U.S. Airstrikes on Syria Signal More Military Spending, Deficits, Higher Gold Prices

Jon Economy, Fiscal Policies, Gold, Health Care, Market Commentary, Precious Metals, Real Estate, War

Mike Gleason: It is my privilege now to be joined by a man who needs little introduction, Marc Faber, editor and publisher of The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report. Dr. Faber has been a long-time guest on financial shows throughout the world and is a well-known Austrian school economist and an investment advisor and it’s a tremendous honor to have him on with us today.
Dr. Faber, thank you so much for joining us again and how are you?
Marc Faber: My pleasure, thank you.
Mike Gleason: Well, to start out here Dr. Faber, before we get into some other stuff I wanted to hear your comments on the state of the U. S. economy. Now, it appears the Federal Reserve has finally gotten serious about moving rates higher at least modestly. U. S. equity markets seem to be discounting that fact, focusing instead on the so called Trump trade. Markets are pricing in a huge infrastructure spending program and tax cuts stimulates that could overwhelm any modest tightening at the Fed. Now that efforts to reform healthcare seem to be failing we expected some of the optimism surrounding president Trump’s other initiatives would leak out of the stock market but so far that hasn’t happened.
Stocks remain near record highs and there isn’t a whole lot of interest in safe haven assets including precious metals. So what are your thoughts here Marc? Is now a time to take some profits and move towards safety or is there still some good upside in equities?
Marc Faber: Well, I think that in terms of the economy I don’t think the economy is as strong as people believe or as the statistics would show and recent trends have rather been indicating some weakness is auto sales, not a particularly strong housing market and we have several problems as a result of excessive credit. So I think that the economy is not going to do as well as people expect and concerning the huge infrastructure expenditure that Mr. Trump has been talking about, it is about a trillion dollars over ten years, maximum. In other words a hundred billion a year.

This post was published at GoldSeek on 11 April 2017.