December 26th, 2011 
Elisheva Wiriaatmadja (NewsMax.com) International investor Jim Rogers says he is short emerging markets and he isn’t “too optimistic” about the immediate future.
“I’m not too optimistic about what’s going to be happening in the world in the next two or three years, and maybe even longer,” Rogers tells the Finance News Network.
“If the world economy doesn’t get better, you’re not going to make money in stocks,” says Rogers. “But then central banks will print more money and when they print money the thing to do is to own real assets.”
“I’m short stocks around the world, I’m short American technology stocks, I’m short emerging market stocks and I’m short European stocks,” Rogers told Finance News Network.
Global economic problems are going to continue to get worse until somebody solves the basic underlying problem of too much spending and too much debt, says Rogers, adding that the biggest risk is the Federal Reserve, which keeps printing money.
“But they’re printing all that money as a result of the debt,” says Rogers.
“The Central Bank keeps buying government debt and the Congress keeps spending government money.”
Failing to address this problem could easily lead to riots in the streets, even war, Rogers says. “It’s better to go ahead and take the pain now, while it would be terrible for two or three or four years, at least we’d get it behind us and start over,” he says.
(Article continues below.)
According to the Washington Post, the Federal Reserve says the largest U.S. banks and financial companies should hold extra cash on their balance sheets to cushion themselves against financial crises, a proposal that will affect banks with over $50 billion in assets.
There are even stricter rules for companies with over $500 billion in assets such as JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc. and Citigroup Inc.
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“According to the Washington Post…”
Nobody in their right mind takes advice for the mockingbird Washington Post. The best way to use that globalist rag is to do the opposite of what the dinosaur paper advises.
What I do not understand,here,is that generally,you can only be short stocks into cash.Even if the companies whose stocks you own do badly,enough of the money printing which Jim anticipates would offset that.
Perhaps,by ‘short’Jim simply means that he prefers not to own stocks.The only other possibility that I can see here is that he is actually shorting stocks and going long commodidies.However,if that is so,he does not say how – through ETFs or futures perhaps.Holding soft commodities in physical form is expensive.
Jim is right, it’s a leadership problem. It’s all about spending money that’s not in the treasury, printing money because we don’t have enough in the treasury, and a divided congress with competing agendas. Until we have some change in Washington, nothing will be accomplished, especially in an election year. Let’s face it; the current administration took its eyes off the compass and missed the opportunity to right the ship. The government is currently on the wrong track, and we need to get our priorities straight. We need a better business environment that will encourage job growth and small business lending. This can be accomplished with substantive adjustments in spending priorities to get the economy rolling, constructive tax relief to create incentives for business growth, and modest reductions in the deficit that demonstrate to the Public that we are now going in the right direction. Absent these modest changes, I’m investing in food production, energy production, and security contracting. Why? Because there is no doubt that that is what we will all really need in the years ahead.