Jim Rogers 02 (Jun 10 - Dec 26)

[winston]

Jim Rogers: US Looks Headed for Recession, Stock Crash in 2013 By Forrest Jones

Taxes are set to rise next year, and as a result, the U.S. economy is headed for a recession and stocks are poised to tank, warns international investor Jim Rogers.

The Bush tax cuts are set to expire at the end of this year, but election-year politics will likely mean they will expire and renewing them after expiration will be messy.

Add to that, the economy is due for a downturn anyway if history serves as an indicator.

"First of all, we have tax increases January 1," Rogers tells Fox Business News. "Secondly, we've had recession every four to six years ... Next year, it's four to six years."

Stocks are easing off their recent highs and more declines are set to come even as earnings reports surprise on the upside.

"I've been investing for a long time, and I have noticed when good news comes out and stocks go down, something's wrong. So you better be worried," Rogers says.

"I don't know what's wrong. But I know we've had a great first quarter. One of the best first quarters in history. And now good news is coming out and stocks are going down."

Other experts agree that next year may be rough for the U.S. economy.

Congressional inaction on pending tax hikes and spending cuts could send the country over a dreaded fiscal cliff and make 2013 resemble a recession, says Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody's Analytics.

Without action, the "fiscal cliff'' could shrink next year's economy by 3.5 percent, or about $575 billion, Zandi says, according to USA Today. "If policymakers do nothing, early 2013 will be recession-like," Zandi adds.

Other noted market observers say the U.S. economy is doomed for sluggish growth at best as the country deals with a massive debt overhang and too little growth.

"My view throughout has been that we were going to have a very weak, very uncertain, very inconsistent recovery in all the developed countries," Martin Wolf, chief economics commentator at The Financial Times, tells Yahoo's The Daily Ticker.

"The U.S. can continue to grow, but it's going to be disappointing growth. I've always thought [the recovery] would be a 7-10 year process from the start."


http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/rog ... /id/436840

[winston]

Jim Rogers: Buy A Tractor By Jeff Harding

His best line: finance has had a great thirty years, but there are too many MBAs and not enough farmers. Buy tractors and farmland.

He’s been selling calls on JPM (“a very large American bank”) but he says he was just extra lucky when their their trading losses hit. They have other problems coming including balance sheet issues, credit card issues, and a man who runs their commodities trading who doesn’t know what he’s doing.

Regarding the gold sell off, Rogers says gold’s been going up for 11 years and that a sell off is normal and good for the gold market. He talks about the Indian gold market taxes which are impacting the market as well.

The dollar is a horrible currency to own, he says, but people flock to it when the world (Europe) is in trouble. He owns more dollars now than ever because everyone else is going into dollars.

Bernanke will print more money because it’s all he knows how to do.

2013: it will be a post-election mess. It always has been and always will. It’s just how things work.

http://dailycapitalist.com/

[winston]

Jim Rogers: US Economic Situation is ‘Very, Very Dire’

The U.S. economy is facing a dire fiscal dilemma this year that will aggravate an inbound recession, says international investor Jim Rogers, CEO and chairman of Rogers Holdings.

At the end of this year, tax cuts are set to expire while automatic spending cuts are set to kick in at the same time, a combination dubbed by Wall Street as a “fiscal cliff.”

Failure to stop it now could see the combination of tax hikes and spending cuts siphon billions of dollars out of the economy and offset any growth.

Considering that the country is due for a fresh downturn anyway as part of a cyclical trend, failure to address the fiscal cliff could mean disaster for the economy, Rogers says.

The U.S. economy, Rogers says, contracts or slows up ever six years by its nature and the last downturn began at the end of 2007.

"If you are going to raise taxes in 2013 I assure you the economy is going to slow down and slow down a lot," Rogers tells Newsmax.TV in an exclusive interview.

"Cutting spending would be good, by the way. It would help the economy. Would they do that? I doubt it because too many lobbyists are going to race in and say 'you can't cut my spending,'" Rogers adds, referring to lawmakers who must approve expiration dates to tax holidays or start dates for spending cuts.

