IU.com: Last year, you had said you were investing in sugar. Are you still a fan?

Rogers: Sugar has doubled or tripled since then. It’s at a 28-year high. I still own sugar; I’m not selling my sugar. Even though sugar’s been going through the roof—even though I wouldn’t buy sugar right now, I’m not selling it. Even though it’s at a 28-year high, it’s still 70 percent below its all-time high, so you can see the enormous amount of scope sugar still has over the next few years. I’m not suggesting over the next few days weeks or months, but certainly the next few years.

Agriculture I suspect is still the best place to be, but I’m not a very good market timer or short-term trader, so I don’t know.

IU.com: Oil has been all over the map in the last year in terms of price. What do you think is its fair value?

Rogers: If I were that smart, I’d be rich, wouldn’t I? If you find somebody [who knows], please give him or her my phone number. With commodities, the way the academics talk about it, it’s the clearing price—it’s the price at which supply and demand come into balance. You’re going to have enough coming to market to meet whatever demand there is, and that will be the price. Unfortunately, that price never existed because with open markets, prices fluctuate a lot. I know it’s much higher than now because right now oil reserves around the world are declining at a fairly steady rate. At present rate of consumption and production, we won’t have any oil in 20 years at any price. So I know it’s got to be higher in order to bring out more supplies of energy and to reduce consumption of energy. What is that price? I don’t know, but it’s a lot higher than where it is now.

Now that doesn’t mean that oil can’t go down by 50 percent next year. If suddenly the U.K. goes bankrupt, I promise you oil will go down by 50 percent next year, but if America bombs Iran, oil will go up by 100 percent next year. So it depends, but over the next decade, the surprise is going to be how high the price of oil stays and how high it goes.

IU.com: Is alternative energy a viable investment?

Rogers: Alternative energy has a fantastic future if you can find the right companies that can execute—whether it’s wind power or nuclear power or solar power; whatever it happens to be. Solar and wind are not economic right now at these prices for oil, but oil prices are going to go higher, and if they don’t, the governments are still going to subsidize that kind of energy, so they have a brilliant future.

IU.com: Beyond commodities, what asset classes should investors consider?

Rogers: Commodities are the only place I know where the fundamentals are improving. The fundamentals at Citibank are not improving; the fundamentals for commodities continue to improve, and that’s where I’m focusing. Perhaps currencies—if you know what the Japanese yen is, you might consider investing there, or the Swiss franc or the Canadian dollar. But other than that, for the most part, I haven’t bought any stocks except in China last fall.

The only bubble I see developing in the world right now is in long-term government bonds in the United States. The idea that somebody would lend money to the United States for 30 years in U.S. dollars at 4 or 5 or 6 percent interest is incomprehensible to me. I’m not short bonds right now because the government keeps driving them up—I don’t know how long they’re going to do it—but I do suspect and hope that sometime in the next year or two, I’ll be shorting U.S. government bonds, because that’s the only bubble I see developing.

IU.com: Are we still waiting for the other shoe to drop with regard to the financial crisis?

Rogers: In my view, yes. What we are doing now is making the situation worse. The idea that you would solve a problem of too much debt and too much consumption with yet more debt and yet more consumption? That defies comprehension, for me. Now, I’m not a politician, or obviously I’d think this was brilliant.

It’s making the situation worse, and in two or three years—or maybe even next year—we’re going to be facing a much, much worse situation.

IU.com: One last question: What’s your favorite BRIC country?

Rogers: That whole BRIC thing is some kind of marketing sham—there’s no validity to it at all. The only one I own is China or maybe Brazil. I’ve owned China for 10 years; whenever it collapses, I buy more. I hope I continue to do that.

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