SHOWS: SINGAPORE (May 28, 2013) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL)

JIM ROGERS, AUTHOR, STREET SMARTS

1. REPORTER OFF CAMERA SAYING:

'China's President has signaled tolerance for slow economic growth, saying the nation won't sacrifice the environment to ensure short-term growth. Would you say China is stepping back from the aggressive stance as the global markets slow?'

2. JIM ROGERS SAYING:

'Well I hope China is stepping back. China several times in the last three or four years has indicated that it's cooling off. All you have to do is watch ET Now. If you're attentive, you'll see that the Chinese have been trying to slow things down for a while. They have a property bubble, they have inflation. So what they're doing is wise if you ask me. And of course many of their customers are having slowdowns - Europe, America, Japan - so it's not unusual for China to have a slowdown. And by the way, Ayesha, you know slowdowns are normal. No country in the world has a constantly expanding GDP. In America in the nineteenth century as we were rising to power and glory, we had fifteen depressions with a 'D'. And we did a pretty good job in the twentieth century.'

3. REPORTER OFF CAMERA SAYING:

'And what is the impact of China in terms of commodities?'

4. JIM ROGERS SAYING:

'Whenever you have a slowdown for someone who's buying anything, whether it's soap, or wheat, or whatever it happens to be, certainly the prices are under pressure when buyers slow down. But that's normal. And certainly you have seen it in some commodity prices in the last year or two.'

5. REPORTER OFF CAMERA SAYING:

'Global equities have seen a strong run up in the month of May before consolidating or even correcting a bit in last few sessions. Would you rather favor this asset class vis-a-vis commodities?'

6. JIM ROGERS SAYING:

'Well I don't really want to own equities right now. I owned a fair amount of Japanese equities, as you may remember, I sold most of them two weeks ago. I thought I was selling them badly. It looks like I might have got something right for a change. But I'm not very optimistic about equities. Because you see what happened in Japan when people start getting worried about the end of the artificiality. Ayesha, when everybody realizes that all the central banks are going to have to cut back, it's not going to be fun. I mean, the Japanese stock market has collapsed in three days. You just wait until the whole world has to face this problem.'