Jim Rogers: Central Banks responsible for Business Cycles

Daily Bell: Obviously you follow business cycles. Can you tell our readers how they work and who is responsible for them?

Jim Rogers: It doesn't make sense that anybody but central banks has been responsible for them in this past century or so. Central banks didn't always have so much power. Central banks used to be the lenders of last resort for the most part. People handed their own power over, in the past few decades, especially. Central banks, more than anything else, have had the main influence on business cycles in the past few decades. Mankind makes our own mistakes and we cause our own problems. People get exuberant for a while and they spend a lot of money, they add capacity and before you know it you have too much capacity and then you have a business cycle. There's nothing unusual about it; it's just the way mankind works.



Jim Rogers started trading the stock market with $600 in 1968.In 1973 he formed the Quantum Fund with the legendary investor George Soros before retiring, a multi millionaire at the age of 37. Rogers and Soros helped steer the fund to a miraculous 4,200% return over the 10 year span of the fund while the S&P 500 returned just 47%.