저자: MarcFaber · 외국인
요약 보기
유동성은 중앙은행 금리만으로 결정되지 않으며, 상업용 부동산 가격 하락, 마진론 부담, 중동 전쟁 영향 등으로 유동성이 긴축되고 있다고 주장. 주식(엔비디아·테슬라 포함)은 2021년 이후 하락세이고 암호화폐도 고점 매수자가 손실 상태라고 진단. 물가 상승과 실질 구매력 감소로 소비가 위축되고 경제지표가 나빠질 것으로 봄. 장기금리는 장기 상승 추세이며 단기적으로는 6개월 내 일부 하락 가능성 언급. 자산 배분은 금 25%, 부동산 25%, 주식 25%, 채권·현금 25%이며 금을 가장 선호하나 유동성 긴축기엔 오르지 않을 수 있다고 함. 정부 부채(약 39조 달러)와 재정적자 해소 불가를 지적하며 트럼프 정책의 인플레이션 가능성 비판.
다듬은 글
The concept of liquidity is frequently misunderstood and one looks at the M supply of central banks and the interest rates movements and people say when interest rates are going up that the Fed is tightening and when interest rates are going down that they're easing. But that is not entirely correct.
There are many other factors that influence global liquidity and especially liquidity in individual markets. Say if you look at commercial properties in the United States and also elsewhere, they have declined significantly in price. So if the Fed funds rate is at say 4% and commercial properties drop by 8% per annum, then the interest rate for the commercial property owners, I must specify, is incredibly high.
And the same will happen in say the stock market if the margin debt, which is very large, is over a trillion dollars. If that margin debt is faced with asset prices that go down, liquidity becomes tight. And my point is that because of the war in the Middle East, many businesses have slumped and many central banks have essentially less money than they had before the crisis occurred, the intervention in Iran.
And so we have many different influences that have an impact on global liquidity. We have, as I mentioned, the collapse in commercial property values has reduced the liquidity. We have stocks that basically haven't really gone up for the last 12-18 months. In fact, since 2021, many stocks have gone down.
If you look at say, the two most favorite stocks at the beginning of 2025, when Nvidia and Tesla they've gone nowhere and these stocks are all down very substantially. Then we have illiquidity occurring in cryptos because many crypto traders, they came in late. They didn't buy Bitcoins below 10,000.
They bought Bitcoins around 100,000. They're all under water now. And they bought speculative meme stocks and tokened stocks and so forth. And they're all under water. And now we also have the illiquidity that occurs when prices go up and the salaries of people don't go up at the same rate. So they are squeezed.
So through inflation, what people call, but actually it's a monetary phenomenon that occurs because money when it's increased, when the quantity goes up, it doesn't flow evenly into the system, but it inflates asset prices somewhere and occasionally it inflates the necessities of life. In other words, the prices in supermarkets go up.
And this is happening right now. And then, as you know, in life, the psychology of people is very important. Are you feeling happy? Are you willing to buy something? Or are you feeling somewhat restrained by conditions that occur around you? And from my observation, because I go out a lot and so forth and I meet a lot of people, my observation is that people are worried and they spend less.
And in my view, the economic statistics that will be published will be very bad. It's not obvious whether an increase in oil prices is inflationary or deflationary. It It depends what the central bank does because in theory, if people spend more money on oil, they have less money on other things. But if at the same time the monetary authorities print money, then the increase in oil prices can be financed and it can lead to higher prices but with more money in the system.
So in nominal terms, GDP expands but in real terms, it contracts. And here I have to say the government always publishes GDP figures. But if you really measure your cost of living increases compared to your salary increase or to your increase in the value of your assets and so forth. At the present time, most people in the world are being squeezed.
Yes, the prices that they pay for necessities, whether it's a rice or spaghetti or bread or potato, is going up more than the salaries. And that's why the housewives, when they go to the supermarket, they suddenly notice that the basket of goods they buy costs more or they cannot afford it and they have to buy less.
