Transcript:

I’m sympathetic to where the Fed sits, because while their mandate is a US mandate, the impact on the world is significant.

One thing where I would criticize the Fed: every time we get some sort of volatility in the marketplace, they seem to get afraid of whether or not they can move towards normalization.

It’s like the Fed is afraid to take the training wheels off of the marketplace, and if you actually want to go fast on a bicycle, you want the training wheels off.

And we need to get to that place, and our view is the sooner we get there the better, and we’ll see how the markets react to that.

I think the reliance upon policymakers at this point today is far too high for my liking.

I don’t think that their job is to be enablers. I think it’s the financial market’s job to appropriately price risk and to move capital, to allocate capital in the best way that they see fit. There’s no guarantees in that.

And when we see that any investment doesn’t fail, I think it becomes unhealthy for the marketplace.

And what it really does is it creates an environment where the economy is very reliant upon the financial markets being very, very buoyant, and what we really need is the financial markets to react to what’s going on in the real economy.

So, the cart and the horse at the moment are in the wrong spot, and I do think that the policymakers are somewhat to blame for that.

So then, when I look at investing, why would you limit your investments to just the United States? Why would you not want to be a global investor, even if you are a US citizen? Or if you’re a UK citizen, why would you want all of your investments to be specific to the UK?

It doesn’t make any sense, because even when you buy the banks in the UK, it’s not like what’s happening with continental banks or US banks or Asian banks…it doesn’t impact what’s going on with your bank.

So, because the world is global, the investment strategies should be global, and I think that that’s very, very important, that even though the Fed has a mandate for the US, US investors shouldn’t have a mandate for the US.

The views expressed herein do not constitute research, investment advice or trade recommendations and do not necessarily represent the views of all AB portfolio-management teams.