Episode 83: The Global Current Macro Outlook with Dr. Marc Faber

[00:00:00] Ben: Welcome to the alt asset allocationpodcast, exploring alternative investment opportunities available to theeveryday investor. Here's your host Ben Lakoff.

Welcome to the alt asset allocation podcast. Today's interviewis with Dr. Marc Faber, Dr. Doom and gloom himself. Dr. Faber is a legend inthe space.

He was up late for this one. The time changed between LA andChang mai is not that hospitable. I think it was 2:00 AM his time. So in thisepisode, we bounce around a bit, but the key is that we're in prettyunprecedented times and that central bankers in the currently monetary regimehave backed us into.

Pretty curious situation. Keep in mind that they do call himDr. Doom. And when looking at these sorts of things, it can keep a bit dire,but that's okay. The key is that we may be transitioning into a time periodwhere returns that were easily generated may no longer be the case. And therecould be an extended environment.

Financial assets losing value that we are entering into. Beforewe jump into the episode, I wanted to take a second to thank you for all thegreat questions and feedback, comments, likes and reviews. I really, reallyappreciate it. And you guys rock. All right. Enjoy this discussion with Dr.Marc Faber.

Dr. Faber. Welcome to the alt asset allocation podcast. Excitedto see you again, sir.

[00:01:32] Marc: Well, thank you very much for having meon your program.

[00:01:36] Ben: Yeah, it's been a long time. So the lasttime we recorded was December, 2020. That was episode 28 and it was a very,very long time ago for my listeners that aren't aware who you are.

You famously predicted the 1987 black Monday stock marketcollapse. And as well as the Japanese bubble in 1990. You are one of thegreatest economists and contrarian investors in the world. And you're thepublisher of the gloom boom and doom report. And you reside in. Old home wellin Thailand, but in Cheng Mai, I'm very excited to have you on.

The episode last time was very much well received. Alwaysappreciate your insight and looking forward to having this conversation. Well,thank you. And it's very late your time. Kudos to you to staying up really verylate. Yes. Not a problem. So. Right now, this is being recorded August, 2022.

And we keep hearing that this is unprecedented times. You are afan of studying history and you've been investing for a very long time now. I'dlike to just start by saying like, how bad is this right now, compared toprevious cycles and, and start by asking, like what periods of history can youdraw parallels to, to help understand what's happening?

Right.

[00:02:51] Marc: Well it's difficult to really comparethe present time to the past because you know, let's say until a hundred yearsago or so we didn't have central banks and now we have central banks thatintervene or to put it more precisely they manipulate markets. They manipulate.One of the most important costs of input in an economy, which is the rate ofinterest that you pay, if you borrow money and with that ability and theability to print money, they can kind of change the business cycle somewhat.

They cannot create eternal prosperity. That should be clear to.But the academics, they kind of think they can do that. But the reality is youcan't produce with money printing, eternal prosperity. Otherwise nobody wouldwork. Nobody would produce anything and everybody would sit on the beach andwith a printing machine and print money and so forth and distribute the moneyto the citizens and hope that all goes well.

So, this is unprecedented in modern times in history, let's sayof the last 5,000 years, we have central banks that print money, and that arerun by people who never worked in their lives. In the private sector. They arenot businessmen, they're academics. And we have to distinguish in a societybetween the workers that do.

The entrepreneurs that create businesses and take risks andassume responsibilities. And then you have the academic circles that sit inuniversities and write all kinds of papers that are academic papers, but theyactually, these people have never had that position of true responsibility. Youunderstand.

So if we have these professors telling the world what to do andhow to run businesses, then obviously the results aren't going to be very goodbecause the world, if we look at the last 5,000 years, became rich frominventors, innovators and businessmen, and especially in the last hundred,hundred 50 years as a result.

Of the capitalistic system that adopted free market economies.In other words we have free markets. We have competition when people are incompetition, they do things and they try to do be things better for theircustomers. And that is an unusual feature of the last 150 years. But becausecapitalism has been so successful, Now, it seems that in the Western world,people want to have more socialism in other what failed in the Soviet union.

And as you know, the Soviet union fell apart in 1989 and theBerlin wall fell. And everybody agreed on one topic. The capitalistic systemhas one and the command economy, what is essentially governed by governmentofficials and bureaucrats and academics has been a failure, but because we wantthis battle with the command economy, with communism and socialism and theirideolog.

