More Jim Rogers quotes

"I would tell you what has always worked throughout history and I'll tell you what has always not worked.

The Japanese tried this in the 90s, they kept putting band-aids on and they wouldn't let people fail. You remember the term "zombie" companies, "zombie" banks? Well it's eighteen years later and the Japanese stock market is still down over 75 percent. They talk about the 90s as a lost decade.

America tried it in the 70s - they wouldn't let anybody fail. We had one of the worst economic decades in American history - high interest rates, high inflation, a collapsing currency. It didn't work.

Korea in the 90s, took a hit. They had a horrible two or three years but, since then, they've been one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world. The Russians took a horrible hit - since then, they've been one of the most rapidly growing economies in the world.

This is not politics, this is not philosophy. I'm telling you what has worked throughout history and what has not worked throughout history.

Look it up."

"Let 'em fail two by two or three by three. I mean, what is this? Banks have been failing since the beginning of time and they're probably going to fail again until the end of time.

The way it's always worked successfully has been, let the incompetent fail and the competent people - banks, mainly in this case - take over the incompetent banks and everybody starts over.

Yeah, you have a very bad year or two but we've had the worst excesses in the credit market we've had in world history. Never before in world history have people been able to buy a house with no money down, and many of them bought four or five houses with no money down and no jobs, and then the bankers were saying, "This is fun, let's do it with car loans, student loans, credit card loans".

We've had horrible excesses -this has to be cleaned out."

Labels: banking, Jim Rogers, Stock market, United States