Jim Rogers - who co-founded the now closed Quantum Fund with George Soros - told 750 global fund managers in Tokyo today that, America is "completely out of control", there will be a 20-year bull market in commodities and that prices will be in turmoil.
And he also warned that it "made sense" if global competition for resources ended in armed conflict.
Mr Rogers told delegates to the CLSA investment forum that the prices of all agricultural products would "explode" in coming years and that the price of gold, which hit an all-time high of $964 an ounce yesterday, will continue its surge to as much as $3,500 an ounce.
Gold would continue to rise, the analyst Christopher Wood told fund managers, "because it is the exact opposite of a structured finance product". In a blistering attack on US monetary policy and the "helicopter cash drop" responses of the Federal Reserve, Mr Rogers described the American dollar as a "terribly flawed currency".