저자: LarryFink · 외국인
요약 보기
래리 핑크는 미국의 구조적 재정적자와 부채 문제가 장기적으로 심각하다고 경고하며, 3% 성장과 민간자본 활성화, 실물자산 투자 확대를 해법으로 제시한다. 핑크는 자신의 커리어(퍼스트보스턴 시절 1억 달러 손실 경험, 1988년 블랙록 창업)와 장기 투자 철학을 설명한다. 장기 낙관론자가 결국 이긴다는 입장이다. 재정 문제: 미국 재정적자가 2000년 약 8조 달러에서 현재 36조 달러 이상으로 늘었고, 연 2~3조 달러 속도로 증가 중이다. 미 국채의 약 30%를 외국인이 보유하며, 타국이 자국 자본시장을 키우면 이 자금 조달이 비싸질 수 있다고 우려한다. 성장률 3%를 10년간 유지해야 한다고 본다. 자본 배분: 머니마켓펀드에 12조 달러 이상이 잠겨 있고, 이를 실물자산·주식 투자로 옮겨야 한다고 주장한다. 예금자는 대출자(낮은 수익)이고 소유자가 부를 쌓는다는 논지이며, 월 20달러부터 시작하라고 권한다. 연 50bp 추가 수익이 30년 후 자산을 18% 더 키운다는 예시를 든다. 암호화폐·AI: 초기 비트코인은 자금세탁·랜섬웨어 영역이었으나 입장이 바뀌었다. 스테이블코인과 AI가 생산성을 높여 3% 성장의 열쇠라고 본다. 미국 GENIUS Act를 언급하며 각국이 자체 스테이블코인을 검토 중이라고 전한다. 정치·사회: 극단주의를 경계하나 미국의 분열은 결국 해법을 찾는 과정이라 낙관한다. 여러 국가 정상과 대화하며 공통적으로 성장과 경제 다변화를 원한다고 본다. 관세 문제도 질문이 많다고 언급했다. 개별 종목·지수에 대한 단기 가격 전망은 구체적으로 제시되지 않았다.
다듬은 글
To me, this is the beauty of the country. We are a mess, but we move forward. And when you think about that, this is one of the reasons why we as a country are able to create incredible companies, innovation, entrepreneurialism. Look at the two of us. Well, Larry, one of the things we're doing with this podcast is meeting people at places that are important to them.
And here we are at Black Rocks headquarters in Hudson Yards uh in Manhattan. And um I know that this is an important place to you, but your beginnings are in Southern California. Tell us a little about your journey from there to here. Well, actually I never saw snow fall before growing up in Southern California.
And um I knew I wanted to do something different. I knew when I graduated undergraduate I knew I did not go to wanted to go right to work and I was able to go right from undergraduate to grad school. Um and that afforded me two more years in in school to make a decision what I wanted to do. Uh and through that that extra two years of getting my MBA um you know it opened up so many different horizons and actually at that time that's how I learned more about Wall Street.
I had no concept of what Wall Street was. I mean, my father was a a very uh active investor his whole life, and he left a a pretty big mark on me and the virtue of long-term investing. But um but through that two-year process of getting my MBA, I did a lot of soulsearching. Maybe maybe there's something more than beyond Southern California.
Um, and I met a couple people in the industry and I went out uh in January 1976 for a bunch of interviews at different firms in Wall Street. Um, I ended up at First Boston and that's when I actually saw snowfall for the first time when I was interviewing here in January. But importantly, I just became um really excited and engaged about the opportunities to be in in the in the markets.
And this was right after um you know in 1974 that's when Wall Street was was given the notice that they that you can have fixed fixed price uh commissions and it was pretty much a pretty stark recession for a lot of the Wall Street firms and by and large most firms even at that time did only advisory business.
They did not have a balance sheet. And for those history buffs in related to Wall Street, in 19736, I think the sum of all the Wall Street firms uh capital might have been $200 million. I mean, it was a very much of a cottage industry. Uh the training program that I started at First Boston had 14 people.
