From 600+ conversations with the world’s leading thinkers.
We are unapologetically at the high-risk, low-return sweet-spot of agricultural finance. We choose to address geographies and sectors where there are real market failures or at least deep market imperfections.
As a nation, we're missing out by not being more flexible, accommodating and encouraging and I think lockdown has- at least- brought about that one piece of positive change.
You must tell yourself the truth about money if you're going to give it away well. If you can't live well with $999 million, there's something clearly wrong with you.
My research over the years has made it clear that companies pay a high price for maintaining low wages, primarily in the form of employee turnover. This turnover can account for 10-25% of a company's total expenses, in relation to payroll in a common setup, with some cases even witnessing figures as high as 45%.
The policies they prescribe are a continuation or exaggeration of the previous policies that created the structural problems in the first place.
We are facing the mother of all debt crises. When you look at the data on private and public debt, the debt to GDP ratio was near 200% of global GDP in 1999, today it's more like 350% and rising. In advanced economies, it's over 420% and in China, 330% and rising.
Businesses have a tremendous amount of power to have impact through practices and business models that operate ethically, create useful goods and services, create jobs with dignity, and create opportunities in communities that may not have existed before.
The defining feature of our era is that the next generation are bona fide digital natives. They've been raised in a digital world, so concepts like artificial intelligence or quantum computing don't faze them. They're backed by technology, making them tech-empowered. This is the first aspect. They're equipped both to decide how capital is utilized and to research if it aligns with their values.
The true risk with all of these securities is the fact that real-yields are actually negative. So I don't think this is an issue of ability or willingness to pay, it's really that you are getting negative real returns.
The average American worker was subject to danger every bit as great as soldiers in war.
We've entered a geopolitical recession, where the old US led world-order is unwinding. This isn't just a Trump issue- it's about Europe, BREXIT, about Russia undermining the US and the West, the rise of China and its alternative political and economic models. The geopolitical recession is exacerbated by the lack of anyone being willing or able to take (or replace) the American role- thus, we are left with an enormous amount of instability, and little resilience.
Well credit, as you say, makes the world go around, but we want the right amount of credit. Too little credit and the economy can't grow, too much credit and the economy becomes unstable and we have the great financial crisis. So we need to find that proper Goldilocks point in the middle.