Agora que a prosperidade está a chegar

(mais cedo ou mais tarde) como Mario "Whatever It Takes" Draghi anunciou hoje, estes 3'30" de entrevista telefónica a Marc Faber parecem-me vir bem a propósito. Note-se, também, a reacção da pivot à alfinetadela sem enfeites que Faber endereça aos media convencionais (no caso, a CNBC) que invariavelmente rejubilam com a infinita sageza e altruísmo dos banqueiros centrais (apesar do SNB suíço...).

Marc Faber : "Não sou um profeta mas irei continuar a comprar ouro"

Marc Faber: Ouro, uma oportunidade

Perante a evolução da cotação do ouro nos últimos 25 anos

não é de admirar que Marc Faber tenha afirmado, ontem, em entrevista à Bloomberg: "I love the fact that gold is finally breaking down because that will offer an excellent buying opportunity".

Os nossos líderes: perplexos, ignorantes e perigosos

Não vi o debate televisivo entre Obama e Romney. Por essa razão não posso (in)validar a surpreendente "janela de optimismo" que rui a. nele detectou (relativamente aos EUA). Do que tenho lido sobre os dois candidatos, esperaria que a leitura do debate fosse mais nesta linha, justamente aquela a que Jim Rogers e Marc Faber aludem no vídeo abaixo da CNBC, do qual, no ZeroHedge, sublinham a seguinte passagem:

Marc Faber: "Both candidates are clueless and completely artificial..."

Jimmy Rogers: "It's worse than clueless, because they think they know what they're doing.. and so they are dangerous! If they were just clueless and looked out the window, we wouldn't have a problem, but they think they have the solution - but their solutions are what's making the situation worse..."

Marc Faber: "That is precisely the point. It is very dangerous to have ignorant people believing that they know something!"

Marc Faber: a política da Fed destruirá o mundo

Em entrevista à Bloomberg, após o anúncio do QE, índice 3:

"É difícil dizer o que acontecerá. Acredito que, eventualmente, teremos uma crise sistémica e tudo colapsará. Mas a questão é o que se passará daqui até lá. Será que o colapso acontecerá com o Dow Jones nos 20.000 ou 50.000 ou nos 10 milhões de pontos? O Sr. Bernanke é um money printer e, acredite-me, se o Sr. Romney ganhar as eleições, o novo presidente da Fed será também um money printer. E portanto tudo continuará na mesma. Os europeus imprimirão moeda. Os chineses imprimirão moeda. Toda a gente imprimirá dinheiro e poder de compra do papel-moeda [moeda fiduciária] virá por aí abaixo. E eu não gosto de títulos de dívida [obrigações]. Não gosto particularmente de acções, mas penso que deter acções é hoje uma melhor escolha do que ter obrigações [Faber, mais à frente na entrevista, confidencia até que, pela primeira vez na sua vida, comprou acções em países 'exóticos', como Portugal, Espanha, Itália ou França devido aos muito baixos preços a que as acções das empresas desses países chegaram] ...

The monetary policies of the US will destroy the world."

Leitura complementar: também por Marc Faber, If I Were Bernanke, I Would Resign

As previsões de Marc Faber para a economia global

Indispensável ver.

Paul Ryan

é o escolhido por Mitt Romney como candidato à Vice-Presidência pelo partido Republicano o que tem entusiasmado muitos, entre os quais José Manuel Fernandes. Para outros, porém, o "entusiasmo" pode ser avaliado por esta eloquente declaração de Marc Faber: "If you put a gun on my head and you said ‘you must choose either Mr. Obama or Mr. Romney,’ I’d say 'please shoot.'"