So, it was really small and unique. But um I selected first Boston because I wanted them to be in trading and that required me to be in New York. Um and it was a very difficult first year of coming to New York. Um it was very different than Southern California. But over the course of a year I I I came to love New York City.
I came to love the meritocracy of uh of the firm and the ability to grow. But also I I found the whole idea of capitalism and what it can do and how you know everyday people can build a life and a career uh in this and if you uh are able to uh grow and grow and learn and and build you know the sky's the limits and so it became a very quick journey for me but importantly I knew really within the first 90 days of being in New York and and taking this job in trading.
Um that it was something that I was fascinated, something that I actually really enjoyed. Um and then I actually became pretty good at it. Yeah. See, it seems like the results would indicate that. Now you we met last year. You told me a little about how the seeds for Black Rockck came out of First Boston and the team that you developed, the leadership team.
What how did Black Rockck evolve from your days there and how does it influence your thinking around the way you run Black Rockck and your leadership team? Well, it really goes to my almost 12 year journey at First Boston. Um I was, you know, I started at 23 uh right out of grad school. Uh at 27, I became the youngest managing director in the firm's history.
I ran a department as I said was really successful really early. At 31, I was on the executive committee of the firm. Um, and at 34, I was a jerk. And you know, the journey was we were making lots of money, way beyond any imagination. We were children in a candy shop. It was just it was crazy times.
Um, you know, the whole book of Liars Poker talked about first Boston and Solomon Brothers, the war that we had, uh, and the competitive edges that we had between each other. Um, and we were making so much money, but we had really inadequate risk controls. We had inadequate knowledge of how we were the risk we were taking in in making all that money.
And I can look back and said, we probably should have been fired for making too much money because the amount of risk we were taking to make that type of money was probably not a great riskreward. But because there was no risk analytics there, the firm actually gave me more capital to put more money to work.
And then obviously in 1986 in the second quarter after a record first quarter, we lost $100 million. And then the firm woke up to the amount of risk we were taking. Now today 100 million is not that big of a loss. Back then that was a lot of money to lose. And I I actually Peter never forgave myself the fact you know that I allowed myself to be put in a position uh to taking on this type of risk without the knowledge of the type of risk we were taking.
And it was easy when you were making all the money and when you're right, but when you have a huge levered balance sheet, as we learned over the years, especially in the great financial recession, when you have that much leverage, if you're wrong by a little bit, it it could be this, you know, death, you know, in terms of a position.
And um I just could not believe I allowed myself to not understand what we were doing and how we were doing it. And um so that was June uh 1986 and it literally took me a year and three quarters to think about what did I want to do next. But I knew from that experience from June to September and try to mitigate and correcting the problem and I I just my soul departed the firm because getting back to the foundation of Black Rockck um I believed in team.
I believed when there is a fire, we run in it together. We hold hands and we put the fire out together and that was the whole foundation of what I thought partnership's about. And I actually felt very isolated and a lot of fingerpointing and all that stuff and and when you make a made a lot of money then there was a partnership when you lost money there was no partnership and no support.
Now my team, you know, I was running all fixed income then and the team was very supportive and all that stuff, but it was the, you know, we had the glue, but above me there was very little in terms of compassion, assistance, one team, one organization, and I knew I was going to leave, but I did not know what I wanted to do.
And I had many different opportunities to go back to another Wall Street firm and do that. I said, I'm not doing that. I'm not repeating this. I wanted to learn something else. And it was very clear to me as we were building new products um in the mid 80s we had more knowledge of those products and the the weaknesses and the strengths of these products than than the our clients.
Our clients were so dependent on us to help them understand it. And it was and it was very clear to me that I said, you know, if we could develop our own risk analytics on the on the buy side and really understand how the the risk we were taking, we can make, you know, we could create a new buyside firm.
And so I I'd like to say the ashes of my failure at First Boston was a fertilizer of the beginnings of BlackRock. And you still have the same partner group you started with. Is that correct? There were eight partners who joined. I mean I So I resigned on a Tuesday. I stayed there for a couple weeks to help out a transition.
The weekend right after I resigned, I had an open house in my house and I literally had 75 people work for me. What are the know what I was going to do and can they come with me? And you know I had the ability to hand choose the type of people we thought would be uh helpful in starting this company.
And fortunately uh two out of the eight people came from technology. So the whole idea was to develop our own risk analytics to understand what we were doing. Um and you know that was the beginning of a of a a great journey. Now I had two entrepreneurs who were willing to help finance me back in 1988.
Now you know we had the we had black Monday just four months earlier you know in 19 October 87 and which was the largest decline I think be uh you know up to the uh great depression. Um, so it was not something that would people would readily do, but I had two entrepreneurs who were willing to finance me to start the company myself.
And I honestly that whole journey that year and a half try to decide and the lack of partnership at uh that I was experiencing, I did not have as much confidence as I should have to just start my own company. Um, I did get to know um uh Steve Schwarzman and Pete Peterson when they started Blackstone in 1986.
And they just and they because they use first boss to help raise money. I I helped them raise money for their first fund. Um and I got to give Steve a lot of credit. He had more trust in in me than I had in myself. And you know I I was asked to become the fourth partner of the Blackstone Group. They provided the capital for us to start and that was the beginning of the of the platform.
We were very independent from Blackstone but our name was Blackstone in the early years and uh uh but it was but and you know from the first month when we started the firm people came to us and said we want to help you and within the first 80 90 days we were making more money than we were than our expenditures.
I mean it was just it was a big surprise and a lot of it was just the reputation that I had. Uh but you know we wanted an advisory client the first and foremost of a big savings loan that was acquiring another savings loan. They needed somebody to help them analyze all the all the all the portfolios and we did that.
Uh then in a very short period of time we were able to re raise our first dollar and that was not in the United States. The first client we ever had on the asset management side uh was a was a client in Japan that that we had prior relationships with. And then probably the greatest surprise to me was the support I had from all my competitors of First Boston and how they came to me and how they wanted to help out.
And so within uh within our first four months as a firm, we were able to raise like over a $500 million closed end fund. And that was the Wall Street firms trusted us, trusted us that even though we didn't have a track record, they trusted in what we were doing, the risk management. And so quite frankly, we were making money within the first 90 days of the firm.
And we never looked back. And and here you are, you're the now running the largest asset manager in the world, and you're considered a thought leader. You write extensively. You travel all over the world. When you're formulating your thoughts, there's an optimism that comes through, but you do have a lot of concerns around society in general.
How do you see the world today? What do you think the key issues, key problems are? What are you optimistic about there? I am an incredibly long-term optimist. Human beings solve problems. We solve problems by identifying the problems. And so what people get so mixed up is if you read the newspapers or read blogs or or listen or or watch a lot of social media, it's full of ugliness in by and large.
I look at the ugliness by and large and say, okay, we're talking about problems, whether they're social problems or economic problems or political problems. And in most cases, we solve those problems because we are we are exposing them, we're discussing them, and we mitigate them. So what I truly worry about in the over the long run are things that we don't talk about.
But so I I I I I get heartened that you know we as a society and with all my travels around the world the beauty of the United States is and that's the beauty of the United States. It is the democracy of thought democracy of ideas but also the you know the you know the whole foundation of free speech.
I mean a lot of it maybe are uh hateful or hurtful but the reality is that's a process that over the long run that you know we could see over over hundreds of years the United States is an absolute political mess. There's no change today. Like people tell me all the time whether they're from a red state or blue state it's never been worse.
Well that's not true. I mean the United States was in much worse shape in the 19 you know late 1960s with the Vietnam War. There was great divisions then. You go back and read the history of the United States. It is a mess and and so I I to me this is the beauty of the country. We are a mess. We expose our messiness, but we move forward.
And and you know, and when you think about that, this is one of the reasons why we as a country are able to create incredible country companies, innovation, entrepreneurialism. Look at the two of us where we where our journeys were, you know, and how where we came from. You can't do that anywhere else in the world.
