Insane and Hungry For Power - Two Disqualifiers!

Are there limits to free speech and do tent cities and their occupants violate our right to free speech or are we violating theirs? (See 1 below)
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According to this op ed author China can beat the U.S. in a match up if it is able to alter its current course of behaviour, embrace China’s ancient philosophers and learn to display more humane authority. That must begin at home.

The author points out no true world power gains for any length of time ignoring morality. (See 2 below.)
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Buffett's comments buffet Eurozone results because words are not working.

Buffett has a solid investment record but of late his portfolio performance has underperformed and his foray into politics has proven he should stick to buying companies. (See 3 below.)
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Pat Caddell, who I like and believe is a rational Liberal, has given up on Obama and again has asked him to resign. That's fine and even commendable. What I have a problem with is his trotting out Hillary as his Party and our nation's saviour.

She might have been a loyal Secretary of state and a willing wife to a scum bag of a husband but she also should have been disbarred long ago for lying and certainly her efforts as Secretary of State are not in keeping with greatness.

But if Caddell wants warmed over toast it simply makes the less than exciting Republicans look a bit better - not much but a little bit.

What is most discouraging is that we are adrift, a nation bereft of decent leadership. No one truly top notch is willing to grab the reins other than the colorless Romney and inexperienced Cain. But then, can you blame the really talented. Being President is a thankless job, not even pays well once you get past the pomp and playthings and the abuse one takes is mind boggling.


You really have to be near insane, insatiably hungry for power and have an ego to match. This is where Gingrich fits in quite well however these qualities are disqualifiers except in the Middle East. (See 4 below.)
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Again it's 'just the same old story' and those who do not understand history will live to repeat its mistakes. (See 5 below.)
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This is a paid for ad by Romney about The St Louis Paving Company and its effort to fend off being unionized. It is something worth watching and I invite you to do so:
http://www.mittromney.com/news/embedded/video/obama-isnt-working-labor
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Edited summation of economist Simon Hunt's thinking. (See 6 below.)

There is no way the world economic order can continue to sustain current debt levels so something has to give and I suspect the Euro will go first followed by the dollar followed by inflation followed by a deeper second dip.

As Hunt suggests, it will take time for the cumulative effect of unpayable debt to bring the pigeons home to roost but I find it hard to believe there is an escape from the ominous fiscal clouds that have been gathering.

Europe is bankrupt, we are bankrupt and China is holding much of our collective debt so that is sure to put pressure on their own economy which has its own set of problems.

This is not the time to have an inexperienced and arrogant leader, if such were ever a good time, but we do and it can only lead to more problems.

Before it is over, I expect a lot more anarchists will be roaming streets disrupting civil order and confrontations with authority will only worsen.

In terms of the market, this is seasonally the time for rallies and I suspect there will be a puny one, perhaps starting from a lower current level. Next year, however, I look for earning comparisons to narrow putting further pressure on markets.


Jim Rogers on the comodity oulook. (See 7 below.)
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Dick
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1)Are Tent Cities Free Speech? The First Amendment does not protect behavior that threatens health and safety.
By L. GORDON

Last week, the New York City Police Department's First Precinct issued the latest crime statistics. Typical offenses in the financial district and Tribeca usually are limited to minor matters such as hawking fake Rolexes and operating unlicensed food carts. This time there was a big increase in violent crimes. "Almost all of these crimes were in and around Zuccotti Park," commanding officer Edward Winski reported, adding wryly: "Many of these were assaults against police officers."

From Oakland, Calif., to Portland, Ore., to New York, the Occupy Wall Street movement has worn out the patience of even the most liberal cities. The protesters were shocked when politicians stopped excusing their unlawful behavior by referring to their First Amendment rights and instead forcibly removed their tent cities as threats to health and safety.

The protesters never-ending endgame is a reminder that under the First Amendment, speech may be subject to time, place and manner restrictions that do not include the concept of "occupation."

The global movement began in New York's Zuccotti Park, which Mayor Mike Bloomberg finally cleared out last week after nearly two months of a tent city even the police feared to enter. By the end, it featured rapes, drug use and public health dangers. It took 150 Sanitation Department workers hours to clear the mess, finding everything from used hypodermic needles to buckets of human waste. "These were some of the worst smells I've ever experienced," a veteran garbageman told the New York Post.

Local residents and businessmen had grown weary of the health and safety violations, drum circles late into the night, and trashing of shops and restaurants. A group called Downtown Community Coalition was formed by unlikely community organizers, including local parents, health professionals, small-business owners and this columnist.

One lesson of Occupy Wall Street is that if local authorities permit campouts, people will camp out. This permissive approach created a false impression of the strength of the movement. The crowds dispersed once the authorities applied typical time, place and manner rules.

Occupy Wall Street is suing to bring their tents and sleeping bags back to the park, but in Clark v. Community for Creative Non-Violence (1984), the Supreme Court held that the National Park Service could enforce its rules against sleeping in tents at Washington's Lafayette park and National Mall, even for a symbolic protest about homelessness. The tents in Zuccotti Park were shelter, not symbolic speech. As First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams told Reuters, it's a "real stretch to maintain that sleeping in a designated area itself is anything more than what it appears to be."

Indeed, the park that protesters selected offers fewer speech rights than public parks. Zuccotti Park is one of 500 "privately owned public spaces" in New York, created when planning regulators allowed a taller building in exchange for maintaining a park. It must be open 24 hours a day, unlike public parks that have curfews, but subject to specific rules ensuring "passive recreation" and the "enjoyment of the general public."

The owner, Brookfield Properties, expressly prohibits tents, tarps and sleeping in the park—rules ignored by the protesters. It also has a history of denying use of the park for political activities, which is within its rights. Last year the city and Brookfield Properties denied a request by a group to use the park to protest against the planned new mosque near the World Trade Center. A content-neutral approach, the cornerstone of First Amendment jurisprudence, should also have kept Occupy Wall Street out.

In a 2002 case, the federal appeals court in New York turned down a union seeking to protest in the publicly owned plaza outside Lincoln Center. Among the judges making the ruling was Sonia Sotomayor, appointed to the Supreme Court by President Obama. Courts will apply a time, place and manner standard even more restrictive of speech in a privately owned park like Zuccotti than in a public park like the Lincoln Center plaza.

The mostly young Occupy Wall Street protesters seemed genuinely shocked when Mayor Bloomberg ordered their tents removed. This probably fueled their violent and abusive reaction.

Their false expectations were set by politicians who should have known better. Shortly after the protests began, their "general assembly" debated whether to risk bringing in tents. New York politicians and the liberal community board representing Lower Manhattan issued statements suggesting that First Amendment rights were absolute, emboldening protesters into thinking they could take over the park indefinitely.

Protesters are free to demonstrate peacefully in Zuccotti Park, provided they follow its regulations. If they have to rely on unlawful campouts and disrupting neighborhoods instead of using speech, their message must not be very persuasive. They might occupy that sobering thought as they consider their future.
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2)How China Can Defeat America
By YAN XUETONG

WITH China’s growing influence over the global economy, and its increasing ability to project military power, competition between the United States and China is inevitable. Leaders of both countries assert optimistically that the competition can be managed without clashes that threaten the global order.

Most academic analysts are not so sanguine. If history is any guide, China’s rise does indeed pose a challenge to America. Rising powers seek to gain more authority in the global system, and declining powers rarely go down without a fight. And given the differences between the Chinese and American political systems, pessimists might believe that there is an even higher likelihood of war.

I am a political realist. Western analysts have labeled my political views “hawkish,” and the truth is that I have never overvalued the importance of morality in international relations. But realism does not mean that politicians should be concerned only with military and economic might. In fact, morality can play a key role in shaping international competition between political powers — and separating the winners from the losers.

I came to this conclusion from studying ancient Chinese political theorists like Guanzi, Confucius, Xunzi and Mencius. They were writing in the pre-Qin period, before China was unified as an empire more than 2,000 years ago — a world in which small countries were competing ruthlessly for territorial advantage.

It was perhaps the greatest period for Chinese thought, and several schools competed for ideological supremacy and political influence. They converged on one crucial insight: The key to international influence was political power, and the central attribute of political power was morally informed leadership. Rulers who acted in accordance with moral norms whenever possible tended to win the race for leadership over the long term.

China was unified by the ruthless king of Qin in 221 B.C., but his short-lived rule was not nearly as successful as that of Emperor Wu of the Han dynasty, who drew on a mixture of legalistic realism and Confucian “soft power” to rule the country for over 50 years, from 140 B.C. until 86 B.C.

