- Marc Faber: Huge Asset Bubble Will Be Deflated
by Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com (Early Sunday Release)
Legendary contrarian investor Dr. Marc Faber says forget about the coming slowdown because the economy has already been backing up for months. Faber, who holds a PhD in economics, explains, “Investors are relatively complacent. Nobody thinks a recession has begun. I think a recession in the U.S. probably began in October/November of last year. If you define a recession as peak economic activity and subsequent declining growth rates that can turn overall negative in the process, I think this is happening now in the world. We are probably already in a recession. The central banks, in my view, will continue to do more or less what they have done in the past, namely, print money.”
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Dr. Faber warns, “When I started to work in 1970 on Wall Street, the stock market capitalization of the U.S. as a percentage of GDP . . . was between 25% and 30%. Now, the stock market capitalization alone is 150% of GDP, and when you add the bonds to it, we are at 300%. It’s a huge asset bubble compared to the real economy. I think no matter what they do, this asset bubble will be deflated, and it will be very painful. The asset holders are the powerful ones here, and they don’t want it deflated. . . . The question is would it have been better economically to go into the hospital in 2008/2009 and clean up the system rather than to essentially inject the sick patient with more opioids to keep him alive? It’s going to get much worse the next time it happens.”
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Faber says, “You ask me what I fear. I say you and I and your viewers do not know how it will end. . . . I am not hopeful for the global economy. We can have a recession at any time, but I think the asset market will hold up because of the money printing.”
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Dr. Faber thinks that the problems in the West are not just financial, but geopolitical with the rise of socialism and communism. Dr. Faber says, “I can assure you that people who lived under socialism and communism in China, Russia and Eastern Europe, that is the last thing they want to go back to–the last thing. The Westerners, who have never experienced the devastating lifestyle under socialism and communism, are amenable to the idea. The millennials think the government should do more. They don’t know what that means. When the government can do more, it can do everything. They can have people build bridges in the desert where no bridges are needed to keep people busy, and that leads to a complete economic calamity.”
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https://socioecohistory.wordpress.com/2019/03/18/marc-faber-huge-asset-bubble-will-be-deflated/