Then you know this is why true this is a an incredible place to to be an entrepreneur to work hard and if you have something unique and meaningful that you know you you could you could build your your company into be beyond your wildest imagination and dreams. Um but overall we find solutions. If you go back to almost every crisis during our lifetimes, you know, after a period of time, the markets reassess itself and then start rallying again.
You know, whether I mean, I could go back to every part of my 49 years being in in in Wall Street now that the optimists are the long-term winners. Now, in a short run, a pessimist can really win in the short run, but generally there are very few pessimists know when to reverse their positions. Is there anything though that you see in today's landscape that gives you pause around that permanent optimism like the national debt or
Yes. Um our deficits are out of control. Um to just to put it in perspective in 19 in the year 2000 after 223 years of a nation the US deficits were8 trillion dollars. Today they're 36 plus trillion dollars. We raised our deficits by 27 billion over the last 28 trillion over the last 25 years and a trillion every couple months now.
And now we're going at a rate of two to three trillion a year. Uh 30% of our our US treasuries are financed by foreigners. And as other countries start developing their own capital markets, as they grow and as they are focusing on making their country great again, as they are focusing on maybe it's better to reinvest in our country than to diversify and investing in the United States, which that trend is starting to happen, it's going to be ve very costly for us to finance this debt.
The only way we could get out of this problem is we have to grow the economy. We need to grow by 3% a year for the next 10 years. That's a that's really hard. But if we unlock private capital, if we unlock the markets, we reduce uh permitting processes, if we if we ex, you know, accelerate um depreciation, the amount of money that's sitting in bank accounts, I mean, money market funds are now over 12 trillion dollars.
the amount of money that's sitting, you know, earning a short-term return. But if we could get more and more of that money invested in in real assets and my fee to everybody here in the United States, but in every other country, when you give your money to a bank, you're you are a lender. Lenders make very little money.
Over hundreds and thousands of years, the people who build wealth are owners of real assets. What I try to tell everybody whether I'm in India or here in the United States or any other country, grow with your country. And so what I'm trying to tell all the Americans, we need to get more and more Americans to invest in real assets, whether it is in the stock market or whether it is in in in their in their own home ownership or other things.
And I think it's really important and it could you could start with $20 a week or whatever it takes to start building that. But the I mean an interesting point is um getting back to just building up a nest eggs. If you could earn an extra 50 basis points over 30 years, 50 base points, which doesn't seem like that much, your your end pool of money is up 18% higher than if he didn't earn that extra 50 base points.
But getting back to the US deficits, Peter, um they're frightening. uh they're they're going to be absorbing more and more of our discretional spending. Uh we're too dependent on foreign purchases and when we had a presidential election last year and even today, nobody in Washington is really talking about it.
They give lip service. And so getting back to my whole idea, we solve problems by exposing problems. We're not solving this problem. We're not talking about it. And both parties are guilty. I'm not I'm not picking at one person or other. The irresponsibility of our federal government to spend this type of money, you know, 27 trillion dollars over 25 years.
Um it's it's this is at a path that is unsustainable unless we grow our economy. And so we need to find ways of unlocking private capital, giving confidence to 12 trillion dollars of money sitting in a bank account, giving them hope that no, that's you could make a lot more money investing in the markets over a long horizon, you're going to make a lot more money owning real assets of some sort.
And if we could get more people to doing that, you know, whether it is uh the whole the the amount of trillions of dollars we're going to need to digitize our economy uh with AI, the need to building power grids to find reliable dispatchable energy, maybe that's nuclear or it's going to be gas. it's going to be at the same time focusing on new technologies, you know, uh whether it's going to be solar or other forms, hydrogen.
So, all of this is in the mix and um and so this is the opportunity. This is why I'm so excited about where Black Rockck is and the opportunity we have in trying to bring uh these investments to to the forefront so our investors can earn that type of return that they can have retirement during uh you know with dignity and decency.
