To me, the prospects of a Euro currency surviving over the long term were not helped this week. The markets have behaved as though some great solutions have been adopted but it seems to me the fundamental problems if anything are worse now. It is true the short term is more stable. But at what cost?
Bailout Is ‘Nail in the Coffin’ for Euro, Rogers Says
“I was stunned,” Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings, said in a Bloomberg Television interview in Singapore. “This means that they’ve given up on the euro, they don’t particularly care if they have a sound currency, you have all these countries spending money they don’t have and it’s now going to continue.”
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“It’s a political currency and nobody is minding the economics behind the necessities to have a strong currency,” Rogers said. “I’m afraid it’s going to dissolve. They’re throwing more money at the problem and it’s going to make things worse down the road.”
This makes sense to me. The problems with the Euro also explain why the dollar hasn’t fallen more over the last few years. The only significant alternative is the Yen. The BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) are looking to increase the profile of their currencies supposedly – or even forming their version of the Euro (I can’t see how that could happen).
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[Rogers suggests] Investors should instead buy precious metals including gold or currencies of countries that have large natural resources, Rogers said. Among other asset classes, he favors agricultural commodities as the best bet for the next decade as well as silver because prices haven’t rallied.
It is very difficult for the politicians in the USA, United Kingdom and other countries to behave fiscally responsible when their taxpayers will eventually have to pay the bill. When you can hope to have others bail you out it seems that much less likely people will behave responsibly. Then again I was skeptical the Euro would be created without first having more consolidation of European governments. There are lots of good things about having the Euro, but in the long run there are very challenging issues to deal with.
Related: Jim Rogers on the Financial Market Mess – Why the Dollar is Falling – A Bull on China
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