À parte a retórica de palavras aparentemente claras, o facto é que os anunciados "cortes" na despesa do "Plano Ryan", quando contrastados com as opções de Obama, são os seguintes quando à evolução projectada da dívida pública (via Zero Hedge):

Imagem retirada daqui

Ou seja: o que se pode esperar da aplicação de algo parecido ao "Plano Ryan", numa hipotética administração republicana que saia das eleições de Novembro, será a diminuição do ritmo a que crescerá o endividamento. Como a plataforma republicana não pode deixar de protestar a sua alergia a aumentos de impostos, o que é possível antecipar é que o aumento da despesa continue a ser "financiado" pelas impressoras da Fed.

Mais do mesmo, pois. Na melhor das hipóteses, em menor quantidade.

Coisas que nos deviam intrigar

Por motivos que desafiaram a razão, houve quem julgasse que juntando sete "buracos" médios num único "buraco" (grande, naturalmente) os problemas das cajas espanholas, fundamentalmente devidos à monumental bolha imobiliária, estariam resolvidos. Viu-se. Na sequência da coisa, o Governo espanhol teve que se virar para a "Europa" e, educadamente, solicitar um resgate uma "linha de crédito".

Como sempre tem acontecido por cada assomo da crise, lá se realizou mais uma cimeira onde foi aventada  a hipótese de se caminhar para uma união bancária (com uma geometria política por definir, a par de inúmeros outros "detalhes"). Até ver, as reacções dos "mercados" parecem ser positivas: as bolsas subiram, o euro também, etc.). Subsiste, porém, uma "pequena" questão, como sublinha Marc Faber no vídeo abaixo: "If you put one or 100 sick banks in a union, it does not change the fact that they're sick.". Pois.

Grécia: Também me parece que não será para a semana

Marc Faber: "I think the dollar had a very strong rally and the euro became very oversold. I think the Greek election will be favorable in other words the Greeks will decide not to leave the Eurozone and the problems will be postponed because they will not implement the austerity that is demanded by them, and I do not know what eventually the actual outcome will be but I think it is quite possible that at some stage the Germans will lose patience and that they will exit the Eurozone"... "The countries that are weak, Spain, Greece, Italy, Portugal, they will not have the political will to implement the austerity that is demanded and the strong countries do not have the political will to pay for these countries"

Marc Faber: 100% de probabilidade de recessão global em 2013

Via ZH. Vai crescendo a sensação de que se aproxima uma "tempestade perfeita":

Marc Faber: Government Bonds are Doomed

Robert Wenzel concorda. (Nota: os títulos da dívida pública portuguesa, a 10 anos, têm evoluído assim)

Previsões de Marc Faber para 2012

Os bancos centrais (Fed e BCE) continuarão a actuar sob o lema "print, print, print".

Marc Faber: por que não cresce a economia ocidental?

Marc Faber numa das mais ricas entrevistas de que tenho memória. Todo o video merece ser ouvido com muita atenção. Retenho, em especial, duas passagens. Aos 3:33,

«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.»

e aos 7:40,

«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.»

Porquê o ouro? (2)

Por pura racionalidade:

Marc Faber: “I am not sure how high the price of gold or silver will increase but when I consider the further inevitable growth of the US and other governments’ debts, the creation of paper money in the world and especially at the low gold ownership rate in the world, I am confident that the price trend of gold is up,” Faber wrote in the August edition of his newsletter the Gloom Boom & Doom Report. - in The Jakarta Globe

Mas também por razões menos nobres:

Hugo Chávez nacionaliza produção de ouro na Venezuela

Em declarações à televisão estatal, Chávez afirmou que “[o] sector é dominado pela máfia. Nós vamos nacionalizar o ouro. Não podemos continuar a deixar que eles o roubem”

The whole world is mad

é o que pensa Marc Faber, em entrevista à Bloomberg, sobre os tempos que correm:

Marc Faber: acumular ouro, investir em prata

Via Finantial Doom Blog

Marc Faber: I think we are all doomed

Numa entrevista com MacAlavany (realces meus), Faber mostra-se muito pessimista quando ao desenlace da "impressão" de moeda pelos bancos centrais, numa escala sem precedentes na História:

