The Curse of Bad Governance Hangs Over Earth Like a Shroud

Australia's Finance News Network recently interviewed Jim Rogers by teleconference from his home in Singapore. Rogers' insights into the sad underpinnings of the ongoing global economic crisis are useful for anyone who is making short, medium, and long-term plans.

First Rogers explains his pessimistic outlook for the US and Europe, then he moves to Asia:

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Lelde Smits: You say Asia will suffer, do you see signs this suffering has already begun?

Jim Rogers: Oh of course it has. If you look at China, China’s already got problems they have inflation. They’re doing their best to calm things down in China, wisely in my view, and then China’s been hit of course with the slowdown in America and Europe. So no, everybody in Asia is slowing down.

Lelde Smits: And what about Chinese property prices. The latest government data from 70 Chinese cities shows the average price of Chinese property has fallen for the second straight month. Do you believe Chinese property is in a bubble and are we witnessing the bust?

Jim Rogers: Some parts of the Chinese real estate market have been in a bubble. Certainly urban coastal real estate in China was in a bubble - that bubble has popped. How far down it has to go, I don’t have a clue. Probably a lot further because usually when bubbles pop, a lot of people get hurt. But it’s not like in the US where in the US, people are buying four or five houses with no job, no down-payment. You know, and then the banks were taking the mortgages and jigging them up even more. China didn’t have that kind of problem. You’re going to see real estate developers go bankrupt in China - no question about that. But it’s not going to be the end of the Chinese economy as it was in the US, the UK, Spain and a few other places.

Lelde Smits: OK Jim, so we’ve spoken about US and European debt, and a potential Chinese slowdown. How do you see global markets reacting in 2012?

Jim Rogers: Well I’m not optimistic for the most part about stock markets. I don’t own many stocks anywhere in the world. The only offset of the caveat for me is the fact that there is an election in the US, in Spain – sorry in France, a few other places. So whenever there are elections coming governments spend, spend, spend they throw money out the window to buy votes. So some people are going to be much better off in 2012. Is it enough to offset the world’s problems? I don’t think so, except in some sectors which will benefit.

So for myself, 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.

Lelde Smits: And what else are you buying Jim and why?

Jim Rogers: Well I own commodities, because if the world economy gets better Lelde, then commodities will do well because of the shortages. The lucky countries will continue to be lucky for a while. I own some currencies, which I mentioned, I’m worried about currency markets. I’m short stocks. I mentioned the things I’m short. So I anticipate problems in stock markets. If the world economy doesn’t get better, you’re not going to make money in stocks. But then central banks will print more money and when they print money Lelde, the thing to do is to own real assets. _FNN

Rogers can afford to live almost anywhere on the planet, and he has chosen Singapore. He states that his reason for choosing that location is so that his children can learn to speak fluent Mandarin Chinese, away from a polluted environment such as one might find in Beijing or Shanghai.

I suspect that Rogers is not being entirely truthful here, since he does not want to earn the enmity of the CCP government in China. Nevertheless, a person tends to vote with his feet and with his bank balances, and Rogers is likely to be particularly honest in those cases.

The western nations which comprise modern western civilisation continue to innovate in the scientific and technological areas. This innovation is dependent upon the underlying financial productivity of these nations.

In other words, the scientific and technological promise of the future is warring against the political realities of today, in order to come to reality. Keep that in mind when making your plans. And always watch what the "smart money" is doing.

All governments are corrupt, all ideologies are false, and everything you think you know just ain't so. Other than that, the way ahead is relatively straightforward.

Massive Entitlement Spending Growth Prevents a Better Future

Images via MJPerry

The US government is stuck in the entitlement racket -- the "votes for cash" scam. By channeling more and more private sector income through government redistribution channels, more private citizens are becoming dependent upon government incomes -- and forgetting how to take care of themselves.

This wholesale shift to government dependency might be okay if it were sustainable. But as anyone who follows international and national economic news should know by now, the entire pyramid scheme is not sustainable. But it is very addictive.

The end result of this massive, exponential growth in government entitlement spending, will be very ugly. Try not to get engulfed by the growing clash between an ever more grasping government, and the people who have to pay the bills and do the productive work. If you get caught in the middle, you may not survive the aftermath.

