Marc Faber, editor of "The Gloom, Boom & Doom Report," said Brexit would be good in the long run because Europe is becoming “economically irrelevant.”
“The future of the world, economically, is in Asia—India, China, Indonesia and the other Southeast Asian and Indo-Chinese countries and emerging economies,” Faber told
Fox Business Network.
“The Western world, relative to emerging economies, is diminishing in terms of importance — also politically and geopolitically.”
Faber also said if the U.K. decided to leave the European Union, it would send a message to the elites and bureaucrats who impose regulations that “stifle economic development.”
“An exit would be good for Britain, and it would not destroy the financial markets, quite on the contrary,” he said. “I think if Britain decided to leave the EU the stock market would rally and the British pound would rally.”
Faber joins other respected voices who are in favor of leaving the EU, such as former London Mayor Boris Johnson, former HSBC CEO Michael Geoghegan and actor Michael Caine. Pro-Brexit economists have made a case for departing
, MarketWatch reported.
However, George Soros, Jamie Dimon and other notables have warned about Brexit’s risks,
MarketWatch reported.
Soros, the billionaire who earned fame by betting against the pound in 1992, said that a British vote to leave the European Union would trigger a bigger and more disruptive sterling devaluation than the fall on Black Wednesday.
Soros used Quantum Fund in 1992 to bet successfully that sterling was overvalued against the Deutsche Mark, forcing then-Prime Minister John Major to pull the pound out of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (ERM).
Soros, in an opinion piece in the Guardian newspaper, said that in the event of a British exit, or Brexit, the pound would fall by at least 15 percent, and possibly more than 20 percent, to below $1.15 from its current level of around $1.46 when Soros made his comments,
Reuters reported.
"The value of the pound would decline precipitously. It would also have an immediate and dramatic impact on financial markets, investment, prices and jobs," Soros, who is 85, said in the Guardian.
Soros, ranked as the world's 23rd richest person by Forbes magazine with a fortune of $24.9 billion, said the Bank of England would not cut rates after a British exit and that there would be few monetary policy tools left to ease a recession or a fall in British house prices.
Financial markets and bookmakers put their money on Britain's voting to remain a part of the European Union on Thursday in a historic referendum that threatens to undermine the experiment in continental unity launched in the aftermath of World War II.
More than 46 million people were registered to vote in the referendum, which asks: "Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union or leave the European Union?" The heated campaign saw the nation take stock of its place in the modern world and question the direction it wanted to take in the future.
"Leave" campaigners claim that only a British exit can restore power to Parliament and control immigration. The "remain" campaign led by Prime Minister David Cameron argues that Britain is safer and richer inside the 28-nation EU.
Financial markets have been volatile ahead of the vote, with opinion polls suggesting a tight race, but the pound surged Thursday amid market optimism that uncertainty over the vote would end with a vote to stay, the
Associated Press reported.
The bookies also clearly saw momentum to "remain." The betting market Betfair said the probability that the country will stay stands at 86 percent, with a British exit, or Brexit, given just a 14 percent chance.
Also buoying the markets was an opinion poll conducted by the Ipsos MORI firm for the Evening Standard newspaper which suggested the "remain" camp winning by a narrow margin.
(Newsmax wire services contributed to this report).
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