Marc Faber: I’d Vote for Trump Because Clinton Will ‘Destroy the Whole World’

March 18, 2016 at 12:15 PM
Share & Print

Marc Faber believes the U.S. will not be a sound, well-run economy like Singapore "unless of course the U.S. is run by [Donald] Trump. Then the U.S. will improve."

During an interview on Bloomberg Television, the author of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report added, "Given the alternatives, I would vote for Mr. Trump, because he may only destroy the U.S. economy, but Hillary Clinton will destroy the whole world."

While Faber, a Swiss investor who lives in Thailand, agrees Donald Trump's potential policies to slow international trade between the United States and other countries would be a negative effect free markets, he also thinks the U.S. has "essentially given in on a lot of things" that benefit other countries.

"If you look at, say, the growth, 2000 to today, which countries have done relatively well? The emerging markets have done fantastically well," Faber said. "Their GDP has gone up substantially. The standards of living have gone up substantially. They have accumulated large reserves, and so forth."

On the other hand, he said, the U.S., Europe and Japan have been declining.

"[The] statistics are visible from industrial production in emerging economies. It's doubled in the last 12 years. Global trade, you look at the share of emerging markets, it's gone up," he told Bloomberg TV. "The developed world, the U.S., Europe, Japan, it's gone down and so forth. So I think that maybe we have to find a way to have a more balanced approach to global trade. I'm not saying protectionism, but the more balanced approach that is fair to the developed world."

When asked how Clinton will "destroy the world," Faber said to "look at her nation building in the Middle East, how successful that has been."

Faber went on to discuss his overall distaste for monetary policies.

"I want to tell you, the less policies, the better it would be," he told Bloomberg TV. "We all learned at school that the free market and the capitalistic system is the best allocator of resources, and now what we have is the worst allocation of resources because it's the government that tells you how these resources are allocated and they continuously expand their interventions, and I can tell you, I started to work in 1970. In the '70s and early 1980s, central banks actually never came up in discussions. They have now become like the messiah, and everybody watches what the central banks do and in the end, in my view, they will have, from a long-term perspective, no impact whatsoever. Now can they move markets short term? Yes, but maybe not in the direction they want to." The financial crises in 2000 and 2008 would have been better if central banks hadn't intervened, Faber said.

"In my view, it would have been better to let the crisis, already the first one in 2000, run its course and prevent the colossal credit bubble that was built up that then led to an even bigger crisis, and now they're doing the same mistake," Faber said. "They're again adding to credit volumes in the world."

According to Faber, credit as a percent of the global economy is up "very strongly" since 2007.

"[M]ost of the credit is now for transfer payments, and that is very negative for long term structural economic growth because it allows, actually, the government to become bigger and bigger and to have more regulations," Faber said. "And I can tell you, I'm in the financial sector and I talk to people in the financial sector. Half the time is nowadays consumed with filling out forms by regulators."

NOT FOR REPRINT

© 2024 ALM Global, LLC, All Rights Reserved. Request academic re-use from www.copyright.com. All other uses, submit a request to [email protected]. For more information visit Asset & Logo Licensing.

Related Stories

Resource Center