Best Of The Best Share Discussion Threads

[traderabc] 08/3/2013 12:54

Jim Rogers: We're Wiping Out The Savings Class Globally,

[traderabc] 08/3/2013 12:44

The Full Interview


An Interview with Jim Rogers
By: Thomas Murcko, dated March 7th, 2013

Jim Rogers is an investor, author, and Chairman of Rogers Holdings and Beeland Interests, Inc. He is the creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI), and co-founder of the Quantum Fund.

The internet has a depressingly low signal-to-noise ratio, making it difficult for investors to find high-quality, unbiased sources of information and insight. One of the few that we've found that can be consistently relied upon is Jim Rogers, as he combines three important traits that we look for:
He's an amazing investor with a truly remarkable long-term track record. One of the best ways to become a better investor is to study the masters.
He's an iconoclast who ignores the crowd and thinks for himself, a rarity in the investing world and a necessity for anyone who wants to escape the fat part of the bell curve and outperform the masses.
Most importantly, he shares his candid observations and opinions in frequent media appearances and in his books, including Street Smarts, which was just published this month (and which we highly recommend).

Here's a transcript of a conversation that InvestorGuide CEO Tom Murcko had with him last month about investing, business, and life.



Tom Murcko: Thanks for taking the time to chat with me today. I just wanted to share with my audience some of your thoughts and ideas. So if you're ready I'd like to just jump right in with the questions.

Jim Rogers: Yes, absolutely.



Tom: You've said that the U.S. is making some of the same mistakes Japan did and might be headed down the same path, toward another lost decade or even two. Is there anything that can be done to prevent this?

Jim: Oh sure there is, you can always take different courses of action, you can try anything, the question is what's the right course of action. The reason I said that is, in the early 1990s, Japan faced problems such as we're facing now, and they refused to let people go bankrupt, they propped up the banks, they propped up a lot of companies, and they came to be known as the zombie banks and zombie companies, and as you know the Japanese talk about the 1990s as the lost decade. But now you're talking about two lost decades. Their stock market is down 75% from where it was 23 years ago. That is not a typo, it's down 75%. We're going the same way. We refuse to let people go bankrupt, prop up everybody in sight, and the problem with that is you're rewarding incompetence, you're bailing out incompetence, rather than allowing new people, new energy, new capital, and new competition. It's called the green shoots, from Joseph Schumpeter. One of the great beauties of capitalism is creative destruction, which allows the green shoots of new energy, and new capital, and new ideas to develop. They're not allowing that in the United States these days, just as Japan refused to allow it for the last 23 years.



Tom: I noticed in your email signature you listed a site called govathome.com. Can you say a little about that site's mission?

Jim: Well, when I wrote my first book Investment Biker back in the early 1990s, among several suggestions, one was that instead of sending congressmen and senators to Washington, we let them stay at home and vote from home. Instead of spending their days and nights interacting with lobbyists and with each other, they'd spend their days and nights interacting with all of us. And they'd vote at the local high school gym or the mayor's office or something. Now in 1789, of course you had to send everybody to the same place, and Washington was halfway for most people. But that's 1789. If you were going to establish a government or anything else in 2015, you would not set it up that way. We now have computers, we have efficient home mail delivery which they didn't have. And you would do it in much different ways now. You would have computer conferencing, etc. We could do it now, as I said, if you were setting it up now, you would probably do it that way. Any 18 year old with half a brain would set it up that way, better than all of the 78 year-olds who are running Washington, D.C. I just suggest that we make the congressmen stay home, sure they can go to Washington two or three weeks a year if they really feel they have to, but if the lobbyists had to come see the congressmen, and they had to do it exposed to all the voters, we'd probably have much different laws, we'd have a much different government, we'd all have much different lives. Now we send 535 senators and congressmen to Washington, where they're immediately descended upon by lobbyists and bureaucrats, and they have their own agenda, but it's not the same agenda that most voters in America would even comprehend, much less support. So it's a suggestion to change with the times. Is it going to happen by 2015? Absolutely not. I don't know if it'll ever happen. Maybe other countries or other generations might do something like that.



Tom: It sounds like you're saying that our political system has a systemic problem, it has too much inertia and can't change... even if smart people agree that there's a better way, the switching costs are too high and we can't get from where we are to where we want to be. You've said something analogous with technology, about how emerging countries are leapfrogging the United States.

