A Bleak Future?

Marc Faber is a 63-year-old Swiss-born economist and financial analyst who has spent a lifetime living internationally and studying the economies of the world. He's smart (magna cum laude Ph.D in economics at age 24) and highly respected, living in the U.S. now. His financial newsletter is read by all major investment houses and wealthy individual investors. I've seen him quoted for years, though have not subscribed to his newsletter.

A short video interview with Faber, posted yesterday at Yahoo Finance, has him predicting the fall of capitalism in the U.S. and the radical fall of standards of living in the West in the coming years -- in other words, an economic revolution due to the U.S. government's inability to manage its debt load and resulting inflation. Given that the U.S. dollar has lost 95% of its value since the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913 -- a century, in other words -- he doesn't feel it will take but a few years for it to lose the remaining 5% of its value, meaning it will become worthless and devaluation will occur -- and an economic tsunami (revolution) of some sort -- the institution of some new form of currency by the government. (These kinds of devaluations have occurred frequently in other countries throughout history, most notably Argentina in recent years, but never in the U.S.)

Here is what he wrote in his September newsletter which he expounds on in the interview:

"The future will be a total disaster, with a collapse of our capitalistic system as we know it today, wars, massive government debt defaults and the impoverishment of large segments of Western society."

I would place more weight on Marc Faber's opinion than I would those in Washington today who continue to promise a bright future while implementing policies that cannot but produce the opposite.

It is not too soon for people to be aware of these possibilities and start creating the defenses they think best for surviving what may be a rocky future -- and the younger you are, the more likely you will live to see this scenario unfold. As for me, my hope is not in the policies or intelligence of men. But that doesn't mean that godly people won't suffer along with the rest, so I am concerned about these issues as well. I think self-sufficiency (food, water, shelter) is the first place to begin thinking about from a long-term perspective.

The interview with Faber is only 5-6 minutes long, and worth watching more than once to grasp the import of his words as they are filtered through his Swiss accent. You have to go here to watch the video.