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Strategies & Market Trends : Mish's Global Economic Trend Analysis -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: mishedlo who wrote (64560)	3/15/2007 12:28:39 PM
From: westpacific	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116555

Jim Rogers calling for massive RE bust! West ------ Top investor sees U.S. property crash Wed Mar 14, 2007 6:56 PM GMT By Elif Kaban MOSCOW (Reuters) - Commodities investment guru Jim Rogers stepped into the U.S. subprime fray on Wednesday, predicting a real estate crash that would trigger defaults and spread contagion to emerging markets. "You can't believe how bad it's going to get before it gets any better," the prominent U.S. fund manager told Reuters by telephone from New York. "It's going to be a disaster for many people who don't have a clue about what happens when a real estate bubble pops. "It is going to be a huge mess," said Rogers, who has put his $15 million belle epoque mansion on Manhattan's Upper West Side on the market and is planning to move to Asia. Worries about losses in the U.S. mortgage market have sent stock prices falling in Asia and Europe, with shares in financial services companies falling the most. Some investors fear the problems of lenders who make subprime loans to people with weak credit histories are spreading to mainstream financial firms and will worsen the U.S. housing slowdown. "Real estate prices will go down 40-50 percent in bubble areas. There will be massive defaults. This time it'll be worse because we haven't had this kind of speculative buying in U.S. history," Rogers said. "When markets turn from bubble to reality, a lot of people get burnt." The fund manager, who co-founded the Quantum Fund with billionaire investor George Soros in the 1970s and has focused on commodities since 1998, said the crisis would spread to emerging markets which he said now faced a prolonged bear run. "When you have a financial crisis, it reverberates in other financial markets, especially in those with speculative excess," he said. "Right now, there is huge speculative excess in emerging markets around the world. There will be a lot of money coming out of emerging markets. "I've sold out of emerging markets except for China," said Rogers, long a prominent China bull. Even in China, the world's fastest expanding economy, Rogers said stocks were overvalued and could go down 30-40 percent. But he added: "China is one of the few countries in the world where I'm willing to sit out a 30-40 percent decline." The last stock market bubble to burst was the dot-com craze which sparked a crash from March 2000 to October 2002. When the last bubble burst in Japan, said Rogers, stock prices went down 85 percent despite the country's high savings rate and huge balance of bayment surplus. "This is the end of the liquidity party," said Rogers. "Some emerging markets will go down 80 percent, some will go down 50 percent. Some will most probably collapse."

To: mishedlo who wrote (64560)	3/17/2007 9:10:09 PM
From: Yulya	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 116555

"Thus has Mr. Bush's request for $100 billion to fund the troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, plus $3 billion to replenish the disaster-relief fund, devolved into a $124.6 billion logrolling extravaganza. You can get the flavor from the bill's very first words on page two: "Title I--Supplemental Appropriations for the Global War on Terror Chapter 1 Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service." Forget the Marines; send in the meat inspectors." In the middle of the cold war, Democrats insisted that we stop building bombers and send more money to the teachers unions. They never stop. They don't know what a war is. All they know is, government's whole reason for being is to shove money back to their districts. War? What war? Oh, yeah. Nancy said that there was no war. There was only a situation to be managed. How can we win without proper storage of peanuts? "This bill has everything the modern military doesn't need. There's $25 million for spinach, designed to attract the vote of Sam Farr, a California farm-region liberal. Perhaps spinach growers who lost business due to last year's E. coli scare need this taxpayer bailout, but it won't intimidate the Taliban unless Mr. Farr plans to draft Popeye. Other lowlights include $20 million to restore farmland damaged by freezing temperatures, and $1.48 billion for livestock farmers. And don't forget the $74 million "to ensure proper storage for peanuts," an urgent national-security need. This happens to be about the same amount that House Democrats propose to increase spending for operations of the Army Reserve, so it's good to see Congress has its priorities in order." Why are Democrats so upset about the war? It's taking up time they could spend spreading pork around. opinionjournal.com