 Mark, I just want to thank you so much for coming on the show. I know you're busy and probably a lot of people are emailing you right now. I've been following your stuff for a while, specifically on economic theories and your outlook on what's happening in the world. And right now we are at a precipice. We're at an interesting time where we're in uncharted territories. We have many different things happening. We have a pandemic, a viral pandemic. We have oil wars. So we have more or less MMMT, modern monetary theory being implemented. And based on all your knowledge and your experience of writing about this, you know, this is a big question. But, you know, what's your take on this? Like, do you have any theses is what do you think we're heading from here? Yes, I mean, I'd like to clarify one point. I have experience about this from reading books and studies and papers. But personally, I have never experienced a complete breakdown simultaneously of economic activity and asset markets and all asset markets to the extent we had it within one month. Normally, a bear market in the magnitude we had and with the destruction of assets we had takes maybe two years, but we had it in one month. Yeah. And then obviously the question is, you know, is this a decline like we had many declines in 2018 until the end of December? And we had the Nasdaq break after 2000 and the financial crisis or is this kind of a break where asset prices will after a while go up again and to higher levels? And unfortunately, I have to say that I doubt that we'll go back to the asset levels or to the levels they were a month ago, any time soon, I would refrain from saying ever again but a lot of stocks will no longer be at those levels and a lot of losses will have been taken and a lot of people will have lost maybe everything, you know what I said, it's a serious situation and even if they print money and even if the virus is over tomorrow until confidence comes back entirely, it will take a long time. And for now, I can say, you know, two weeks ago in America, some economies, including Goldman Sachs said, all the economy is slowing down and we have revised economic growth for 2020 to 2% or something like this, but corporate profits for costs they were still at over $170 for the S&P and my view is that corporate profits, the way it looks now will tumble minimum, and I'm saying minimum 50%. And if the corporate profits tumble by say 50%, some would say maybe 30%, but even 30% and this would be an optimistic outlook then stocks today are no cheaper than they were a month ago because a month ago the earnings were say at 100 and now they're down to 70, in my view down to 50. So you understand, as stocks came down, the earnings also came down. And so I wouldn't say that stocks are very cheap at the present time and the market, yes, is very oversold. This is, I've seen this oversold market maybe once in 1987. On the other occasions, it never got this oversold, but I just like to say, I've also seen markets that became extremely overboard, like in 82 in August 82, September 82, but then they didn't correct on the downside. They moved sideways for a while, and then they shot up again. And I'm afraid that we're in a situation where the market is very oversold but may not rebound very much and could move sideways a bit before we tank again to lower levels. And it's interesting to have a lot of subscribers and people who send me emails about what not. None of the emails that I received asked me whether it was a good time to reduce stock positions. All the emails I've received, all of them, without an exception, asked me whether they should buy stocks now or buy more. And so forth. So the frame of mind of investors is more like they are afraid of missing a rally, not of a major decline that extends much lower. I'm more interested in also, I just saw recently that the Fed is doing a trillion dollars a day in repo they're printing. It's worth, I couldn't even believe it. I'm like, here we go. Just turn on the machines. And you're right, everything's oversold. Since 2008, the stocks oversold. Everybody that got a bailout in 2008, we're just doing stock buybacks propagating the value of their stock. There's all thin airs, all paper value. And I'm more interested in is do you see or do we see or do you think there's a possibility of inflation with the dollar? And do you think that anytime soon, trust will come back to investors to see whether there's a one? Because the biggest problem right now is price discovery and confidence in an asset. People don't have confidence in the stock market right now. Even gold was selling off liquidating for cash. I'm curious, do you have any thesis on that? Well, for now, we have a demand deficiency, obviously, because, as you know, people, if they stay home, they may not have a salary. Yes. Like I live in Thailand. OK, in Thailand, tourism is 20 percent of the economy and it employs probably about two million people. In the tourism sector, in other words, hotels, restaurants, travel agents, guides, and so forth. And these people, they have nothing to do at the moment because there's no tourism, nobody comes to Thailand because nobody wants to be quarantined right away at the airport. It's like I live in Thailand. I'm not going to go anywhere because I'm not sure I can come back. So it paralyzes the whole economy. Now, whether it's necessary or not, I'm not so sure. I think maybe the governments are overdoing it and I am skeptical of any government action. I always think whatever they do, they fuck up. So maybe they overdid it and maybe they exaggerated the problem. But the reality is business is dead. If you look at picture of Park Avenue in New York or Thai Square or Zurich, the station or Grand Central in New York or the airport with the airport in Thailand or if I go out of my house, which I still do, the streets are empty. The bars have all been closed. It's a major disaster for me. Yeah, like they're talking about right now, air dropping everybody like a universal basic income. And it's funny that you said earlier, yeah, the government fucked up everything. The reason we're in this mess is because of them to begin with. And it's funny that people think that they're going to be the ones that fix everything. Yes, that is the funniest, actually. A lot of the problem arose because of their ill-conceived policies, especially after 2000, we had the first crisis. Then they kept interest rates artificially low and there were clowns and comedians like Paul Krugman. Oh, my God, it would be good to have another bubble and yelling agreed and Bernanke agreed. So, you know, you can't actually do business with people like that. They are very dangerous for the entire system. And they created the first problem, the great financial crisis. What did they learn? F.S. Nothing. They offers doubled down on their bubble creation and created superseding the housing bubble, another financial bubble with more debts. When the debt problems brought about the great financial crisis in the first place, they piled on even more debts to create this problem. Now, the coronavirus is an issue. But you understand, in a normal economic system, in a healthy system, it wouldn't create this kind of wreckage. And of course, the politicians and the central bankers will blame coronavirus for everything. But the drought, the dirt in the financial system and the political system was there before. But this, we all know, only the politicians and the central bankers will deny it. The question is, you know, where do we go from here? And as I said, I'm not very optimistic. I think I wrote a report a year ago that the asset inflation is coming to an end. Because as you know, inflation is a very difficult concept to define. We can have inflation in wages and we can have inflation in commodities and in food. And we can have inflation in asset prices, such as we had in the last 20, 30 years. And this asset inflation was very pronounced and it is possible that now, essentially all asset prices will come down. I mean, I've been a bit surprised that gold came off this much. But in a credit contraction, you know, in a debt deflation, this has been described by Irving Fisher in his book, the debt deflation theory. In a debt deflation, everything goes down. Yes, by probably gold will not go down by 90 percent. Whereas many stocks will go down by 90 percent. Yes, silver took a big hit. Have actually already gone down by 90 percent. Yeah. And what's the liquidation crisis? Everyone's liquidating cash as king right now. I'm trying to figure out the bottom. Well, it depends, you know, what is the leverage in the system? And I am afraid that a lot of investors leveraged their portfolios for the following reason. Let me explain. Say, you and I, 20 years ago, we have a portfolio. You're more aggressive. You invest 70 percent in stocks and 30 percent in bonds. I'm more conservative of 70 percent in bonds and 30 percent in stocks. Now, if there is a market decline, the stocks go down and the bonds, because at that time, 20 years ago, the profile of bonds was a higher quality than it is today. The bonds may have gone down somewhat, but they were yielding maybe six, eight percent years. Today's bonds are yielding three or four percent, the lower quality bonds. Well, now the yield has shot up because the price of the bonds went down. But the point I want to make 20 years ago or so. If we had a big setback in our stock portfolio, the bond portfolio gave us some cash flow that allowed us to buy more shares when they were depressed or after the decline. Nowadays, the problem was that bond yields were very low. Again, the government has created his artificial low interest rate with in many countries negative interest rate. So when you have your portfolio of, say, 70 percent stocks and 30 percent bonds, the bonds give you no cash flow. So when your stock portfolio goes down, you don't have the cash flow to buy more. Number two, the friendly brokers and private bankers, they went to the clients and said, yeah, we know the yields are very disappointing for you, four percent or three percent or whatnot on these