A pundit dogfight: Marc Faber versus Jim Rogers

published 9 December 2011

A "dog fight" has kicked off between Marc Faber and Jim Rogers, says Beaconequity.com. Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, is worried that China faces a hard landing, with commodities being sucked into a "vicious downward spiral". China has had a "huge" bubble and bubbles burst, they do not land softly. A bust would have "a devastating impact via the resource producers of the world". Faced with a slump in demand, they will buy fewer Chinese goods hence the danger of a vicious circle.

But commodities guru Jim Rogers, who has been keen on raw materials since they began a long-term upswing at the turn of the century, thinks Faber is being too bearish. "Marc still doesn't understand China," he says. China's landing over the next few years will be "less hard overall than others, such as Greece, the US et al". Commodities will have a correction, but it is unlikely to be devastating. Gold rose 600% in the 1970s, then corrected by 50% before rising further, he points out.

"If I was always bullish about commodities and completely missed out on the crash in 2008, then obviously, having tied my reputation to commodities, I'd continue to be bullish," retorts Faber. But Rogers won't have it. "I proclaimed repeatedly that one should not buy commodities in the run-up phase" in 2008, he says. He explained then that he wasn't selling raw materials because the long-term trend was up and was hedging by shorting banks. What's more, Faber "totally missed" the incipient commodities bull over a decade ago, while "he and his friends" were "wildly excited" about Russia. "We all know how that resulted."