Dr. Doom

Marc Faber, the market pundit, who predicted the 1987 stock market crash and was among a handful who predicted the more recent financial crisis ,delivered a bleak warning of social and financial meltdown, in Tokyo at a gathering of 700 pension and sovereign wealth fund managers.

Faber said that investors, who control billions of dollars of assets, should start considering the effects of more disruptive events than mere market volatility."Buy farmland and gold,"

“The next war will be a dirty war,” he told fund managers: "What are you going to do when your mobile phone gets shut down or the internet stops working or the city water supplies get poisoned?” His investment advice included a suggestion that fund managers buy houses in the countryside because it was more likely that violence, biological attack and other acts of a “dirty war” would happen in cities.He also said that they should consider holding part of their wealth in the form of precious metals “because they can be carried”.
“When I tell people to prepare themselves for a dirty war, they ask me: “America against whom?” I tell them that for sure they will find someone.”

One of Dr Faber’s scenarios involves growing military tension between China and the United States over access to limited oil resources. Today the US has a considerable advantage over China because it has free access to oceans on both coasts, and has potential energy suppliers to the north and south in Canada and Mexico. It also commands an 11-strong fleet of aircraft carriers that could, if necessary, secure supply routes in a conflict situation. China and emerging Asia, meanwhile, face the uncertainty of supplies that must travel from the Middle East through winding sea lanes and the Malacca bottleneck. American military presence in Central Asia, Dr Faber said, may add to the level of concern in Beijing.

In Asia, particularly, he said, stock pickers should play on future food and water shortages by buying into companies with exposure to agriculture and water treatment technologies.