Even as the recent global sell-off has witnessed in February-March has spooked certain investors, Microsoft’s Bill Gates says that a 2008 like financial crisis is a certainty. “It is hard to say when but this is a certainty. Fortunately we got through that one reasonably well,” Bill Gates wrote in response to question posed by a reader in an AMA (Ask Me Anything) session on Reddit in February-18. “Do you think in the near future, we will have another financial crisis similar to the one in 2008?” the user had asked.
Interestingly, Bill Gates also mentions about Oracle of Omaha Warren Buffett of having spoken about it. “Warren has talked about this and he understands this area far better than I do,” Gates said. The 2008 financial crisis which led to the Great Recession resulting in 8.8 million job losses in the United States alone, and its repercussions were felt worldwide. The net worth of households across America is estimated to have fallen by $19 trillion. While Gates believes that another crisis is certain, he has not predicted any timeline.
A few prominent voices had earlier warned about an imminent stock market crash too. In the wake of the recent sell-off, Jim Rogers, the renowned co-founder of Quantum Fund, said that the next bear market ‘will be worst in our lifetime.’ “When we have a bear market again, and we are going to have a bear market again, it will be the worst in our lifetime,” Jim Rogers, the chairman of Rogers Holdings, told Bloomberg in an interview.
Sometimes referred too as the commodities guru, Jim Rogers has been predicting the ‘worst time in our lifetime’ for quite some time now. In August-17, Jim Rogers told Kitco news, “We could see the worst crash in my entire life pretty soon.” Earlier, Jim Rogers had observed that the 2008 financial crisis was caused due to a rise in debt, and since then the debt has gone through the roof.
“Public debt is currently at historic highs in advanced and emerging market economies. Average debt-to-GDP ratios, at more than 105 per cent of GDP in advanced economies, are at levels not seen since World War II,” Vitor Gaspar, Director of IMF Fiscal Affairs Department said at a news conference in Washington last week. A recent report by Institute of International Finance said that global debt has swelled to all-time high of $237 trillion in 2017.
