Transcription
In my basic view, we had this asset inflation after 1980, 1981, where all asset prices went up. Everybody became rich who had assets, whether you had paintings, or whether you had buildings, or whatever. And now, I think everything will go down eventually. And I'm sort of thinking what will go down the least.
>> Dr. Dr. Mark Fabber, editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom, and Doom Report. It is so wonderful to welcome you back to the show. Thank you so much for taking the time to join me again, Dr. Fabber.
>> It's my pleasure. Thank you. And, uh, welcome to all your viewers and listeners.
>> Well, we love it and we love having you on. And gosh, we had you on at the beginning of the year. We even got the office tour, which was so much fun. I always enjoy our conversations, and this audience loves hearing from you, Dr. Fabber. So let's start, let's start where we always start, which is with that big picture, more of that macro view, your take on the state of the global economy, where we are, where you see things headed. And as you know, Dr. Fabber, you can take all the time you need to set the table when it comes to that big picture view.
>> Well, I mean, if we look at the big picture, we have to be very careful because some economies are just sort of expanding and, uh, have bottomed out. I mean, I would say in Asia, we've probably bottomed out, and also the markets have bottomed out relative to the US around the turn of the year. And since then, many markets in Asia have outperformed the US, also in Europe. And then we have economies that are very mature in the business cycle, which are turning down. So we have to be very country-specific and also stock-specific. I think, I mean, as a general trend for the last 10 years, it was good to invest in indices and in the popular stocks like, uh, the Fang 7 and semiconductors and so forth. Going forward, I think it will be very stock-specific. I mean, I look, say, at different sectors in the market, and within sectors, we have, say, about banks. Some banks have performed well, and some banks haven't performed well. And, uh, therefore, as an investor, I think some caution will be in order. Number two, my view is that, as you know, in the last 10 years, or since essentially 2009, at the low in March 2009, the S&P at 666, we've had a rise in the S&P, an outperformance of the S&P, and especially of the NASDAQ, vis-à-vis everything else. And, uh, we also had strength in the US dollar. And since Trump was elected, we have more weakness in the dollar. And so, if we, the difficulty in monetary inflation as such as we have, is how do we value assets? Do we value them in US dollars, or in euros, or in Brazilian real, or in Singapore dollars, or in gold, silver, platinum, or whatever? And, uh, I think we value in dollars the market driven by liquidity, which we have increased interest rates in the world since 2020. But the liquidity has continued to expand. The level of interest rates doesn't tell you whether money is tight or not. You could have, like in Turkey, interest rates around 80%, and still easy monetary policies. Or in Zimbabwe, they had interest rates at a,000%, and money was still expanding. So that doesn't tell you anything. And this is the difficulty. The, the economies are not doing particularly well for the typical household. Let's say a household that gets a salary, the father works in a factory or in an office or whatnot, and, uh, he gets maybe a salary increase at the end of the year, but it doesn't match the cost of living increases. So in real terms, actually, his purchasing power is going down. And we have many statistics actually compiled at the Federal Reserve by the academics, and they show that the typical household in America, when they reach 35 years old, they are less well-off and they earn less than their parents earned, say, 40 years ago. And this is a, a sign of a decline in the purchasing power of money and in the standards of living of people. And I see it very clearly, uh, when I travel through Europe. The standards of living there, lots of people, they really struggle. They, they're not hungry, but to meet their bills and to have some discretionary spending power, they are struggling.
>> Mhm.
>> Same in the US. Same in the US. I mean, you go to smaller cities, to smaller communities, it's not a pretty picture. On the other hand, you know, you ask me what is the big picture? When I travel to China and to India and to Indonesia, and I compare it to how these countries were 50 years ago when I came to Asia. I came to Asia in 1973. Uh, at that time, most of these countries were dirt poor, and people had no economic freedom and no spending power. Uh, the Americans, they always complain that the Chinese are not spending. This is a complete idiocy. They are spending of course a lot, but they're not spending a lot on American goods. They're spending a lot on goods manufactured in China. And they travel a lot. I mean, 3 years ago, there were 140 million Chinese traveling overseas. After COVID, it fell, and then it recovered. But some Chinese are shifting their, their traveling plans from say, this country to another country, and so forth. So, and now we have India is also a billion people. And I don't think these countries will be rich in terms of GDP per capita such as we have in Monaco and in America and in Florida and in Switzerland and so forth. But they will be rich in terms of market size. The market will be huge. You know, when a billion people consumes, it is more than when 300 million people consume.
