A power shift from New York to Washington, from Dubai to Abu Dhabi, from Shanghai to Beijing. The fall of globalization and the rise of state capitalism. President Obama shifting global opinion of the US back out of the red, but its a shift that is blown far out of proportion. 
These were but a few [...]

When one turns on the news today, there’s a good chance that they will be faced with the image of a well-dressed professional exiting their office carrying a simple cardboard box:  a sad sight for sure and even worse for investor confidence.  The collapse of the second major U.S. bank in as many weeks has [...]

 Analyst Arnab Das of Dresdner Kleinwort writes in the Financial Times that sovereign wealth funds are the solution to the global financial crisis, and should not be subjected to so much scrutiny.
SWFs are here to stay. Elections may foment opposition but host country and SWF governments will engage constructively, given shared interests in global financial [...]

Quite the interesting column in the Wall Street Journal this week:

Don’t Pick on Sovereign Wealth
By DOUGLAS REDIKER and HEIDI CREBO-REDIKER
FROM TODAY’S WALL STREET JOURNAL EUROPE
July 17, 2008
Under pressure from the U.S., Europe and the IMF, representatives of 25 sovereign wealth funds managing about $3 trillion in assets met last week in Singapore to discuss how [...]

Two reports from the Wall Street Journal caught my eye today - the first one being that the U.S. Energy Information Administration is now saying that it expects $100 a barrel oil to be the norm for 2008 - changing expectations from just three months ago that prices would average $87 a barrel. The [...]

This one comes from the Financial Times:

US agrees on principles for wealth funds
By Daniel Dombey in Washington
The US announced on Thursday that it had reached an agreement with Abu Dhabi and Singapore on a set of principles for investment by sovereign wealth funds, a step it hopes will assuage concerns about such funds’ transparency and [...]

Here is an interesting talk by Edwin M. Truman of the Peterson Institute on the potential threat (or lack thereof) of sovereign wealth funds to the United States:
Question: Do sovereign wealth funds pose a risk to the United States?
Answer: We live in a risky world, but the economic and political risks to the United States [...]

 
I hear a lot of convincing arguments about why we shouldn’t worry about the Kremlin’s sovereign wealth ambitions.
After all, Russia’s $150 billion stabilization fund is comparatively tiny considering the returns that Gazprom and Rosneft are bringing in (though the dire lack of transparency of these state-owned firms make any estimation of capital management difficult), and [...]

The Wall Street Journal features a column from Sen. Evan Bayh calling for more rules on SWF. This should be taken very seriously.

Time for Sovereign Wealth Rules
By EVAN BAYH
February 13, 2008; Page A26
Imagine what would happen were a candidate for president to propose that the federal government begin buying up shares of major U.S. [...]

The lack of investment reciprocity between Europe and Russia, especially in energy assets, is beginning to raise some concerns among officials - especially considering that the president-to-be recently called upon the business sector to go on aggressive spending sprees abroad.
Now all eyes are on Russia’s modest brand new sovereign wealth fund, fueled by $32 [...]