Posted on 04/05/2013 10:05:06 AM PDT by dennisw
video
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0TSQaKMK2w
Jim Rogers decries the growing uncertainty and recklessness of global central planners as the world enters unchartered financial markets:
For the first time in recorded history, we have nearly every central bank printing money and trying to debase their currency. This has never happened before. How it’s going to work out, I don't know. It just depends on which one goes down the most and first, and they take turns. When one says a currency is going down, the question is against what? because they are all trying to debase themselves. It’s a peculiar time in world history.
I own the dollar, not because I have any confidence in the dollar and not because it’s sound – it’s a terribly flawed currency – but I expect more currency turmoil, more financial turmoil. During periods like that, people, for whatever reason, flee to the U.S. dollar as a safe haven. It is not a safe haven, but it is perceived that way by some people. That’s why the dollar is going up. That’s why I own it. Will I own it in five years, ten years? I don't know.
It makes it extremely difficult for the investor looking for acceptable risk/reward or the saver looking to protect their purchasing power; as in Rogers' view, all options have their problems:
I own gold and silver and precious metals. I own all commodities, which is a better way to play as they debase currencies. I own more agriculture than just about anything else in real assets because of the reasons we discussed before. We were talking before about the risk-free or worry-free investment. Even gold: the Indian politicians are talking about coming down hard on gold, and India is the largest buyer of gold in the world. If Indian politicians do something -- whether it’s foolish or not is irrelevant -- if they do something, gold could go down a lot. So I own it. I’m not selling it. But everything has problems.
To Rogers, the bigger danger that concerns him is the hollowing out of the 'saving class' resulting from this situation. Central planners' policies are punishing the prudent in favor of rescuing the irresponsible. This has happened before in world history, and the aftermath has always had grievous economic, social -- and often human -- costs:
Throughout our history – any country’s history – the people who save their money and invest for their future are the ones that you build an economy, a society, and a nation on.
In America, many people saved their money, put it aside, and didn’t buy four or five houses with no job and no money down. They did what most people would consider the right thing, and what historically has been the right thing. But now, unfortunately, those people are being wiped out, because they are getting 0% return, or virtually no return, on their savings and their investments. We’re wiping them out at the expense of people who went deeply into debt, people who did what most people would consider the wrong thing at the expense of people who did the right thing. This, long-term, has terrible consequences for any nation, any society, any economy.
If you go back in history, you'll see what happed to the Germans when they wiped out their savings class in the 1920s. It didn’t lead to good things down the road for Germany. It didn’t lead to good things for Italy, which did the same thing. There were plenty of countries where it wiped out the people who saved and invested for their future. It’s usually a serious, political reaction, desperation in some cases, and looking for a savior and easy answers is usually what happens when you destroy the people who save and invest for the future.
Bernanke is screwing every American who has ever saved a dime. Instead of getting a decent return based on a free market Ben and the boys force them to gamble their savings in the bond or equity market, something they know absolutely nothing about. A fuc8ing disgrace.
Though I’m not fond of the likes of Lenin and Keynes, they do have some insight on politics and economics, especially when it comes to ruining a viable system of limited government and wrecking an economy.
Here’s what Keynes had to say about Bernanke:
“Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth. Those to whom the system brings windfalls, beyond their deserts and even beyond their expectations or desires, become ‘profiteers,’ who are the object of the hatred of the bourgeoisie, whom the inflationism has impoverished, not less than of the proletariat. As the inflation proceeds and the real value of the currency fluctuates wildly from month to month, all permanent relations between debtors and creditors, which form the ultimate foundation of capitalism, become so utterly disordered as to be almost meaningless; and the process of wealth-getting degenerates into a gamble and a lottery.”
“If you go back in history, you’ll see what happed to the Germans when they wiped out their savings class in the 1920s. It didn’t lead to good things down the road for Germany. It didn’t lead to good things for Italy, which did the same thing. There were plenty of countries where it wiped out the people who saved and invested for their future. It’s usually a serious, political reaction, desperation in some cases, and looking for a savior and easy answers is usually what happens when you destroy the people who save and invest for the future.”
ping
Documentation File on the negative impact of the Obamanation Counterculture on America.
I agree with him 100%. A large part of the world has become middle class over the last decade or so and now governments are wiping out those gains for their own short term benefit.
His warning about bad things happening should be taken seriously and in the same vein as the run up to WWII.
He has really hit the nail on the head.
I’m impressed.
47% with no skin in the game is a big problem.
Exactly! B@stards!
Exactly! B@stards!
(worth repeating)
WHOA, Jim! It's the socialism, stupid. National or international.
Socialism Is Legal Plunder - The Law; Bastiat 1801-1850
BIG GOVERNMENT IS CRONY SOCIALISM.../TOTALITARIANISM
DEPOPULATE socialists from the body politic.
ELIMINATE the FED
It's very easy to...
...live - free - republic
(thanks for the post/ping, dennisw
I am reading a lot on the Federal Reserve these days. What an incredible operation to be making money out of thin air. We have a super super fiat money system. One of the top fiat money illusions ever created.
The FR now has 2.5 trillion in USG debt on its books and adding a trillion each year via QE. It was in an Ambrose Evens Pritchard column yesterday....What is to prevent the FR from canceling out a trillion or two tomorrow if its in the mood tomorrow? Just wiping them (USG securities) off its books to help the Federal Govt. Because as it is the FR rebates most interest profits it makes so how much skin is it off their asses?
Talk about your imaginary money!!! Here is the exact quote. >>>
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Columbia Professor Michael Woodford, the world’s most closely followed monetary theorist, says it is time to come clean and state openly that bond purchases are forever, and the sooner people understand this the better.
“All this talk of exit strategies is deeply negative,” he told a London Business School seminar on the merits of Helicopter money, or “overt monetary financing”.
He said the Bank of Japan made the mistake of reversing all its money creation from 2001 to 2006 once it thought the economy was safely out of the woods. But Japan crashed back into deeper deflation as soon the Lehman crisis hit.
“If we are going to scare the horses, let’s scare them properly. Let’s go further and eliminate government debt on the bloated balance sheet of central banks,” he said. This could done with a flick of the fingers. The debt would vanish. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/comment/ambroseevans_pritchard/9970294/Helicopter-QE-will-never-be-reversed.html
Thanks for the information and your research, dennisw. Very, very interesting. BTTT!
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