My Blog

Leeb: Spain Flirts With Disaster As Europe Ready To Blow Apart

On the heels of the S&P downgrade of Spanish debt, today King World News interviewed acclaimed money manager Stephen Leeb, Chairman & Chief Investment Officer of Leeb Capital Management. Leeb told KWN that not only is Spain in trouble, but Europe is literally ready to blow apart. Leeb also discussed gold and silver, but first, here is what Leeb had to say about the S&P downgrade of Spanish debt: “It’s really one more sign that Europe is on a terrible track. When you have 25% unemployment in Spain and a huge amount of economic distress in most of Europe, and you are telling people the solution is to spend less money and become more austere, it’s just simple logic that’s not going to work.”

Stephen Leeb continues:

“This is an accident waiting to happen. Sooner or later they are going to have to fire up the printing presses again, and flood the countries with money. Europe is ready to blow apart. People are literally killing themselves in Europe. Suicides are way up because of economic distress.

People are being told that the remedy for economic distress is to spend less. How can you spend less when you can’t even afford to buy enough food? This simply can’t last....

Continue reading the Stephen Leeb interview below...

UPDATE: To hear legendary Jim Sinclair discuss exciting new results from the

company he believes is the best investment click on the logo:

“Germany is doing quite well right now, but they just don’t get it. Germany has loans out to Spain, Italy and all of these other European countries. If these other countries break away from the euro, all of the sudden German banks are going to be paid in currencies that are worth one tenth of what they are worth now.

How is Germany going to export anything if this happens because the German mark will go way up in value? So Germany will go down too. It’s inevitable that you are going to see a breakout of inflation throughout the world.”

Leeb also added this: “In the United States, Eric, two data points that are important. Oil is over $100 and unemployment insurance claims are close to 400,000. That is a recessionary number. You have a massive number of people in America, a number that has never been this high, that are paying over 50% of their income in energy and food.”

When asked about gold, Leeb responded, “Gold may get hit if Europe does fall. There might be selling of gold for liquidity. If gold does get hit, it will be one of the greatest buying opportunities people will see in their lifetimes, but it may not happen. My point is if you are fully invested in gold, stay there. In a few years you will find you are very wealthy. If you are 50% invested, buy the dip if one materializes.

China is buying gold because they know what is happening. This is a recipe for the Chinese yuan becoming the new reserve currency because they are accumulating a lot of gold that will probably be used to back the yuan.

What is that going to mean for the dollar and inflation in the West? It’s going to go to levels that we’ve never seen before. This is a when, not if event. And the when is, when is gold and silver going to soar to the sky?

I don’t even have a target for gold anymore. Investors need to be careful with anything that is denominated in dollars and paper. You have to be in hard assets in order to survive this cycle.”

The Eric Sprott audio interview will be released this weekend, but the Egon von Greyerz audio interview is available now. And be sure to listen to this week’s incredible line-up of other KWN interviews, which include Rich Yamarone, John Embry, Jim Sinclair and John Hathaway. You can listen to these interviews by CLICKING HERE.