"I hope they are smart enough to keep the tax cuts in place."

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Rog ... /id/440796

[winston]

Jim Rogers: Europe Should Have Let Spanish Banks Collapse By Forrest Jones

European finance ministers shouldn't have arranged a $125 billion bailout for Spain to recapitalize its banks, says noted international investor Jim Rogers.

Bailing out ailing financial institutions adds to debt burdens and gives policymakers wiggle room to put off making tough decisions like paying down debts.

"It's nothing more than pushing the thing out into the future. It's making the situation worse. The solution to too much debt is not more debt. This is the most insane thing I have ever heard," Rogers tells CNBC.

"It's going to make the collapse, when it comes, even worse. You should be not careful, you should be worried."

The bailout will help Madrid recapitalize those banks, although letting them go under would have been better, Rogers says.

"Let them go bankrupt. The way the system is supposed to work is when you fail, you fail. Competent people come in and take over the assets, reorganize and start over," Rogers says.

"What we are doing in the West, we are taking the assets from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people and say 'now you compete with the competent people with their money.' It's absurd economics. It's absurd morality."

"Let Greece go bankrupt and then others would realize that 'OK guys, we've got to shape up. If we don't shape up, we're finished.'"


http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Rog ... /id/441916

[winston]

Local dentist sued by Jim Rogers

An American billionaire, a permanent resident here, is suing his dentist over a treatment, that has left little for either party to smile about.

Investment guru Jim Rogers, 69, wants a reimbursement of the $48,150 he spent on ceramic enhancements to his teeth recommended by Dr Ernest Rex Tan of Smile Inc Dental - and compensation on top of that.

It is unclear how much compensation is being sought, but Chinese-language daily Lianhe Zaobao reported on Wednesday that the case is to be heard in the High Court, where only claims above $250,000 are dealt with.

Dr Tan, 43, is fighting back, and counter-claiming for defamation.

PS: Investor Jim Rogers (left) claims that he went to Smile Inc's Dr Ernest Rex Tan (right) to consult the dentist about his temporomandibular joint disorder, but Dr Tan said the investment guru had wanted to cosmetically enhance his teeth.

http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNew ... 13398.html

[winston]

Jim Rogers: Use Commodity ETFs to Profit from Supply Shortages by John Spence

Stocks

• “I’m short stocks,” Rogers said.


Currencies

• Rogers owns several currencies but his largest positions are in the Swiss franc and Japanese yen. Other currencies he owns include the U.S. dollar and Chinese renminbi.


Commodities

• “The supply of commodities has been in decline for over 20 years.” The major oil fields are in decline and there haven’t been many new mines opened.

• In agriculture, the average age of a farmer in the U.S. is 58, and 66 in Japan. “We’re running out of farmers,” Rogers noted.


Precious metals

• “Gold is up 11 years in a row. Gold is consolidating now, a well-deserved consolidation. I own gold, I’m not selling gold. If gold goes down, I’ll buy more.”

• He’s bullish gold will eventually go well over $2,000 an ounce but said corrections of between 30% and 40% are normal.

• Rogers owns all the metals but said if he had to buy one today, it would be silver.

http://www.etftrends.com/2012/06/jim-ro ... shortages/

[winston]

Rogers: Correction May Take Gold below $1,200 By Dan Weil

Legendary investor Jim Rogers remains a long-term bull on gold, but thinks the precious metal’s correction may still have a long way to go.

At around $1,600 an ounce, gold is down about 17 percent from last year’s record peak of $1,924.

Gold has been in a bull market for the past 11 years, and Rogers, who has owned it for longer than that period, tells Oilprice.com, “I don't know of any asset in history that's gone up 11 years in a row without a correction.”

As a result, he’s not buying any more now. “Corrections are normal and are the way things should work, the way things do work,” Rogers says.

“Having said that, I don't know when the correction will stop. It's normal in my experience for corrections to go down 30 or 40 percent.”

A 40 percent drop from its peak would send gold to $1,154.