Jim: Certainly in some ways, yes, I mean if you go to some countries now, people don't have telephones with land lines, they just completely leapt over that whole thing. We all used to have telephones with copper wires coming in. Most new countries don't have land lines, they don't have all those copper wires, et cetera. They don't need it, they just completely leapt over all that. That's been the story throughout history, the way people have developed, something new comes along, people develop it rather than go with the old ways, and people still stuck with the old technology and the old ways usually have to change or get passed by.



Tom: Throughout your investing career you've consistently spotted trends before others, including the housing bubble and the financial crisis. How are you able to do this? Is it about knowing what sources of information to pay attention to and which to ignore, or are you able to synthesize information into wisdom in a way others don't?

Jim: I don't know, but I do know that if something's too good to be true then it's probably not true. The idea that we could all buy five or six houses with no job and no money down, and then that those mortgages could be sliced and diced and made into even more miraculous AAA credit... Looking back, even at the time it was incomprehensible to me that people would believe that. But looking back on it, I don't think anybody could comprehend how that happened, but it did. You often see that. Back in the late 90s there was the whole dot com thing. Everybody was talking about a new era. Even the Wall Street Journal started to capitalize New Economy, you know, everybody got sucked in. But if you have any knowledge of history, you know this can happen throughout history. All bubbles look the same, all absurd policies look the same, and they all lined up. And people always say the same things, they say it's different this time, they say it's a new economy, a new era, whatever, and it never is. All these absurdities always end up badly. And by the way, the Wall Street Journal stopped capitalizing New Economy in the early part of this century, because even they came to realize, oh my gosh, it was not a new economy, and it never is a new era. Mankind doesn't change very much at all.



Tom: It seems like a lot of it comes down to human nature and human psychology. In a bubble, some don't realize it's a bubble, but even those that do are jealous of their neighbors making so much money in whatever's hot right now, greed overwhelms fear and they can't resist buying regardless of cost.

Jim: Well yes, all of that is correct. But I never know whether people really believe some of the absurd things they say. I don't know whether they're fools or liars. I'm stunned sometimes with some of the things I hear when I go through life.



Tom: So as a follow-up question, what's something you think most people aren't paying attention to now but should be?

Jim: Oh well, there are many things. I would start with the debt in the United States government. You might say "oh, they're paying attention", I would say balderdash. You know, my entire life I've heard congress talk about deficit spending, bemoan deficit spending, and talk about the debt. Back in the 1980s there was something called the Grace Commission, which was specially commissioned to study what to do about the deficit and the debt. And it passed laws, congress passed several laws since then, saying there will be no more deficit spending, or there will be no more debt, there will be no more, this will change, blah blah blah. And then they turn around and they ignore the laws. This has been going on for a long time. You might say people are paying attention, I would say that's claptrap, they're just talking, they have no intention of doing anything about it, and even if they "do something", what they do is say "ok, instead of having increased spending, we'll have less increase, we'll still increase, it'll just be less." I mean, no, nobody's paying attention to it.



Tom: I think some people are aware of it, but it gets back to what I was saying about a systemic problem with the political system. Since pain later is easier than pain now, a lot of people on both sides kick the can down the road... they know there will be big problems but they don't want to lose political power now and they don't care what happens once they're out of office.

Jim: Well, I call that not paying attention. You say they're paying attention, I guess you're saying they're liars, not fools. Either way, people are not paying real attention to the biggest problems facing the world, not just America, and of course all of that deficit spending has led to money printing worldwide, and nobody's paying attention to that either. Now it's the accepted conventional wisdom that money printing is a good thing and only nuts like me say there's something wrong with debasing your currency.



Tom: Well, I'm definitely on your side with that, and as a long term investor I do worry that high inflation is on the way, and I don't know what to do to minimize the pain of it when it comes. I like to hold some cash as dry powder for when the market dips, but I know that its value is slowly falling to zero while I hold it. Do you have any recommendations for investors who think high inflation is coming in the U.S. and the rest of the world?

Jim: Well, nobody should invest in anything that they themselves don't understand. So if I sat here and said you should do x, y, z, and people don't have a clue what I'm talking about, they should probably ignore what I say or even what you say. Nobody should invest in something that they don't understand. If you know nothing about gold except that it's supposedly valuable, you shouldn't buy it, or invest in anything you don't know about. But once you know a lot about something, you will probably figure out some ways to protect yourself. I mean if you have your own business, like you, usually the best thing to invest in is your own business, because you know more about that than anything else. I have various ways that I'm trying to protect myself, but even if I told you I'm doing x, I might change my mind tomorrow afternoon, and then you would be stuck doing x because I said it. I'm not going to call you and tell you I changed my mind on that position. So people really need to invest in only what they themselves know a lot about.



