Sunday, October 5, 2008

The incompetent economists say no one could have seen the financial crisis coming. What sort of RUBBISH is that ?

I constantly see so called economists on the news saying no one could have predicted the financial melt down . Well what rubbish ,a fifth grader with a pocket calculator would have seen this coming . I am just glad none of these numskulls are in charge of my finances. Warren Buffet the worlds best investor knows the minimum required return on investment as he just lent 3 billion dollars to General Electric which were having trouble attaining funds due to the credit squeeze at 10% per year. Now take ten percent as the base line for return. Why did anyone think price to earnings ratios of 30 to 40 equal to 2.5% for bank shares or any others which is riskier than cash deposits to be considered acceptable ? The more volatile an investment is the higher the guaranteed return should be. Also take into account inflation between 3 and 5% then you would be losing money.
This whole problem has been created by huge super funds and other large groups that have not been investing in new production but just inflating the prices of existing assets until these assets can no longer return a reasonable dividend. There is just to much of this lazy money in our economies looking for an easy reliable home even with minimal returns.
Australia has initiated many tax effective investment programs to establish new industries like wine,olive oil, tree plantations . Many will fail and this is why it is imperative they do get the support of large investors . The playing it safe mentality of super funds and investors in general has not worked out for them in the long run with the bubble bursting on property,share markets, credit markets and commodity prices. So they may as well invest in new industries like renewable energy,carbon tree sinks, fresh water recover systems and other real economy products such as food . Instead of hiding behind traditional asset based investments that inevitably become overinflated which should never have had PE's above 10 times earnings.
To those large investors i say "get off your bums and get your hands dirty creating new business's " and if you don't have the skills to start a new business what the hell are you doing handing investment money. I mean if you have enough skill to value an investment properly surely you have the basic skills to start up enterprises.

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