Continuing his trip overseas, Jim landed in Russia to give the former communist nation a little pep talk on how not to run their currency. Below is an interview with Russian Today and a couple of videos. Note to future interviewees, there are no Titanium futures 
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.”
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February 7th, 2009 at 3:55 pm
Great video! Jim will not say it directly, maybe because of security reasons at the time, but it is pretty obvious Jim expects the ruble to fall big time.
February 7th, 2009 at 5:39 pm
yeah, it looked like Jim really did not want to answer the question of whether or not he was short selling. Being in Russia, with anti-Moscow sympthies being stifled regularly in the media, i could see why. As soon as he gets home he’s going to start work on how to make money off of a crumbling Russian economy!
This was a great set of videos.
mac
February 7th, 2009 at 6:27 pm
Funny, the WSJ did a story on how a journalist is getting threatened by the Kremlin
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123397562521459749.html
February 7th, 2009 at 9:27 pm
I am really really liking the chart on the Brazilian Real….
February 11th, 2009 at 6:15 pm
Mr . Rogers is looking for a new currecy to invest in
perhaps he should consider the” rogers dollar”
like a reader said in one of these blogs….if anyone would have
bought. chines stocks,commodities oil and the like in the past 12 months
and he had to borrow…his situation would be not very pretty
to day
why then run down so many professionals in the business
” critisize is easy…the art is difficult “
February 11th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Gables – you are absolutely correct on subscribing to Rogers’ calls on China, commodities… First of all – due diligence is critical – Jim isn’t out there telling anyone what they should be doing. Rogers certainly has the capital to hold on to positions that go against him. The key, in my mind, is at what level do you enter your position. And then using professional money management skills to manage your risk. Rogers wasn’t buying oil or Ags or China in July 2008 – he was very clear about that.
But the man was also very clear that he was long the Yen and short the banks and investment banks, so those certainly hedged his position. And personally, having read a tremendous amount of Rogers’ writings, I believe he likely hedged his oil position. He has often spoken of “buy the panic, sell the euphoria” and oil was most definitely euphoric in July ‘08. Rogers was also predicting a severe recession, in which case oil demand always goes down…
I like Rogers a lot – his analysis, in my mind, is spot on. And altho he talks about being a bad timer, I believe he is actually a pretty good timer. He recognizes inflection points very well, in my mind. It’s just that he talks so often and has such a large audience who want to know what he is doing that when he says he is bullish people want to run out and follow his words. But you obviously can’t trade that way! bEst of luck!
February 11th, 2009 at 7:21 pm
“It’s just that he talks so often and has such a large audience who want to know what he is doing that when he says he is bullish people want to run out and follow his words. But you obviously can’t trade that way!”
Spot on Mike. Keep in mind, not only can he not trade that way, there’s also a legal risk behind what he or anyone on television says (i.e. Jim Cramer being another example).
Other than that, definitely do your due diligence and build your positions slowly to average down if you plan to hold long-term