Tom: You've said that the U.S. has too many lawyers and MBAs, and that the financial sector also isn't the best place to be starting a career now. What advice would you give to a student about what field to pursue?

Jim: Again, everybody, especially students, should pursue what they love, their own passion. Don't do what other people suggest. You know, back in 1958, America produced 5,000 MBAs per year; nobody else produced any. Last year we produced 200,000, and the rest of the world produced tens of thousands more. We have a glut, we have a lot more MBAs than we used to, there's a huge amount of competition in that field, in finance. And nearly all MBAs these days study finance. In the old days some of them studied manufacturing, or marketing, or accounting, or other things. Now it's nearly all finance. This is at a time when there's massive debt and leverage in the financial community. You know, back in the 60s and 70s there was very low leverage in the financial community, many investment banks were partnerships, partners weren't about to go and risk their entire fortunes with leverage. And of course now you have governments around the world antagonistic to finance, passing laws and regulations all the time, trying to come down hard on financial types. Finance, which was a backwater and pretty much ignored by everybody including students, has now become, in the 80s, 90s, and the last 10 or 15 years, wildly hot and popular. That's why I'm saying this is going to change. Throughout history we've had long periods where the financial types were the masters of the universe, followed by long periods when the people who produced real goods were. Well, that's changing now, going back to the old ways. We have more people in America studying public relations than studying agriculture. More people study physical education than study mining engineering. So how much more do you need to know? 10,000 people studied agriculture last year while 200,000 got MBAs.

[traderabc] 08/3/2013 12:41

Jim Rogers Explains what is Direct Democracy

Jim Rogers : Well, when I wrote my first book Investment Biker back in the early 1990s, among several suggestions, one was that instead of sending congressmen and senators to Washington, we let them stay at home and vote from home. Instead of spending their days and nights interacting with lobbyists and with each other, they'd spend their days and nights interacting with all of us. And they'd vote at the local high school gym or the mayor's office or something. Now in 1789, of course you had to send everybody to the same place, and Washington was halfway for most people. But that's 1789. If you were going to establish a government or anything else in 2015, you would not set it up that way. We now have computers, we have efficient home mail delivery which they didn't have. And you would do it in much different ways now. You would have computer conferencing, etc. We could do it now, as I said, if you were setting it up now, you would probably do it that way. Any 18 year old with half a brain would set it up that way, better than all of the 78 year-olds who are running Washington, D.C. I just suggest that we make the congressmen stay home, sure they can go to Washington two or three weeks a year if they really feel they have to, but if the lobbyists had to come see the congressmen, and they had to do it exposed to all the voters, we'd probably have much different laws, we'd have a much different government, we'd all have much different lives. Now we send 535 senators and congressmen to Washington, where they're immediately descended upon by lobbyists and bureaucrats, and they have their own agenda, but it's not the same agenda that most voters in America would even comprehend, much less support. So it's a suggestion to change with the times. Is it going to happen by 2015? Absolutely not. I don't know if it'll ever happen. Maybe other countries or other generations might do something like that.- in investorguide

[traderabc] 08/3/2013 12:40

The Government Has It Bass-Ackwards: Failing To Prosecute Criminal Fraud by the Big Banks Is Killing – NOT Saving – the Economy

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said:

I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions [banks] becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if you do prosecute, if you do bring a criminal charge, it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy

As we've repeatedly noted, this is wholly untrue.

If the big banks were important to the economy, would so many prominent economists, financial experts and bankers be calling for them to be broken up?

[traderabc] 05/3/2013 22:23

Jim Rogers Shares Some Lessons in Investing - Become a Better Investor

[traderabc] 05/3/2013 17:40

Wealth Inequality in America

[traderabc] 02/3/2013 12:17

Street Smarts, by Jim Rogers
By Andy Duncan, on 24 February 13


In China, eight is the lucky number. The Mandarin symbol for eight is a pictogram representing a side of meat being sliced in two, in infinite progression. This forms the symbolism of multiplication and increase, in the same mythological way that the biblical story of Noah represents multiplication and increase, two by two by two, giving us this same powerful, capitalistic, and mystical number of eight


For where chapters one to seven of Jim Rogers's new book, Street Smarts, are a wonderful how-to-get-rich and rags-to-riches story of his life so far – including a description of his wedding in Henley-on-Thames, a town where I also got married – he really pulls out the economic meat cleaver in Chapter Eight. He begins to lay it, at first, into Alan Greenspan, and then rolls up his sleeves before setting to work with Ben Bernanke, Timothy Geithner, and Uncle Tom Cobley and all, with a fiendish delight which had your author calling for more Pinot Noir to appreciate the greater subtleties of the author's carefully-crafted words.

