Book Review: Jim Rogers' Street Smarts aka Thoughts from a Southern Gentleman

Jim Rogers has had one heck of a life. From a small town in Alabama to the Ivy League to all around the world on a motorcycle, his insights are never preachy. He covers a wide range of topics, including one particularly negative anecdote about his former co-worker, George Soros. (FYI: even back in the day, consent decrees were worthless.) 

Big on commodities, Rogers promotes farming as the job of the future. He reasons food prices have been too low, and--just as in gold/silver mining or oil exploration--low commodity prices usually cause fewer producers and/or lower production, often leading to a crash. As prices and producers decline, new (and presumably more efficient) investors, seeking profits, will enter, rebalancing the supply/demand equation. At some point, prices will rebound, and the higher prices will create a snowball effect for both buyers (no longer concerned with deflation) and producers, especially if banking institutions issue loans. The alternative, a government-controlled economy, is inferior because it generally will not allow entities to fail. An avowed capitalist, Rogers explains, "The cure for high prices is high prices. It always works...." "The Soviets did not have anything because nobody produced anything, and nobody produced anything because prices were set so low." 

To his credit, Rogers realizes the flaws in his own paradigm and lambastes the Federal Reserve's easy money policies. Excessive Federal Reserve economic intervention is harmful, he argues, excoriating both Greenspan and Bernanke. In Rogers' experience, capitalism provides a self-reinforcing mechanism for regeneration aka creative destruction. It's true Rogers is known as a "bear," which means he makes money when companies fail, but the characterization of bias is unfair--every hedge fund manager sells short. 

Readers interested in politics will enjoy Rogers' comments on domestic and international affairs, including details about his new home, Singapore, and his reasons for relocation. 

On the black market.

Two passages stand out: 1) "As recently as 1987 the United States was a creditor nation."; 2) "America is borrowing money to pay for military hardware that sits and rusts in the sun. The man who manufactures the hardware makes money, but after that, there is no beneficiary. The investment does not represent an ongoing source of production, the way a canal or a railroad does." 

There are too many jerks in the financial world, but Rogers seems to be one of the good guys, someone who's never forsaken or forgotten his humble Southern roots. 

© Matthew Mehdi Rafat (2017)

Bonus: Rogers shares a lot of information on Singapore. See below for excerpts.

The "genius of Singapore": public housing programmes for all.

HDB flats in Singapore (2018)

Book Review: Stig Abell's How Britain Really Works (2018)

Newspaper journalists are notoriously bad at long-form, worse with entire books. Part of the problem is a journalist's firsthand experience, though unique, doesn't necessarily capture the entire picture. For example, a journalist assigned to education might interview hundreds of insiders without ever meeting a single person knowledgable about pensions' involvement in unpredictable budgeting and lower entry salaries. Our modern world makes it impossible to have a life and publish a book containing ample firsthand experience matched by well-researched, comprehensive footnotes. 

In any case, Abell is excellent when discussing his specialities--healthcare, particularly the NHS, and British politics--but attempts too big a spoonful by also covering the military, economics, education, law, and media. His casual style is best-suited to casual readers interested in Britain generally and perfect for an advanced politics high school course. 

Despite my criticisms, much is enjoyable about the book. As you might expect, Abell is well-read--his recommended reading list at the end is wonderful--and he shares facts few others could. Did you know Zaire is not an African word? Or that the NHS is the "fifth largest employer in the world"? 

Had Abell written a shorter book about just politics, it would have been an easy five stars. Witness this remark on PM May's performance: "no humility, no soul-searching, no human touch, no real change. The audacity of nope." (My own characterization of May is slightly more appreciative, i.e., a person with the remarkable ability to piss you off and put you to sleep at the same time.) Though in favor of more public welfare spending, Abell doesn't avoid unpleasant truths like moral hazard: "If you know you are going to be treated no matter what happens, you may take warnings about salt, or sugar, or booze or cigarettes less seriously; you may not bother to turn up to an appointment on time, or at all... 40% of the NHS's workload is related to 'modifiable health risk factors.'" 

In the end, Abell endears himself to the reader as an insider-outsider, one of the few successful Britons who attended diverse schools and made it without the aid of rich parents. He refused to speak at his former high school's commencement speech on account of his dislike of the experience and shares his pain at using the term "toilet" rather than the more proper "lavatory," a faux pas. A good, not great book, but few of us can claim greatness in literature; in some cases, one's own life will have to suffice. (June 2018) 

Bonus: on Singapore's educational system, ranked as one of the world's best, along with Japan, China, South Korea, Finland, Estonia, Vietnam, and Canada: