Hold gold and silver and prepare for junior mining stock mania

Fayyaz Alimohamed foresees a “mania” in junior mining stocks and recommends holding physical gold outside the banking system as a safety net. Gold Report interview.

The Gold Report: Fayyaz, in June 2008, using readily available economic data, you wrote that the global economy was on the verge of financial collapse. What do those sources tell you about where the global economy is headed today?
Fayyaz Alimohamed: In November 2006, I predicted that the U.S. was headed into a recession. Seven months later, the Bear Stearns funds cracked, beginning the crisis. By June 2008 it was obvious to me that the crisis would escalate into a crash.

Today, the U.S. cannot meet its gargantuan future unfunded liabilities. Europe and Japan face debt levels that ensure eventual sovereign debt defaults and declining standards of living. There is potential for all of this unwinding to seriously affect an entire generation.

These economies cannot grow their way out of their problems and the cuts needed to balance budgets would create massive social turmoil because the cuts themselves would lead to sharp drops in gross domestic product, creating vicious negative spirals. The current solution being utilized is more debt and quantitative easing. That can only keep things afloat until it can’t anymore. I would say that we will have the next major crisis within the next two years.

TGR: I would like to flesh that out a bit. What do you believe will trigger the next crisis?

FA: Genuine reform has not been implemented. This crisis was caused by unprecedented levels of consumer and corporate debt and Wall Street greed. When the crisis happened, government rescued distressed debt by massively increasing its own debt. For example, the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank are using their balance sheets at about a 30:1 leverage. This is the same sort of leverage that Wall Street banks had recklessly indulged in. When government debt was substituted for corporate and consumer debt, the whole system rolled over into a much more dangerous phase.

TGR: Do you think the European debt crisis will remain the dominant theme in 2012 or will other themes take center stage?

FA: The European crisis is simply a proxy for a global debt crisis. It happens to be focused on Europe because Germany has not been as eager as the Federal Reserve to print money. Germany remembers the hyperinflation of 1924, when unbridled money creation led to prices doubling every two days.

Today, governments have a preponderant influence on the economy, while large corporations, through lobbying, have inordinate influence over the government, to the detriment of other stakeholders. As the danger of a deflationary depression increases, governments are attempting to reinflate the economy; they may well overreach and create hyperinflation.

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Posted by admin on Jan 26 2012. Filed under Gold predictions, Gold stocks. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry