A Joe Biden and Kamala Harris victory in the US presidential election will be “disastrous”, veteran investor Mark Mobius has warned.
Mobius, who left Franklin Templeton after more than 30 years in 2018 to set up Mobius Capital Partners, told Financial News that US President Donald Trump’s stance of lifting coronavirus lockdowns will kickstart economic recovery.
“It [a Biden-Harris win] would be disastrous,” said Mobius.
When asked whether a Trump win would boost the stock market, Mobius said: “Yes, definitely. His goal is to get people back to work, reduce unemployment and generally boost the economy.”
Trump is somewhat losing ground to Biden, the former US vice president. Fifty per cent of US registered voters say they would vote for Biden if the election were held now, while 41% back Trump, according to the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
The coronavirus crisis has battered the world’s largest economies that froze into lockdown over the past couple of months.
Last week, the UK stumbled into the “largest recession on record” because of the pandemic, which has killed nearly 47,000 people in the country.
“Unless they [Britain] are able to end the shutdown policies and also end the erratic policy moves, the recession will continue and economic recovery will be difficult,” Mobius said.
Meanwhile, the US economy shrank at a 32.9% annual rate between April and June — the country’s deepest decline since the government began keeping records in 1947. More than 169,000 people in the US have died as a result of the virus.
Mobius called on global governments to lift lockdowns to get economies going, warning that “more lives have been lost” because of the virus lockdown than the Covid-19 outbreak.
“It is important for governments to cease the shutdown actions and allow people to return to their normal living and working routine. Too much emphasis has been placed on Covid-19 to the detriment of the majority of the people.
“It is possible to allow the normal operations of the economy by encouraging people to wear masks and follow simple hygienic behaviours. I estimate that more lives have been lost not related to Covid-19 [but] because of the hardship engendered by the shutdown measures,” the 84-year-old fund manager added.
This article originally appeared on Financial News.