Now suddenly people think we need more socialism and we have inthe Western world, I mean, in some countries extreme this social thinking thatwill destroy our prosperity. There's no question about it. Yeah. And thepoliticians are bright because. They have to say things that the majority wantsto listen to.

And the majority always wants the government to pay them more.In other words the bakers, they want subsidies for the baking professionprofession and the construction workers want subsidies and benefits for theconstruction workers. And the professors at universities want benefit for theprofessors and the horse ends on.

So everybody wants more and more from the government and thegovernment becomes bigger and bigger, but the government doesn't create anyWells. The government is like a cancer, it retires economic growth and anyviewer of yours who has their own business. Sooner or later he will run intosome kind of a government official that tells him, oh, you can't do this andyou can't do that.

And if you open up a restaurant, we have to come and checkthis. Another police department comes and says, we have to check that anotherbureaucrat will say, well, we have to check, check the ceiling. And then, then,and at the end it increases the cost. Endlessly. And it makes it very difficultfor small businesses to exist because you know, if you're Starbucks orMcDonald's, you have a team of people that know how to open a new store, thenew restaurant, they are the lawyers there and the architects and the engineer.

They know how to talk to the government officials. They knowwho to call and who to pay off under the table and so forth. The smallbusinessman doesn't have that. It doesn't have that the means to have all thisteam. And so it essentially destroys small businesses and COVID was a wonderfulexample how big businesses did well.

And the small business owner was bankrupt. And many, not a few,many were bankrupted. And this is the sad part because the governmentofficials, they get the salary. They couldn't care less, whether the individualcan continue to run his business or not. They get the salary anyway, but theworld sits there and does nothing.

Nobody re rebels against these government officials. That surprisedme. In fact, the rich people actually support these measures because they arethe shareholders of the big corporations that actually benefit from the closureof small businesses.

[00:09:53] Ben: I mean what it, what it starts to soundlike that the, the true free market and real competition and, and weeding outof these losers is actually broken.

So even though capitalism won in the 1989, is it completelybroken now?

[00:10:09] Marc: And if so, we go from here very, veryhard to break it. You have, it's an episode against capitalism becausecapitalism. Relies a free market relies on property rights. And if you have aproperty, either you are entitled to defend your property, then you should beable to use your guns and shoot anyone who is undesirable.

But society such, if you shoot someone, they will take you tocourt. They will not say, well, he has the right. It's his, it's his property,right. Only the government has the right to shoot you and someone breaks in thebreak in for sure. The, the sea or whatever it is, will be shot. Yeah.

[00:11:05] Ben: Well that, that in very short order,right?

You've been very Very consistent since the great financialcrisis that this money printing, you know, MMT this academics saying you justkeep printing forever. It's really breaking the back of capitalism, but at somepoint, these government debts have to be repaid or taken care of in some way.

I'm curious, like how, how does, what are the different routeshere to kind of solve where we are today? Or is there we're kinda at that pointof no turning back.

[00:11:39] Marc: I think we are already at the pointwhere you can't turn back. I think maybe you can kind of reduce the damage, butthe damage is here and I want to explain to you something very careful.

That your viewers have to take notice of, if you have twocountries, say one country, a in country, a we have citizens, they belong tothe country. They've built businesses and they pay out salaries and they havean administration and so forth, and everybody understands. We have to paysomething for the police force.

We need to pay something for the clean water. We need to paysomething for defense and so forth and so on. So everybody understands we haveto pay tax. Okay. So everybody pays tax. And the budget is balanced now incountry B you have one of these lunatic of the MMT people modern Mo monetarytheory, which is not modern at all because throughout the ages, they printedmoney, but you have one of these lunatics in charge or one of these fed officials.

In the us who prints money, you have these people in charge.Then in theory, you could have a system where nobody pays any tax. The treasuryspends money. And the federal reserve, the central bank then prints the moneyhands over the money to the treasury to pay out the checks to everyone, to thefiremen, to the workers, to the, the social security recipients and of ourhands on.

Okay. So nobody pays any tax. So are you gonna tell me, or anyof your viewers. Starting country B nobody pays any taxes. Innovation is auniversal tax. It's an unfair tax because it touches different people verydifferently. It hurts the poor people. The most, the lower income recipients.It hurts the highest the people on, in the well permits at the highest.