>> Yeah. Dr. Fabber, I think that's a great frame up to the conversation from a big picture view. I want to ask you a follow-on here. What about you're mentioning the, the monetary inflation? We've seen asset price inflation. So the question for you is, assets at these valuations from that investor perspective, what do you make of it? Does it make sense? Uh, where do you see things headed?
>> Well, I mean, this is a, for the, for the investment community, this is the most important question because, uh, and this has been observed already in the 16th century. When you print money, you drop money onto the world, the money doesn't lift, uh, prices evenly. So let's assume we, uh, look at say, a room, and the money is falling down from the ceiling. Uh, the money then will flow into one corner of the room, or into another corner of the room, or maybe into the middle of the room for a while. And that corner, or wherever the money flows to, will be inflated. So the prices will go up. And then one day, someone will wake up and say, "Oh, the prices here are high, and over here they're low. So let's buy something here." And then what will happen is that this will go up, and this will go down, and so forth. And depending on the quantity of money, the total amount, the say, the market capitalization of all the stock markets in the world can still go up. But it doesn't mean that the salaries and the standards of living of people go up. I mean, if I had to describe the last 40 years, people like myself who are in the financial sector, with the least, uh, I mean, the financial people will all tell you that they work hard and so forth. I can tell you, go once on a farm and see how the farmers work who pick up potatoes, or go into a coal mine 100 years ago. Nowadays it's better, but it's to work in a coal, in any mining operation is very tough. Anyway, we, the financial people, because we are the intermediaries of the money that is created by Mr. Bernanke with his helicopter that falls down. It falls first to us, and we then invest it somewhere else. And so the more money is being printed, the more we benefit. That's why Wall Street and all the financial centers, they will never argue for tight money. They don't want tight money. They want easy money.
>> At the, and the, the portfolio managers. If you're the head of Fidelity, or the head of whatever, BlackRock, are you going to tell your clients, "We must tighten monetary conditions, and the stock market will crash as a result"? No. You tell them, uh, these policies are very desirable. And what they're not, not telling the people that the reality is, if you look at the price of gold, say in 1970, before the US went off the gold window, the price of gold was $35. Now it's more than $3,000. So this is the loss of purchasing power of the US dollar and of other currencies. It's not that the dollar is worse than the others. They're all equally bad because they are all controlled by central banks whose interest is not to have monetary policies that make sense, but monetary policies that facilitate the expansion of government. And so the government becomes bigger and bigger and bigger as a percent of the economy, and this retards economic growth. But equally, in a democracy, if as a politician, you go to the people and say, "Look, all these policies, they create inflation, and we have to tighten our belts." It means either you get less subsidies, social security payments, what not, or we have to increase taxation. Are you going to get elected? No.
>> But you can tell the people, because the people don't think, you can tell the people, "We're going to punish the foreigners. We've been screwed by foreigners. We impose tariffs on the foreigners." A tariff is a tax on the US consumer. But it's not paid by the rich Americans. The rich Americans, they private, they buy their private planes in Bermuda or in a tax haven. They buy them luxury yachts. Not they don't register them in the US. They register them in Panama or something like this, so they don't pay the tax in the US.
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>> On the tariff side, Dr. Fabber, we saw like the volatility in markets, um, this year, and we've now seen them recover and they're back near their all-time highs. It makes me wonder too, um, it's you, it's the top percentages of folks, the wealthy, who really are the owners of these assets. Um, does it, does it kind of create like an illusion of like the state of the economy? I don't know where I'm going with this exactly, but like if you are an asset owner, it probably doesn't really bother you all that much, whereas like regular folks, they'll probably feel it. I just wonder like, is the state of the economy, is it more of an illusion?
>> Well, uh, Irving Fisher, who was one of the leading economists of the 20th century in the US, he, he wrote the book about money and so forth, and about the 1920s and what then led to the crash in 1929. And he wrote books about the boom and crashes and so forth and business cycles. I mean, he talked about the illusion of wealth. And I have another book that is actually very good in that respect. Uh, it's called the, the Penniless Billionaires.
>> Here you have it.
>> Yeah, I see it.
