by Crystal Hsu Taipei Times
Jim Rogers, a top global investor and co-founder of the Quantum hedge fund, yesterday said he is skeptical about the reported improvement in the US job market and that the latest round of quantitative easing will not fix the US economy.
The US jobless rate dropped to 7.8 percent last month, the lowest since US President Barack Obama took office in January 2009, according to a report released on Friday by the US Department of Labor.
The labor agency also revised previous numbers to show the US economy created 86,000 more jobs in July and August than first estimated.
“I have learned not to take advice from the government, especially the US government, which frequently misleads its citizens,” Rogers said in a media briefing in Taipei.
There is an election coming in the US and the administration wants to win, he said, adding that most other institutes believe US unemployment remains worse than the official statistics suggest.
In its quarterly update of the World Economic Outlook, a survey of the global economy, the IMF yesterday raised the US’ growth forecast slightly to 2.2 percent this year from 2 percent, but put growth in the world’s largest economy at 2.1 percent next year, down from the 2.3 percent it had predicted in July.
Rogers, who is based in Singapore after selling his New York apartment in 2007, said that even if the reported drop in the US’ unemployment rate is true, it has nothing to do with the US Federal Reserve’s third round of quantitative easing that was initiated last month.
“Printing money has never worked [in stimulating economic recovery] throughout history,” he said. “Sometimes it worked in the short term, but it’s never worked in the medium or long term.”
Jim Rogers has taught finance at Columbia University’s business school and is a media commentator worldwide. He is the author of Adventure Capitalist, Investment Biker, Hot Commodities, A Gift to My Children, and A Bull in China. See his website.
