Marc Faber quoted LKY
"listen you lazy bugger, now you have to tighten your belts, you
have to save more, work more for lower
salaries"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/marc-f...ower-#comments
Marc Faber To America: "Listen You Lazy Bugger, You Need To Tighten
Your Belts, You Need To Work More For Lower Salaries"
Once again, the latest fire and brimstone sermon by Marc Faber is
absolutely spot on, starting and ending with his "policy"
recommendation for what the US needs: "I will tell you what the US
needs. The US needs a Lee Kwan Yew who stands in front of the US
and tells them, listen you lazy bugger, now you have to tighten
your belts, you have to save more, work more for lower salaries and
only through that will we get out of the current dilemma that
essentially prevents the economy from growing." No money printing,
no extensive protests, no excuses. Of course, this would have to
accompany a global overhaul of the system, something Zero Hedge has
been advocating since day one, as it is impossible to reform this
broken system from within: "The problem i have with the investment
universe is that i find it difficult to envision how the US and
western Europe can return to healthy sustainable growth without a
complete purge of the financial system and some type of catalyst.
Something that restores some measure of social cohesion among
people; it could be hyperinflation, a complete credit market
collapse, widespread sovereign defaults, civil strife, major
military confrontation.” Alas, in that he is also correct, and as
we said back in early 2010, when the current episode of extend and
pretend ends and the can kicking exercise finally fails, next up is
war.
It is refreshing to see that Marc is a reader of Zero Hedge, and
specifically the post that we consider one of the most important of
the year, namely that from BSC, which laid out in black on white
what the next steps will be:
I tell what you to do. I think a flat tax on everybody would be
actually a good measure and i think to reduce the regulatory
environment in the US. We have expansionary fiscal and monetary
policies. But we have restrictive regulatory policies. And it
curtails any initiative by the small businessmen., and the large
businessmen, he doesn't employ and invest capital in the US, he
does he that in China or somewhere else in the world where the
regulatory environment is more favorable. If you look at net
investments in the US, it's gone down for the last 20 years, and
it's now negative. In other words, basically the capital stock of
America is not being replenished. It's being replenished somewhere
else. And at the same time, the policies of the Keynesians have
always encouraged spending. “We're not going to get out of
recession by saving. Spend, Spend, Spend.” That is wrong. The lack
of savings is the problem of the United States.
Faber on volatility and liquidity:
i think the volatility arises because we have the Nasdaq bubble and
then we had the housing bubble and the stock market bubble and then
a commodities bubble and usually when the bubble bursts like off
the 29 or after the late '60s you have a period of very high
volatility for about 10 to 15 years before the markets settle down
and then reignite the uptrend. As far the dollar is concerned, the
reason i'm actually quite positive is that global liquidity,
despite of the fact that the ECB and the European governments will
flood the market with liquidity to pay the sales out, that global
liquidity is tightening. And whenever global liquidity is
tightening, it's bad for asset prices but good for the US dollar as
was the case in 2008.
On what the true target of #OccupyWallStreet, whose otherwise noble
intentions are unfortunately being abused by higher powers, should
be:
Basically we have the Keynesians and the Democrats and I'm not
saying that all democrats are equal, but they want interventions
and we have far too many interventions in the western world where
the share of the total economy that goes to government and is
government- sponsored has grown. And that essentially makes it very
difficult for the western world to grow substantially. As to that
huge level of debts, i don't see how the western world, including
the US, japan, and Western Europe can actually grow. They're going
to stagnate. And when you have stagnation over a longer period of
time, people start to ask questions and then they go after
minorities. And Wall Street is a minority – they are a minority and
anyone else would have done the same. They use the system. But they
didn't create the system. The system was created by the lobbyists
and by Washington. So they should actually go to Washington and
also occupy the Federal Reserve on the way.
Finally, his conclusion is once again spot on: Wall Street's growth
is merely a smokescreen for something far more insiduous and
something repeatedly covered by Bill Buckler and other more
insightful strategists: namely the infinite growth of central
planning and the government apparatus. Wall Street's monstrous
increase is merely a smokescreen by government to allow it to
operate in its shadows and to pocket the benefits of the most
mutated symbiotic relationship in the history of the world.
The problem is, governments in the western world -- and I'm not
singling out the US -- they have grown like a cancer. And now they
protect themselves to stay in power and they have a variety of
alliances, like, for instance Mr. Obama he has no clue, but when he
sees the protesters in Wall Street he immediately says yes, yes,
yes that’s a good idea so he can target the minority so can buy a
few more votes. And of course the well to do people want to protect
what they worked for and also what they're paying for because as
you know in the US roughly 50% of the people don't pay federal
income tax. So actually to say that the rich have not contributed
anything is actually wrong.
The conclusion is that any systemic reset should not target just
Wall Street: it should focus first and foremost on what is most
broken in US society: its "government."