Board-Ansicht
Mix-Ansicht- Jetzt warnt auch schon ein Super Reicher vor der Depression... - CRASH_GURU, 30.01.2006, 15:33
Jetzt warnt auch schon ein Super Reicher vor der Depression...
-->Financier warns of tough times
Print this story Email this story to a friend Email Alert
British financier and author Jim Mellon
Related Video
Close Up: Economic Turmoil (10:27)
Jan 25, 2006
A British financier and multi-millionaire is visiting New Zealand with a warning that the western world is on the brink of a depression.
As news spreads of 30,000 jobs lost at the Ford Motor Company in the US and small New Zealand companies also shed jobs, Jim Mellon says 2006 is the year to hunker down and consolidate.
Mellon ranks alongside Sir Elton John on the UK rich list and is co-author of the book Wake Up - How to Survive and Prosper in the Coming Economic Turmoil.
In New Zealand for just a few days, the high-flying financier says the party is over and it's time to prepare for the great depression of the 21st century.
"My suggestion is that the next two or three years are going to be a dangerous and difficult time for us," says Mellon.
He says his book is written for those living in the comfortable world of the rich nations club - a club which he claims is going under. And he believes only the financially fittest will survive.
The global entrepreneur and economic pundit is picking a rough sailing for western economies like New Zealand's. And he says much of the problem is stemming from America.
"Every man, woman and child in America imports approximately $16 worth of foreign product and they only export $9 so there's a gap of several dollars a day for every man, woman and child - multiplied by 282 million people, multiplied by 365 days a year, equals $US650 billion a year which is bigger than most countries GDP by a mile...that's how deficit is financed...by the Chinese and Japanese banks buying American government debt," says Mellon.
Today the United States is the world's biggest debtor and Mellon says China will become an economic power to rival the US in his lifetime.
"Ultimately how does America pay for that...there's only one way out and that's a lower standard of living for the Americans and hence for the rest of us in Anglo-Saxon economies."
Mellon says the West can't compete with China on a manufacturing basis because the average wage rate is between 20 and 30 US cents per hour while in Germany and the UK it's $US30 per hour. And he says the skills gap is not that great.
"We have approximately 15 years before China overtakes the US - it's already overtaken the UK, France and Germany."
And Mellon says New Zealand has experienced the same"frenzied boom" as in the UK, America and Australia.
"Property prices have gone up 10 times in the space of 20 years...that's a ludicrous rise and incomes haven't risen 10 times."
Mellon's own"rough forecast" is that over the next five years or so properties could fall 50 percent.
He is concerned that many people are loaded with debt rather than savings.
"There's no stigma attached to being in debt any more so your grandparents would have been mortified if they'd owed more than 5 shillings on something but now it's acceptable."
Economics aside, Mellon says other triggers for global instability include climate change and pandemics. And he says the gap between the rich and the poor has become a gulf.
"The poor haven't been organised in the past...and they haven't been proximate to us...but more increasingly they are getting organised."
Wake Up is not the only book publishing such dire prophecies. Recent releases include Empire of Debt, House Poor and Boom Bust - the Depression of 2010.
Mellon says that to survive a depression people need to start saving, stock up and go back to the basics.
He uses Hurricane Katrina as an example of how quickly society can collapse.
"Within three days the entire societal structure of New Orleans collapsed...a rich society...a major city...everything collapsed - law and order, the public service, everything."
Mellon says his book is designed to provoke conversation and debate and it's not a prescription. He says it's there to start people thinking about these things. He suggests we need to be poring over financial journals and economic magazines.
Source: Close Up
Thread gesperrtgesamter Thread:
