In your latest book, you have been critical of the
numbers put out by the Indian government. I’ll quote from your book:
“All growth rate figures are unreliable. It is stupefying to me that
India could claim to have a clue to what is going on even in India, much
less in China or in the US” or “When it comes to growth rate, Indians
base their numbers on what China is reporting, making sure that theirs
are better than, or at least in line with, China’s”. But, institutions
in India are pretty strong and the numbers, be it GDP or any other put
out by the Indian government, are considered to be largely reliable.
Jim Rogers : All government numbers are suspect. Last week, the US
government revised its economic statistics and added a whole economy
bigger than the Swedish economy—so America just went up a level in a
week because they revised the numbers. I don’t trust what any government
says. The Soviet Union used to have great numbers, but they were all
made up in offices in Moscow.
I was not just picking on India, but using it as an
indicator. If you go back over the last few years, you will see the
Indian economy, as per the numbers its government has put out—some of
the numbers its government has projected—are comparable with those of
China. Then you go see both countries and you’ll realize something is
wrong. If India’s growth over the last couple of years was comparable to
that of China, where are the schools, the highways, the infrastructure,
the housing, where has it all gone?
I was using this to state that we should be very careful
about what governments tell us. In one of my books, I’ve come down hard
on Germany—the Germans who were supposed to be hardworking and
disciplined were also found to be making up some of the numbers they had
been reporting related to job creation.- in livemint
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%.