Sunday, April 26, 2015

"But you are under-invested in real things and over-invested in paper things."

The title is a quote from Steen Jakobsen, Chief Investment Officer of Saxo Bank in Denmark.  He was interviewed on the Peak Prosperity Show and you can find the entire interview here:

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/get-ready-for-the-biggest-margin-call-in-history/

Bit of a long read but worth it as he has some interesting ideas on what we are doing wrong and what we can do right. He does feel that getting it right is going to take a wake-up call, as in another major financial disaster to alert politicians to the need to do something different.   He ends noting:

I think we agree on one thing, we need to see some sort of a failure in the system for people to wake up. I think it’s very close by and I think we agree on that, yes."

 I only hope some of our politicians take the time to listen to him.  They probably won't, however, as he is Danish and what do they know.  Never mind that they are the third happiest country, well ahead of the U.S., which is just behind Mexico at number 15:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-04-23/these-are-the-happiest-countries-in-the-world

and that their government debt to GDP ratio is less than half of what it is in the U.S.  Nope, these stats mean nothing and this guy, just because he has that Chief Investment Officer title thingy, certainly knows nothing.  But - hey - what if he has something there.  Instead of just throwing trillions at too big to fails and falsely building yet bigger paper bubbles, how about when things get bad we invest in things like infrastructure, education and the like.  Money still spent, but spent in a way that can truly provide a return on investment. 

Just look around.  There is plenty of worthy investment to be made.  The Boston commuter rail system could not handle this past Winter and is in desperate need of some upgrades.  Same can be said now for San Francisco:

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/04/new-problem-old-tracks.html

And the Chicago school system is on the verge of bankruptcy:

http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2015/04/credit-swap-event-triggers-for-chicago.html

We have plenty of places we need to invest money and aren't and lots of places we are giving away money and shouldn't.  Time for a wake up call.