Marc Faber on the Federal Reserve and Hyperinflation
The Hera Research Newsletter (HRN) is delighted to present the following powerful interview with noted speaker and best selling author Dr. Marc Faber, whose newsletter, The Gloom Boom & Doom Report, highlights unusual investment opportunities. Dr. Faber is a popular speaker at investment seminars and conferences around the world and is best known for his contrarian investment approach.
Born in Zurich, Switzerland, Dr. Faber went to school in Geneva and Zurich and finished high school with the Matura. He studied Economics at the University of Zurich and, at the age of 24, obtained a PhD in Economics magna cum laude.
Between 1970 and 1978, Dr. Faber worked for White Weld & Company Limited in New York, Zurich and Hong Kong and, since 1973, has lived in Hong Kong. From 1978 to February 1990, he was the Managing Director of Drexel Burnham Lambert (HK) Ltd.
Dr. Faber’s best selling book Tomorrow’s Gold — Asia’s Age of Discovery has been translated into Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Thai and German. Dr. Faber is a regular contributor to several leading financial publications around the world.
Dr. Faber, who is an investment adviser and fund manager associated with a variety of funds, is a member of the Board of Directors of numerous companies around the world.
Hera Research Newsletter: Thank you for joining us today. You’ve commented that the Federal Reserve’s policies have been linked to past boom and bust cycles in the US economy. Why do you believe that?
Dr. Marc Faber: Booms and busts happen also under the gold standard like we had in the 19th century various railroad and canal booms, and we also had real estate booms, first on the east coast in Chicago, then, at end of the century, in California. What the Federal Reserve has really done is create a lot of economic volatility. If you look back at the various crisis starting with the S&L crisis in 1990, then the Tequila crisis [the Mexican Peso crisis] in 1994, then Long Term Capital Management (LTCM), the NASDAQ bubble and at the current crisis, each crisis actually became worse and worse and the bubbles became bigger and bigger. The Federal Reserve did not pay any attention to excessive credit growth. The reason I am so negative about the Federal Reserve’s policies is that they only target core inflation and argue that they can’t identify bubbles, but when each bubble bursts they flood the system with liquidity that bring about unintended consequences.