The least, but eventually it hurts everybody because thecurrency goes down and because inflation accelerates and interest rates will goup and it will then cause some damage to the value of assets. Okay. But believeme, a country that doesn't pay physically tax. Just pays it through thisinflation process I described, they also pay a tax and it's a very high taxthey pay eventually.

[00:14:58] Ben: Well, you just keep kicking that canfurther and further down the road. Eventually somebody's gotta deal with it.Right.

[00:15:03] Marc: Eventually it will become more and moreexpensive. huge. It results in a complete breakdown of society. But ifAmericans want that, and if they're wealthy people in America and some interestgroups and the NGOs like, well

[00:15:24] Ben: the, the us has turned into a pretty muchanything you say will get you canceled sort of thing.

So I think that's, that's probably a bit of it. It sounds likein your latest post that you pu published. Yes. Or today which I'll link in theshow notes. Inflation is hot. It seems outta control. It's a lot of thediscussions in the moment. It, it sounds like what you're saying is this islike, this is not obviously a transitory thing, but this is the long termpervasive issue due to all of the things we've been doing over the past 40, 50years.

I'd be curious just to kind. Sum up your thoughts on inflation,where it's going from here continued up into the right Batten down the hatcheskind of riff on inflation a bit.

[00:16:07] Marc: In my recent report, I pointed out theinflationary cycles of the seventies. So we had accelerating inflation. On inthe sixties until the end of the sixties and then inflation peaked out in 1970and then it came off until 72.

But then we went up strongly until 74 and after 74, the rate ofinflation between 74 and 76 was cut in half. Also short term interest rateswere cut in. Okay. So 50% reduction and everybody thought, oh, the inflation isover. And then it started again between 76 and 1980 inflation went up strongly.And all I want to say is personally we have now two opposing forces in theeconomy.

We have an inflationary force. Okay. But at the same time,unlike all these government officials in the us who have turned VO and can'tutter the word recession, I think the global economy is in recession period.The problem is CNBC and Bloomberg and Fox. They never introduced, neverinterview people from the street.

Ordinary folks who can't ex express themselves. They interviewthe academics and the politicians with, and most of them are a bunch of liarsperiod because they are paid off by government offices. Most economies that youwill see on TV. To directly or indirectly they're paid off by say the federalreserve as they give them money as consultants, or they give them consultingfees from the TV to say nice things about the economy, the politicians anyway,but the reality is you go and ask people, honorary people, at least 50, 60%,they will tell you.

They see it, they have less money than a year or two years ago.You ask young people, there are statistics. The fed has these statistics, the35 year old today, people who turn today 35 years old, they are less than theirparents when they turn 35. Inflation adjusted. They have less money in thebank, especially the generation Z who lost all its money in momentum, stocksand meme, stocks and specs and cryptos.

ALS do you think the stock market was invest, invented to makepoor rich the stock market, the cryptocurrency market, all these markets is amechanism. How to enrich a view inside as the wealthy people at the expense ofordinary folks on the streets.

[00:19:27] Ben: Yeah. Well that paints a pretty, prettydire picture for tomorrow's youth thinking, you know, it's time to save investin the stock market.

I mean, this is, well,

[00:19:37] Marc: no, I'm not, it's not dire. If youaccept the reality. That wealth's creation. Doesn't come from going to a casinoand doesn't come from buying lottery tickets. I mean, I was yesterday in annight club. The nightclub hosts is they told me, oh, they bought lotterytickets for the next lottery because it's a very big lottery and this and that.

They asked me what I ever bought a lottery ticket. I say, no,never bought a lottery ticket in my life because I'm in the lottery business,myself in the stock market. But of course someone will win the lottery. Justrecently someone won for the second time, the lottery in the same location, Ithink in Michigan.

So he can write a book and say how to become rich, who isbuying lottery tickets. but you and anyone with any brain should know that youcan't, that not everybody can become rich by buying lottery tickets. This oneamong maybe a hundred million that becomes rich by buy lottery tickets. ButWells creation comes from hard work.

I was just reading and came tonight before we had the, I. AboutPlato, about his philosophy and you want to achieve something. You have to workvery hard and not I don't consider day trading to be a very hard work. Youunderstand?