But we need to have every member of our government to wake up to the idea that this these deficits are threatening our future. They're threatening the value of the dollar. Let's be clear. If we did not if we were not the the country whose currency is the currency of the world, we would not be able to have these deficits, you know.
But because we are the currency for the world, we are we are accorded a privilege that no other country is accorded. We should not lose sight. It is a privilege. It is not a right. And I think too many men and women in Congress believe it's a right, not a privilege. And I think we're jeopardizing that right.
And it's not permanent. And I think we get away with it because there's no alternative right now. But as we move towards more crypto strategies, more stable coin. I was in Asia two weeks ago and you know the countries are all talking about creating their own stable coin because they're worried about the do the increased dominance of of having a dollar stable coin worldwide.
So they're all going to start their own getting back to they're going to focus on their own economy and they're going to digitize and create their own stable coin and digitization of their currency. So there are and you know and I do believe things like Bitcoin will play a big role in this too. And I know we're, you know, the our government is very in favor of this.
We just had the Genius Act that was signed last week. But the reality is these names, but but but if we don't handle this properly, we are going to lose this, right? I think we've got a uh to your point, we have a growth problem and and the other element is we have a spending problem which has got to get under control one way or another.
And totally absolute bipartisan uh disaster. And I talk to our clients all the time about what you just said earlier about being an owner versus a lender. There's a thousand investments. You black rocks in every single one of them. End of the day, you're an owner, you're a lender. And wealth wealth is created.
And don't be a lender. Don't be a lender. Lenders are for shortterm moments when you when you're when you're less optimistic. 100%. You know, you brought up cryptocurrency and your your personal belief around this or comments on this have certainly evolved over the years. It did. So tell me, tell our audience what you thought in the beginning, what you think today, what what's Black Rockck doing.
Um, I didn't believe in it. Um, actually in the early years, it was a domain of money launderers and and thieves. Obviously, you know, if you were if you're at a corporation, you were held ransom with some type of code, you paid in Bitcoin. So, I can tell you this still happens today. and still have
every six months one of our clients is business someone hacks it and wants Bitcoin to so as a ransom. So I said that I said in 2017 on a panel sitting next to Jamie Diamond who Jaime still today is against it very much so but right around 2020 around co when I had a lot you know a little more time on my hand um I started talking to a person who is a huge believer in it.
So it was me I you know the one thing I was throughout my 49y year career I'm still a student and there are times I'm wrong and so during this period of time I I brought in a bunch of different people talked to them learn more about it and I remember one time I met this one woman who was providing illegal jobs for Afghani women.
women could not work. You know, with the Talib with the uh Taliban uh in control of Afghanistan, women are prohibited to work. And this woman was trying to find a way to empower and employ women in Afghanistan. The Taliban controls the banking system, so there's not a chance that she could pay them.
But she started having them code. They were all coders. They were able to code for different companies out of Afghanistan. And they were being paid in Bitcoin. And so so I started this journey of learning of different applications and why and I studied why are people buying it and much of it has to do with and it gets back to our deficits.
Many people own Bitcoin because they're frightened of the debasement of their of their financial system of their currency. Many people own Bitcoin because they're frightened of their security. 20% of all Bitcoin holders are Chinese. Okay. then I don't you know the so you own it to me Bitcoin is digital gold you own gold for the same reason but it's even even more transportable because it's all you have authenticated ID and then you have all this stuff and you could move it around and so uh around 2023 24 I became a real believer in it and then we took a very active role and we used to bring in all these different people uh who were big believers in it uh like Michael Sailor from Micro Strategies.
I mean, Michael came to our office when his when the stock was in the teens, but he was a huge believer in it. Transformed his company. I mean, I could just say all these different people came in and talked and then we became, you know, we we became a leader in working with the SEC and in trying in trying to move forward in this.
And uh fast forward now a little more than 18 months when we first started creating a Bitcoin ETF. Today it's IBIT is 86 billion. We're you know at least you know 40% of the market today. Uh our Ethereum ETF is now $9 billion. We are the collateral manager for Circle. Um and we believe that the that stable coin is going to be a major component of how economy will work and Bitcoin is going to continue to be that alternative to gold.