Images via MJPerry

Come to Europe and Watch the Unions Go On Strike

Europe's springtime of strikes is turning into the summer of strikes

Europe's economic problems begin and end with public employee unions (the US too)

China isn't looking too prosperous lately either

You could even say things are bad all over

There is never a good time to elect a clueless clown president, but US voters seem to have chosen the worst possible time to do so. By electing an empty icon rather than an experienced and competent leader, voters doomed themselves and their children to an endless avalanche of debt from the top down. After successive generations of "dumbing down", psychological neotenisation, and academic lobotomisation, the American voter is now so stupid as to vote for his own economic suicide.

Will air-headed American voters come to their senses and stop sawing at the limb they are hanging on? Never underestimate the stupidity of a voting population that is increasingly dominated by government employees and public sector unions.

Will Europeans Learn to Stand?

For many decades, Europe has been treated like a quadriplegic. With the arrival of the mighty EU, Europe was supposed to learn how to stand on its own. Many expected Europe to become intimidating once again. Sadly, that does not seem likely.

Under the proper leadership, Europe might have grown stronger and more successful. But Europe is under a leadership determined to simultaneously treat indigenous Europeans as cripples who must be cared for by the state, AND at the same time open the door to immigrants of a primitive, violent, and bigoted nature. It is the threat from these bloody religious extremists from inside/outside Europe that is most pressing--but the European people would be more able to fend for themselves if the nanny state had not kept them so long disabled in an infantile and dependent state.

Although the EU warns against "Islamophobia," those who live in the real world know that there has been an explosion of violent infidelophobia in Western Europe staged by Muslim immigrants. This wave of violence especially targets Jews, but the attacks against Christians that are going on in the Middle East are increasingly spreading to Europe as well. In more and more cities across the continent, non-Muslims are being harassed, robbed, mugged, raped, stabbed and even killed by Muslims. Native Europeans are slowly becoming second-rate citizens in their own countries.

This violence by Muslims is usually labelled simply as "crime," but I believe it should more accurately be called Jihad. Those who know early Islamic history, as described in books such as The Truth About Muhammad by Robert Spencer, know that looting and stealing the property of non-Muslims has been part and parcel of Jihad from the very beginning. In fact, so much of the behavior of Muhammad himself and the early Muslims could be deemed criminal that it is difficult to know exactly where crime ends and Jihad begins. In the city of Oslo, for instance, it is documented that some of the criminal Muslim gangs also have close ties to radical religious groups at home and abroad. As Dutch Arabist Hans Jansen points out, the Koran is seen by some Muslims as a God-given "hunting licence," granting them the right to assault and even murder non-Muslims. It is hardly accidental that while Muslims make up about 10% of the population in France, they make up an estimated 70% of French prison inmates.

In the city of Antwerp, Belgium, Marij Uijt den Bogaard from 2003 to 2006 worked as a civil servant in the immigrant borough of Berchem. She noted how radical Islamist groups began to take over the immigrant neighbourhoods, but was fired when she warned against this danger in her reports to the authorities:

"Many victims of burglaries in houses and cars, of steaming and other forms of violence, can testify that aggression by Muslims is not directed against brothers and sisters, but against whoever is a kafir, a non-believer. Young Muslims justify their behaviour towards women who do not wear the headscarf, whether Muslim or non-Muslim, by referring to the Salafist teaching which says that these women are whores and should be treated as such. They told me this. I wrote it down in my reports, but the authorities refuse to hear it."

Filmmaker Pierre Rehov tells how a friend of his is a retired chief of police who used to be in charge of the security of a major city in the south of France. According to him, 80% of the rapes in the area were made by Muslim young men. In most cases, the parents would not understand why they would be arrested. The only evil those parents would see, genuinely, was the temptation that the male children had to face from infidel women.

The wave of robberies the increasingly Muslim-dominated city of Malmö is witnessing is part of a "war against Swedes," this according to statements from the immigrant youths themselves. "When we are in the city and robbing, we are waging a war, waging a war against the Swedes." This argument was repeated several times. "Power for me means that Swedes shall look at me, lie down on the ground and kiss my feet."

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When a population is taught to let the government do everything for it, the people naturally lose their innate ability to take care of themselves. This creates a weakling people, entire nations of cripples without the inner fortitude that is necessary to prevent outside conquest and inside treachery.