>> Because, because the penniless billionaires are people like, uh, the ones that live in Zimbabwe. They're all billionaires, even poor people, but they don't, money doesn't mean anything anymore to them. So, uh, you know, when I grew up, my father used to say, if he wanted to talk about someone who was very rich, he said, "He's a millionaire." Meaning he has a million. Nowadays, people laugh. If you say he's a millionaire, they talk about billionaires. But in my days, in 1970, when I started to work, there were two or three billionaires in the world, Getty, Rockefeller, and, uh, Mr. Ludwig, he was in shipping. And then in 1980, 1981, there were already eight billionaires. And now there are thousands. If you come to a room and you say, "This, this guy's got a billion," nobody's interested. Below 50 million, people are not rich.
>> Isn't that kind of crazy like to think about? Yeah, you're right. Like when I was a kid, I probably would be like, "Oh wow, a millionaire has so much money." And now I was like, "Yes."
>> Yeah.
>> Yes. It's exactly that way. And, uh, I mean, the question is, as I said, in monetary inflationary times, of course, there are some people that benefit, as you said, the rich people. And I want to make one thing very clear. I am not complaining for my personal conditions. You understand? I'm in the financial sector. I benefit from money printing, and I benefit from rising asset prices because I own assets and I have no debts and so forth. So I'm in a favorable position. And as interest rates went up, my income went up. But the poor guys, you know, the people that borrow money to maintain their consumption or live paycheck by paycheck, they have to borrow from credit card companies and God knows what. When interest rates go up, they're squeezed very badly. And that's why when the economists talk about wealth in America and how well the economy is doing,
>> Housing affordability in America is at the lowest level ever. Lowest level.
>> I can tell you that, Dr. Fabber. Yeah. As a, as a reality. But they don't talk about this because Wall Street wants to paint a picture that looks nice. And the politicians, there was a, under me, the economy is booming. Yeah. But the deficit is going up. The other day, I was listening to a panel discussion on Fox. I mean, you have to scratch your head about what these people know about, you know, international relationships and so forth. They, in general, they thought the, the tariffs were very favorable for the US. When in fact, this is fairly well, I mean, in economics, we have different ideologies. We have capitalism, and we have socialism and state ownership and so forth and so on. But one thing is fairly well established: the exchange of goods is favorable. There's no point to have agriculture in Manhattan. Manhattan should specialize on financial transactions, on insurance, on legal matters, and so forth. You understand? And do the agriculture somewhere else, in the plains of Montana or wherever. Anyway, so the exchange of goods is beneficial, and it doesn't matter whether Manhattan would have a trade surplus with Montana or vice versa. It complements the two economies that they trade with each other. And so different countries, they complement each other. I mean, to Trump, he maintains the Chinese ripped off the western world, specifically America, of course. But quite frankly, when I see, or when I used to see the workers in Asian factories working under not particularly good conditions, now this has changed because of automation and robots and this was. But at that time, they lived, uh, they worked under miserable conditions, but they built, I mean, they manufactured Nike shoes for very little money, for which then Nike made the money by adding a huge profit margin. They bought the shoes in China or in Vietnam or India for $10 a pair, and they sold it for $150, $50 a pair. The money was made not in China. The Chinese work like this, sweating. Money was made in the US and in Europe. So to talk about in trade, who rips off whom, is a futile, futile discussion because there are many aspects to it. In general, the western world has benefited from Asia enormously, enormously. The cost of everything would be much higher, and the quality much lower, had Asia not supplied the western world with textiles, toys, uh, handy phones, mobile phones, and so forth and so on. Believe me. Believe me. Do you think that Americans want to work in a factory all day long? Trump is dreaming. And I have to say, I would have voted for him because the alternatives are much worse.
>> I would have voted for him.
>> Yeah.
>> He's a clown, but he's an entertaining clown. The alternatives were clowns, but not very entertaining. So as it relates to the US, you had mentioned earlier our debt and deficit situation. How are you thinking about that? How that might play out? I imagine that is a concern for you. Walk us through like the scenarios that you've been thinking about for the US. I am curious.
>> Yeah, the debt has been a concern for me for the last 40 years, and it's still ticking.
>> Trillion. Yeah.
>> You understand? With money printing, you can postpone problems for a long time. And you ask me how it will end. I want to tell you something. The politicians will never say that. But the reality is, you and I, we don't know. We don't know how it will end. I personally, I cannot imagine a situation where it would end well. You understand? I, I mean, whatever from whichever angle I look at it, I think it will end badly. That's why I'm telling my investors and clients and so forth, and I said, uh, I want to own some assets that would be affected the least if this, whatever happens. Say, uh, I think it makes sense to own some precious metals and some precious metals shares. And I suppose it makes sense to own resources like oil and rare earth materials, and so forth and so on. I suppose, but I'm not sure. That's why I diversify.