And if there's more debasement on on on currencies, whether it's the dollar debasement or other places, they're going to be more demand for Bitcoin. And if there's more global instability and you weary about your security, this is an asset that you're going to own. And so there's so I I look at most of Black Rockck's money that we manage are we manage money because we're hopeful.
As I said, you you you you own real and hard assets because you're hopeful that over a 30-year period of time, the compounding of those assets are going to be worth a lot more than being a lender. and time, you know, almost every period of time in our man in man's history that has paid off. Um, and I look at Bitcoin as my hedge.
It's a modest hedge compared to the all the money we manage, but it is a legit I believe it's legitimate and it it can play a role no different than TIPS. Why would you own a TIP if you're in if you're heavily oriented to fixed income? own tips because you're worried about the value of fixed portfolio that inflation is going to rise and you're gonna you're gonna offset your fixing portfolio by owning tips.
I mean they're just these are just you know balancing you know a balancing uh asset to to fit into a whole portfolio. So if this is a fear-based asset, let's call it that. What what is it about the market that concerns you the most when you look at the market today? The crypto market? No, just the overall market.
Um gosh, I'm there's very little that I'm worried about in the overall markets today. I mean, I I mean, I hear the narrative, look at there's so few public publicly traded companies. I cut in half, right? 8,000 to 4,000 or so. But I think that's a natural evolution. You know, when we bought BGI in 2009, most companies said you can't be over 10% of a portfolio.
So that was only what now 16 years ago. Today, Black Rockck manages in many cases 100% of our clients portfolio. And so, the whole evolution has changed. And I think we as consumers, but we as you know people in business, um the most valuable asset we have is time. And if you believe that's only going to get more um more valuable, you're going to use fewer and fewer organizations to to be part of your life or fewer and fewer retailers.
And so if you take that, it should not be a surprise we went from 8,000 companies to 4,000 companies. That being said, the 4,000 companies are worth, you know, 3x of what the 8,000 companies were worth. So we're building more giants in every industry. I mean I look at the success of Walmart. I mean what Walmart has done alongside Amazon but in the re you know from a traditional retailer Walmart has gone from a strength to strength to strength.
They are using AI more than any other retailer and they're they're they understand their clients better than any other retailer by understanding what each client is buying when they're buying it with shelf space the whole idea. But there there's a great example. They're so much more efficient. In 2004, Black Rockck was public now for 5 years, but in 2004, I would say 90% of the public asset managers had a higher market cap than Black Rockck in 2004.
Today, all the public asset managers who trade public securities, the sum of them is not even worth half of Black Rockck. Uh and so you know you're you're seeing the scale operators you're seeing it in the transformation in the RAIA channel and what what what you're doing. I mean, we're seeing more concentration because scale provides us with more tools to help our clients.
And so, I I'm not worried about this shrinkage of public companies. And look, it most, you know, today because there's so much private capital, private firms can stay private longer, right? For sure. But that being said, in most cases, most private companies ultimately are going to go public because whether the founder or the leadership team wants to have a higher mo, you know, monetized somewhere or there might be a m founder succession issue and all these issues.
And so I'm I'm I'm very relaxed about that. And but I do believe what's the magic about the US economy is we we more rapidly weed out the weak links and we're building stronger enterprises, better enterprises, more connected to their clients than ever before. I think that's completely true. I I look at like when I talk to my clients, I go back to the 80s and say, "Remember all the restaurants in your neighborhood?
30, 40 of them, whatever there were. Very few of them are still standing today. But the the ones that struggled, they might have lasted 5 years, 10 years. Today it's not uncommon for restaurant to open up and be gone a month later or a year later. It's the same capitalist process. It's just moving so much more rapidly and we're really moving more towards these winter.
And for some people that's very destabilizing and I get it and this is why we have such you know so much populism in our country today because there's a little more fear and and this the AI and the technology change is going to is going to eliminate a lot of white collar jobs. At the same time, it's going to create massive amount of highly paid bluecollar jobs.
