No question he is a bright guy with a very thorough knowledge of the commodity markets. He has always said he had poor timing and was no good at short term trading.
He went short bonds way too soon, but he is a very, very patient investor.
Eventually interest rates will rise and bonds will drop. We are seeing some early, maybe too early, anticipation of that now.
It would be foolish to ignore his warnings of the dangers of too much sovereign debt, and what could happen down the road, but it seems he doesn't appreciate Keynes. And if I'm right about that, then I think he is wrong not to appreciate the virtues of Central Bank easing in a recession. If the Fed could redo some of the details of the emergency actions taken in conjunction with Treasury in 2008-9, i'm quite sure they would. But in the main, since then, the Fed and Bernanke have done an outstanding job of putting Keynes prescription in place. At least the first half of the prescription. The second half requires that the Fed tighten once the economy has recovered and that some combination of spending reduction and/or tax increases be implemented in boom times. Keynes was a very smart guy, and proven correct in so many cases that I can't doubt that he was also right about the way to smooth out economic bumps in the road.
The problem is this: The Fed controls the first part of the Keynes prescription, but the Congress the second. And the morons in Congress have shown themselves to be incompetent and incapable of rational action. For this reason, I think the disasters that Jim Rogers sees coming down the road may well play out as he anticipates, but if they do it won't be because the Fed has been "printing"; rather it will be because Congress did not apply the breaks to spending once the economy recovers. And as to Roger's timing, well who knows?
Furthermore, I don't think he appreciates the excellent job, in the main, that Bernanke and company has done in carrying out the Fed's half of the Keynes prescription. Sadly, having the U.S. Congress in charge of the second half of the prescription seems to be a flaw that has no chance of being corrected short of major changes in the Constitution. A balanced budget amendment might help. I have always opposed that, because it could hamstrings the government in emergencies, and I thought it would interfere with implementation of Keynes' "Part One." But I am beginning to appreciate that a very carefully drafted balanced budget amendment might work.
