Stop Press…………BBC World…………HardTalk………..with Stephen Sackur…………If you have Foxtel(why wouldn’t you?) you really should make a date at 6.30 eastern standard time weekdays to watch Mr Sackur’s interviews,always good value, always offering insight.
Today he spent 30 minutes with Jim Rogers, who i knew of but had minimal understanding of his background or views. It blew me away how relevant and poignant his views were. Jim was George Soros’s old business partner at the Quantum fund in the heyday of currency arbitrage and sold his US assets in 2007 just before the crash. We were living in Connecticut in 2007 and 2008 and seeing the GFC unfold in the markets was an experience i will never forget. The arrogance of the American TV pundits claiming this was a one day blip daily for months, CNBC creating fiction out of the crisis that was unfolding and highly leveraged “experts” talking their book. It was the perfect storm, i lost money during it but the theatre that unfolded in the US of A that was long overdue as the level of debt and financial exuberance(Bernanke’s phrase….he’s just as bad) was out of control.
Anyway back to Jim Rogers, quite simply a Sage in the wilderness, a man who sees clarity where there are only clouds. In short he is long Asia and heavily short the USA,UK and Europe. I agree even at the crazy price differential. The short term stats say the Australian economy is struggling but medium to long term the story is very strong.
The second piece of eye catching media of the day was the report that commercial spend on online marketing grew by 400% year on year………..my prediction within 5 years offline media will be almost irrelevant.
