Thursday, February 21, 2008

Will sovereign wealth funds support the market?

BBC Radio 4 broadcast an interesting programme on sovereign wealth funds tonight. Is it not possible the oil exporting and trading surplus nations will be looking for a home for their capital, at the same time as private investors and overborrowed institutional investors are trying to cash out?

If so, the real story is not yet another impending market crash, whose effects may in any case be softened by an influx of new money that has political motive and so is not so narrowly focussed on a fair market price; instead, the major issue may be that, just as the West's industrial base has been hollowed-out, so its equity base may be attenuated in the same way.

In other words, our countries are like a man who has lost his job and is just about to find out that his pension scheme has been raided.

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