Jim Rogers: US Actions in Ukraine Will Turn Out Bad for the US; Russia is Doing What It Has to Do

Also from the Blodget interview of Jim Rogers:

It sounds like you have been reading American propaganda too much. This all started with America, with that diplomat in Washington [Victoria Nuland, the Asst. Secretary of State]; they have her on tape. We were the ones who were very aggressive. We're the ones who said, 'We're going to overthrow this government, we don't like this government, even though it was elected. They are fools and we don't like them, so we're going to get rid of them.' We were the aggressive ones. Crimea has been part of Russia for centuries. If it weren't for [Nikita] Khrushchev getting drunk one night, it would still have been part of Russia. That election was in process, anyway. Everybody would rather be part of Russia than Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the worst-managed countries I've ever seen. Of course people want to get out of Ukraine. You would, too. It's a disaster. And Russia has been much more prosperous.

Maybe Putin has been overly aggressive, but he has been subject to horrible stress in the West. The State Department says he's a bad guy, so the American press says he's a bad guy. They stop looking at the facts. It happened in previous wars, including Vietnam.

The other effect it's having is driving the Russians and the Asians together. That will hurt us — the US — in the end because the Asians have more money than the West. America's the largest debtor nation in the history of the world. China has huge assets, as do other Asian countries. So unfortunately, it's causing Russia to turn more toward Asia. That too will be good for Russia in the long term. There are 3 billion people in Asia. You see the Russians have made this huge gas deal with the Chinese. The Chinese and the Asians have recently started an Asian bank to compete with The World Bank. This whole thing, which we started, is only accelerating bad movements.

These sanctions are not hurting everybody, but they're certainly hurting Europe, which is driving more and more people to look for competitors to the US dollar and the US banking system. In the end it's good for Russia. I don't like saying it. I'm an American like you are. But I have to deal with facts, not with propaganda and not with hope.