Dr. Doom' Warns of 'Massive Market Meltdown

Mark Faber, noted investor and author of “The Gloom, Boom, & Doom Report,” during an interview on CNBC’s “Squawk Box” Tuesday warned that the global economy will experience a “massive market meltdown.”

“I don’t think markets are going down because of Greece, I don’t think markets are going down because of the ‘fiscal cliff’ — because there won’t be a ‘fiscal cliff,’ ” said Faber.

“The market is going down because corporate profits will begin to disappoint, the global economy will hardly grow next year or even contract, and that is the reason why stocks, from the highs of September of 1,470 on the S&P, will drop at least 20 percent, in my view,” he added.

Blaze readers who follow our daily “Market Roundup” know full well corporate earnings in FY2012 have been disappointing. Apple’s stock, for example, has fallen precipitously on its poor quarterly earnings and even McDonald’s has seen a decline in sales (the first in nine years).

“Dr. Doom” continued, arguing that the U.S.’ so-called “fiscal cliff” entails minor tax increases in “five years’ time” and spending cuts “in 100 years.”

His solution? Pain: eurozone style.

“There will be pain and there will be very substantial pain. The question is do we take less pain now through austerity or risk a complete collapse of society in five to 10 years’ time?” he said, noting the lack of progress Washington has made in tackling this issue.

The noted investor added: “In a democracy, they’re not going to take the pain, they’re going to kick down the problems and they’re going to get bigger and bigger.”

What, in Faber’s opinion, is retarding economic growth in the U.S.? Well, for starters, “Dr. Doom” thinks the U.S. real estate market has been "overbuilt." He also expects “deleveraging” in the near future.

“In the Western world, including Japan, the problem we have is one of too much debt and that debt now will have to be somewhere, somehow repaid or it will slow down economic growth,” said Faber. “I think we lived beyond our means from 1980 to 2007, and now it’s payback period.”

The central bank stimulus, Faber argues, was ill-conceived and the markets should have been allowed to implode, allowing us to actually restructure our financial system.

“I think the whole global financial system will have to be reset and it won’t be reset by central bankers but by imploding markets — either the currency [markets, debt market or stock markets,” he said. “It will happen — it will happen one day and then we’ll be lucky if we still have 50 percent of the asset values that we have today.”

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Front page photos source courtesy the AP.