Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Abolish the Incompetent Federal Reserve

Legendary investor Jim Rogers not only thinks Federal Reserve policy is incompetent, he thinks the entire institution should be eliminated.

Asked by RT television network what he'd do if he was named chairman of the central bank, Rogers said, "I'd abolish the Federal Reserve, and then I'd resign."

The world has survived just fine without central banks for most of its history, he notes.
"America has had three central banks in our history. The first two disappeared," Rogers said.

"This one will too, because they keep . . . leveraging up the balance sheet. They keep making mistake after mistake. They keep printing money."

The result?

"This is going to self-destruct, unless the politicians say this thing is a mistake, let's get rid of it," Rogers said. "It's more likely, though, that it will self-destruct."

When it comes to stocks, which are trading at or near record highs, "we're certainly going to have a crash someday — all this artificial sea of liquidity," he said.

But while a correction could come soon, Rogers doesn't see an imminent plunge. "With all the money printing and spending in the world, this could go on for a while," he said.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan doesn't share Rogers' view that stocks are in a bubble.

The equity premium, "a measure of what the average investor requires the rate of return to invest in common stocks [is] still way below normal,” he told Fox Business Network.

"There are a lot of things that can go wrong,” Greenspan said. "But to say that the market is bubbly and in a position where it could conceivably create a serious problem, I think is overstating it."

- Source, Money News: