Well known economist and publisher of the Gloom, Boom and Doom Report, Doctor Marc Faber, raised eyebrows this morning when the long-time proponent of being your own central bank was quoted by Bloomberg as saying that the coming crisis will be so severe that you won’t even be able to hide in gold.

So we are creating bubbles and bubbles and bubbles. This bubble will come to an end. My concern is that we are going to have a systemic crisis where it is going to be very difficult to hide.

Even in gold, it will be difficult to hide.

As a well respected contrarian investment adviser, Faber’s comments will no doubt be used by those who shun gold as a wealth protecting investment vehicle to scare those who have taken financial shelter in the 5,000 year old medium of exchange. In fact, in the Faber Bloomberg interview host Alix Steele actually claims that gold has “not held up as a safe haven,” an asinine statement considering that the precious metals has risen precipitously to new all-time highs from a price of $750 per ounce during the throes of the financial crisis in 2008, to about $1600 today.

But did Faber really mean that gold as a store of wealth is no longer viable?

Has he abandoned his long-time principles of owning hard assets during financial, economic and political turmoil?

Hardly.

For the last five years he has vehemently argued that all currencies are doomed, except for gold:

In today’s world, all paper currencies are not particularly desirable. All governments will print money. All governments will have fiscal stimulus packages as soon as something goes wrong. And all paper currencies will lose in their purchasing power. So, there’s only one ultimate currency and these are precious metals, specifically gold. (May 5, 2010)

But Faber is a realist, thus there is more to his recent views than the notion that you won’t be able to hide in gold for safety.

Faber is not suggesting you shouldn’t own gold, he’s highlighting how serious of a crisis we’re actually in, something the mainstream media won’t touch with a ten foot pole.

He has long predicted a collapse so severe that it could realistically spiral into a widespread global war, a situation where gold may be difficult to trade simply because traditional systems of commerce will have essentially been destroyed. According to an interview from late 2012, Marc Faber says that we may well see World War III within the next five years and he has advocated for not just investing in gold, but assets that will matter when life as we know it today no longer exists:

…he says buy a farm you can tend to yourself way out in the boondocks. And protect it with high voltage fences, barbed wire, booby traps, military weapons and Dobermans. (August 2010)

Thus, as howling mainstream media pundits will point to Faber’s “turn” on gold as evidence that this relic is no longer worthy of investment, understand that Faber’s ideas cannot be summed up in a single sound bite.

We are dealing with a large scale global collapse that will affect every single person on this planet.

It’s going to be violent, and as Faber notes, may involve a downed electricity grid, poison in our water supplies, dirty bombs and a crash of the internet infrastructure.

And just to reiterate where Marc Faber stands on gold, he made it pretty clear in February of 2010 when he said, “The One Thing I Will Never Do in My Life is Sell My Gold.”

Take Faber’s non-mainstream filtered advice. Be your own central bank and stock up on hard assets – farm land, a means of food production, security measures, precious metals, and anything else that can’t be papered over.