If you don’t know Jim Rogers you should.  I first heard about him maybe 15 or so years ago.  I was riding my Harley around and someone gave me Jim’s book, Investment Biker.  It’s a great read and for several months I wanted to grow-up to be Jim Rogers.

Also interesting, from Wikipedia:

In December 2007, Rogers sold his mansion in New York City for about 16 million USD and moved to Singapore. Rogers claimed that he moved because now is a ground-breaking time for investment potential in Asian markets. Rogers’s first daughter is now being tutored in Mandarin to prepare her for the future.

He is quoted as saying: “If you were smart in 1807 you moved to London, if you were smart in 1907 you moved to New York City, and if you are smart in 2007 you move to Asia.”

The man is prescient.  So if he’s got something to say, we should be listening.  There’s a few new articles sharing with us what he has to say:

Experts have been saying that 2013 is the year to worry about, not 2012. Jim Rogers agrees.  The commodities guru was on CNBC’s The Kudlow Report last night saying again that 2012 will see money pumped into global markets because it is a year choc-a-bloc with elections.

Rogers said “This year’s fine. Worry about 2013.  Be panicked about 2014.  This year, a lot of good news is coming out.” Speaking of the U.S. economy specifically, he said the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet is bloated referencing M2, a measure of money supply. He also added that President Obama is spending a huge amount of money ahead of the elections:

via Business Insider.

Same series, different story:

At what level do you think oil prices will break the back of the American recovery?

We are going to have a slowdown. Such is the staggering debt that America has, it has caused more and more of a drag on our economy. I would also point out to you that every four to six years we’ve had an economic slowdown in the U.S., since the beginning of time, so by 2012, 2013, 2014, we are well overdue for an economic slowdown for whatever reason. Whether it’s caused by high oil or what, we’re going to have a slowdown in the foreseeable future.

How do you see oil prices impacting consumers in emerging markets, especially in Asia, when many of them are struggling to rein in inflation and drive growth?

Everybody is paying higher prices for oil and that obviously impacts consumption everywhere and its not just oil, its food and everything else that’s going up. There’s inflation everywhere, the U.S. lies about it, I mean the U.S. government lies about inflation but there’s inflation everywhere. I mean I don’t know if you go shopping, but if you do, you know prices are up. The government says they’re not, I don’t know where they shop. Everybody else’s prices are up.

via Business Insider.

Indeed.  Boxes of food are getting smaller but the pricing has gone up.  Everything at the store is more expensive with the possible exception of electronics.  The U.S. Government’s removal of energy costs from the inflation index was a telling sign that they simply don’t want to give the folks the real bad news.  They’d rather stick their heads in the sand and pretend everything is ok.