted, the US recovery was the best recovery money could buy.... [F]oreign central banks were unwilling to let their currencies fall against the dollar, and intervened massively... a seemingly unlimited credit line from the world’s central banks funded the expansion of the US fiscal deficit, preventing the growing stock of Treasuries from crowding out private investment....

A cooperative grand bargain... offers the best chance for unwinding of the US external imbalance without a sharp deceleration of US and global growth. However, such a bargain looks increasingly unlikely.... China may be willing to add $240 billion, or even $300 billion, to its reserves for another year. We doubt it will be willing to do so for two more years.... [T]he risk [of] a disorderly unraveling... a sharp correction of the US dollar and of the US bond market, a surge in US long-term interest rates, a sharp fall in the price of a wide variety of risky assets (such a equities, housing, high-yield bonds, and emerging market sovereign debt) - are growing. Such an unraveling could result in a sharp economic slowdown in the US. It will force countries that now depend on US demand growth for their growth to adjust as well...