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Stephen Jen, an economist with Morgan Stanley, monitors 29 sovereign-wealth funds with an aggregate buddle of $2.9 trillion dollars.
The UAE’s Abu Dhabi Investment Authority gets a lot of the attention today because of its huge reserves of US Dollars from its sale of Oil to the world (oil transactions still being denominated in USDs), and the fact that it is investing in our banks. That fund is at the top of the list with estimated assets of $875 billion.
Interestingly enough, Norway’s Government Pension Fund – Global comes in second at $380 billion. And as mentioned in my previous article on this subject, (Are We Selling Ourselves Cheaply to the Sovereign-wealth Funds?) it is profit driven in the good old capitalist way.
The China Investment Corporation, surprisingly perhaps, is down the list below Singapore’s GIC ($330 billion), Saudi Arabia’s various funds ($300 billion) and the Kuwaiti Reserve Fund for Future Generations at $250 billion. China’s fund has been blessed with $200 billion, a fraction of the estimated ¾ trillion dollars of U.S. IOUs held by the People’s Republic of China (PRC, or Communist China).
Surprisingly, the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation, a sovereign-wealth fund held by the state of Alaska and based on its mineral wealth, earns honorable mention within the top 12 on the list of 29 sovereign-wealth funds with assets of $38 billion.
The moral of the story, you ask? I don’t know about you, but it was interesting to me to find out that, counter to the publicity, not all of these funds by any means are held by developing economies and based on earned surpluses of Uncle Sam’s Treasury IOU’s.
It seems to me, after cogitating on it a mite, that these financial entities are quite varied, and that they will be more important as the global economy develops.
Stay tuned as this saga unfolds before us.
I was watching the CNBC business channel this morning when, much to my wondering eyes, and ears, the commentator regurgitated many of the statistics from my article. I was quite proud of ME. The MSM had been watching me for a change.
that is until I realized that they probably get their in-depth world news from The Economist just as I do.
Bummer. It was a short trip, but pretty heady stuff for the moment of supposed glory.
But then the thought struck me. I received my copy of The Economist a few days ago in the mail. It had to have been printed and sent out at least a couple of days before that, to say nothing of the composition time and writing time involved. I would guess there was at least two weeks between the writing of the source articles I used in The Economist and this posting of this article.
Here is a weekly magazine that I have found to be well ahead of what I see on the T and V often times. That is if it is even covered by the Corpo-MSM in this country. What I do get to see in the American Corpo-MSM is often old news for the rest of the world.
It is good to know we are cradled in the loving arms of the American International Corporate arms and are shielded from the real world.
Makes me 'Proud to be an American'. Where can I get one of those knee jerk bumper stickers?
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