According to the ancient Chinese philosopher Xunzi, there were three types of leadership: humane authority, hegemony and tyranny. Humane authority won the hearts and minds of the people at home and abroad. Tyranny — based on military force — inevitably created enemies. Hegemonic powers lay in between: they did not cheat the people at home or cheat allies abroad. But they were frequently indifferent to moral concerns and often used violence against non-allies. The philosophers generally agreed that humane authority would win in any competition with hegemony or tyranny.

Such theories may seem far removed from our own day, but there are striking parallels. Indeed, Henry Kissinger once told me that he believed that ancient Chinese thought was more likely than any foreign ideology to become the dominant intellectual force behind Chinese foreign policy.

The fragmentation of the pre-Qin era resembles the global divisions of our times, and the prescriptions provided by political theorists from that era are directly relevant today — namely that states relying on military or economic power without concern for morally informed leadership are bound to fail.

Unfortunately, such views are not so influential in this age of economic determinism, even if governments often pay lip service to them. The Chinese government claims that the political leadership of the Communist Party is the basis of China’s economic miracle, but it often acts as though competition with the United States will be played out on the economic field alone. And in America, politicians regularly attribute progress, but never failure, to their own leadership.

Both governments must understand that political leadership, rather than throwing money at problems, will determine who wins the race for global supremacy.

Many people wrongly believe that China can improve its foreign relations only by significantly increasing economic aid. But it’s hard to buy affection; such “friendship” does not stand the test of difficult times.

How, then, can China win people’s hearts across the world? According to ancient Chinese philosophers, it must start at home. Humane authority begins by creating a desirable model at home that inspires people abroad.

This means China must shift its priorities away from economic development to establishing a harmonious society free of today’s huge gaps between rich and poor. It needs to replace money worship with traditional morality and weed out political corruption in favor of social justice and fairness.

In other countries, China must display humane authority in order to compete with the United States, which remains the world’s pre-eminent hegemonic power. Military strength underpins hegemony and helps to explain why the United States has so many allies. President Obama has made strategic mistakes in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, but his actions also demonstrate that Washington is capable of leading three foreign wars simultaneously. By contrast, China’s army has not been involved in any war since 1984, with Vietnam, and very few of its high-ranking officers, let alone its soldiers, have any battlefield experience.

America enjoys much better relations with the rest of the world than China in terms of both quantity and quality. America has more than 50 formal military allies, while China has none. North Korea and Pakistan are only quasi-allies of China. The former established a formal alliance with China in 1961, but there have been no joint military maneuvers and no arms sales for decades. China and Pakistan have substantial military cooperation, but they have no formal military alliance binding them together.

To shape a friendly international environment for its rise, Beijing needs to develop more high-quality diplomatic and military relationships than Washington. No leading power is able to have friendly relations with every country in the world, thus the core of competition between China and the United States will be to see who has more high-quality friends. And in order to achieve that goal, China has to provide higher-quality moral leadership than the United States.

China must also recognize that it is a rising power and assume the responsibilities that come with that status. For example, when it comes to providing protection for weaker powers, as the United States has done in Europe and the Persian Gulf, China needs to create additional regional security arrangements with surrounding countries according to the model of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization — a regional forum that includes China, Russia and several central Asian countries.

And politically, China should draw on its tradition of meritocracy. Top government officials should be chosen according to their virtue and wisdom, and not simply technical and administrative ability. China should also open up and choose officials from across the world who meet its standards, so as to improve its governance.

The Tang dynasty — which lasted from the 7th century to the 10th and was perhaps China’s most glorious period — employed a great number of foreigners as high-ranking officials. China should do the same today and compete with America to attract talented immigrants.

OVER the next decade, China’s new leaders will be drawn from a generation that experienced the hardships of the Cultural Revolution. They are resolute and will most likely value political principles more than material benefits. These leaders must play a larger role on the world stage and offer more security protection and economic support to less powerful countries.

This will mean competing with the United States politically, economically and technologically. Such competition may cause diplomatic tensions, but there is little danger of military clashes.

That’s because future Chinese-American competition will differ from that between the United States and the Soviet Union during the cold war. Neither China nor America needs proxy wars to protect its strategic interests or to gain access to natural resources and technology.

China’s quest to enhance its world leadership status and America’s effort to maintain its present position is a zero-sum game. It is the battle for people’s hearts and minds that will determine who eventually prevails. And, as China’s ancient philosophers predicted, the country that displays more humane authority will win.


