Marc Faber asks Greek to buy gold
LONDON (Commodity Online): The debt crisis plaguing Greece has turned out to be another opportunity for global investment advisors to bat for gold, the hottest commodity traded in the world.
And when it comes to gold, what the Swiss investing advisor and analyst Marc Faber says on the economic crisis that has hit Greece is making waves these days. Faber says Greek crisis is just the beginning and the entire Europe will be caught in debt problems. And the commodity that can save people is gold.
While Faber does not hold any hopes for the US dollar and Euro, he says the only ideal investment for people these days is to buy gold. Greece is caught in a big problem and their currency (which is Euro) is hugely overvalued. So in these circumstances I would advise the people in that country to buy gold, said Marc Faber.
I don't think the Greek bail out plan will work out, and I think other countries like Spain and probably Portugal (and Italy) will then also have to be bailed out eventually, and it will lead to more monetization in Europe, one of the reason the euro has been so week, says Faber.
He says:The pain of the austerity will be very, very burdensome on Greece, and eventually the economy can not grow with the kind of budget they will have to enact, and under these conditions their currency is way overvalued (they are in the euro). And so without the ability to grow, their ability to pay the interest and repay the debt will actually diminish.... I think everybody should accumulate some gold over time. I would recommend people to buy every month some gold for ever.
Faber says the ideal thing for the people in Greece is to own gold because the yellow metal is the best investment these days and it is not a liability for anyone else.
Gold is not a liability of someone else, you really own it, you keep it in a safe deposit box, its quantity can not be increased at the same rate as you can print money which will eventually again weaken the US dollar. I am not saying that the dollar will go straight down, but eventually the purchasing power of money will lose, Faber pointed out.
Lastly, for Faber's view on why this time it is different, and the developed world will not be able to pull itself out by its bootstraps, his view:
If you compare the depression years, in the depression years we did not have credit cards and we did not have unfunded liabilities from Social Security, from Medicare, from Medicaid. These are all debts that will come due that will have to be paid by the government, and eventually this fiscal deficit will lead to a government debt that will then, because of its increasing size lead to sharply rising interest burden. In other words, in ten years time I would estimate that between 30 and 50% of tax revenue will be spent on the interest payments on the government debt. That will necessitate the monetization of the debt and that will then lead to a weak dollar.