“It's only gone down that much once in the past 11 years, and even then it ended the year up,” Rogers says.

“If it goes down a lot, I hope I'm smart enough to buy a lot more. I’m certainly not selling my gold, because I suspect gold will be much, much, much higher over the next decade.”

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Rog ... /id/444557

[winston]

Billionaire investor warns of fresh global crisis ‘in 2013 or 2014′ By Melissa Law

Jim Rogers explains that he remains bearish on the outlook of the global economy.

Commodities guru, Jim Rogers, warns that the current financial crisis is set to worsen in the next couple of years, with fresh problems surfacing in 2013 or 2014.

Speaking to Yahoo! Singapore at the Shares Investment Conference 2012 press briefing on Thursday, Rogers explained that he remains bearish on the outlook of the global economy because "nobody's solving the problems in Europe".

"At the moment there's an election in America and an election coming up in Germany. Both of those countries are major economic powers, and they're doing everything they can to get re-elected.

They're both spending a lot of money and they're printing a lot of money to get through the next election," said the 69-year-old American investor, who co-founded of the Quantum Fund along with George Soros.

Rogers, who relocated to Singapore with his family in 2007, added, "But I would suspect that after the elections, probably 2013, 2014, you're going to see more economic problems… and a lot of those problems will come out of Europe."

He then pointed out that nobody's really decreasing their debt in Europe, with most countries struggling under increasing debt except for a few small countries like Bulgaria. He added that current measures to help the affected nations are merely pushing these problems away into the future.

But that's not the only problem. Respected stock trader and author Mike Bellafiore, who was also present at the press briefing, said that the current crisis is not just about debt.

According to Bellafiore, who is a partner and co-founder of New York proprietary trading firm, SMB Capital, the current financial crisis also has a problematic political dimension to it.

The trader who owns three businesses in America said, "In 2008, there was really a banking crisis. (The current crisis) is more of a political crisis, in the sense that essentially Europe is at the mercy of (Angela) Merkel and how France and Germany decide to handle the situation with Greece."

Bellafiore then raised two questions: Is Germany really going to continue to pay for the debts of Greece, Portugal, Italy and Ireland?

And how likely is it for someone who lives in Greece to sign up for years of austerity when it wouldn't be difficult for a "populist Greek politician" to rally the people's support to leave the European Union and start their own currency?

"It's not just going to be just an issue of 'Can we work out our debt?'. It's an issue of 'Do the people who are making these decisions have the appetite to continue?' and 'Do the residents have the appetite to sign off on this?'," he said, adding that at the moment, nobody really knows the answer.

Turning to the issue of China's slowing economy, however, both investors are in fact pleased and optimistic rather than worried.

Rogers explained that China's recent policies to cool its economy are taking effect, so that they can "pop" their property bubble and defeat inflation.

Bellafiore said that China "has become softer purposely" and they are "trying not to grow as quickly" because of inflation, as opposed to it being an effect of the global crisis.

Rogers also added that Asian nations have generally been doing well in building up their reserves and spending less, which he says, is the way to go for countries to tide over the financial crisis.

According to the investor who currently lives in Singapore with his family, the city-state in particular, has been "doing a lot of things right".

"(Singapore) doesn't have staggering debts like America does. It's been saving money for a rainy day and loosening up its economy and its political system in many ways," he said.

The father of two, who rides a bicycle to and from his children's school every day, has only one tiny problem with Singapore.

"I just wish they would be more bicycle friendly," he said.

http://sg.finance.yahoo.com/news/billio ... 22571.html

[winston]

Recent commodity downturn just a blip - Jim Rogers
Author: Geoff Candy

GRONINGEN (MINEWEB) -

The commodity super cycle still has legs, says renowned investor, Jim Rogers, as supplies remain constrained.

Asked on Mineweb.com's Gold Weekly podcast if the recent slowdown in many metal prices and a number of high profile comments about the end of the bull market, Rogers said, "this is nothing more than a blip.

The bull market will continue until a lot of supply comes on stream and the problems since 2008 ensure not a lot of supply is coming on stream."

Rogers said, usually after eight or nine years of a bull market, companies begin to bring new sources of supply online. But, this time around, those that were beginning to think about new supply in 2008 were hit by the financial crisis and many such plans were shelved.

This has continued into 2012 where you have had a number of the world's top miners, including the likes of BHP Billiton, slowing expansion plans.

"All these guys are delaying or suspending or cancelling new supply which is bullish. Until the supply comes we're not going to have an end to the bull market and, certainly in agriculture, my goodness, inventories are near historic lows, we have serious shortages of everything in agriculture developing, including farmers."

With regards to the growth engine for commodities that is China and reports of a loosening in monetary policy in the country, Rogers maintains that it has tightened up two or three times in the past decade in a bid to pop the real estate bubble.

"Every time that they have begun to pop the real estate bubble in the past, once things start getting tough they get a lot of phone calls and they start loosening up again. In my view, China has loosened up too early every time in the last decade, which is why the real estate bubble has continued and it's gotten worse.

So it looks as though China is going to loosen up again and in my view they're going to loosen up again too early this time around, and you'll probably have a continuation of the same old thing - more inflation and perhaps excesses in real estate again."

In terms of specific commodities, Rogers would not commit but said were he a new investor looking at the sector, he would look at those commodities that have fallen the most.

For example, he said, he would look at silver rather than gold because, on a historic basis, silver is down more than gold.

"Silver is about 40% below its all-time high, and gold is 10% or 15% below its all-time high," he pointed out.

http://www.mineweb.com/mineweb/view/min ... &sn=Detail

[winston]

Jim Rogers: Fed Has Already Begun QE3 to Avoid 'Egg on Their Face' By Forrest Jones

International investor Jim Rogers says that the Federal Reserve is secretly printing money to avoid "getting egg on their face again" after previous attempts to kick-start the faltering economy with more than $2 trillion of quantitative easing failed.

Since the downturn, the Federal Reserve has twice sought to spur the economy by buying assets like Treasury holdings or mortgage-backed securities held by banks, a monetary stimulus tool known as quantitative easing that pumps vast amounts of liquidity into the financial system to spur recovery.

Two previous rounds of quantitative easing (QE1 and QE2) pumped a collective $2.3 trillion into the economy and Fed officials say they remained poised to roll out a third round (QE3) if recovery doesn't gain steam.

"I do not know if they will announce it. I know they are going to print more money. They already are," Rogers told India’s Economic Times.

"If you look at their balance sheets, you will see that something is happening, assets are building on their balance sheets and they are not coming from the tooth fairy," said Rogers, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with George Soros.

Mere talk of quantitative easing can send the dollar tanking and assets like gold and stocks rising, as the tool seeks to stimulate the country by flooding the financial system with liquidity in a way that pushes down interest rates across the economy to encourage investing and hiring.

Supporters say the policy steers the country away from deflationary decline and rising unemployment rates, while critics charge the move is merely printing money out of thin air and plants the seeds for inflation down the road.

Some critics like Rogers say the first two rounds didn't really do much to help the economy, as unemployment rates remain high while growth remains tepid.

"I do not know whether they will announce it or not. They are a little bit embarrassed because they announced QE1 and QE2, and it did not work. So they may try to discuss it," Rogers said.

"They may just continue to do it without getting egg on their face again, but they are going to print money, they are all going to print money. It is the wrong thing to do, but that is all they know to do."

Rogers also told Britain’s The Daily Telegraph: "They probably have learned how to do things off balance sheet. I have nothing to confirm this but everyone else has learned how, so they probably have too. This is just a comment on human nature."

Rogers also believes there is no end in sight to the eurozone's problems.

"There are going to be more problems coming out of Europe," he said.

"You have got countries that are essentially bankrupt. Nobody is dealing with the problems in Europe. You look at everyone out there. They all have higher debts and all of their projections, maybe Bulgaria and one or two more countries do not have higher debts in their projections, but everybody has got increasing debt. The solution to too much debt is not more.


http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Rog ... /id/450676