>> When you say in badly, what does that look like in your mind?
>> Yes, in my mind, again, as I, I don't know, but it could be war. World War II is a possibility. And, uh, I mean, Russia and China, I have to say, have been remarkably patient with the clowns in the western world who run their countries. Now, just consider, you're in India. Your country has 1.3 billion people, and then you have a trade minister of England coming to your country and giving you lectures about democracy. I think, I think it's a wonderful thing. And of all people, a British person, because if there's one nation the Indians blame for their relative decline in the 19th century, it's obviously the British Empire, because they, they ruled India in the 19th century until essentially 1947. Seven. And have you ever seen Mountbatten, the viceroy of India? That is the best joke for an Indian to show British politicians who lectures them. And DTO, you know, you have some people like Macron. He has no power, and he has an incredible mess in France, and he goes and lectures Xi Jinping in China. [Laughter] I mean, as an international observer, you shake your head. The western world has to wake up because I know exactly what happened is when China opened up in '78, everybody laughed and said it's never going to work and so forth. And then, uh, by the 1990s, they saw that it's actually working. But they said, "Well, the Chinese will continue to manufacture, you know, calculators and toys and garments and shoes and so forth. And we, the western world, we have the platform companies, they're called Nike, Apple, what not. We just put the label on it, we sell it, and we make a huge profit." But now the Chinese have brands, and they have in technology companies that are way ahead of Western technology. Not a little bit ahead, way ahead. So the competition has shifted and so forth. And the next one will be India. And, you know, you have countries like Indonesia, more than 200 million people, and so forth. So the markets are gigantic. 88% of the world lives in the countries, uh, Trump wants to impose tariffs on 88% of the world. You can imagine how popular the American policies are. I mean, in the present situation, if you're the western world, you would want to impose economic policies that are desirable, but but they alienate, they actually push Russia, China, Iran, and so was, and India. Even India, India and China have never been able to see eye to eye, but now they're in the same boat.
>> Yeah, it's so interesting getting that kind of outside perspective too, that global perspective of like how the tariffs are being perceived. Dr. Fabber, I heard you earlier talk about the dollar, the US dollar, and the weakening of the dollar. I take it you're bearish on the dollar, right?
>> Ultra bearish.
>> Can you expand upon that for me, please?
>> Yes. This is a big, you know, I have different portfolios, and some are valued in euros, and some are valued in dollars, and some are valued in Swiss Franks, and some are Asian portfolios, which I value essentially in US dollar. And obviously, the currency movement has a big impact on the valuation. But I don't know how to value a portfolio anymore because in dollar terms, they will tend to go up, but they may go down if I convert it into say, gold or silver. They may go down in value, or if I convert it into wheat and corn and so. You're sitting there and you have assets, but you don't know really how to value them. I tend to value my assets, uh, when I go out and I drink a beer, how, how many beers can I buy with a $100 US?
>> I don't know. A lot.
>> In Manhattan, it's not that much.
>> Yeah, depends where you are.
>> It's not that much. But in Thailand, you can get royally drunk with $100 in an evening. You can, you can get, uh, drunk for a week. It depends. Uh, because in Thailand, when you go to bars and so forth, there are two prices. The prices for your drink, and the prices you have to pay for a lady drink. Say, when I, if you worked in a bar in Thailand, your drink would be twice the cost of mine. And the increase in the price would be your commission. That's what you earn. So if you smile nicely, you will get more drinks.
>> I don't know. I don't know if I want to get on there. But wait, why would my drink be more expensive?
>> Wait, my drink's more expensive?
>> Yes. I mean, that's the system.
>> Okay.
>> They don't get the salary. The girls that work in bars, they get the commission.
>> Oh, got it. Okay. Okay. Okay.
>> Oh god. It's a capitalistic system. You work hard, you smile nicely, you move nicely, you earn more.
>> Okay.
>> What's wrong?
>> So, you are ultra bearish on the dollar.
>> Yes. But, but I'm ultra bearish on all paper currencies.
>> Okay. So, you like precious metals, obviously then.
>> Yes.
>> All right. Talk to me about that. The thesis there, and we have seen, you know, gold's been on a tear. Curious like, where do you see things headed from here?
>> Can you call Mr. Jerome Powell and Mr. Trump how much money they want to print? Trump, in a perfect world, he would like to cut short-term rates to 1%.
