Another Prominent Economist Forecasts Depression, Says Gold To Hit $2000

Systemic financial meltdown will see prices more than double

Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Tuesday, Feb 3rd, 2009

Yet another renowned economist and investor has declared that the U.S. is entering a full scale depression that will see gold prices more than double in the near future.

Canadian investor Eric Sprott, who rightly predicted the collapse of banking stocks last year, has told Bloomberg News that the U.S. has entered the worst economic slowdown since the Great Depression:

“The trend is down, and there’s not one signpost that says it’s changing yet,” Sprott said yesterday from Toronto. “We’ll stand by to wait to see those, and until it does, you have to assume it gets worse.”

Sprott, the chairman and founder of Sprott Asset Management Inc., a company worth $4.5 billion, also said that he sees gold prices hitting $2000 as a result of a systemic financial meltdown:

“The window to raise money for gold stocks has blown open,” Sprott said. “The investing public has started to go to that one thing that they think it’s safe to invest in.”

Gold is currently trading at around $908 per ounce, and while other commodities are falling off, gold producer's stocks have almost doubled in the past three months.

Sprott also warned that the foreign investment in U.S. Treasury securities could dry up as countries concentrate on their own financial markets. Sprott said such activity would be “catastrophic”:

“When do people stop buying the credit of the country? That’s a tough question to answer, but it’s on a lot of people’s lips right now,” he said. “Each country has their own financial problem, so there’s no funding for anything external.”

Sprott's prediction mirrors that of numerous other fund managers and top investors such as Johann Santer, Jim Rogers, Robin Griffiths, Edward Hands and Jurg Kiener to name but a few, who are now predicting that global central banks' insistence on printing their way out of economic turmoil is setting the stage for a hyperinflationary holocaust, a knock-on effect of which will be gold's acceleration towards $2,000, as demand for precious metals outstrips supply.

Meanwhile other prominent economists such as former chief credit officer at Fannie Mae Edward J. Pinto, philanthropist George Soros, the IMF’s top economist Olivier Blanchard, and Professor Peter Morici, a former chief economist at the U.S. International Trade Commission, have all concluded that the U.S. is entering a full scale depression.

These summations dovetail with the analysis of renowned financial publication The Economist, which reported last month that, based on the characteristics of the current financial crisis, the U.S. is in a depression, not a recession.

http://www.infowars.net/articles/february2009/030209Sprott.htm