By bailing out Wall Street and applying “band-aids” to the economy, the U.S. Federal Reserve may well be causing its own downfall – even as it hastens the demise of the greenback as a viable global currency, investment guru Jim Rogers told Money Morning during an exclusive interview.Because of such strategic missteps, U.S. consumers could be facing a long and painful economic malaise, similar to the “lost decade” of 1990s Japan, or the stagflation-riddled 1970s in the United States, Rogers said.

Make no mistake: If that happens, there are two clear culprits – current Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan.

Bernanke “and Greenspan together will probably bring [about] the end of the Federal Reserve,” Rogers said during the interview in Singapore. “We’ve had two central banks in America that failed [and] this third central bank will probably fail, too, because of Bernanke and Greenspan. The Federal Reserve [just] put $200 billion more onto its balance sheet of mortgages. Now I don’t know how big they can expand their balance sheet, but if they keep doing it, there’s only so much – and they just bought Bear Stearns (BSC).”

Rogers first made a name for himself with The Quantum Fund, a hedge fund that’s often described as the first real global investment fund, which he and partner George Soros founded in 1970. Over the next decade, Quantum gained 4,200%, while the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index climbed about 50%.

It was after Rogers “retired” in 1980 that the investing masses got to see him in action. Rogers traveled the world (several times), and penned such bestsellers as “Investment Biker” and the just-released “Bull in China.” And he made some historic market calls: Rogers predicted China’s meteoric growth a good decade before it became apparent and he subsequently foretold of the powerful updraft in global commodities prices that’s fueled a year-long bull market in the agriculture, energy and mining sectors.

Given Rogers’ prescience – not to mention all the uncertainty facing U.S. investors right now – we thought it was well worth a sit-down with the noted guru, even though it meant traveling all the way to Singapore, where he now lives with his family, to do so.

During that interview here in Singapore, Rogers also said that:

• Although the United States faces perhaps its most daunting economic challenges in at least a generation, “in America, most people do not understand that there is a problem.”
• Because of these weak-dollar efforts – as well as the billion-dollar bailouts – “America is now the largest debtor the world has ever seen.”
• Although the central bank seems intent on engineering a U.S. economic rebound by creating an ultra-weak dollar, no country in history has ever emerged from a serious financial crisis by “debasing its currency.”

The bottom line: The strategies that the central bank is currently employing are nothing short of “outrageous,” Rogers said.

“You know, I’ve read the Federal Reserve Act,” he said. “Nowhere does it say [the central bank is] supposed to bail out investment banks! Nowhere does it say you should bail out Wall Street. Their mandate was to have a sound currency, and then it was later expanded to have employment – to help employment. But nowhere does it say: ‘Bail out investment banks.’”

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