>> Mhm.
>> That, I mean, we have already now an increase in interest rates, but as I pointed out to you, in the US, there's $9 trillion sitting in money market funds. There's plenty of liquidity. If there, if liquidity was tight, the bond spreads, lower quality against high quality, would be much wider. If money was tight, tight, precious metals would be down 50%. If money was tight, the stock markets around the world would not be all going up and booming, and you would not have the excessive speculation. You have, we have record speculation. I mean, I didn't even know that it existed. Day options, their expiry is at the end of the day. So, uh, I think it's all these are all signs of plenty of liquidity. As long as this plenty of liquidity is there, in my view, money has not become tight, but the cost of money has gone up, but it's not tight. And that leads to this, uh, situation where the 50 richest people in the world, they've become immensely rich. You know, like before '29, the rich people became immensely rich, but the poor people are struggling. This is the current state of affairs, and I think it will end badly. But exactly how badly it will end, and when badly it, I wouldn't know. But I would keep this in mind as someone with assets. I would think, uh, maybe I have to reverse my thinking of how do I make the most money in the bull market of assets, to how do I preserve my capital and lose the least money if something goes wrong, because as Mark said, something will go wrong. There's no question about it. There's no question. The question is only when. I had friends at Merrill Lynch, they were the strategists in the early '80s at Merrill Lynch. They predicted already then that there would be a debt collapse. But it hasn't happened yet. But it will happen for sure, inevitably. It can happen in a nice way. I tell you, uh, by the government tightening the belt and taking difficult measures, like Milei in Argentina, he took difficult decisions. But in a functioning democracy like the US, I think it would be very difficult. And the worst part of the US is that both parties like to spend money. None of them wants to tighten monetary policies and reduce the deficits. They all want to spend. The Democrats more on this, and the Republicans more on wars that don't make any sense at all. But that they are more associated with the defense industry, industries that benefit from wars, and people that benefit from wars. Never forget, a lot of people benefit from wars.
>> We didn't bring this topic up with you. I don't think we've even talked about this with you, but, um, cryptocurrencies, Bitcoin, what's your view there?
>> My view is it will go up until it won't. I don't think there is much value in cryptos. I think it's a great invention, and I think it will replace the paper money system to some extent. But we have to be very careful because, uh, there will be maybe some cryptos that survive, and others, uh, that they'll all survive. But what is the value if every country has 100 different, uh, cryptocurrencies? What is the value?
>> And have you, have you ever dabbled in it?
>> To ask you one thing that your viewers should also consider. The crypto market now altogether is something like $4 trillion. Now, what happens if the crypto market drops by 50%? Will Mr. Trump ask the Fed to support the crypto markets? That is the question. The Fed supports the bond market. They're buying bonds. They intervene into the foreign exchange market and so forth and so on. So why shouldn't they intervene into the crypto market?
>> It's an interesting question, huh? Okay. On the Fed, I don't know if you saw this, uh, on Friday, we had that jobs report, and the downward revisions here in the US for the non-farm payrolls. Um, obviously President Trump would love the Fed to cut rates and has been pushing for that for a long time. Do you think we'll see rate cuts this year?
>> Yes.
>> Do you think we'll see at the September meeting, or how are you thinking about Fed policy?
>> The question is, are cuts appropriate? In my view, no.
>> Okay, explain. Yeah, I'd love to hear.
>> But, but you, you understand, before we discussed the economy of the rich people, the people that benefit from money printing, and the people that suffer from money printing. In other words, the, the, the housewife that goes to the department store and buys goods, and the prices are up, and the companies reduce the quantity in the packages they buy. You understand? When you buy say, the, a package, before it was maybe 12 pieces, and now it's only nine, something like,
>> The shrinkflation too, because you're so,
>> Shrinkflation.
>> Anyway, they shouldn't cut rates now because money is not tight. And to my being ashamed, for the first time in my life, I actually agree with a Fed chairman not to cut rates. I, I could never agree with anyone about their monetary policies, uh, because they were all inflationary. But now I, I'm supportive of Powell. Equally for the household that is struggling because he bought a house at the high price, he borrowed money say at 1, 2% interest and so forth, and suddenly now it's 5%. He's struggling. And so you have a lot of people who are not in a good financial condition, but, uh, the money printing is kind of keeping them alive. And the rich people, the money printing is enriching them. So the system continues. But as the statistics show very clearly, and nobody can tell me that the economy is booming. It's just not the fact. It's an illusion. You know, you walk around the street and you see all the people on the street, and they go into shops and so forth and so, but they all have no money. They have no savings. But for the rich people, money printing is of course very desirable. That's why we're going to have it, that for sure.