Yan Xuetong, the author of “Ancient Chinese Thought, Modern Chinese Power,” is a professor of political science and dean of the Institute of Modern International Relations at Tsinghua University. This essay was translated by Zhaowen Wu and David Liu from the Chinese.
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3) Billionaire investor Warren Buffett said Europe's debt crisis had shown up a "major flaw" in the 17-member eurozone system and it would take more than words to fix it.

"There is a major flaw in the euro system ... I do know the system as presently designed has a major flaw and that flaw won't be corrected just by words," he told CNBC during his first trip to Japan on Monday.

Buffett, dubbed the "Oracle of Omaha" for his long track record as a value investor, said he had no idea how Europe's sovereign debt crisis, which started in Greece two years ago and rages on, would end, though he noted there were good valuations among companies in Europe.

"Not in the debt space, but in the equity space there are opportunities. I can think of a dozen euro stocks that are attractive ... there are stocks I like and wonderful businesses.

"We bought Tesco earlier. I could buy more if the price came down," said the 81-year-old chief of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., referring to the British retailer.

Buffett earlier told reporters in Iwaki City in northeast Japan that he also sees opportunities to invest in the country and was not deterred by either the March earthquake or a scandal engulfing camera and medical device maker Olympus.

Making a trip that he had cancelled in March due to the earthquake and tsunami, Buffett told reporters: "My view on Japanese people and Japanese industries is unchanged. We just had a demonstration over months that the tsunami did not stop Japanese business and the people."

"Olympus doesn't change my view at all on Japanese investments," Buffett said, referring to a widening accounting scandal at the company, which has admitted hiding losses for decades through improper accounting, raising questions about Japanese corporate governance standards.

Buffett earlier opened a new plant at cutting tool maker Tungaloy Corp., a unit of an Israeli firm in which Berkshire Hathaway holds an 80 percent stake. The factory is just 40 km from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant that was crippled by the disaster in March.


JAPAN STRUGGLES

A swift recovery in Japanese manufacturers' supply chains and output helped the world's No. 3 economy rebound from a post-quake recession and grow by 1.5 percent in the third quarter.

But a strong yen, cooling demand in key export markets and disruptions from widespread flooding in Thailand — a major production base for Japanese firms — have clouded the outlook, and Japanese stocks are down about 18 percent this year — their worst performance since 2008.

Japan's exports fell 3.7 percent in the year to October, the fastest pace in five months, signaling more weakness ahead as the strong yen and sputtering global growth drag on the recuperating economy.
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4)The Hillary Moment - President Obama can't win by running a constructive campaign, and he won't be able to govern if he does win a second term..
By PATRICK H. CADDELL AND DOUGLAS E. SCHOEN

When Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson accepted the reality that they could not effectively govern the nation if they sought re-election to the White House, both men took the moral high ground and decided against running for a new term as president. President Obama is facing a similar reality—and he must reach the same conclusion.

He should abandon his candidacy for re-election in favor of a clear alternative, one capable not only of saving the Democratic Party, but more important, of governing effectively and in a way that preserves the most important of the president's accomplishments. He should step aside for the one candidate who would become, by acclamation, the nominee of the Democratic Party: Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Never before has there been such an obvious potential successor—one who has been a loyal and effective member of the president's administration, who has the stature to take on the office, and who is the only leader capable of uniting the country around a bipartisan economic and foreign policy.

Certainly, Mr. Obama could still win re-election in 2012. Even with his all-time low job approval ratings (and even worse ratings on handling the economy) the president could eke out a victory in November. But the kind of campaign required for the president's political survival would make it almost impossible for him to govern—not only during the campaign, but throughout a second term.

Put simply, it seems that the White House has concluded that if the president cannot run on his record, he will need to wage the most negative campaign in history to stand any chance. With his job approval ratings below 45% overall and below 40% on the economy, the president cannot affirmatively make the case that voters are better off now than they were four years ago. He—like everyone else—knows that they are worse off.

President Obama is now neck and neck with a generic Republican challenger in the latest Real Clear Politics 2012 General Election Average (43.8%-43.%). Meanwhile, voters disapprove of the president's performance 49%-41% in the most recent Gallup survey, and 63% of voters disapprove of his handling of the economy, according to the most recent CNN/ORC poll.

Consequently, he has to make the case that the Republicans, who have garnered even lower ratings in the polls for their unwillingness to compromise and settle for gridlock, represent a more risky and dangerous choice than the current administration—an argument he's clearly begun to articulate.

