Here’s one that we missed back in late July. Marc Faber joins Howe Street’s Tom Jeffries to discuss the inflation / deflation debate which was also covered in his August 2009 Gloom Boom and Doom Report. (Video interview follows excerpt and my comments)
I think the policy response is a total catastrophe. And, I also feel the purpose of any crisis is to clean the system. But, nothing has been cleaned. It’s gotten worse and worse and worse. It’s this entanglement between Wall Street and the corrupt politicians and the Treasury and the Federal Reserve opened doors between the three….
This is not the final crisis. The final crisis is the one when the whole system will collapse and the whole system will be cleaned of corrupt politicians and incompetent policy makers.
My guess is that we are years away from Doc Faber’s final crisis. No politician wants to be in charge when the real SHTF, so they will hold it off as long as possible and pass it on to the next guy. There’s a distinct possibility that President Obama won’t even be in office when it happens. While the potential for collapse of in public and private confidence may be accelerating right now, it can be a years-long, sometimes decades-long, process, as is discussed in Martin Armstrong’s recent piece How All Systems Can Collapse Overnight.
Marc Faber with Tom Jeffries July 21, 2009:
Faber, I believe, is a genius and is correct to point out the unsustainability of our current fiscal path. Everyone just wants to know 2 things: when will everything collapse, and how can I profit from it? The 2nd question is the easier to answer, but many believe that depends on what the answer is to the first question. For example, many will say something like “buy gold”, but if the collapse is years away it is hard to sit and hold gold (as it stays stagnant) while the market continues to climb. Most investors do not have the discipline to stick to their guns like that – including me. We are all greedy. We all want to ride the gravy train as long as we can and get out the day before everything implodes… as if we all have the crystal ball which provides us with those exact dates. That is why I like to listen to guys like Jim Rogers when he talks about how pointless it is to try and time the market. He pays attention to fundamentals, knowing FULL WELL that the market is not paying attention to them. That is the true contrarian way to invest. I think Warren Buffet said “don’t ever buy a stock that you don’t intend to hold for 10 years.” Wow, what an outdated philosophy! 🙂