Friday, February 29, 2008

Jim Rogers Gone Wild.

He's getting a little too rabid for me on the anti-US thing and his criticism of Ben Bernanke is over the top [if only he'd unleashed these tirades as publicly and loudly against Greenspan, who boxed us into this corner in the first place] but his call on agricultural commodities and selective other commodities strikes me as right.

[My aside on the US:
Obviously, the major boom type growth now is in other places (Brazil, India, China, etc), and you have to expose yourself to their growth via your investments, but I rather enjoy the US, trust it's open and free society more than any other, continue to believe that it will offer opportunity, and my kid will do just fine learning English, thank you very much. And personally, I think all currencies are flawed; it's just relative, and in the timing.]

TimesOnline: Quantum's Jim Rogers says US 'out of control'.

Quotes:

Jim Rogers - who co-founded the now closed Quantum Fund with George Soros - told 750 global fund managers in Tokyo today that, America is “completely out of control”, there will be a 20-year bull market in commodities and that prices will be in turmoil.

And he also warned that it “made sense” if global competition for resources ended in armed conflict.

Mr Rogers told delegates to the CLSA investment forum that the prices of all agricultural products would “explode” in coming years and that the price of gold, which hit an all-time high of $964 an ounce yesterday, will continue its surge to as much as $3,500 an ounce.

....

In a blistering attack on US monetary policy and the “helicopter cash drop” responses of the Federal Reserve, Mr Rogers described the American dollar as a “terribly flawed currency”.

He said that the plan by Ben Bernanke, the Fed Chairman, to “crank up the money-printing machines and run them until we run out of trees” had exposed America’s weakest point to her rivals and enemies.

The dollar may have declined recently, he added, “but you ain’t seen nothing yet”.

Talking to a room almost exclusively populated with Japan-focused equity investors, Mr Rogers recommended an immediate language course in Mandarin and a switch into commodities — the second-biggest market in the world behind foreign exchange.

Mr Rogers said that historic drains on wheat, corn and other soft commodity inventories have created market dynamics that could lead to severe food shortages.

The outlook over the next two decades would see prices of everything from cotton and sugar to lead and nickel “going through the roof”.

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