Friday, April 27, 2012

Marc Faber on China and Australia's Outlook

Faber: . . . The second source of uncertainty is really what will happen in China. There are different views, most economists say we will have a soft landing and so forth. But I have been working in the investment business for 40 years, all the time I've heard about soft landings and no recessions and no crashes and no panics and so forth and so on. Maybe the Chinese economy will decelerate more rapidly than is generally expected and possibly even crash in which case it would have a HUGE impact on economic activity around the world.

Interviewer: And especially in Australia

Faber: Correct. If there is a meaningful slowdown in China then obviously the Australian economy will suffer very badly. I happen to think the Australian economy will suffer REGARDLESS, because we have a very elevated property market that has become unaffordable for a large number of people, and we have already some cracks in the property market, we have a very high household debt to GDP ratio so I am not optimistic about the Australian economy.
The first source of uncertainty was money printing.

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