Jim Rogers on Bailouts

Daily Bell: Do you believe in the bailouts taking place in America?

Jim Rogers: Of course not. This is what the Japanese tried to do in the 1990s and it led to zombie banks, zombie companies, lots of problems generally. And the same thing is going to happen this time too. America already has its zombie companies. We are going deeper and deeper into debt. With Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac, the debt is just staggering. And of course all those derivatives and off balance sheet items are obligations of the US taxpayer. This will continue to get worse and is a horrible disaster.

The way things are supposed to work is, when somebody goes bankrupt or somebody fails, he goes bankrupt. Then competent people come in, take over the assets, reorganize and start over from a sounder base. Just as what happened in Scandinavia, Korea or Mexico or Russia, or many other countries in the past twenty years. Yes it is horrible for two or three years but then things get much better. The Japanese did it the other way round, and they still have not recovered. What America is doing is taking the assets away from the competent people and giving them to the incompetent people - and then saying, "OK now you can compete with the competent people with THEIR ASSETS." I mean it is absurd economics, it's outrageous morally and the politicians don't care about morality of course, and it's a disaster that is being imposed on America and the rest of the world.

See rest of interview at The Daily Bell