Marc Faber Says Lehman Collapse ‘Favorable’
Posted on: Sep 15th, 2008 | By Contrarian Profits | Filed under Featured, Financial News
The bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers (NYSE:LEH) is “quite favorable,” says Gloom, Boom & Doom Report publisher Marc Faber.
“The air will be clean within the next one month and we can get a fairly good rebound starting from the middle of October until the spring of next year,” he said in a Bloomberg Television interview.
Faber also warns that AIG (NYSE:AIG) may be a “much bigger problem” than Lehman…
In June Faber said, “If I’m a bad businessman and I go out of business, who’s gong to help me? But Bear Stearns and the Wall Street elite, because they are tied into the Treasury and the Federal Reserve and they have lunch together, it’s a club and so forth, they’re bailed out. It’s a joke!”
“I think a lot of banks are already bankrupt … but they hide their rotten assets … in categories where you don’t really need to value them,” Faber said. “I think the financial sectors, by-and large, has much larger problems than is perceived by the investment community and the stock market to some extent is telling you that.”
Investors should go into gold as its price did not rise as fast as that of other commodities while the central bank keeps printing money, Faber said.
The Fed has been “misleading” investors on wanting a strong dollar, Faber said, as it kept lowering the interest rates. “When it comes to action, they show no concern about inflation.”
He also blamed the central bank for forcing investors to abandon safe deposits in banks for riskier strategies by keeping rates so low.
“The Federal Reserve is the greatest speculator—they force people to speculate,” he said.
“I think they should have stopped cutting rates at say 4 percent … you could stop cutting rates and pursue a tight monetary policy. You can take other measures, mop up liquidity,” Faber added.
Fail? Bail?
to ‘pig’ to bailout/save, or fail/let go?