Description: Should they be transparent to the world? To the citizens of their own countries?

Question: Should sovereign wealth funds be more transparent?

Transcript: Well, I say I am actually glad you asked the question about sovereign wealth funds, because the debate of our soveriegn wealth funds is s perfect illustration of the new anxiety of the West. I mean, this been is demonization of sovereign wealth funds in the Western media and they have been described as political animals out to eat up the world. Actually the sovereign wealth funds are very conservative institutions. Their only goal is to preserve their wealth. They want to invest on the basis of the existing rules of the day and follow the rules of day in investing in companies or being exactly what America and Europe used to do when they had all the money in the world. In fact, they do not want to destabilize the world order, because if you are now holding the largest pools of capital, and, as you know, capitalists are very conservative, right? They don’t want to see revolution, they don’t want to see disruptions. The sovereign wealth funds are the new capitalists. They want to preserve this current order. So, how can you see them as a threat? They are not out there to break the rules, because they have a vested interest in playing by the rules, and they are as transparent or not as transparent as any hedge fund is. You tell me, go to hedge funds and say “open up your books to be and tell me what you do?” Which hedge funds is going to do it for you, right? Some of this is privileged commercial information and in the same way that is exactly what the sovereign wealth funds are doing. So I think this demonization of sovereign wealth funds is one of the biggest mistakes that the West is making as the result of the things anxiety about its lost of power in the world today.

Question: Is it a good idea to concentrate so much capital in so few hands?

Transcript: Well, you consider the concentration of capital that America used to have when you had the great barons, the Rockefellers and the Carnegies right? You used have this massive amount of sovereign wealth concentrated in very few hands. Well, this is history. This is what history is all about. How is it you are so calm about one individual, Bill Gates, having 60 billion dollars? If you are not uncomfortable about one individual having 60 billion dollars, why are you worried when the whole country of four million people have 200 billion dollars? If you divide 200 billion dollars by four million people, it is nothing compared to what Bill Gates has. So, why these double standards? That is what everybody is asking.

Question: Should sovereign wealth funds be more transparent to their own citizens?

Transcript: Sure, it is their money, but, no, if you are Singaporean, and you became independent in 1965, and you have the per capita income of Ghana, 500 dollars, and there was the no money in the bank, no savings, right? And today you are a Singaporean. You are sitting this enormous pool of savings. You suppose to feel unhappy or happy? Come on, the Singaporeans know that the great advantage that the Singaporeans have over many other countries is that they have absolute confidence that not a penny is being stolen from their pool of savings, okay? Now, very few countries can have the same kind of confidence. When you take a country like Nigeria. It has exported billions of dollars of oil, and Nigeria today has nothing, okay? Now, would you rather be a Nigerian or Singaporean? The citizens do get a lot of the money. In fact, if you look at the recent budget that was passed by the governments, it was considered the very generous budget. There were tremendous amount of hand-outs to various people. And you know the Singaporeans enjoy a standard of living today, which is frankly not just comparable to the West, but better than the West, because in the West you still have at the bottom, right? In America, for example, you have slums, you have ghettos, you have home homelessness, you have people with more access to medical care. Guess what? That doesn’t happen in Singapore. And why is that possible? It’s because of the huge pool of savings that Singapore has accumulated, which is been shared with the population.

Recorded on: 2/28/08