The news is pouring in across the pond as Jim Rogers wraps up in the U.K to return for a speech in Vegas.
Whats the current state of current U.S. Public Relations….?
“We are now the world’s largest debtor nation…we are going to hear the term ‘currency crisis’ a lot more.”
On bailouts….
“The central bank in America had made it clear that it will not let anybody fail, and that has helped create this huge amount of loans”…….”LTCM (LongTerm Capital Management” should have failed and had they let it fail, we would not have had so much, if any, of this gigantic creation of toxic waste. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers would not have been able to write all this junk.”
“Greenspan refused to let them [LTCM] fail, then he printed huge amounts of money, which led to the dot-com bubble, then after that bubble popped he printed huge amounts more money to goose up housing and consumption.”
What about those huge capital injections to free up the credit market….?
“It’s absolutely false…What the hell is Paulson talking about? Investment banks have been going bust for years…What happens is that he gets calls from his buddies on Wall Street, saying ‘this is serious and we’re gonna fail’ and he panics and dresses it up like the whole world’s going to end. For God’s sake – these kind of things have been happening forever.”…..We now have “horrible economics and horrible morality”
How is Europe farring?
“Some got it less wrong than others” is the most he will concede. Jean-Claude Trichet at the European Central Bank “at least seems to understand what’s going on”.
And The UK…?
“The financial system here is maybe in even worse shape than the US”- (Not exactly what they wanted to here eh?)
“Look at Northern Rock…it got into trouble, there was a run on the bank, people were taking their money out and putting it in Barclays and Royal Bank of Scotland instead.”
“Then the government stepped in and bailed out Northern Rock, so everybody started taking money out of other banks and putting it back into Northern Rock because it was the only totally secure bank. That weakened the other banks so the government had to come in and bail them out too – it’s the same idiocy that prevailed in the US.”
“In a decade, you’re going to be importing oil again – what’s going to hold sterling up when you’re a net importer of oil? You’ve already got a balance of trade deficit. I’ve sold all of my sterling… there are no fundamentals to support sterling as far as I can see.”
Where do we find safe ground….? East baby!
“All the creditor nations are in Asia now. The five biggest creditor nations are China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore – and throughout history, financial centres have gravitated to where the money is.”
What is Jim doing….
Once Asian central banks cease buying US government bonds, all bets will be off. When will that be? “I don’t know, and I don’t know why they keep doing it… I certainly wouldn’t – I’m shorting US Treasury bonds”
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
One Response to “The West Is Finished”
Trackbacks/Pingbacks
[...] Chronicle during Jim’s recent appearance in the U. K.. Notes of the first part can be found here, and the third will be up as soon as its [...]