Good cause for gloom, says Dr Doom

Investment guru believes the recession will last longer than most people think

In early 1973, Marc Faber - aka Dr Doom - was asked by his then employer, investment bank White Weld & Co, whether he would consider moving to Hong Kong to develop its Asian business. White Weld had two offices in the city, a necessary arrangement as the Cantonese manager did not get along with its Shanghainese staff. The idea was to merge the two offices and streamline operations under a good Swiss manager.

'I took a pay cut, but I felt this was compensated for by the opportunity to live a challenging and interesting life, and to build a business based in Hong Kong. So in the summer of 1973, I moved to Hong Kong with three suitcases,' Mr Faber writes in his bulletin, The Gloom, Boom and Doom Report.

And so began the internationally acclaimed investment guru's tryst with Hong Kong. Though he does not live here anymore, Marc Faber Ltd still maintains an office in the city.

Over the years Mr Faber has built a reputation as a contrarian investor, often refusing to go with the tide of conventional market wisdom and proving to be right, as in correctly predicting the 1987 stock crash.

These days he is railing against the US government's huge rescue plan. He believes it will do more harm than good and end up prolonging the recession rather than cutting it short.

He even calls the prevalent economic philosophy of stimulus and government intervention the 'Zimbabwe school of thought' that believes in fixing financial problems by printing more money.