Noted investment advisor Jim Rogers spoke with RT about the banking bailouts and the outlook for major currencies. His gloomy assessment began with why bailing out banks which are insolvent is fundamentally wrong.
JR: “The main thing they are doing wrong – they are giving money to the banks. They made mistakes – they should be failing. Giving them money is not going to do the economy much good at all. It may save their friends, but that’s not going to do much for the economy. They should let those people go bankrupt, so the people who are sound could then take over and build, and you could start from a sound basis. The American politicians are doing the same thing – but it’s not going to do any good, it’s going to make things worse.”
RT: Russia’s Central Bank has been gradually depreciating the Rouble and says it will support it at a level of 41 Roubles per euro-dollar currency basket – will it be possible?
JR: “Thought my investing career, I’ve seen Central banks say things like that. They’ve never worked. Central banks never can defend something that is not sound, and if that value of 41 is not sound in the economy – it’s not going to work. And it’s good for the market. Because then the market knows – ah! That’s what they’re gonna do. Now what we should do is to sell it to them at 41 – because we know it’s no good. So they will come and sell a lot, and eventually the Central Bank will have to give up. And it will fail again.”
What do you think is going to happen to the major currencies in the nearest future?
JR: “We going to have more currency turmoil, we are going to have currency crises in the next year or two. We’re going to have plenty of crises, but certainly currency crisis. Maybe its gonna start with the pound sterling, maybe with the U.S. dollar…I don’t know where it will be. But you gonna see more currency crisis and more problems, and more bankruptcies, and more turmoil, in the conomy and in the financial sector worldwide. At the moment I’ve been buying the Yen. I hope the Yen is a place to be for a while. But if the Yen goes up a lot – I have to sell it, if it goes down a lot – I’ll have to sell it. Then what I’ll do with my money. I don’t know.”
Are you optimistic about the Dollar?
JR: “No, I’m terribly pessimistic about the U.S. dollar. The dollar is having an artificial rally right now. I’m an American citizen, but I hope some time this year I’ll sell all of my dollars, and I own no U.S. dollars.”