This is happening right now and in my view, this has tightened the money that is available to speculate. And so the asset price bubble that we experienced, I mean since 1980 asset prices have basically gone up until most recently, say 2020-2021, but since then interest rates are in a rising trend. My view is they could go down somewhat in the next 6 months, but the long-term trend is a rising trend because inflation is likely to increase, especially under Mr.
Trump, who has no regard for debts. He doesn't care how much they spend. When people talk about inflation, it is nothing else than diminishing purchasing power of money. In other words, your $100 today buys much less than your grandmother's $100 because the purchasing power has gone down significantly.
And in the '70s, there were one or two billionaires. That's all. In 1980, there were six billionaires. And now you have in every country thousands of billionaires. And it's not that the world has become all that much richer. It has become richer because of the opening of countries like China and Russia and Kazakhstan and India and so forth, who abandoned socialism and moved into a capitalistic system.
Thanks to capitalism, these countries prospered, relatively speaking, because so many young people, they think the government should do this and the government should do that. No, the government shouldn't do anything. They should stay out of the economy. And we've seen that now with all our own eyes.
Whatever they touch, they mess up. The essence of interest rates is that they move in long-term cycles. So, if I go back 200 years, I can say they went up until then and then down and so forth. And in this century, they went up until 1921 and then they had a declining trend until the Second World War.
And after the Second World War, they started to gradually increase. And this increase in interest rates then accelerated in the late '60s and '70s with a peak in interest rates in 1981. And then, after we had a declining interest rate structure in the US and worldwide until, say, May to August 2020, when the 10-year Treasury bond, which had yielded more than 15% in 1981, in August 2020, it went down and had a yield of 0.57% and from there, the trend of interest rates has been up.
Now, the Fed started to cut rates under Mr. Biden in September 2024. And what happened, and this is very interesting, and investors must realize this, the Fed does not control interest rates. They control short-term rates to a large extent. In other words, they can cut the Fed fund rate to zero, but the long bond, the 10-year and 30-year bonds, the interest rates on these bonds may go up.
And this is what has happened since September 2024. Instead of bonds rallying, the bond market went down. And Mr. Trump, in his complete ignorance about everything, including economics, and Mr. Bessen is not much better. They think they can cut rates and that bonds will rally. That is a fallacy. The bonds will rally the day there is a recession and the day there is an absence of inflationary pressures.
But right now, the inflationary pressures are there and they are not on the downside, on the upside. So, I am bullish about bonds because I think that people should learn to invest with the philosophy or the strategy, how do I lose the least money in the next 5 years? So, in bonds, say a 10-year treasury, I don't think you lose a lot of money.
You lose some purchasing power, but many stocks, they will drop another 50% from where they are, and they've dropped already 50% from their highs. I have about 25% of my assets in gold and 25% in real estate and 25% in stocks and about 25% in bonds and cash. And I feel the most comfortable with gold, but I want to stress here that I don't think that gold will necessarily go up in an environment of tightening liquidity, but it may go down less than other items and it may be relatively safe.
You are saying that if you have nowadays a deposit with a bank, I'm not sure they will repay you. The US government will repay you because they can print money. They have a debt of what is it now? $39 trillion and the interest payments are monthly $88 billion at the moment. If interest rates go up, it is going to be $100 billion a month interest payments.
If interest rates go down, maybe a little bit less, but the trend is upwards. And the deficits are not being solved because neither the Democrats nor the Republicans have any interest to cut government expenditures. Mr. Musk tried to do it, but he got sacked because everybody said, "I don't want to cut my expenditures." And so it was.
The democracy is such a system that they're going to spend too much money and collect too little taxes because if you want to become the president of the US and you go to the people and say, "You have to tighten your belts and we have to increase your taxation." You're not going to get elected. But, if you bring up a theory, you know, make America great again and you know, of course, people think, "Oh, that's great.
You know, we're going to be great again." But, if you spend money like water like Mr. Trump and Mr. Trump has the additional qualification that as a businessman he's never repaid any debts. His companies went bankrupt several times. Historically, this is one of the most comical period because if you look at the quality of the last few presidents we had in the US, you have to laugh.
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