Faber: Next Stimulus Will Be Worse

Wednesday, July 15, 2009 3:46 PMBy: Julie Crawshaw


Some economists think that another bubble is what’s needed to get the economy moving again.
Gloom, Boom and Doom publisher Marc Faber said this is ridiculous, and that the Federal Reserve — which he holds responsible for creating the housing bubble — wants to do it all over again.
The central bank should not encourage excessive credit growth, Faber tells Moneynews.com's Dan Mangru in an exclusive interview.
Between 2000 and 2007 the total U.S. credit market debt increased at five times the rate of nominal gross domestic product.
Unfortunately, Faber said, the next bubble is already here. This time it’s government spending and fiscal deficits that Faber thinks will double the government’s debt during the next six years or less.
“The U.S. government is largely deranged,” he said. “The private sector is the dynamic one, and that’s why I object tremendously against building up fiscal deficits because (they) shift economic activity into unproductive government instead of leaving it in the private sector.”
Another stimulus package would only make matters worse.
“In the Depression, they had one stimulus after another and it didn’t help,” Faber said. “What helped was World War II.”