Tuesday, March 3, 2009

AIG Should Go Bankrupt...

From CNBC on whether AIG should be allowed to fail:
Suppose AIG goes bankrupt, it is better that AIG goes bankrupt and we have a horrible two or three years than that the whole US goes bankrupt," Rogers said. "AIG has trillions of dollars of obligations, let them fail, let the courts sort it out and start over. Otherwise we'll never start over."

On Monday, CEO Edward Liddy told CNBC that the insurer is far more stable and secure than it was last fall but acknowledged that it was "difficult to say" if AIG will need even more money from the government in the future.

Bailing out the banks is going to increase the debt spiral and finally cause the destruction of the world's biggest economy, Rogers said.

"I think it's astonishing, they're ruining the US economy, they're ruining the US government, they're ruining the US central bank and they're ruining the US dollar," he said.

"You are watching something in front of our eyes, very historically, which is basically the destruction of New York as a financial center and the destruction of America as the world's most powerful country."
Well, Jim Rogers pretty much summed up what we've been arguing for quite some time. That is, nothing can fundamentally improve until the fundamentally-flawed debt is forced into default. That's the endgame. Nothing else.

Classic closing quote from Rogers:
"The idea that you have too much debt, too much borrowing and too much consumption and you're going to solve that problem with more debt, more consumption and more borrowing? These people are nuts."