Jim Rogers 02 (Jun 10 - Dec 26)

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Reuters Summit-Jim Rogers bets the farm as he shuns Wall Street By Herbert Lash

NEW YORK, Dec 7 (Reuters) - Investor guru Jim Rogers says life on the farm will bring far more riches in coming years than the trenches of Wall Street.

Rogers, a commodities evangelist for more than a decade, has tweaked his pitch, saying the producers of the world -- whether individuals, companies or countries -- will become the new growth sector.

In short, Rogers told the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit in New York, being productive, saving the fruits of your labor, and owning hard assets hold the keys to a bright future.

"All these people who got MBAs made a mistake. The city of London and Wall Street are not going to be great places to be in the next two or three decades. It's going to be the people who produce real goods," he said.

"Throughout history we've had long periods when the financial centers were in charge. But we've also had long periods when people who produced real goods were in charge -- the farmers and the miners," Rogers said.

Rogers, who rose to prominence after co-founding the now defunct Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros some four decades ago, railed about the fiscal irresponsibility of debtor governments and praised China and other Asian countries because they save, work hard and invest in the roads, schools and factories that beget tangible wealth.

As an example, he said that commodity- and mineral-rich Canada will fare far better than Belgium, the seat of European bureaucracy.

Rogers still touts commodities, despite a recent price surge. Even with the benchmark Reuters-Jefferies CRB index <.CRB> of 19 commodities hitting its highest level on Tuesday since October 2008, Rogers said commodities will continue to soar over the next decade.

"They're very high, but they're going to be much, much higher over the next decade. Even I'm going to be stunned, and I'm the bull," he said.

A year ago at the Reuters Investment Outlook Summit, Rogers said investors in oil, metals and grains should not sweat sell-offs in those markets because the printing of money by governments across the globe would push prices higher.

Rogers reiterated on Tuesday that politicians are afraid to bite the fiscal bullet and will opt to debase their country's currency. He called the Chinese renminbi the world's safest currency and again said gold would eventually rise above $2,000 an ounce.

A bubble might exist in housing in China's coastal cities, but he called it a price bubble and not harmful like the credit bubble that was behind the U.S. housing debacle.

"We had a credit bubble here, perhaps the biggest credit bubble in the whole world," he said. "That kind of huge credit bubble certainly is different than a price bubble. If people go bankrupt in China, it's not going to bring down the Chinese economy." More currency crises loom, and creditor nations -- China, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Taiwan and Singapore -- will thrive, he said.

Rogers singled out the United Kingdom as vulnerable to hard times, and said the pound would underperform the euro over the next five years.

The United States also faces difficulties.

"The way you build an economy, a thriving economy is you save and invest," he said. "Productive capacity is what leads to long-term growth of the economy. You don't build an economy by going to the disco every night."


Source: Reuters

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DJ Jim Rogers: China 'Doing Right Thing' In Raising Interest Rates To Curb Inflation - Xinhua

Influential U.S. investor Jim Rogers said Tuesday that China's central bank is doing the right thing by raising interest rates and banks' reserve requirement ratio to curb inflation, Xinhua News Agency reported Wednesday.

Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, told Xinhua at a conference hosted by Thomson Reuters in New York that although he isn't familiar with the details, he believes China's inflation has something to do with excessive liquidity.

He also criticized the U.S.'s quantitative easing policy, saying it is "totally wrong" for the U.S. Federal Reserve to stimulate the country's economy by pumping a large amount of money into the market, according to the report.

He said the Fed's quantitative easing policy aggravates China's inflation problem.

"The expectation that China may further raise its interest rate and the widening interest spread between China and the United States will attract 'hot money' flows into China's stock market or commodity market," the report cited Xinhua as saying.

However, he also expressed confidence in China's economy and its currency, according to the report.

Rogers said he owns U.S. dollars, Japanese yen, Australian dollars, Canadian dollars and yuan.

"I am not sure about other currencies, but I am sure about the RMB, which is a strong currency, maybe the safest currency right now," Rogers said, using the initials for renminbi, the other name for the yuan.


Source: Dow Jones Newswire

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Jim Rogers: U.S. inflation data is “a sham”

U.S. government inflation data is “a sham” and is causing the Federal Reserve to vastly understate price pressures in the economy, said Jim Rogers.

The U.S. central bank uses inflation data that relies too heavily on housing prices, Rogers told the Reuters 2011 Investment Outlook Summit, and he criticized the Fed’s $600 billion bond-buying program.

“I expect interest rates in the U.S. to go much, much, much higher over the next few years. Real assets are the way to protect yourself.

If the world economy gets better, commodities are going to go up in price because there are shortages.

If the world economy does not get better, you should own commodities, because (central banks) are going to print more money,” he said.

Rogers also said the price of gold will eventually rise above $2,000.


Source: Reuters

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Jim Rogers: We have a serious debt problem in the West, somebody has to deal with it

INTERNATIONAL. Legendary global investor and chairman of Singapore-based Rogers Holdings, Jim Rogers said some European countries are bankrupt or are having serious liquidity problems and should be allowed to restructure their debt.

Speaking today on CNBC Worldwide Exchange Rogers said: “You need to let Ireland go bankrupt. They are bankrupt, why let innocent Germans, Poles or innocent anybody pay for mistakes made by Irish politicians and Irish banks”.

"They are bankrupt. Let them go bankrupt, let the banks' shareholders lose money, let banks' bondholders lose money, let Ireland reorganize and start over, that's the only thing that's going to work. Zombie banks and zombie companies is not going to work," he added.

On Monday, ministers from the 16-country strong eurozone said that the existing safety net of €750 billion (US$1 trillion) was large enough, and praised both Portugal and Spain for the steps they were taking in getting their economies in order.

Some fear that the existing fund would be overstretched if countries such as Spain and Portugal followed Greece and the Irish Republic in asking for help.

On Monday, the head of the International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, had called for an increase in the size of funds available for support.

And on Tuesday, he criticized Europe's response to the eurozone debt crisis.

Speaking from Athens, where he was attending a meeting with the Greek prime minister, Mr. Strauss-Kahn said: "The eurozone has to provide a comprehensive solution to this problem. The piecemeal approach is not a good one."

Greece is insolvent, Portugal has a liquidity problem, Spain has a liquidity problem.......the UK is totally insolvent, Rogers told CNBC.

“This is a serious problem we have in the West, somebody has to deal with it,” he added.

US President Barack Obama announced last night he’ll accept a deal to sustain all the Bush-era tax cuts for high- income taxpayers for two more years in exchange for extending federal unemployment insurance for the long-term jobless and cutting the payroll tax by US$120 billion for one year.

"Not raising taxes is always good for the world and for the economy, so we can presume that things will slowly continue to creep up for a while," said Rogers.

What they [the Federal Reserve] are doing is not good for the world with all this money printing going on, said Rogers, adding "but at least they are not raising taxes, which is good for the world".

"It's stupefying; we have a central bank in the US that thinks all they have to do is print money. That's never worked, never worked in the world in the long term or the medium term, and yet we have central bankers in America that say that's what they're going to do. That's all they know".

The renowned investor reiterated his fear that inflation has already started to creep up across the world and that will ultimately affect stock markets.

“Everybody watching this show knows that prices are going up,” Rogers said. “Prices are going up, that’s called inflation....anyway that’s not good for stock markets.”

"They are printing money, it is causing inflation, inflation is going up, people are suffering, when people suffer, one of two things happens: Either the economy gets worse, or it works through to wage increases and this causes more inflation," he explained.

Rogers confirmed he bought the euro when it was low and said he was sticking with his investment.

“I’m long the euro and certainly I’m staying with it.”

http://www.bi-me.com/main.php?id=49975&t=1&cg=4

[winston]

Rogers: U.S. Is Bankrupt

NEW YORK (TheStreet ) - Jim Rogers, the famous contrarian investor, is a long-time hater of the Federal Reserve, bailouts and money printing.

So with the EU and U.S. both struggling, I sat down with Jim Rogers to get his opinion on what is the worst and what is the best option for these debt-laden countries.


Let's go to your take of Europe vs. the U.S. Which is worse?

Greece, Greece is terrible. The U.K. is terrible. They have serious serious problems. Ireland is in serious trouble, which is worse? The U.S. can print money and therefore it can conceivably put off its problems further than anyone else.

But at the same time it looks like the European Central Bank is going to continue to bail out some of the European countries that are in serious trouble.

They're all bankrupt; the U.S. is bankrupt; Greece is bankrupt, we're sitting around diluting ourselves; the U.K. is bankrupt.


So you would call the U.S. insolvent as well?

Yes, if you look at the numbers there's no way the U.S. can ever pay off its debt. I haven't done enough homework to know but there are friends of mine who've said the U.S. cannot pay its debt. Within five years, the U.S. will be defaulting on its bonds. I have not done that homework myself.


OK. So what is the fate of the EU?

What will probably happen is the euro will break up sometime in the next decade and when that happens some countries will probably pull out of the European community, the European Union. I would expect some form of the European Union to last longer than perhaps the euro, the euro as we know it now.

The euro is a brilliant concept, the EU is a brilliant concept. Unfortunately, the Europeans have brought in too many countries too fast, if you ask me. They should have done it slower and in a more concentrated manner but I'm not European so I can't tell them what to do. So you may see the euro fail eventually, don't forget I own the euro now, and that will cause the EU as we know it to change.


Can you tell the U.S. what to do?

Let people go bankrupt ... You can't just say, 'Oh well, we had 30 years of the most outrageous credit bubble in the history of the world. We've done a lot of other things, we've gone deep into debt, it'll be OK, don't worry.'

The world doesn't work that way. If you go on a drinking binge ... for three weeks, it's going to take a while for you to recover. You are going to have to suffer some pain and start over. The same way with anybody who makes mistakes.

Cut spending. Making people give their money to the government instead of spending it themselves in the way they want to spend it or invest it or even save it ... sending it to Washington is not going to do you any good. You've got to cut spending dramatically and cut taxes if you want to have a vibrant dynamic economy.

Look at the successful Asian economies. They don't have staggering expenditures. They don't have staggering tax burdens. They encourage people to save and invest and they do and they have very dramatically successful economies.


http://www.thestreet.com/story/10947048 ... L_btb_html

[winston]

Jim Rogers Talks China, Gold, Commodities By Alix Steel

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Global investor Jim Rogers is betting on China and commodities to make him money.

Rogers is invested in Chinese stocks, the euro, the dollar and the renminbi. He is long commodities and short U.S. bonds.


Euro

Last summer everybody got extremely pessimistic, and everybody was dumping the euro as fast as they could, and in my experience when everybody's on one side of the boat you should go to the other side of the boat, and so I stepped in and bought it and it went up.

USD

Same thing. I own the U.S. dollar because everybody in the world is pessimistic on the dollar including me ... It doesn't always work, but most of the time when you go against the crowd you will make money.

Do you know what it is going to take for you to sell the euro and the dollar?

Well, lots of exuberance, the same thing. If everybody gets widely enthusiastic and thinks the euro's OK now or the dollar's OK now, then I would probably be forced to sell.

Things are happening with the dollar that could make it more attractive. I mean they are talking about giving tax incentives for people to bring their dollar holdings back home that can make the dollar go a lot higher for a while. Things could happen, and we'll just have to wait and see how it works out.

India

I mean you look at the Indians. Who can believe the Indian [growth] number; certainly not me.
I've been going to India for many years, too, and I know they're not growing as fast as China, but they claim to be.

The Indians wait for the Chinese to announce their growth numbers and then they announce theirs. They want to make sure they are in the same league. But all of these numbers are made up; you must understand that by now

2011 Outlook

Let's go to your outlook for 2011. What are three things you are going to be paying attention to in the world economy in the next year?

Everything, everything that's going on: central banks, currencies, commodities, stocks, bonds. I'm short bonds, I'm short U.S. long bonds. I try to pay attention to everything. I cannot be a successful investor unless I pay attention to everything.

I'm mainly long commodities. My investments are commodities and currencies right now. I'm short bonds, as I mentioned, I'm short an emerging-market ETF, because emerging markets were so hot in the last couple of years. I own some shares that I've owned for years. I have all my Chinese shares that I've ever owned. I bought my first Chinese shares back in 1999. I don't like to sell things unless there's a good reason.


Are you short any U.S. stocks?
I'm short one ETF, one index ETF.


http://www.thestreet.com/story/10949845 ... ooyah_html

[winston]

China Will Go Too Far Tightening Rates, Says Jim Rogers By Prieur du Plessis

China will likely over-tighten policy as it grapples with inflation, providing good buying opportunities in 2011, says Jim Rogers.


http://www.dailymarkets.com/stock/2011/ ... im-rogers/

[winston]

Jim Rogers: I Would Rather Own Silver Than Gold By Forrest Jones

Silver is becoming a better investment than the one of the hottest commodities of the past few years, gold, says investment guru Jim Rogers.

Rogers, a commodities champion, says silver prices have more room to grow than do gold prices.

“I would rather own silver than gold," Rogers tells India's ET Now.

“Silver is still 40 percent below its all-time high. So silver has not been any sort of great bubble compared to perhaps some other assets we know."

Other commodities make for good investments as well, including agriculture.

“Likewise for the rice, if rice goes down, I will buy more rice. So both the silver and rice have a great future for the next few years,” Rogers says.

Precious metals tend to rally when the world's reserve currency, the dollar, weakens.

The U.S. Federal Reserve has been printing money in an effort to spur economic recovery, sending the value of the greenback down in the process.

While the dollar has erased some losses in recent trading, concerns over expansionary monetary policy on top of deficit spending in Washington are fueling inflationary fears, which has investors rosy on the outlook for precious metals, gold especially.

"The majority of factors for gold are very positive," Credit Suisse precious metals analyst Tom Kendall tells Reuters.

"If you were looking for negatives, you would have to say the lack of any sizable de-hedging program this year from the miners would be one that you could pick up on, but from the investment community, sentiment is still very much bullish towards gold."

http://www.moneynews.com/StreetTalk/Jim ... /id/381807

[winston]

Jim Rogers: Gold is "overdue" for a fall

Gold is "overdue for a rest" and probably will fall after a decade of gains that sent prices to a record, said Jim Rogers, the chairman of Rogers Holdings who predicted the start of the global commodities rally in 1999.

While gold "may go down for awhile," the metal is "going to go over $2,000 in this decade," Rogers, who owns gold, silver and rice, said today during a presentation to business executives in Chicago.

Gold touched a record $1,432.50 an ounce in New York on Dec. 7. The price closed today at $1,387.

"I'd rather own rice," Rogers said. "I'd rather own something that's more depressed than gold."

Agricultural commodities are "going to boom" as demand increases in developing markets, primarily in Asia, he said. All commodities will be supported by the weakening dollar, which is losing value because Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke is "printing money" by buying Treasuries in an effort to shore up the U.S. economy, Rogers said.

"Paper money is made of cotton, and I'm long cotton, by the way," Rogers said. "One reason I'm long cotton is because Dr. Bernanke is out there running the printing presses as fast as he can."

Rogers said he doesn't own shares in U.S. companies and is short U.S. long-term treasury bonds. The Chinese renminbi may provide "almost sure profits over the next five to 10 years," he said.

"In the future, it's the stock broker who's going to be driving the cabs," Rogers said. "The smart stock brokers will learn to drive tractors, and drive them for the farmers, because the farmers will have the money."


Source: Bloomberg

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Prediction Du Jour: Oil Will Hit $200 A Barrel, Says Rogers
By Prieur du Plessis

The price of oil could surge above $200 a barrel, more than doubling from present levels, according to Jim Rogers (via Investment Week).

As concerns about oil reserves running out heighten, he believes we will see another dramatic rise in price.

“Maybe there is a lot of oil in the world, but if there is, we don’t know where it is or how to get to it,” he says.

I have no idea whether we will see $200, but oil above $100 will certainly start creating a headwind for the economic recovery.

http://www.dailymarkets.com/stock/2011/ ... ys-rogers/