He most absolutely, positively has been WRONG for the past 20 years. He's been saying the same thing over and over again, and it never happened. If you followed Jim Rogers' advice back in the 80s, you would have missed out on the strongest bull market in history. Congratulations. Even now, when the US is issuing trillions in debt, its deficit is a mess, etc... the dollar is still holding up. If not now, then WHEN? A broken clock is right twice a day. Does that make the clock right? A prediction of an end result without a corresponding prediction of timing is completely useless. People are predicting that the super-volcano under Yellowstone national park will erupt some time in the next 200,000 years and destroy the entire Western USA. I'm sure that person who predicted that will eventually be "right", just like Jim Rogers. Are you going to sell all you stuff and move to the East coast? Oh wait, what about global warming, I guess you should move to the Midwest instead.
Move to Asia, that's the future! I believe Rogers touched upon that in his market wizards interview as well, back in the eighties.
But now you're assuming Rogers traded in the direction of his predictions and seeing as he has performed pretty well over the past 20 years I'd think he has not. Yes, timing is important but it doesn't have to be perfect and even those who see a bearish event can have an open enough mind to see opportunity for a bullish play in the meantime.
Here is a 2002 Peter Schiff video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhJaVEWAG24 I'd be happy to hear people's opinion on whether he is 'a broken clock' or he was indeed on to something even back then. Cheers.
I don't think there could ever be a one world currency, because, as you've touched on, the world is too diverse. What country wants to give up control of its monetary policy? Europe did it, but most of the countries involved are very similar culturally. Can you imagine the Chinese in charge of American monetary policy? Or Americans in charge of monetary policy of Arabs, or say Venezuela? I just can't see it happening.
Peter Schiff was right about the housing crisis back in 2006/2007, but the conversation was about Jim Rogers. Peter Schiff's timing was impeccable, and everyone laughed at him and he got the last laugh. The only problem is that his trading picks weren't good. I believe he lost money in 2008 because of flight to safety, and in 2009 he made money from the Chinese markets. Not sure how he's faring right now with the chinese markets down 15+% since August though. The question now is whether or not his prediction of armageddon will be correct. As I've said previous, I think basically he's right, but I think it won't be enough for the world to lose confidence in the US... not yet anyway.
Marc Faber told people in 2000 to buy gold and oil because they were going to go to +1000$ and +100$ in a few years but he was rather bearish on stocks themselves calling for a DOW 6K or something like that. No one has all of them right. I like listining to these guys anyway because they implement history in their discours which is always nice to learn.
Or Americans in charge in Arabs? Places like Afghanistan and Iraq for example? It could argued that the Chinese are already indirectly incharge of American monetary policy. The probability will be a progressive reduction of currencies, inititially to 4 in the developed world, in the same manner as the recent impartial reduction in the number retail banks in the US. It's still moving too fast, however.
Peter Schiff is a great speaker and a wide reaching thinker. I own his books. He's a great starting point for an investor / trader. However, he doesn't understand correlation, nor global macro liquidity distortions like other people out there do. Example: He was long emerging Markets stocks of all kinds through the crisis and had a 70% drawdown, so I've read. So risk management is important when your trading other peoples money, you can't just be a theoretician.