“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,” Marc Faber writes in the September issue of The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.A statement like that pretty much speaks for itself, but it’s a bit more complicated than appears on first blush.
Faber has been bullish — especially on commodities and emerging market stocks — for some time now and believes the current global recovery trade will last another two-to-three years, as discussed in more detail in a forthcoming clip. But he has major long-term concerns about the dollar’s long-term viability given rising U.S. deficits, massive unfunded mandates and the fact “we have a money-printer at the Fed.”
This combination will eventually lead to runaway inflation, wholesale debasement of the dollar, and a major lowering of living standards for most Americans and many Europeans as well, says Faber, who is “highly confident” in this grim prediction.
In a SPIEGEL interview, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, 55, discusses his astronomical bonuses, the mistakes and failures of his bank prior to the start of the global financial crisis and his proposals for better regulating financial markets.
SPIEGEL: Mr. Blankfein, two years ago, your $67.9 million bonus was the largest ever paid to a Wall Street banker. You recently said that you could understand the anger that people are expressing over inflated bonuses. How are we to understand this?
Blankfein: I think people legitimately question whether compensation is tied to performance and, looking back, they see that some people were enriched but did not seem to have any alignment with their shareholders. A large part of the compensation paid to our senior people, including mine, is paid in shares, which may be worth less or more depending on our performance well after they were granted. This is what our shareholders want and we are convinced of this alignment of interests.
The Chinese are the future power of this earth. Quoting Benjamin Franklin? We are looking forward in obamanomics changing anything that worked for us in the past (got to show them stupid white people they weren’t smart after all) while China is using everything we did in the past to blow by us. Communism with free interprise in its private sector may be better than democracy with nonstop government intervention into the private sector if you know what I mean….and I think you do. Oh only one small difference, communist take 50percent of what you make and democrats want 70 or 80 percent, depending on whether they are buying themselves a bunch of new personal jets or not.
William Hailiang Chen, London UK. Photographer/Architectural Researcher
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I am not a fan of politics/economy and never concerned this in the past. However, since last year April I have put quite a lot of information about politics/economy due to the current social/economy uncertainty. I am not responsible for the content of external internet sites which I copied the content at the time I read. Those information doesn't represent my political view rather just the information I have collected which might infulence my judgement on viewing the world. I am open minded and eager to find out the 'truth'. You are welcome to post your opinions.
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陈海亮，英国伦敦
摄影爱好者/建筑研究者
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