rss

Abu Dhabi Lecture: Short Summary

He began by explaining why extreme deflation scenarios are extremely unlikely under the Bernanke Fed, comparing the Fed chairman’s commitment to an anti-deflation strategy to Hitler’s Mein Kampf, a book that also clearly stated a policy program in advance but was not widely believed until it was too late.

Likewise Dr Faber believes Mr. Bernanke is committed to printing money and will in any case have very little choice because of entitlements and the US constitution. Thus he could see the S&P 500 dropping back from current levels to say 950 in this autumn but by then Fed monetary policy would be strongly inflationary and bring the market back up.

Dr Faber pointed out that with the US so deep in debt the Fed thinks it cannot allow asset prices to drop below a certain point because that would devastate the balance sheets of the banks with debt deflation. But he thinks in the long run this is just rolling up another crisis for the future that will destroy the US dollar and cause an even bigger financial crisis.

Declaring himself the ‘most pessimistic of forecasters, nobody is more pessimistic than me’ Dr Faber outlined a scenario in which the dollar has to be replaced by another unit after a future inflation, and holders of cash and bonds lose virtually everything in the process.