What Jim Rogers thinks you should buy now

Famed investor Jim Rogers believes that, as in previous recessions, commodities will bounce back quicker than shares. So where does he think you should put your money now – and is he right?

If there's one man who hasn't been swept off his feet by the prospect of Barack Obama in the White House, it's Jim Rogers. "Barack Obama has two policies to speak of," he told attendants at the World Money Show in Westminster. First, he wants to tax capital, just when capital is at its weakest. And second, he wants to protect American jobs. Both ideas are absolutely disastrous, reckons Rogers.

You only have to look at the experience of Japan. The Japanese were determined to protect and prop up their faltering businesses in the nineties, but all it did was leave them with a load of zombie banks. All that happens when you tax capital to prop up failing businesses is that you take money from the competent and give it to the incompetent, says Rogers. This has never worked. "The best hope for America is that everything Obama has said so far has just been rhetoric".

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Eoin came to MoneyWeek in 2006 having graduated with a MLitt in economics from Trinity College, Dublin. He taught economic history for two years at Trinity, while researching a thesis on how herd behaviour destroys financial markets.