(...) "I think we are all doomed. I think what will happen is that we are in the midst of a kind of a crack-up boom that is not sustainable, that eventually the economy will deteriorate, that there will be more money-printing, and then you have inflation, and a poor economy, an extreme form of stagflation, and, eventually, in that situation, countries go to war, and, as a whole, derivatives, the market, and everything will collapse, and like a computer when it crashes, you will have to reboot it. For the investor, the question is: How do I navigate through this complete disaster that is going to unfold? And I think if you look at different asset classes - real estate, equities,bonds, cash, precious metals – I suppose that you have to be diversified. I think real estate in the U.S. may go down another 10% or so, or even 15%, but I am always telling people, if you can buy the piece of land or the house you like, what do you actually care if it does down another 10%? If everything I bought in my life had only gone down 10-15%, I would be very rich, because a lot of things became worthless, especially loans to friends, and bonds, and so forth.Look at the history, for example, of Germany, for the last 100 years. They had World War I. They had the hyper-inflation in World War II. The bond-holders got wiped out three times. If you owned Siemens, and you still own Siemens today, it was not a fantastic investment, but at least you still have something. You were not wiped out. I think that in equities you will be better off because you have an ownership in a company,than by being the lenders to companies, and the lenders, especially, to governments."

A inflação é um imposto insidioso sobre as poupanças

In a recent interview with David McAlavany Dr. Marc Faber answered this question about inflation:

David McAlavany: It seems like perhaps one of the best strategies that they [o Governo] have to employ is a manipulation of the CPI [Índice de preços no consumido] numbers so that people assume that real-world inflation is 2 to2½%, while running at a 5% rate, essentially cutting the debts in half over a long enough period of time. If real-world inflation is, as John Williams of Shadow Stats has said, closer to 8%, then we are alleviating a lot of our existing stock of debt, at a rapid rate.

Marc Faber: Correct. But you understand, you are not really helping the economy, you are impoverishing, let’s say, the honest people who are decent, who have deposits, who save money and keep it in the banking system, who simply do not want to speculate. So, it is a tax on people’s savings, and it is a very vicious tax, because it is not so obvious to them,but it will become obvious one day, when with their money they can buy less and less. In other words, the purchasing power of money goes down. That is why I am telling everyone, if you already own cash, consider gold and silver to be a component of your cash portfolio, and own some of it, because the government can appropriate it, but otherwise they cannot fiddle around with it in terms of increasing the supply.

Há um terrível perigo a pairar sobre todo o mundo

Marc Faber:

«See the first-of-its-kind Federal Reserve press briefing (*). Ben Bernanke--Chair of the Fed, U.S. National Economic Planner, Manipulator of the Money Supply, Master of the Debased and Hopelessly Inflated Dollar, Taker of Purchasing Power, Mauler of the Mortgage Market, Great Enabler of Moral Hazard and Second-To-None Stealer of American's Savings---presumably felt the need to explain his stellar record to us. This guy is an all-star. Grab some popcorn.»

(*)-Vitória, exclusiva, de Ron Paul.

Previsões (4)

Marc Faber, também conhecido por Mr. Doom (realces meus com particular realce para o último parágrafo):

"I do not think that people should put on Gold but they should be their own central bank and gradually accumulate gold reserves as a currency and they should basically hold it physically but not in the US outside the US " [because] " I think there is the risk that the US will once again as they did in 1933 collect the gold expropriate the gold they will not take away and not pay anything they'll pay probably the market price and after they will revalue it it by say five times."

"I think you are right in saying that we are in a contest for the ugliest currency (...) but I believe that the best currency is still gold and silver and this is not the perception of most people they think that gold and silver are speculative investments ."

"I think that conceivably the US dollar here could rebound but I maintain my longer term projection , the value of the US dollar will be precisely its intrinsic value namely ZERO precisely ZERO , yes I told you two years ago and I still maintain that ."