저자: Trenton Elena · 외국인
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It's with the man himself, Jim Rogers. Thanks for joining me. I'm delighted to be with you, Jim. Today on Zero Hedge, we saw CNN's Greed and Fear Index hitting highs that we haven't seen since 2014. So we're seeing this greed aspect, where there's a lot of fear and a lot of greed, and investors are getting greedy in the stock market. The S&P 500 actually hit a new high today. What is your thought on this?
Well, it's weird. The world is flooded with an artificial ocean of liquidity. Central banks all over the world cannot stop their printing presses. In fact, they keep doing more. It looks like the Japanese are now going to print even more, and Europeans are going to print even more. This is all absurd. It's all very, very bad. The question is when it ends. It should have ended by now, and it hasn't. It seems to be getting worse, which is good for people in the S&P short term, but it's not going to be good in the end.
You mentioned central banks getting involved. Where do you suppose these rallies in the markets are coming from? I know the Federal Reserve just gave the banks a backdoor bailout, allowing them to buy back their own stock. Do you suppose it's just going to be more of the same Ponzi scheme regarding these market rallies until the system implodes?
Absolutely. If you look at stocks, let's use the New York Stock Exchange as an example. In May 2015, twice as many stocks were down as up on the New York Stock Exchange. The averages looked okay, though. So far this year, more stocks are down than up. But if the averages look okay, it's because there's a lot of money floating around, and most of it is going into a few big stock names that people know and will buy at almost any price. Most stocks are going down. If you look around the world, most of the big stock exchanges are down over the last year, some of them fairly substantially. So there's a lot of money floating around, but it's not doing very well in returns.
I've got to ask you: who do you suppose is going to profit from this current debacle, this global financial mess? Obviously we've got the eurozone with Brexit. I'll bring up George Soros, who tends to position himself for big profits in geopolitical events. We recently heard about his short bets in the stock market and at Deutsche Bank, along with his long position in gold. Where do you see the elite money going, and how will they profit from this big mess?
Most stocks are down in most stock markets around the world. Most people are not doing well. Unless they happen to own a lot of bonds, or happen to own gold, they're not doing well. Most dangerous, hair-down canvas: I'm not sure who's making the money. Maybe the short sellers are making money in the various markets around the world, but unfortunately people are not getting good returns. Many hedge funds, as you know, are closing, and there are thousands of hedge funds now, but the returns are not there. You also see most futures funds are not doing well. We're in a period where most people are not making much, unless you happen to own the S&P and those few stocks that always go up, or you're on bonds. Those are the things that are up this year.
Deutsche Bank is reminding me a lot of Lehman Brothers in 2008. I'm actually hearing that a Deutsche Bank implosion would make Lehman Brothers look like a small bank in Idaho going under. Would you agree? What we saw in 2008 with Lehman Brothers, and what we're seeing now with Deutsche Bank, look eerily similar.
You can forget all the comparisons used in the last two or three decades. Deutsche Bank is the largest bank in Germany, a gigantic institution. It has trillions of dollars in off-balance-sheet derivatives. If that goes, you look out the window, because you're going to see a gigantic storm coming.
Let's shift our focus to China. We know China is accumulating gold, on and off the record. I'm wondering, do you feel that China is positioned stronger to absorb a massive shock to the fiat currency system than the US and the eurozone, considering the gold it's importing?
China does have a lot of gold, and it's interesting. If you go to China and walk down the street, you'll see a lot of gold shops where people can go in and buy and sell gold if they want to. This phenomenon did not exist 15 years ago. It has only happened in the last few years. So the Chinese public has been buying a lot of gold. You can buy Chinese gold coins pretty easily in China, and a lot of people have been buying. The Chinese public is positioned stronger than it ever has been, as far as gold and precious metals go, though not ever. As for the Chinese government, I don't know if it owns those. They don't officially announce how much gold they own. But China is certainly in a better position than most countries. The West, the United States, and most countries in Europe have huge debt. China has debts too, and something much worse than it has had in the past few decades, but China is in much better shape to deal with what's coming than most countries.
Mr. Rogers, I'd like your closing thoughts. Bill Gross, the bond king, says investors should now be worried about just getting their money back, the return of their money versus the return on their money. With that theme in mind, what are your final thoughts?
He's correct about that. Even with your own government bonds, if governments don't declare bankruptcy and don't default, what they'll do is just print a lot of money. Russia went bankrupt in the early '90s, and all the pensioners still got paid, but they got paid in worthless money. So no, they didn't default, and that's likely to happen this time around. You might get your money back, but in fact you're not getting real money back. So he's right to worry.
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