Wednesday, October 20, 2010

Marc Faber on Inflation

No matter what central bankers and the cheerleading, mostly useless academics who surround them pronounce in their self-created aura of infinite academic “delicacy and refinement”, under the auspices of the Fed they will do precisely one thing: print, print, and print. Sadly, as Mignon McLaughlin observed, “The know-nothings are, unfortunately, seldom the do-nothings.”...

He suggested that, like the king in a fairytale, Mr. Obama should dress up at night like a pauper and go out and talk to business people. According to Marcus, King Obama would then realize how unpopular he is and how destructive his economic policies have been for small businesses. He also suggested that the academics at the Fed and in the administration should, for once in their lives, go out and work, instead of sitting in big glass office towers and having no clue about what is ailing the economy.

Marcus then emphasized that none of the small businessmen he talked to had any plans to hire staff, because they felt there was far too much uncertainty about what kinds of regulations and laws Congress and the administration would come up with next. All his business friends and customers had told him that Obamacare would be a complete disaster for them. (It imposes on small businesses enormous non-medical tax compliance. It will require them to mail IRS 1099 tax forms to every vendor from whom they make purchases of more than US$600 in a year, with duplicate forms going to the IRS. Obamacare will also fund 16,000 new IRS agents…) Asked what he would suggest as a solution, Marcus, who looks much younger than his age and is still very alert, responded that the US would be greatly helped if Congress went on a holiday for two years, as this would prevent the government from doing even more economic damage.

read the entire essay

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