bonds. But hello, the borrowing rate is so low you can borrow money, you have a bond, you leverage it to say 80 percent. It yields four percent. You borrow money at two percent. And that boosts your return to maybe 10 percent or more. If everything goes well, now that the bonds have gone down, the friendly private bankers that have only your interest in mind, not theirs, they call you and say, we have a margin call for your account. You have to put up more margin or we have to sell you out. Yeah, yeah. And that and that you can multiply among millions of investors and among hedge funds and icing the fed with the liquidity injections, couldn't care less about the small man on the street. Don't ever think that the government is not concerned. The government is concerned about getting the votes, but couldn't care less about the feelings and the hardship of ordinary people. But their bodies at hedge funds and that Goldman Sachs and that Citigroup and all the banks, that is in their interest to bail them out. Of course, they're getting zero percent loans. Regular people aren't getting any help. They're talking about UBI, which is going to come a lot of stipulations, a lot of stipulations and the lifeblood of the free market, the entrepreneurs who provide the most jobs, who provide real value products, they get fucked. I don't get any cheap loans. I don't get any support. I get nothing. And so hopefully this is some wake up call to some people to realize how badly our system is skewed. People blame us on capitalism. I'm like, I wish this is not capitalism. This is a corporatism. This is the biggest rigged system of all time. It's not a free market. It's crony capitalism. Correct. It's a travesty to call this a market economy or a capitalistic system. This is a completely rigged system by, essentially, yeah, I'd say vicious people, vicious people. Yeah, I agree. And so do you have any advice for anybody out there who's planning to kind of strategize what to do? Should they just sit and wait right now to have some cash or what's your advice for people? I think for the last 30, 40 years, precisely since 1982, the mentality of the public became gradually geared towards thinking how to maximize my capital gains in stocks, in bonds, in commodities, in gold, in silver, in real estate. In other words, there was a strong greed element. And partly understandable because the wages didn't go up. The ordinary person could not make ends meet. He had to either borrow money or supplement his income by speculating, you know, either through the appreciation of the house or whatever. But from his ordinary income, which has been stagnating for the last 30 years or so, he couldn't live properly, especially not if he had children, especially not if he had a divorce. That was the killer. So these people were geared towards investing and speculating. I think now the investor number one priority is what is the worst possible case? OK, the worst possible case is a stock market decline, as I've seen on numerous occasions of 90 percent. That is the worst possible case. And the bond market could be the default rate. Not among government bonds, they'll pay for the time being. But eventually, who knows the time being they will pay not much, but they will pay. But the corporate bond market, I wouldn't be surprised if the default rate is 30 percent. You know, it's possible. And in 2008 and also before that, in 2003, corporate bonds tanked in value. They tanked recently. In other words, if you look at bond ETFs, like HIG, HIG is a high yield bond ETF, HYG. And EMB, that's the emerging market bond ETF. They've plunged, but they may go lower, you understand. The situation could get out of hand in this deleveraging process. And so I think anyone as an investor, I would tell him, look, I don't think you should play hero right here. You should consider what is the worst outcome and can you afford the worst outcome? You understand, if you are a billionaire and you lose 900 million, it's not pleasant, but you can still live well on a hundred million. But I think most people can still live reasonably well. But if you have a million and this is for your retirement and you lose 90 percent, it's not a very pleasant experience. So I think the mindset should change and become, you know, what is the worst case outcome? And I don't mind if the market rebounds, maybe with the 30 percent or 20 percent having stocks, they'll appreciate, but I don't want to take the risk of losing everything. Yeah, I think that's really, really good advice. I appreciate that, Mark. Mark, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your thoughts and experience. I wasn't more optimistic. No, no, no, it's not about being optimistic. It's about being real and honest and transparent, which you bring to the table. If people want to read more about you, what's the best resource for them to check out? Well, they can Google my name, Mark Faber, or they can go to our website, gloomboomdome.com. Thanks, Mark. I appreciate it. Thank you for your time and for the interview. Bye bye. Bye bye.