Veteran investor Jim Rogers has recently expressed a dire prediction regarding the global economy, warning of a rapidly approaching, massive crisis. Rogers foresees this looming economic catastrophe as triggering the most substantial bear market in his 80-year life, a stark warning indeed. The seasoned investor’s cautionary forecast has relevance to Bitcoin (BTC) and alternative cryptocurrencies (altcoins) too.
He Expects a Worse Situation Than the 2008 Crisis
During a recent interview with Real Vision Finance, Jim Rogers drew parallels between current economic conditions and those that presaged the devastating Global Economic Crisis of 2008. However, he pointedly stated that the present situation was considerably worse.
A close associate of productive investor George Soros and one of the founders of Soros Fund Management, Rogers anticipates that the accumulated debt within the system will inevitably lead to a significant bear market in risky assets:
“I know we are going to experience the worst bear market in my lifetime. We experienced a significant bear market in 2008 due to relatively high debt. Please look out the window, since 2008, debt has been rapidly increasing everywhere. There are massive increases in debt. That’s why I believe the next bear market will be the worst market in my life. Because the debt has increased astonishingly in the last 14 years.”
Rogers highlighted the similarity of the present financial market conditions with the massive inflationary crisis of 1980, necessitating monumental interest rates and treasury bond yields:
“There will be problems across all markets. Real estate markets, stock markets, bond markets, foreign exchange markets, everything… You may not be old enough to remember, but when we had our last big inflationary spiral in 1980 and 1979, the interest rates of short-term government treasury bonds, the interest rates of treasury bonds were over 21%. This is not a typo. Yes, it was indeed over 21% because the situation was out of control, and something had to be done. It was done, inflation fell, but it was no fun for many people when inflation fell. This is what is going to happen now.”
The Fed, Having Paused Interest Rate Increases, is Preparing for New Hikes
Although the Federal Reserve Open Market Committee (FOMC) decided to pause interest rate hikes for the time being, keeping the interest rate stable at its monthly meeting, several Fed members have been signaling for some time that they will increase interest rates further due to continued high inflation.
Chairman Jerome Powell, during the second day of his semiannual Monetary Policy Report presentation to the US Congress, supported the remarks of his fellow Fed members by announcing that they could make two interest rate increases by the end of the year while answering questions from members of the U.S. Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee.
