Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Jim Rogers: History Reveals Bailouts do more Harm than Good


The assertion by Jim Rogers that government intervention in the market will cause more pain then help is absolutely correct. Interference in the markets during the Great Depression, in reality, caused the Great Depression. Honest economists say it would have only lasted a very short time without interfence from the government.

If there hadn't been government interference during that time, the marketplace would have cleaned itself out and lasted only a very short time.

Our present situation

"Capitalism is where the market does its work. These guys [Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke], for the last 8 to 10 years, have refused to let the market do its work to clean itself out," Rogers said. "You let things collapse…and you have a clean growth afterwards."

The obsession by the professional politicians to become heroes in the eyes of the easily swayed population will eventually be destructive rather than helpful. They're doing it because they hope by time the next election cycle comes around people will forget what happened and vote them back into office.

Either that, or things will be so much worse than they are now because of government action, that politicians will be able to bluff their way through and make themselves look like they're fighting for Americans even more, even though they've made the problems worse.

It's unfortunate that Americans overall don't understand why these problems are happening and the source of them. Until we become more economically literate, the boom and bust cycles will continue as government continues to make problems worse by inserting their abusive policies into the marketplace.

As far as Rogers and what he's investing in now, he says commodities will continue to offer superior returns over stocks in the near future, and he's also investing in China as it loosens up its monetary policy.

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