Investment icon Jim Rogers says that not only will Asians live better than Westerners, they will finally start eating chocolate as well.
"There are 3 billion people in Asia and most of them have not had a very good standard of living in the past 100-200 years," Rogers told CNBC. "That’s changing and changing very rapidly."
"They’re gonna eat more; they’re gonna wear more clothes. So agriculture is going to do very well, including cocoa," Rogers explains.
"(Asians) like chocolate, they like sweets,” he told CNBC. “Most Chinese have never had chocolate to this day. They’re gonna have it and they’re gonna do well."
Rogers is nowhere near as positive in his outlook for the U.S. economy.
“In America, (Federal Reserve Chairman Ben) 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 says.
Rogers claims that nothing Bernanke has ever said has turned out to be right.
“Please go back and look up his record and you will see,” he says. “The man just doesn’t understand economics, he doesn’t understand finance, he doesn’t understand currencies. All he understands is printing money,” he says.
“This is not going to work.”
Bloomberg reports that, in a recent speech to central bankers and economists, Bernanke made his strongest statement yet that the Fed alone can’t keep the recovery going.
“Strong and stable” growth will “require appropriate and effective responses from economic policy makers across a wide spectrum” as well as private-sector leaders, Bernanke said, adding that the Fed’s remaining tools, including asset purchases, will work if needed.
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