One year ago in these pages, we warned that if President Obama continued down his overly partisan road, the nation would be "guaranteed two years of political gridlock at a time when we can ill afford it." The result has been exactly as we predicted: stalemate in Washington, fights over the debt ceiling, an inability to tackle the debt and deficit, and paralysis exacerbating market turmoil and economic decline.

If President Obama were to withdraw, he would put great pressure on the Republicans to come to the table and negotiate—especially if the president singularly focused in the way we have suggested on the economy, job creation, and debt and deficit reduction. By taking himself out of the campaign, he would change the dynamic from who is more to blame—George W. Bush or Barack Obama?—to a more constructive dialogue about our nation's future.

Even though Mrs. Clinton has expressed no interest in running, and we have no information to suggest that she is running any sort of stealth campaign, it is clear that she commands majority support throughout the country. A CNN/ORC poll released in late September had Mrs. Clinton's approval rating at an all-time high of 69%—even better than when she was the nation's first lady. Meanwhile, a Time Magazine poll shows that Mrs. Clinton is favored over former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney by 17 points (55%-38%), and Texas Gov. Rick Perry by 26 points (58%-32%).

But this is about more than electoral politics. Not only is Mrs. Clinton better positioned to win in 2012 than Mr. Obama, but she is better positioned to govern if she does. Given her strong public support, she has the ability to step above partisan politics, reach out to Republicans, change the dialogue, and break the gridlock in Washington.

President Bill Clinton reached a historic agreement with the Republicans in 1997 that led to a balanced budget. Were Mrs. Clinton to become the Democratic nominee, her argument would almost certainly have to be about reconciliation and about an overarching deal to rein in the federal deficit. She will understand implicitly the need to draw up a bipartisan plan with elements similar to her husband's in the mid-to-late '90s—entitlement reform, reform of the Defense Department, reining in spending, all the while working to preserve the country's social safety net.

Having unique experience in government as first lady, senator and now as Secretary of State, Mrs. Clinton is more qualified than any presidential candidate in recent memory, including her husband. Her election would arguably be as historic an event as the election of President Obama in 2008.

By going down the re-election road and into partisan mode, the president has effectively guaranteed that the remainder of his term will be marred by the resentment and division that have eroded our national identity, common purpose, and most of all, our economic strength. If he continues on this course it is certain that the 2012 campaign will exacerbate the divisions in our country and weaken our national identity to such a degree that the scorched-earth campaign that President George W. Bush ran in the 2002 midterms and the 2004 presidential election will pale in comparison.

We write as patriots and Democrats—concerned about the fate of our party and, most of all, our country. We do not write as people who have been in contact with Mrs. Clinton or her political operation. Nor would we expect to be directly involved in any Clinton campaign.

If President Obama is not willing to seize the moral high ground and step aside, then the two Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Harry Reid and Rep. Nancy Pelosi, must urge the president not to seek re-election—for the good of the party and most of all for the good of the country. And they must present the only clear alternative—Hillary Clinton.

Mr. Caddell served as a pollster for President Jimmy Carter. Mr. Schoen, who served as a pollster for President Bill Clinton, is author of "Hopelessly Divided: The New Crisis in American Politics and What It Means for 2012 and Beyond," forthcoming from Rowman and Littlefield
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5)Europe and the Palestinians: What's the Difference Between Ordinary insanity and Middle East Policy Insanity?
By Barry Rubin

What is the definition of insanity? Repeating the same behavior and expecting different results.

What is the definition of Middle East policy insanity? Intensifying the same behavior that has already failed and expecting a better result.

Example: After 60 years of failure by radical Arab nationalism being intransigent, warring on the West, trying to destroy Israel, and seeking to create a utopian Arab society that turns into a ightmare, we are about to get six decades or so of revolutionary Islamism doing each of these things in an even more extreme way.

But here's my favorite instance for today. For almost three years, the Palestinian Authority (PA) has refused to negotiate with Israel. It has kept none of its commitments, rejected every U.S. initiative, and wasted an entire year playing with a unilateral independence bid at the UN to avoid making a compromise peace. It has made a unity agreement with the genocidal, antisemitic Hamas.

The PA has also been rife with corruption and there is a huge economic catastrophe facing Europe. Oh, and the PA also maintains a huge, well-paid security establishment that doesn't do anything useful and has on its payroll antisemitic preachers who spew hate

So how does Europe respond? Obviously by increasing aid to the PA by 20 percent, from 500 million to 600 million Euros for 2012.

