Faber: How investors can beat hyper-inflation - General - FinanceAsia.com - The network for financial decision makers

Faber: How investors can beat hyper-inflation - General - FinanceAsia.com - The network for financial decision makers: "Faber: How investors can beat hyper-inflation By Dan Slater | 24 September 2007 Commentator Marc Faber says investors could benefit from sky-high asset prices as the US stokes inflation. In a typically bearish appraisal, author of the Gloom Boom and Doom Report Marc Faber advised investors on the last day of the CLSA Hong Kong forum on Friday to stock up on physical gold and rural real estate ahead of possible global conflicts and US stagflation (inflation without growth, last seen in the 1970s.) Faber sees the US as a consumption giant unable or unwilling to make capital investments, with third-world infrastructure, and a tendency to binge on consumer goods actually produced by other people. He estimates the US GDP has shrunk from a 32% share of the world's GDP in 2000 to just 28% this year. He believes the rise of the Asian block is inexorable, and points out that in emerging markets, oil consumption is already greater than that of the G7 group of countries. The sale of semiconductor chips is also four times as great in Asia as that of semiconductor chips in the US. Faber believes the conditions for a period of higher interest rates, low growth and high inflation are now with us, rooted in recent US policy. advertisement Thus, he sees US GDP gro"