In this revealing interview with Birch Gold Group, Jim Rogers, legendary investor and author, explains just how badly Quantitative Easing and ongoing currency wars are damaging the U.S. economy, and why it’s so important for any person to protect their savings with physical gold and silver.
[amazon asin=B003TOBM1K&template=*lrc ad (left)]Rachel Mills, Birch Gold Group (BGG): This is Rachel Mills for Birch Gold, and I am very pleased to be joined today by Jim Rogers, legendary investor. Thank you so much Jim for joining me.
Jim Rogers: I am delighted to be here Rachel.
“…if everybody says the sky is blue, I at least urge you to go and look out the window and see if it’s blue because I have found that most people won’t even bother to look out the window…”BGG: So today I wanted to talk a little about stock market highs and Quantitative Easing and inflation and a little bit of Federal Reserve and when is the taper is going to happen and currency wars. But there is one question that I don’t have to ask you, which you get asked a lot, I know, and that is what your secret to being so prescient in the marketplace?
JR: As far as I know, I’m not quite sure. I do know that I have learned over the years, always, when nearly everybody is thinking the [amazon asin=0307986071&template=*lrc ad (right)]same way that means somebody’s not thinking that means we got to start thinking about it and see if there’s not another way, another approach. Because if everybody says the sky is blue, I at least urge you to go and look out the window and see if it’s blue because I have found that most people won’t even bother to look out the window. If they see on the television or in the newspaper or something that everybody says the sky is blue, I at least urge them to look out the window. I find that most people don’t want to do their homework, that’s the first problem that many people have, is just doing simple homework.
“…no matter what we all know today, it’s not going to be true in 10 or 15 years…”
Second, I have learned that if everybody says the sky is blue and I go and look out the window and see that it is blue, I have also learned that, well wait a minute, if everybody knows the sky is blue, is that going to change? Now that everybody knows something, is [amazon asin=1250004470&template=*lrc ad (left)]it time to start thinking about “Well maybe tomorrow the sky will not be blue?” And again, most people say “Well everybody knows the sky is blue and that’s all we need to know.” No, it’s not all you need to know because another thing I have learned in my life is that no matter what we all know today, it’s not going to be true in 10 or 15 years. You pick any year in history and go back and then look to see what everybody thought was true in that year, 15 years later the world had changed enormously. Enormously. And yet in that particular year everybody was convinced that this is the way the world was. Pick 1900, 1930, 1950, any year you want to pick, and you will see that 15 years later, the world was totally, totally different from what everybody thought it was at that time.
So I have learned, for whatever reason, to know that change is coming, to know to think against the crowd, that the crowd is nearly always wrong and to try to think for myself. Now, I certainly make plenty of mistakes and have made plenty of mistakes in my life, but these are some of the things that I have learned, to try to think around the corner, try to think to the future if you want to be successful.[amazon asin=B0058DHZLG&template=*lrc ad (right)]
BGG: Yeah that’s right. And I read somewhere, tell me if this is true, that you were shorting real estate in 2006?
JR: Yes, yes, 2006, 2007, 2008. Yes, yes. I was short Fannie Mae, I was short all of the investment banks. I was short all the banks.
BGG: And I bet, were people rolling their eyes at you, were they laughing at you?
JR: Oh very much so. I went on television quite a lot in those days saying it’s crazy. And I was on CNBC and I explained that I was short Fannie Mae and had been short Fannie Mae and Fannie Mae finally started to collapse. And the lady said to me, “Well it’s your fault that Fannie Mae is going down, it’s the short sellers that are causing problems with Fannie Mae.” And I explained to her, “Listen lady, if you [amazon asin=B005ESMGZU&template=*lrc ad (left)]really think that short sellers are making Fannie Mae collapse, you better get another job, because that’s not the way the world works.” Short sellers do not make Fannie Mae go from $70 to $0, I assure you, the only thing that can make that happen is serious fundamental problems. So yes, everybody knew I was nuts back in those days!
And then, they started blaming it on me and on the short sellers, all of the problems. Nobody likes to take responsibility for their mistakes, certainly not politicians, but it was clear that first they laugh at you, then they ridicule you and say it’s your fault and blame it on you. Eventually they all say, “Oh, well we knew that. We thought of it ourselves! We knew that Fannie Mae was a fraud.” But that’s a difficult and sometimes painful process.
BGG: Sounds like they were attributing more power to you than you actually have!
JR: It’d be wonderful if all I had to do was sell something short and it would go down. Unfortunately it usually goes up when I sell it short, my timing is usually pretty wrong.
BGG: I want to talk a little bit about currencies. It seems that all the major countries in the world are in this race to the bottom to devalue their currency relative to all the others to appease their export industry. Meanwhile, workers and savers are getting killed by the cost of living increases that this is causing. Do you have any observations or predictions about how this currency war is going to end, or can it continue somehow indefinitely? And who wins in a currency race to the bottom?
