Friday, February 1, 2008

Jim Rogers: 'It's going to be much worse' - Jan. 31, 2008

Jim Rogers: 'It's going to be much worse' - Jan. 31, 2008: "Where he expects the pain to be most intense is on Wall Street. He says he hasn't covered his short positions on the investment banks or Citigroup (C, Fortune 500) and won't for a while. 'Those things are going to go way, way, way down,' says Rogers. 'The investment banks are down now because of the problems in the credit market. Wait until the effects of the bear market come along. If you just go back and look at other bear markets, investment bank stocks have gone down enormously. We haven't gotten to that stage yet. It's going to bring their balance sheets under duress. This is going to get much worse. But that's where there have been excesses for the past decade or so. And whenever you have a bear market come along the great excesses of the previous period are the ones that get cleaned out the most.'"

If Jim Rogers is right about this - watch out for real estate in Rancho Sante Fe, La Jolla, Del Mar, Greenwich the hamptons, any where wall steet money demanded trophy properties.

What could make Jim Rogers wrong is if the dollar slides so far that foreigners with Euros or other currencies can consider top spots like Ranch or buy. I was told yesterday there have been some people from china looking to buy in Rancho Sante Fe.