I read a wonderful newsletter every month called the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, written by Marc Faber. (Gloom, Boom and Doom report I highly recommend it.
Marc Faber if you don’t know is a great investor, market commentator and newsletter writer. Some of his highlights include calling the 1987 crash, the recent housing bubble and the great debt bubble we have been building. His newsletters are not all about financial markets but include a lot about history and geopolitics. He occasionally has some thought provoking, controversial comments. His latest comments in the April 6th issue stunned me.
He mentioned how there is growing outrage at how taxpayers are bailing out the financial elite. Here are the comments that stopped me cold:
“In every society, outrage by the people has been very dangerous. But throughout history, before it turned in earnest against the government, the political elite always managed to turn it against minorities, whether it be Jews throughout Western Europe (conveniently assisted by the Church), Armenians in Central Asia, Kurds in the Middle East, Indians in Africa, and Chinese in Southeast Asia. And since I have far more Jewish friends around the world than friends of any other ethnic background, I am deeply concerned about the growing outrage of the American people – particularly if the US economy doesn’t improve, which I believe it won’t in the long term. For sure, if I were of Jewish origin and living in the US I would be insuring against the eventuality that that outrage will be turned against a minority group. I would buy property in Asia and keep some assets in Asia (but not through an American bank), where Jews are such a tiny minority and such an economically insignificant economic force that they don’t attract any attention. In fact, if I were Jewish, I would leave the US without delay! The “outrage” writing is on the wall and I wouldn’t trust Mr. Obama for a second.”
Now normally he isn’t prone to hyperbole. And he is strong student of history. And history is on his side in the argument. It seems to have started with the biblical story of Joseph being Pharaoh’s adviser to years later Jews being enslaved by a Pharaoh, who “knew not of Joseph.” The Jews had a prominent place in Ottaman empire only to be turned on savagely by fanatical Islamic sects.
The best example though is Germany’s Jews. Before WW1 crushed Germany and after a series of terrible economic policies destroyed Germany’s economy, Jews had never had it as good in any country. They were scientists, musicians, doctors and financiers. A short 15 years after the end of WW1, Hitler was in power and a reign of terror started. One of the reasons that so many Jews were slaughtered in the Holocaust is that they thought that it was impossible that this would happen in their beloved country of Germany.
And here we are with wars that are draining our economy and economic policies that some would argue are very similar to the Weimar Republic’s (pre-Hitler Germany) policies of printing money. Now while this time it may not be the Jews, history shows that when “things get bad, the majority turns against the minority,” Marc Faber says.
Let’s hope the US is somehow different and that history does not repeat itself.
Sounds pretty far fetched. I have heard of very little evidence that jews in the US suffer from a lot of discrimination or hate crimes, and the US is the biggest supporter of Israel. One might argue that it’s the other way around, the minority at risk – if any – would be those of the islamic faith. It makes me wonder what Mr. Faber’s true motive is to ask jews to leave the US… Another tipoff to his predilections is his statement against President Obama. One may disagree with the president’s political views, or his strategies for solving the issues we face, but to say “I don’t trust him for a second” is, in my view, bordering on racism. In conclusion, I would say that for a prominent investor and newsletter writer to advise jews “to leave the US without delay” is, itself, an outrageous act against jews!
I can’t believe marc faber actually wrote that? Is this April fools?
He did, it is no joke, you can find it in his latest report.
It doesn’t sound too far fetched to me. Think of institutions that are flash points of populist anger and you will find prominent Jews associated with them (granted, you will find also find Jews opposed to many of these institutions as well, but angry populists are less likely to notice this). For example, if you’re angry about Wall Street firms such as Goldman Sachs benefiting from the government bailout, the CEO of Goldman Sachs is a Jew (and, of course, Goldman and Sachs were Jews). If you are angry about the surge in illegal immigration in recent years, many of the politicians and pundits who support an open borders policy have been Jews. If you are angry about the increasing secularization of the country, you may note the heavy Jewish involvement with the ACLU. If you are angry at the Obama White House, you may notice that his chief of staff is a Jew.
Similarly, if you are angry about the war in Iraq, you may focus on neoconservative advocates of the war, many of whom are Jewish. If you are angry about the Fed, the Fed Chairman is a Jew. If you are angry about Obama’s economic policy, Larry Summers is a Jew. And so on.
Again, my point isn’t that there aren’t Jews on the opposite side of all these issues — there are. But angry folks are less likely to notice them.
OT Aaron, but did you see my recent post on DSNY? Any thoughts? I know you don’t write about stocks on this blog, so feel free to leave a comment on mine. I’m still waiting to get an updated statement from Vandenberg on the Yangaroo dispute.
This kind of paranoia strikes me as typical jewish self-righteous paranoia I might hear in an elevator in the Lower East side amongst old women, not mark faber.
You string off a list of Jews then you write “and so on?” There are lots of Indian financial analysts who are good at tricky math I don’t understand… why don’t we blame them? There are lots of black people in congress who get together with their caucus and vote for stuff I don’t like. WHy don’t we blame them! There is a woman secretary of state and an old guy as the VP… why not blame them! Tricky Japanese people make cars cheaper than FORD in our own backyard. Let’s blame them. CHinese people have gutted our country of it’s manufacturing base. Mexicans take all the good jobs. Black people take all the welfare money. And so on.
Jews are great. Jews are smart. But really, they’re just not that big of a target. Speaking as a non-Jewish American Wasp good ole’ boy… I’d rank Jews down at the bottom on my hit list and put the mezcans and chinese up at the top. I see the government confiscating our wealth with inflation but they’re not going to come after the Jews per se. Of course, the Jews will THINK they’re coming after them. Sort of sad to see them thinking that way already but I guess it’s hard to get over world war 2. While I’m spewing utterly politically incorrect nonsense, I might mention that Jews are good at whining and paranoia (but they have some ok qualities, too).
I think Greenspan is getting senile, today he said that you can stop asset bubbles by increasing capital requirements. That just increases the cost of credit. The next time you have a real estate bubble, you’ll have the same problem, assuming that banks are still in the business of loaning against real estate. If you want to stop this problem, then eliminate the federal subsidies for real estate development and investment, then require people in that industry to put their own money at risk instead of someone elses. If Greenspan really wants to change the banking system, though, then simply ban 95% and 90% LTV loans. Require a bigger equity cushion. BTW, the “too big to fail” argument is a fallacious one. During the Great Depression, Canada had no bank failures. The reason was that their banks were very large. The banks closed branches, etc., but none of them failed. By contrast, the US was dominated by thousands of very small banks, and we had more than 10,000 of them fail. So there is nothing inherently unsafe about a banking system dominated by large banks. The real problem with large banks is that during good times, they don’t provide enough competition for each other.