That will teach them a lesson all right! But what lesson? Why the lesson that extremism, intransigence, refusal to make peace, inciting to violence and glorifying terrorism are rewarded.
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6)Simon Hunt November/December Economic Report

"The world is in a balance sheet depression which will make a second and perhaps more dangerous credit crisis almost inevitable. That should break out next year or in 2013.

"The three global pillars of the world economy, the USA, Europe and China, each have their own problems, but their impact is global because of the feedback loops from the financial sector to the economy.

"The USA has a debt and deficit profile which is unsustainable; the Euro Zone has to decide whether it can forge a fully fiscal union or whether the costs are too great, in which event membership will be restructured; and China is trying to put its economy on a more sustainable growth path at a time of leadership change.

"Debt and demographics will be the determining forces to global growth. Markets will no longer countenance indecision and pushing debt problems under the table by lending more funds to indebted governments. Politicians want to postpone what they know is inevitable: debts must be repaid."
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7)Why Jim Rogers is right about commodities

Jim Rogers, a former partner of George Soros in the hedge fund game, has been vociferously bullish on commodities for going on 15 years. Except for getting older, married and becoming a parent, he has not changed.

Here are some of Rogers's comments. Even after applying the true-believer discount, they offer a feast for thought:

"The 19th Century was the age of Britain, the 20th Century was the age of America, and the 21st Century will be the age of China," Rogers said. He has moved from New York to Singapore with his wife and two young daughters, who he says are now fluent in Mandarin.

Down on dollar-based investments

"The U.S. dollar has started fading as the world's reserve currency," Rogers said, assailing what he called the U.S. government's de facto policy of devaluation.

"However, the dollar could get a temporary boost if the government allows U.S. companies to repatriate their overseas cash without onerous taxation," he said.


"The 30-year bull market in bonds is about to come to an end," Rogers said. "Bond portfolio managers should start looking for a different line of work."

Added Rogers: "Stocks have been in a trading range for 12 years, and that will continue." Long spells of go-nowhere meandering are fairly common in the market's history, he explained, citing the Dow Jones Industrial Average's fluctuation from roughly 800 to 1000 from 1964 to 1982 -- almost 18 years.

"I'm short American technology, Europe and emerging markets," Rogers said. "I'm also bearish on American education, but I haven't figured out how to short Princeton." (Rogers graduated from Yale University in 1965 and from Oxford University in 1966.)

But why would Rogers short emerging markets, when they would seem to figure prominently into his bullish commodities scenario, not to mention his prediction of Chinese global dominance?

"The time to buy emerging markets is when everyone else is dumping them," he said, "not when there are 20,000 M.B.A.s running around touting them."

"The secular bull market in natural resources began in 1999," Rogers said. This advance shows no immediate signs of ending, he added, "but when it does, it will end in a bubble, like all long-term bull markets do."

Rogers predicted: "There will be more social unrest and more countries will fail. Politicians will try to impose price controls, of course, but they won't work. Speculators will be the scourge of society, attacked from all sides. It will get very ugly."

Seeds of change

"I own all commodities, but I own agriculture most of all," he said. "Agriculture is in the worst shape of all commodities in terms of adequate supply." One reason is that "we're running low on farmers. How many young people do you know who want to become farmers?" he asked the audience of dark suits.

And even if farmers were not in shorter supply, population growth is reducing the amount of arable land at the same time it is increasing the demand for food and fiber, Jim declared. As a result, "farmland will become one of the great investments of our time."

"I don't know if I'm a good commodities investor or not," Jim said, "and I don't need to know. I invest in commodities through indexes."

Those would be his own indexes, which he started developing in the late 1990s. The Rogers International Commodity Index is the basis of an exchange-traded note on the New York Stock Exchange, as well as several other investment products.


Some people were upset that commodities did not save their portfolios from the stock market plunge of 2008, and so swore off the asset class. This year, too, stocks and commodities both are falling, and for the same reason -- the global economy is slowing and may again tip into recession.

Most of the time, though, commodities do diversify investment portfolios. And it is hard to conceive of a world in the next 25 years or more in which natural-resource scarcity will not be a major economic theme. Getting in position to ride this theme seems to be as close to a no-brainer as anything gets in investing.
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