Once again, the latest fire and brimstone sermon by Marc Faber is absolutely spot on, starting and ending with his "policy" recommendation for what the US needs: "I will tell you what the US needs. The US needs a Lee Kwan Yew who stands in front of the US and tells them, listen you lazy bugger, now you have to tighten your belts, you have to save more, work more for lower salaries and only through that will we get out of the current dilemma that essentially prevents the economy from growing." No money printing, no extensive protests, no excuses. Of course, this would have to accompany a global overhaul of the system, something Zero Hedge has been advocating since day one, as it is impossible to reform this broken system from within: "The problem i have with the investment universe is that i find it difficult to envision how the US and western Europe can return to healthy sustainable growth without a complete purge of the financial system and some type of catalyst. Something that restores some measure of social cohesion among people; it could be hyperinflation, a complete credit market collapse, widespread sovereign defaults, civil strife, major military confrontation.” Alas, in that he is also correct, and as we said back in early 2010, when the current episode of extend and pretend ends and the can kicking exercise finally fails, next up is war.

It is refreshing to see that Marc is a reader of Zero Hedge, and specifically the post that we consider one of the most important of the year, namely that from BSC, which laid out in black on white what the next steps will be:

I tell what you to do. I think a flat tax on everybody would be actually a good measure and i think to reduce the regulatory environment in the US. We have expansionary fiscal and monetary policies. But we have restrictive regulatory policies. And it curtails any initiative by the small businessmen., and the large businessmen, he doesn't employ and invest capital in the US, he does he that in China or somewhere else in the world where the regulatory environment is more favorable. If you look at net investments in the US, it's gone down for the last 20 years, and it's now negative. In other words, basically the capital stock of America is not being replenished. It's being replenished somewhere else. And at the same time, the policies of the Keynesians have always encouraged spending. “We're not going to get out of recession by saving. Spend, Spend, Spend.” That is wrong. The lack of savings is the problem of the United States.

Faber on volatility and liquidity:

i think the volatility arises because we have the Nasdaq bubble and then we had the housing bubble and the stock market bubble and then a commodities bubble and usually when the bubble bursts like off the 29 or after the late '60s you have a period of very high volatility for about 10 to 15 years before the markets settle down and then reignite the uptrend. As far the dollar is concerned, the reason i'm actually quite positive is that global liquidity, despite of the fact that the ECB and the European governments will flood the market with liquidity to pay the sales out, that global liquidity is tightening. And whenever global liquidity is tightening, it's bad for asset prices but good for the US dollar as was the case in 2008.

On what the true target of #OccupyWallStreet, whose otherwise noble intentions are unfortunately being abused by higher powers, should be:

Basically we have the Keynesians and the Democrats and I'm not saying that all democrats are equal, but they want interventions and we have far too many interventions in the western world where the share of the total economy that goes to government and is government- sponsored has grown. And that essentially makes it very difficult for the western world to grow substantially. As to that huge level of debts, i don't see how the western world, including the US, japan, and Western Europe can actually grow. They're going to stagnate. And when you have stagnation over a longer period of time, people start to ask questions and then they go after minorities. And Wall Street is a minority – they are a minority and anyone else would have done the same. They use the system. But they didn't create the system. The system was created by the lobbyists and by Washington. So they should actually go to Washington and also occupy the Federal Reserve on the way.

Finally, his conclusion is once again spot on: Wall Street's growth is merely a smokescreen for something far more insiduous and something repeatedly covered by Bill Buckler and other more insightful strategists: namely the infinite growth of central planning and the government apparatus. Wall Street's monstrous increase is merely a smokescreen by government to allow it to operate in its shadows and to pocket the benefits of the most mutated symbiotic relationship in the history of the world.

The problem is, governments in the western world -- and I'm not singling out the US -- they have grown like a cancer. And now they protect themselves to stay in power and they have a variety of alliances, like, for instance Mr. Obama he has no clue, but when he sees the protesters in Wall Street he immediately says yes, yes, yes that’s a good idea so he can target the minority so can buy a few more votes. And of course the well to do people want to protect what they worked for and also what they're paying for because as you know in the US roughly 50% of the people don't pay federal income tax. So actually to say that the rich have not contributed anything is actually wrong.

The conclusion is that any systemic reset should not target just Wall Street: it should focus first and foremost on what is most broken in US society: its "government."