[00:21:13] Ben: And, and, and it could see it is so theworld,

[00:21:16] Marc: I mean, I always say the damage causedby money.

Printing has been that many people were led into temptation tobelieve. That you can become rich by trading, whatever, whereas crypto stocksor bonds or Curr. And that isn't the case. It's the case for very few people.

[00:21:38] Ben: Yeah. And there, there will always bethose few survivorship that preach very loudly, how easy it is for the rest ofthem,

[00:21:45] Marc: the, the sheep test, but they writebooks, they have newsletters all these nonsense.

And but if you analyze. Carefully how there's so many technicalanalysts, they say the stock will go this and that way the bonds will go up anddown. And so I always tell to all my friends and clients, please show me onetechnician who became rich. Just one.

[00:22:13] Ben: Well, who came, became rich from trading,not from selling their course from their own fading.

[00:22:18] Marc: Right. They became rich because theywere working for Mary Lynch of Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley, or they hadtheir own business and they were very good at marketing their services.

[00:22:30] Ben: They're very good at selling theirservice on, on how to get rich. Yeah, so I, I, I mean, this is, this is ainvesting podcast.

I tell my service well, Hey, you don't need to at all. I meandecades of track record says that you probably know what you're talking about,but that's why, this is an investing podcast thinking a much longer termalternative investments, things outside of the traditional world.

But I mean, when talking about this The, the first thing thatcomes to mind, let's just jump into one of these asset classes. It sounds likethe perfect storm for gold inflation distrust in the government is kind ofgrowing as these young investors get burnt in this casino. I presumably you'restill bullish on precious metals.

Like where, where do you kinda see these fitting into the assetallocation over the next decade or so?

[00:23:17] Marc: Yes, but I have to. Qualify thisstatement of being bullish. I believe we got, we move through different cycles.I believe for the investing public for investors, we had a very favorable cyclestarting in 19 81 82 when bond price.

For bottomed out or interest rates peaked out. The deposit ratewas over 18% in the us. And we went to essentially zero recently and bondyields were over 15% in 1981. And the stock market in 1982 in August was below800 on the Dow Jones. We just no higher than in 1964. Okay. So we had like 18years of no upward movement in stocks, but because of inflation stocksinflation adjusted had lost 70% of the value after 81, 82, we've been in bullmarket essentially until recently.

In the stock market, we can say the more speculative stocksthey peaked out in January, February, 2021, these were the mem stocks, thespecs, and so forth. The stocks that were promoted by the big promoters on theReddi. The Reddi crowd was January, February, 2021. And the broad market, whichis driven. By stocks like Amazon and Facebook and apple and Microsoft, andsocalled fun stocks peaked out in November.

And the final peak was actually in January four of this year,since then, everything has been going down a lot. And by a lot, a lot of stocksare down 70, 80%. I mean, can give you entire list of such stocks. And I thinkthat We are now in an environment which is difficult for asset prices becauseyes, we can print money or we can reduce the tightening, but with an inflationof around 9% per around the world, eight, 9% and interest rates at 2%.

Know, it's gonna be difficult to bring the inflation downpermanently. So I believe that we may have rallies here, invo, but in realterms, like in the sixties, I think the markets have kind of peaked out and toreally make money on, on large money will be difficult. I think gold may go up.Yes. But if you have inflation and gold goes up, then.

You know, maybe the currency also goes down and interest ratesgo up and then home prices go down and so forth that on your hundred percent ofyour assets that you make a lot of money in the next 10 years is not likely.And I, I think we have to learn how to be modest.

[00:26:56] Ben: yeah. In real terms, it will get harderand harder to make this, these easy returns.

Things like tax optimization and like the, the, the, thesmaller optimizations will become more and more important.

[00:27:10] Marc: But the most important in life not topay a penny to government officials don't pay any tax at all. That is the mostimportant in life, because most of it is, was.

[00:27:24] Ben: Well, as an American, you know, there'stwo countries in the entire world that tax based on nationality it's the us anderea, so I'm a I'm the former.

So unfortunately getting out of paying too many taxes, it'slittle difficult for our nationality. That's that's that's for sure. Whenthinking a tax tax optimization aside in terms of like broad asset allocationsor, I mean, ultimately it's like positioning yourself to lose the least moneyor lose less money than the other asset allocation.

