3.18.2009

Just Doesn't Make Sense

Our current bailout strategy doesn't make sense to me, but I didn’t think I was intelligent enough to be the one pointing it out. Well I found someone who is smart enough and eloquent enough to explain why this fundamentally cannot work.

Legendary global investor and chairman of Singapore- based Rogers Holdings, Jim Rogers said the US risks sending the world into a depression as its bailouts of failed companies rob healthy businesses of capital.

Speaking to Bloomberg TV today , Jim Rogers said: “The U.S. is taking assets from competent people and giving them to incompetent people,” said Rogers. “That’s bad economics,” he added.

Rogers argued that American International Group should have been allowed to descend into bankruptcy, and he feels the same about similarly situated businesses. It just doesn't make sense to divert money from healthy, prudently-managed companies and plow it into debt-burdened companies that are being run badly at best and criminally at worst.

Rogers has spent a career being one step ahead of mainstream investment thinking.  Amongst his many accomplishments, Rogers was co-founder with George Soros of Quantum Fund. During his ten years with the fund, the portfolio gained more than 4,000%, while the S&P rose less than 50%