Jim Rogers: Worse Crisis Coming Because of Debt

Legendary investor Jim Rogers, CEO of Rogers Holdings, offered a very glum outlook on the U.S. economy yesterday. According to him, we’re headed for a crisis worse than 2008, the Chinese Yuan will soon be safer than the dollar, and Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke will probably institute another round of money-printing, or QE3.
“The debts that are in this country are skyrocketing,” he told CNBC. “In the last three years the government has spent staggering amounts of money and the Federal Reserve is taking on staggering amounts of debt.
“When the problems arise  next time…what are they going to do? They can’t quadruple the debt again. They cannot print that much more money. It’s gonna be worse the next time around.”
He later added, “The U.S. is the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. The debts are going through the roof. Would you keep lending money to somebody who’s spending money and not doing anything about it? No you wouldn’t.”
Because of that, he said the Chinese Yuan will be a safer currency bet than the dollar. And what may even better is gold and silver: he’s hoping the price goes down on both so he can “pick up the phone and buy more.”
He’s also convinced Ben Bernanke, who he calls a “disaster,” will institute another round of quantitative easing, essentially printing money, later this year.
“They’re gonna bring it back because [Bernanke will] be terrified and Washington will be terrified,” he said. “There’s an election coming in November 2012. Washington’s gonna print more money.”
According to him “draconian” cuts will be needed to control U.S. debt:

Rogers comments come as a new poll reveals nearly half of Americans expect another Great Depression in the next 12 months.

''Next time we have a slowdown, or a recession. America has shot its wad. Ben Bernanke can't keep printing money - the world is going to run out of trees at the rate he's printing money.'' - Jim Rogers

Jim Rogers - Expect More Bottoms

Jim Rogers on "Financial Armageddon"?

Wow! Interesting videos these! More insight from one of the world's most successful and now, controversial, investors!

Jim Rogers: "Mr. Bernanke Has Never Been Right" and "Become a Farmer"

I thought this interview was quite humorous, albeit true!

Jim Rogers On What to Own Right Now

I just try to be long things that are going to do better than the things that I am short on. By the way the best sector in the world that I know right now is probably agriculture. Everybody should become a farmer. Farming is going to be one of the greatest industries of our time for the next 20 to 30 years.

It has been finance and paper shuffling and money, now it is going to be real things and real assets.
The only sector that I know the fundamentals are improving are commodities. Many farmers in the world cannot get loans for fertilizers now, inventories of food are at 50 year lows.

Nobody can get a loan to open a mine, oil reserves are declining around the world at a fairly rapid rate, the fundamentals because of the supply of commodities is the only thing I know that is getting better.

If you need to own something I would suggest to you to learn how to own commodities and selling stocks short.

I still own my US dollars. I plan to get out of the US dollar some time this year. It seems that the short covering rally, it is an artificial rally, people are forced to cover their shorts in the US dollar and there were huge short positions.

- Jim Rogers

Lengthy Jim Rogers Interview in 5 Parts

This is nearly an hour-long interview, but shows Jim Rogers discussing many different aspects of economics. Fascinating!

Jim Rogers On Dutch Television

This is a great interview! Ignore the interviewer, who introduces Jim in dutch. The interview itself is in English. It occurred Thursday, February 12th. Jim Rogers understands the essence or prosperity economics!

Jim Rogers on Bloomberg TV

Here are a few gems from the interview:

Mr. Geithner, has been /failing/ for 15 years; he has caused this problem. Mr. Geithner has been head of the New York Fed for several years and that's the office that was supposed to supervise Wall Street and the financial system. He came up with the TARP and all these absurd bailouts. Mr. Geithner has never known what he is doing and everybody will discover that, including Mr. Obama.

The idea that you can fix a period of excess borrowing and excess consumption by more borrowing and more consumption to me is just ludicrous.

We should do what the U.S. told Japan to do in the nineties. You let companies go bankrupt, you clean out the system, you wipe out everybody that is insolvent. Mr. Greenspan went to Japan and said, “you are doing it wrong”, you have got to let people go bankrupt, you have got to clean out the system. The Japanese did not do it. They continued to prop up zombie banks and zombie companies and they still talk about the lost decade. Geithner said the other day that the Japanese did not spend enough money; all they did was to spend money. I almost fell out of my chair when I heard that. America is making exactly the same mistakes, and the politicians are making it worse, not better. Do you know why they are making it worse? Because they want to support their friends on Wall Street and the bankers so that they all can keep their Maseratis.

Bad bank? They are not letting anyone fail. But the idea that the US Government is coming in and buying these toxic assets. Who is going to value these assets, either the banks are and they are going to set it to high, the taxpayers atre going to lose out…it's not going to work, it has never worked.

If we keep putting in more and more government money, we will have a depression. This has never worked. Look at countries that took their pain. It was horrible for 1 or 2 years. But they cleaned the system and came out with sound economies. Korea, Mexico, Russia took the pain but cleaned the system and became sound economies, grew fast in the next few years.

Gutsy guy, that Jim Rogers!

Jim Rogers: USA Now "More Communist Than China"

Jim Rogers, the famous billionaire commodity guru, commented on CNBC earlier today that with the Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac bailout, the USA is now "more communist than China". Rogers was one of the geniuses that made George Soros' Quantum fund such a monumental success, and helped Soros acquire his own billionaire status. Here is an article that details the story:

Fannie/Freddie Bailout Makes America 'More Communist Than China'

If this doesn't fix the credit crisis, and economic conditions continue to deteriorate, this latest bailout is so big that it could be looked at through the retrospective lens of history as the biggest economic catastrophe in history. Let's hope our financial system survives this one, because the next shoe to fall could be too big for even the U.S. government to apply a tourniquet!

Agricultural commodities ETFs for my IRA and stock portfolio

In am also long the following two ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds) in my IRA account: MOO and DBA. I am also watching JJA & JJG, but want to see a longer history before buying.

One important factor to consider in selecting an agriculture ETF is whether the ETF tracks the commodities themselves or businesses that grow them. I have noticed that ETFs that track the commodities tend to follow the underlying commodity trend better. The business-based ones tend to show greater sympathy to the stock markets and related indexes. However, the commodities ETFs that track the futures have different tax consequences, especially due to the contango phenomenon in futures. I always do plenty of research into these considerations before deciding which ones to buy.

NEWS:
Also have you heard about Jim Roger's new agriculture ETF (symbol: RJA)? RJA is a much broader-based agriculture ETF, but who better to manage an ETF based upon commodity futures than the master commodities uber-bull, Jim Rogers? His ETF is really taking off and growing very rapidly. I believe his ETFs will be some of the best-performing, without doubt. In fact, his all-commodities ETF (symbol:RJI) is significantly outperforming any other broad-based commodity ETF this year! Jim knows his commodities better than anyone! RJI is the broadest-based commodity ETF of them all, and the results are astounding.