Don't worry about gurus of gloom

By Zhen Ming


WITH just 10 days left before New Year's Eve, the countdown to 2009 will soon begin.

It's time now for me to look ahead and make some predictions for the New Year.

And as I gently wipe the dust from my crystal ball, all I can see initially is the word 'recession'.

And then I can also see signs of cutbacks, layoffs - and pure worry.

That's because, for many, the future is frightening.

A record 63 per cent of Americans in a recent ABCNews/Washington Post poll, in fact, think the US is in a 'long-term economic decline'.

So how bad is it out there? And what's in store for us in 2009?

To find out, I scoured cyberspace to seek the views of three gurus of gloom:

Marc Faber

Known internationally as 'Dr Doom' , the Swiss-born investment guru is publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report. He once warned investors months before the so-called Black Monday crash of 1987.

Dr Faber recently made the following predictions on Bloomberg television:

'Next year, if the economy in the US is as weak as I think it would be... I think sovereign wealth funds are going to be very busy supporting their own markets, they won't have much money to buy assets around the world.

'The next emergency measure will be that Americans are not allowed to buy foreign currency and transfer money overseas, and the next measure will be not permitting Americans to buy gold and so on and so forth.'

Nouriel Roubini

Also known as 'Dr Doom' but more among Americans, the economics professor at New York University reputedly saw the 2007 mortgage-related meltdown coming - long before many of his peers did.

Dr Roubini this month made the following scary predictions in Fortune magazine:

'We are in the middle of a very severe recession that's going to continue through all of 2009 - the worst US recession in the past 50 years ...

'For the next 12 months I would stay away from risky assets. I would stay away from the stock market. I would stay away from commodities. I would stay away from credit, both high-yield and high-grade.

'I wish I could be more cheerful, but I was right a year ago, and I think I'll be right this year too.'

Gerald Celente

As CEO of the Trends Research Institute (a panel consisting of 25 experts with a variety of backgrounds), he is renowned for accurately predicting future world events such as the fall of the Soviet Union and the 1987stock market crash.

Mr Celente told Fox News late last month that, by 2012, America will become an undeveloped nation, and that there will be a revolution marked by food riots, squatter rebellions, tax revolts and job marches.

In a subsequent interview, Mr Celente also added: 'It's going to be very bleak. There is going to be a lot of homeless, the likes of which we have never seen before. Tent cities are already sprouting up around the country and we're going to see many more.'

Mr Celente, who also successfully predicted the 1997 Asian currency crisis and the sub-prime mortgage collapse, last year told UPI that 2008 would be known as 'The Panic of 2008', adding that 'giants (would) tumble to their deaths'.

Mr Celente's predictions have seemed to come true, what with the collapse of the likes of Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers.

So how worried should we be by these dire warnings? Should we lose any sleep over their predictions?

To be sure, many banks in the West have had to be saved, asset prices have plummeted, and a recession is now hitting the global economy.

To be sure, we're now in a period of what economists call 'forced liquidation', which has happened less than 10 times in the past 150 years.

And yet, we're still around.

And yet, if you were take a good look around, the streets of Singapore are still full of flashy cars, our shops still full of food, and most of us are still gainfully employed and comfortably housed.

So let's shrug off our irrational shivers and instead look forward to 2009.


Source: The New Paper, Sun 21 Dec 2008