[traderabc] 01/3/2013 15:10

Nigel Farage: 'Really exciting' result from by-election

1 March 2013

The leader of the UKIP party, Nigel Farage is already looking ahead to the future of his party.

Speaking to Daybreak he said this morning's result at Eastleigh was "really exciting", as the party gained so many votes from Tory, Labour and Lib Dem voters.

He said looking forward to to 2015, the party needs to focus on getting more members, and more presence in UKIP's "weaker parts of the country."
- See more at:

[traderabc] 01/3/2013 14:52

Jim Rogers : Russia is terribly depressed
Russia is terribly depressed. Nobody likes Russia. I'm buying the bonds, the currency and stocks. I first went there in 1966. I've changed my mind and, yes, I think I'm not giving my money to (Russian President Vladimir) Putin. I hope. That's how you make money. You find something that everybody hates. When it's changing ... that's how you make money."

[traderabc] 28/2/2013 13:42

Elizabeth Warren's Q&A of Ben Bernanke at Senate Banking Committee

[traderabc] 28/2/2013 11:58

Jim Rogers Opens His Investing Playbook
Tue 12 Feb 13 | 01:00 PM ET
Legendary investor Jim Rogers bold market call. Rogers comments on stocks, gold, commodities and tonight's State of the Union address, with CNBC's Jackie DeAngelis and the Futures Now Traders, Jeff Kilburg at the Nasdaq and Anthony Grisanti at the Nymex

[traderabc] 28/2/2013 11:51

Picked these up from here




Should work on a loop starting here

[traderabc] 28/2/2013 11:47

Investment guru Jim Rogers

[traderabc] 27/2/2013 11:39

Friday, February 22, 2013
Jim Rogers : There Will Be Wars Over Oil And Water
Jim Rogers : "There will be wars east of the Red Sea over oil and wars west of the Red Sea over water." - in an interview yesterday before giving a speech to the CFA Society of Atlanta .

[traderabc] 27/2/2013 11:37

Poor 'Justin', struggling with some uncomfortable truths..



Jim Rogers BBC Interview 25 FEB 2013

[traderabc] 21/2/2013 11:24

More of the Beck interview.

Jim Rogers : Wall Street is going to become a backwater again

[traderabc] 20/2/2013 10:27

"Too Big to Fail has become Too Big for Trial"

[traderabc] 18/2/2013 14:12

George Soros Is Going After The Two Most Hated Currencies In The World


The two most hated currencies in the world right now are: The Japanese Yen and The British Pound.

In the case of the yen, the new Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has come into power with an aggressive easing agenda (both monetary and fiscal). The yen has been getting slaughtered since November.

In the case of the British pound (which has been getting hammered all year) the currency is weakening on a combination of weak economic prospects, a worsening balance of trade, and the expectation that newly incoming Bank of England chief Mark Carney will be inclined to ease policy further.

And George Soros is apparently going after both currencies.



Read more:

[traderabc] 18/2/2013 14:08

Thursday, February 14, 2013
Jim Rogers: This is Where I'm Investing Now
Gold? Stocks? Bonds? Billionaire investor Jim Rogers tells CNBC's "Futures Now" traders where he's putting his money to work, with CNBC's Jackie DeAngelis.

[traderabc] 18/2/2013 13:46

Jim Rogers: Fed's Money Printing 'Going to End Badly'

[traderabc] 18/2/2013 13:37

Jim Rogers: Long-Term Bull Market in Stocks, Perhaps Not

[traderabc] 18/2/2013 13:11

Friday, February 15, 2013
Jim Rogers Wonders Whether Obama is Delusional or just a good Liar
Noted investor, free market advocate, and author Jim Rogers during an interview with Glenn Beck on Wednesday said that Tuesday's State of the Union address makes you wonder whether President Barack Obama is "delusional" or just a good liar.

[traderabc] 13/2/2013 14:21

An old one.

Massive Inflation is Coming - Jim Rogers