Still, there is no austerity in France compared to
Greece. He expects France to be a lot worse than Greece will ever be. That’s
one European country and this will be the case in many other European
countries. The UK will be terrible economically, but the social unrest will
also be very, very severe and extremely difficult in the UK.
So we are seeing it everywhere. Mervyn King, head of
the Bank of England, he now says UK banks will need another 35 to 50 billion
pounds of capital. He says the banks in England are undercapitalized and the
risks are major. Here you have a central bank chief who openly says the banks
are at risk of failing. Of course this is the risk worldwide with banks, but it
is refreshing to see a central bank governor actually saying it officially.
Sadly this is the case with almost all countries in the world.
Turning to Japan once again, as I said in the last
few interviews, Japan is one of the biggest risks in the world because of their
economic position. The Bank of Japan had a loss in the last quarter of 230
billion yen, which is about $3 billion. Their balance sheet is also continuing
to expand, it’s up to roughly 156 trillion yen or about $2 trillion.
Moving to the US, GDP was better at 2.7%, but again
that was just inventory buildup and government spending. GDP is still weak if
you take those two elements out. Consumption is very weak and inflation in the
US is running at 1.6%. Anyone who buys food and fuel knows inflation is a lot
higher than 1.6%. Also, if you used the real ‘deflator,’ GDP would be
negative.
Consumption will continue to head lower because
people are worse off now. There are 127 million people in the US dependent on
government welfare. This is against a full-time working population of 115
million people. So there are 115 million people working full-time and 127
million depending on the government.
The bottom line is there are less and less people to
pay for the welfare. This is why the deficits will continue and grow much worse
than they are today. Also, if you look at median income in the US, it’s down 8%
in the last three years, and disposable income is down a staggering 25% if you
adjust for inflation in the last ten years.
If you look at the real estate bust in the US, take
states like Florida, California and Arizona, 50% of homeowners have negative
equity. Las Vegas is as high as 70% negative equity. Again, it means that the
banks are never going to get the money back. This simply means that the
government has to print more money.
This is the same problem in developed countries all
over the world. Therefore, governments will print increasing and virtually
unlimited amounts of money. So currencies will continue to reflect that
activity. The dollar, euro, yen, and the other currencies have already fallen
80% in real terms vs gold over the last ten years. These currencies will
continue to fall another 80% to 100% vs gold in coming years.
So investors have to look at how to preserve their
wealth and the way to do that is with physical gold. Investors are always
asking, ‘What percentage of my money should be in physical gold?’ I told people
in 2002 to put 50% of their money into gold. That would now total 85% since
gold has gone up more than any other asset..."
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