Gold price bull Marc Faber booted from boards for racist remarks

Marc Faber under fire for racist comments

Marc Faber in 2014. Image from archives

Well-known market commentator, contrarian investor and gold bull, Marc Faber, is coming under fire for comments made in his latest missive for the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report.

In the October edition of his closely-followed newsletter 71-year old Swiss-born Faber who lives in Thailand writes:

“And thank God white people populated America, and not the blacks. Otherwise, the US would look like Zimbabwe, which it might look like one day anyway, but at least America enjoyed 200 years in the economic and political sun under a white majority.”

“I am not a racist, but the reality — no matter how politically incorrect — needs to be spelled out.”

Canada’s Sprott Inc announced on Tuesday that Faber was asked to resign from the board of the $10 billion alternative asset manager and precious metals investment firm:

“The recent comments by Dr. Faber are deeply disappointing and are completely contradictory with the views of Sprott and its employees,” said Peter Grosskopf, CEO of Sprott.

Faber also sits on the board of Vancouver-based Novagold Resources which is advancing the Donlin project in Alaska and Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines which has copper projects in the Congo and precious metals investments in South Africa.

Later on Tuesday Ivanhoe Mines released a statement that the company had requested and accepted Faber’s resignation:

Ivanhoe Mines’ values of equality, respect and dignity for all people are a fundamental underpinning of the company’s enterprise and the conduct of every aspect of its business. There is zero tolerance for racism. Ivanhoe Mines disagrees with, and deplores, the personally-held views about race that Marc Faber has published in his current investment newsletter.

Novagold announced Faber’s departure from its board in a terse statement on Tuesday afternoon noting the resignation from the board is effective immediately.

BusinessInsider reports a number of media outlets including Fox Business, CNBC and Bloomberg TV said they do not intend to book Faber in future, but Faber is standing by his report:

“If stating some historical facts makes me a racist, then I suppose that I am a racist,” Faber wrote in an email to Bloomberg and CNBC. “For years, Japanese were condemned because they denied the Nanking massacre.”

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