“Buy a farm and let your girlfriend work on the farm,” he said, to the applause of investors. “If the global economy doesn’t recover, usually people go to war.”
Faber Says Financial Industry to Contract ‘Much More’ (Update2)
By Patrick Rial and Hideki Sagiike
Feb. 27 (Bloomberg) -- The financial services industry, hammered by job cuts and record losses, is in for an even bigger contraction as the global recession deepens, said Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.
“The financial sector will contract and it will contract much more than we’ve seen so far,” said Faber, who was in Tokyo to speak at an event hosted by CLSA Ltd. Financial professionals have “been in paradise for the past 25 years.”
More than 275,000 jobs in the financial industry have been lost in the last two years, according to Bloomberg data, while losses and writedowns at global companies exceeded $1 trillion in the past year. Faber said the contraction could rival declines seen in the 1970s following the collapse of Bernard Cornfeld’s Investors Overseas Services that shook confidence in the industry for a decade.
“The financial sector has been occupying themselves with trading against each other all day and it’s totally unproductive,” said Faber, 62, who told investors to abandon U.S. stocks a week before 1987’s so-called Black Monday crash, according to his Web site. “It’s like a huge casino and that will come to an end.”
Faber said gold was currently expensive relative to other commodities, and the bearish sentiment that’s driven investors from equities to the precious metal is likely to reverse soon. He had recommended investors buy gold since the start of an eight-year rally that this month saw the metal top $1,000 per ounce as skittish investors sought safe-haven assets.
‘Substantial’ Stock Rally
“I’m a little bit careful about the outlook for gold for the rest of the year,” he said. “A countertrend rally could occur soon where stocks would suddenly rise quite substantially.”
Faber today recommended investors short U.S. Treasuries, as a 27-year bull market likely ended in December, starting the beginning of a long bear market. Faber also recommends selling the Japanese yen, though the nation’s stocks may outperform global equities in the next one or two years because they have been depressed for so long, he said.
The yield on the 10-year U.S. government bond fell to a record low of 2.04 percent on Dec. 18, compared with a peak of 15.8 percent in September 1981. The yen has gained against every other currency in the world, except one, in the last 12 months even as the economy contracted at the fastest pace in 35 years. The Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell to the lowest in 26 years this week.
Head for the Farm
The best bet for investors may be to buy a farm and escape from the cities, as a prolonged recession could lead to war, as the Great Depression did, said the Swiss national, who now lives in Thailand.
“Buy a farm and let your girlfriend work on the farm,” he said, to the applause of investors. “If the global economy doesn’t recover, usually people go to war.” |