>> Yeah. Um, I have a question for you. It's a bit more of a selfish question, but I am 37, and I would like to buy my first home, but I've been waiting, Dr. Fabber, because the affordability, it's, it's not there. I don't, maybe I'm making a mistake by waiting, but I'm hoping that, that's terrible to say, but I would like prices to come back down, or at least feel like appropriate. I don't know. I feel like a lot of people are in my position. We would like to buy, but it doesn't seem attainable. Do you, do you think that we'll see prices come down in the US as it relates to real estate? Do you have a point of view there?
>> Well, you can, uh, look at commercial real estate, how it collapsed. Five years ago, nobody thought that some buildings that were selling for $100 million would then change hands for $20 million.
>> Mhm.
>> I mean, my view is that the com, residential real estate reached the peak in 2007, 2008, and then we had a big setback. My view was that this was the peak, 2007, 2008. But no, the Fed, in their wisdom, superimposed a gigantic bubble onto the bubble that they already created then. That's the problem with the Fed. They never learn anything. They keep on printing money, and when things go bad, they print even more. And so that will one day lead to a complete disaster and a breakdown of society. But if I were you, I would probably wait because the condo prices, I mean, maybe you want to buy a house and so on, but the condo prices are coming down now in most American cities. And in my view, the residential property is a very vulnerable asset because it is excessively priced. The demand is not there, and the supply has increased partly. This is important. You see, I'm a boomer, born in 1946. I'm a little bit older than you are, but we, and your parents and so forth, they all own assets. They don't want the asset prices to go down. But you, the generation Z, that doesn't happen.
>> I'm a millennial. Yeah.
>> They want the prices to go down because they want to be able to buy them. And I think they will come down. I mean, in my view, massively. But it may not again, it may not happen in dollar terms because if they print money in the US, they can maybe support the ho, the home prices and support the stock market in dollar terms. But the dollar goes down. So then, when the dollar is down in real terms, your house will have lost value. But the Americans policy maker will tell you, "A dollar is a dollar," and so forth. No, the dollar has a value, and its value has its purchasing power has tended to go down since the formation of the Federal Reserve by 98%, by the way.
>> Mhm. Yeah. Ties back to the Fed. All right. I'm going to sneak in one last question for you, Dr. Fabber. It's a two-part question, and I always enjoy our conversations, so I'm so grateful for your time. What for you is the biggest risk right now, and what for you is the biggest opportunity that you're excited about?
>> I mean, for me, the biggest risk is I get punished very badly because I'm, I'm not bearish enough in my, in my opinion. I should be more bearish. And, uh, I have assets, you know, in stocks and in bonds and in commodities and so forth. In my basic view, we had this asset inflation after 1980, 1981, where all asset prices went up. Everybody became rich who had assets, whether you had paintings or whether you had buildings or whatever. And now, I think that everything will go down eventually. And I'm sort of thinking what will go down the least. But even if I buy the things that go down the least, they may still go down by 50% when everything else goes down by 95%. You understand? This is a concern. And, uh, I see it with myself. Let's say I'm in a better mood when my assets increase in price. And that's why I think that economies in the US, they underestimate, uh, how negative, uh, the wealth effect will be on consumption. When people have less money, when they feel less, when the illusion of wealth is deflated, they will, they will reduce their spending meaningfully. They will increase the savings rate. As you know, the savings rate is practically non-existent in the US. It is existent because the rich people have an endless savings rate. Say, you earn a year, a billion dollars. Your Jeff Bezos and so forth, you earn a billion. How much are you going to spend on your steaks in the evening? You may spend on mistresses and young boys and politicians and what not. But even to spend more than say, you earn a hundred, 500 million or a billion, and you spend 5 million, it's difficult to spend more than $5 million a year. I never tried it, but I'm just thinking.
>> Yeah, no, it makes sense.
>> Wealthy people, I know wealthy people, they live very modestly. They have no interest to spend on anything.
>> Yep.
>> Okay, I need to go because I have, I'm a working.
>> Yeah. Dr. Mark Fabber, I really appreciate you being so generous with your time, all of your knowledge, your wisdom, helping us all learn and get better. Really appreciate you. Looking forward to seeing you again soon. Thanks again, Dr. Fabber.
>> Thank you very much.