INVESTMENT BIKER: On the Road with Jim Rogers

A strange work of travel writing that might well have been entitled International Investment and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Motorcycle enthusiasts and investors interested in predictions about the world economy will enjoy this account by fast-track biker and financier Rogers of his 20-month world odyssey in search of financial enlightenment. In 1980, he retired from Wall Street, a millionaire at the age of 37, intent on fulfilling his dream of riding his motorcycle around the entire planet. After years of battling with Communist bureaucrats in both China and the Soviet Union, Rogers crossed China by motorcycle in 1988 and received permission in 1989 to cross Siberia. With his girlfriend, he finally set off in March 1990 for a world tour, commencing from Ireland, traversing six continents, and finishing in Texas. Rogers's focus is economic; where other writers might see culture, scenery, or people, he sees labor, resources, and capital. Whether in Japan, New Zealand, or Mexico, his theme is almost obsessively the same: The enemy of efficiency and productivity is ""statism"" (excessive regulation) in all its socialist, social democratic, fascist, and Communist variants. Rogers is bullish about countries, like those in South America, where he sees statism on the wane, while he judges nations that impose currency controls and trade restrictions to be bad investment risks. Lamenting what he sees as the US's unsound currency, ballooning budget deficits, and increasingly statist orientation, Rogers, more bearishly than many will like, calls this country ""an obvious short sale."" Surprisingly uninformative about the many countries Rogers visited, and his tendency to view all societies solely through the prism of libertarian/free-market ideology ultimately proves wearisome.