What advice do you have late broadly speaking for investors interms of thinking about how to position. Their portfolios accordingly when kindof thinking this is the, the backdrop, the macro backdrop in which we'redealing with.

[00:28:15] Marc: But, but you, you understand, this is avery difficult question because it's like you going to doctor and say what youthink would be the best for me to stay healthy and you know, and what kind ofbills should I take and what kind of medicine?

And so, I mean, you have to analyze each person's. Financialcondition. Now, if you are a young guy in your twenties or thirties and youhave a salary and you are doing business you have to decide where do you CAwhere can you live and where do you want to live? Because some professions, ifyou are a writer of software, You could be on a farm in a small village inSpain, Italy Germany, and so force in the us in a small city rural environmentwhere real estate is not expensive, but if you have to go to an office of abank or in investment bank every day on wall street, Then it's difficult tolive, you know, re remotely in the countryside.

Maybe you can make a deal with the company and say, I go to theoffice three times a week and two days or three days out of a week, I work workfrom home. Then you can travel to the office, say for one and half hours, threetimes a week. But anyway, In general. I think real estate is expensive, but inmany in Europe, in many small villages, they give you the real estate becausethe villages are falling apart, but you have to have some talent to live therein the sense that you need some manual skills to fix the house.

Because if you don't know anything, it will be very expensiveto, to hire the workers. And again, the bureaucrats will come and say, ah, youcan't do this and you can't do that. Oh, this house is under protection for,you know, like antiquity or whatever. It's. And so what ends up. So you need toknow the local regulations then.

And so course, but this is what I would do. If I were a youngguy, I would go buy something in the countryside. Now I live in Asia, so I'mnot gonna go and buy something in Italy because once I leave Italy for threemonths and I come back, everything has been stolen. Because we have so manymigrants, they come, they have nothing, they go and they empty whole houses.

[00:31:04] Ben: yes. I'm a big fan of geographicarbitrage. Like we talked about last time I lived in Thailand for four years,huge fan and kind of flag theory in general, but like when thinking. Globally.So this us worker potentially working remotely from a village somewhere savinga lot more.

I mean, there's, there's a lot going on from a, from a globalperspective right now. Like how. How should these people be thinking aboutdifferent countries with different land ownership, rights, or propertyownership, rights and, and things like this, because I mean, the us, isn'tgreat, but there's a lot of other, like bigger governments that are, that areeven worse, you know?

So it's kind of jumping from one boiling pot of water toanother, in some cases.

[00:31:49] Marc: Yes. Unfortunately you are right.Unfortunately.

[00:31:52] Ben: I'd be curious how to, how to thinkthrough that, because it's also with, I mean, the us dollar and all themonetary policy that's happening here. Well, okay. So you, you put your moneyin euros.

Like what it always feels like jumping from one pot to a boilingwater to another.

[00:32:10] Marc: Yes. That is in an environment such as Itry to describe. For the next 10 years, the returns will be essentiallydisappointing. The question is how do we lose the least? And I'd just like toremind you of yours.

Let's assume we are in a bull market and the stock market overthree years goes up by 50% and you and I, we are only up say 15%. Then we arerelatively poor compared to the stock market that went up 50%. Okay. If we arein an, in an environment where all these geniuses that never studied and neverworked had huge gains in 2019, 2020 mem stocks.

And then they lose 80% of the money or everything. And you onlyare down say three, four, 5%. Then you are a genius compared to them. You, youunderstand, it's all a relative, but as I tried to explain earlier on. I thinkand this has always throughout history, been the case markets are to someextent rigged and it's not rigged in favor of the small investor.

We have, they're not used nowadays as much as they used to beused before, but we had in the seventies indicators that showed when the publicparticipation is high in the market. The top of the market is very close. Andwhen the public participation is zero, when the retail investor has been wipedout, like in 1932 after the depression or in the home buyer, in home buyingafter the 2008 crisis.

The small home buyers, the small speculators were wiped out andthe big boys, they came in and bought the properties from these poor peoplethat the properties were foreclosed upon. But this is the way the market works.It's not a mechanism to make poor people rich the mechanism to make rich peoplericher.

And I mean, I was fortunate in my life. And so I'm not as a, asa asset holder, I'm not necessarily complaining about it. I'd done well,because I had assets that was diversified into different things like stocks andproperties. And then, then, then that, and I have a business that generates acash flow, but I'm just trying to explain.

