Jim Rogers: How the Federal Reserve Will Fail and the One Sector Every Investor Should Be In

http://www.moneymorning.com/2008/09/06/jim-rogers-book/

Things were so bad in the U.K. in the 1930s they made it an act of treason to use anything except sterling and then by ‘39 they had full-exchange controls. And then, of course, they had the war and that disaster. It was a disaster before the war. The war just exacerbated the problems. And by the mid-70s, the U.K. was bankrupt. They could not sell long-term government bonds. Remember, this is a country that two generations or three generations before had been the richest most powerful country in the world.

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Now the only thing that saved the U.K. was the North Sea oil fields, even though Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher likes to take credit, but Margaret Thatcher has good PR. Margaret Thatcher came into office in 1979 and North Sea oil started flowing. And the U.K. suddenly had a huge balance-of-payment surplus.

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Even Zimbabwe, you know, took 10 or 15 years to really get going into it’s collapse, but Robert Mugabe came into power in 1980 and, as recently as 1995, things still looked good for Zimbabwe. But now, of course, it’s a major disaster.

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(Q): There’s a lot of talk that the Chinese will use the Olympics to launch a new wave of nationalism and to move ahead. Are the Olympic Games as relevant as some people think?
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America had the Olympics in ‘96 and it had no effect on the American economy - before or after. Some people in Atlanta were affected before and after. And some people who were involved with the Olympics were affected before and after.
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Sydney, Australia had the 2000 Olympics. It had virtually no effect on the Sydney, or on the Australian economy - even though Australia had 18 million people. It’s tiny … nothing. Yes, it had an effect on some people.

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(Q): Are you still bullish on China?
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Oh, yeah.