The United States needs to stop printing money and take on austerity measures like the Europeans did, in order for the economy to recover, said billionaire investor Jim Rogers, chairman of Rogers Holdings.
"I'd rather have the Europeans running the U.S. Central Bank than the people running the U.S. central bank, least they know how to try to build for the future," Rogers told CNBC Monday.
“In America, Bernanke just says we'll print more money, we'll spend more money, even though the United States is now the largest debtor nation in the history of the world."
Rogers reiterated that economies in trouble should be allowed to go under, like bad companies.
"The things that have worked in the past... will be you go bankrupt then you re-organize and you start over. You have a painful period for awhile, and then you start over. This has been done in the past 3 or 4 thousand years, and that's the way you do it," said Rogers.
"Trying to push the problem out to the future, and printing money, we just had another example here in the U.S., it didn't work and it's not going to work."
Rogers said that with central banks "flooding the world with money", the only place to invest right now is in real assets, whether it's in "silver, or rice or natural gas".
"Paper money is not going to do it for you," he added.
No Bubble in Gold, Currencies are ‘Difficult”
He disagrees that that there's a bubble brewing in the gold market right now, although he doesn't rule that out in the future.
"I expect there to be hysteria in the precious metals markets in 5 to 10 years. Right now, very few people own gold, and I can hardly call something a bubble when very few people own it," he said.
Rogers also revealed that he is bullish on the agricultural commodity space.
"There are 3 billion people in Asia, and most of them had not had a very good standard of living in the past 100 or 200 years. That's changing and changing very rapidly. They're going to eat more, they're going to wear more clothes…so agriculture is going to do very well."
He pointed out that cocoa stands to do very well.
On currencies, he said it's a difficult asset class to invest in right now, as he expects "a lot more currency turmoil over the next 2- 3 years because of the huge imbalances that exist in the world."
"I would prefer the euro, perhaps with the yen second. Because there are many technical reasons that I'm optimistic about the yen," he concluded.
© 2010 CNBC.com
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