That the small investor who starts with $10,000 his chance isto make, you know, 10 million hundred million, a billion is one out of a out ofbillions. You know, it's very small. believe me. It's very small. His bestchance is actually to work hard and have a job that generates a relatively high.But even there I'm pessimistic because when I started to work, I want todescribe the situation very carefully that you understand how unfair the systemhas become because of money printing.

Because of the tax I described that inflation is when I startedto work, my salary was over 4,000 Swiss, Frank. And I had an apartment twobedrooms with a large bathroom, with a large kitchen, with an attic and a cellright in the center behind the city theater. I mean, from there, you can walkto work anywhere in the city within say 10 minutes.

And I paid less than 5% of my salary for that apartment. Sorry.About 7% of the salary. Show me anyone in New York city who works on wallstreet also. Unless he's at that very high salary level. Yeah, exactly. For hisapartment. Less than 30 or 40% of his salary.

[00:37:09] Ben: Yeah, the it's nonexistent nonexistent.

It's very,

[00:37:13] Marc: and this is, this is what I tried toexplain early on. The fed now has consumer price inflation. Okay. So theHousewives pitch, but for years we had asset price, inflation asset price.Inflation is equally. Because it makes things unaffordable for most youngpeople. Yeah. And by the way, this is a myth that we didn't have inflation forthe last 20, 30 years.

I mean, I always went to New York. I went to Tokyo, said to thepeople in the TV stations, we interviewed me and said, but inflation is so low.I said, tell me, honestly, Do you think your cost of living is not going upevery year? Insurance premiums, rent transportation cost. I've never seen inthe last 50 years, I work now more than 50 years, I start working 1970.

I've never seen a country where the cost of living has gonedown. Maybe sometimes for a year or two prices, didn't go up in New York. Oncethey had the airport, taxi fair was fixed at $35 from Kennedy to anywhere inManhattan, but it didn't last long. It just lasted for a year or two. And thenthe taxi driver, they wanted, you know, tip on the $35.

So with the tip and also $50. And so, but everything has becomemore expensive.

[00:38:59] Ben: I'd be curious and kind of last questionon this sorts of stuff, but you, you talked about the small investor interestas kind of a Contra indicator. And we talked about unaffordability of rent andthings like this.

So something that hasn't quite caught up. Everybody invests inreal estate because it always goes up and like, you can take out a mortgage andlock in the low rate of inflation. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts on likeus real estate in general. I know each pocket is very, very different, but likethere, there seems to be a lot of investor interest, which as you said, waslike a good Contra in indicator.

So just general thoughts on us real estate market, because itseems like it's still at that meme stocks phase. But with inflation, it couldmake sense.

[00:39:47] Marc: Yes. Depends on what price you buy itat. As I said, some properties in the conscious side are not terriblyexpensive, but in some cities they're expensive and then you have to analyze,so the people who are wealthy and who don't like to be living in.

Banana Republic or third world country. They move and they goto Florida and they leave the cities. And then these cities will have toincrease taxation or the city deteriorates as was the case in Detroit. I canshow you pictures of streets in, in Detroit, in the twentie. They were theluxury streets and today they're they ate, I mean, they're horrible because thecity then moved to the suburbs and earth.

So we have to be careful. Number two, if you have Wells onepoint people have to realize real estate is the most visible asset you can.Every no, no matter how dumb government officials are. In other words, even ifyou have Kamala Harris in charge of appraising values in a city of real estate,she would be able to see house a, B, C, D, that she can count.

You can be sure of that. She may not know the value needs, 50advisors and 300 security staff. You look after her while she appraises thevalue, but that she can probably do, but not much more, but if you have liquidassets, there are more ways to hide it. That it's not immediately obvious

[00:41:48] Ben: that that's a very good point, Dr. F

[00:41:51] Marc: so, and believe me on real estate, I'veseen values. You. Go down because of taxation and rent control. If we havesocialists, one of the things they usually do, price controls, rent controls

[00:42:13] Ben: certainly feels like the direction we'reheaded. So you know, model that into your assumptions when purchasing stuff.

[00:42:18] Marc: Yes. I I'd say, you know, but that's whyI say if you're buying a small village somewhere, And don't go as a rich man,go as a normal worker. Not that you arrive there, your private plane and yourMercedes 300, whatever or Ferrari, you have to go and live like ordinarypeople. Then they leave you peace. Of course, if you go there and you arrivewith your helicopter.

And you five girlfriends out of play ball magazine or somethinglike this. And immediately the whole town talks about you. They're gonna go afteryou and text you and annoy you. .

[00:43:04] Ben: Makes sense. Well, I'll be, I'll bemoving up into the north and Cheang Ry or pie or something. , I'll be in yourneck of the woods before too long.

[00:43:13] Marc: You have different problems here.

[00:43:14] Ben: Yeah, of course, of course. Dr. Faber,it's been awesome catching up with you as, as always like really, reallyappreciate your insights on these things. What do you want? What would be greatis if you'd leave my listeners with some glimmer of hope but also wherever theycan find out more about you and I'll be sure to link everything, but

[00:43:33] Marc: yeah, well, you see, I may bepessimistic about asset prices for the next 10 years, but I think if you arepreserving your well.

And everybody loses 30, 50% or more, then you're doing okay.Number two. If you can maintain a high degree of freedom, you should be veryhappy because, you know, we have, like, when I read the statements of the worldeconomic forum, it seems that they want to kind of enslave people. I will heara. The survival states that describes how you go back to servitude.

So if you can stay free, it's already a lot. And number two, Ithink there are still lots of opportunities in the world for someone who isdedicated, hard working. And disciplined, but someone who can also take ordersand EV has to work. I mean, I'm amazed in Switzerland, we have the socialistparty. They want to reduce working hours to 35 hours a week.

I told them because I had to debate them. I said, I don't knowany entrepreneur. In the whole world who has his own business and only works 35hours. I still work. I don't have to, but he's as a Christian, this my duty, aslong as I can, as I long as have the strengths that I do something. This is theChristian duty duty.

Like I'm married and I have to do certain things for mymarriage. I may not like it all the time. yeah, you understand this is life.You can't always say oh, today. I don't feel like working. So I take it easy.No, you have to have a sense of duty and discipline and do things. And this iswhat I would, would recommend to young.

You better get used to hard times? You know, I, I think wehaven't had really in the Western world, hard times where people like in thedepression, people really were in trouble. And I can tell you in the thirdworld, lots of people had nothing to eat. Nothing after the second world waralready during the second world war, there were so many refugees.

They, how many people arrived in American, the 19th century, 20thcentury, they arrived had nothing that lost everything then that start workingand hustling and so forth. But now is difficult because the government saysyou. Do this, you can't do that and you're not allowed to do this and so forth.And so you want to work hard.

The government will come and say, no, you're not allowed towork hard. Yeah. Can only work 30 hours.

[00:46:58] Ben: Well, it's the cycle and we're we'reentering this area of, or this EPPO of hard times,

[00:47:04] Marc: which is, but you can vote. Youunderstand? We are still a democracy. I think that young people should be moreengaged.

And understand that socialism is the greatest disaster that youcan impose on a society. And if you don't believe it, why don't you go and lookat the conditions in Cuba in North Korea and in Venezuela, I just read today anarticle, another want to restart the stock market in Venezuela because theyrealize since Chavez came to power, the GDP is down 75%, 75.

But then the socialist refugees who come from Venezuela andother Latin American countries to America, they go and tell the Americans, oh,you need more socialists. And the Americans, they believed is nonsense.

[00:48:10] Ben: Maybe, maybe this time it'll be differentand we just have the magic touch and it, we Cal perfectly right.

okay. I'm joking. It won't be

[00:48:21] Marc: okay.

[00:48:22] Ben: Dr. Dr. Thank you so much. Great to seeyou and really appreciate your insights today. Hey, are you still here? If so,please drop me a message on Twitter and I'll give you a app, a proof ofattendance protocol and F. Just for you, but I wanted to quickly jump on anddiscuss the end here or the takeaway.

So there weren't any real concrete takeaways in terms of thingsto hope for, which is always a tough thing to end on. So I think. Things canlook dire, but there's always hope it's always darkest right before the Dawnhumans evolve. So keep your heads up, keep learning, investing in yourself infinancial assets.

Be kind, think about the environment, focus on the long termand we're all gonna make it. So there you go. Oh, and please like subscribe,share, review all of these things. I really, really appreciate it.

Have a great day.

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