You know, we have we are going to have a massive shortage of electricians and AI electricians are paid about $150,000 a year. We're going to have a shortages in, you know, in so many different businesses right now. And so, this is one of the this is why yes, it's going to AI is going to shape the world.
It's going to create a lot of uncertainty because there going to be some big winners and big losers. And this is why we need to talk about this stuff and and help shape families and their children that where should their careers go. But the one thing I would say to everybody who's listening, the one thing that AI is not going to change is human touch.
So in reality is we're going to need more people who provide human touch than ever before, especially in an aging economy. We're going to need more nurses than we have today. So in a world that's going to be more isolated, more techdriven, the highest demand roles will be the people that are high emotional intelligence and able to deal with other people.
Absolutely. Across the board, more than ever, you've talked a lot about AI. What do you see AI as impact at Black Rockck today and in the future? What what do you think the big changes will be? Well, because of our scale, I mean, and and because uh we have our analytical system called u uh Aladdin where, you know, many many of our clients utilize and actually many of our competitors use it.
Um um we we believed uh advanced data analytics were going to be an important component of who and what we are. Uh in 2017, we we created an AI lab and called it an AI lab at Stanford University. 2017. Um because we believe that the analytics, the algorithms associated with big data anal analysis is going to create a differentiated you know ideas to produce better net returns and our systematic equity team has proven that.
We believe that using better AI tools will create more efficiencies within the organization. I look at just Black Rockck over the last five years, um, our our assets are up about, uh, almost 40%. Our headcount's up about five. And so we've created a lot of efficiencies with better analytics and data.
And um and so it to me AI just creates better and better productivity and efficiency. And getting back to the United States and the 3% growth, the only way we're going to be doing that is through better productivity and productivity is going to be heavily oriented towards, you know, the implementation of AI across all industries.
Well, capitalism has been a big theme of this conversation and you you've written extensively about it. Yep. How concerned are you, if at all, about the rise of socialism across the United States? I mean, we're sitting here in your backyard. We've got a socialist that uh it seems to be the lead for mayor.
Do you see this as temporary u because of infl like I see it as a a a reaction to inflation and what's happened since co, but what do you see it as? What's caused this? And how concerned are you about it, if at all? Well, I'm always concerned about extremism, whether it's left-wing extremism or right-wing extremism.
Um, but I actually believe the extremism is something that we got to be focused on. But I think I think through this extremism, whether it's far-right extremism, far left extremism, it brings both Americans to the center. And so over time, I'm I'm less worried. Getting back to the 1970s, the social protest was so vivid and the division between the men and families and women who were in the military and fighting a war that most a lot of Americans did not believe in and the the protesting.
I mean, this is this is what America is all about. It is about we we you know you think about McCarthyism back in the 50s and you know the fear of communism there and all these different you know reactions. As I said we're a messy country but it's through the mess we glow and we find solutions. Our job is to make America stronger.
Our job most importantly is to make our 12.5 trillion dollars of client money to to put it good work to good use and with great future opportunities. So you know we have to deal with everybody from the far left to the far right. Um but our job is to work with every everybody and find solutions and you know and and importantly as a fiduciary to each and every client and their money our job is to find solutions.
So, and that's that's who America is. We're a divi we're pretty a divided country right in half. And you know, it's all in the edges. And but that's the beauty of America. Our job is to find solutions and people do just listen to what they want. If you're on the right, you're reading the Wall Street Journal watching Fox News.
If you're on the left, you're reading the New York Times. You're watching CNN, MSNBC, you just hear what you want to hear all the time and diminish the other side's views all the time, unfortunately. which is which leads to skewed views. So what I do I read five different newspapers almost every day and I just then you know because I want to I want to see the journey of both sides and you know and it's it's really remarkable to read the same um the same u narrative of of something that happened with a totally two different lenses.
Um I it's funny to read things that I was at and participated and you get two different you know interpretations that are far extreme and that unfortunately that's that's where we are but for us to be a fiduciary to our clients we we need to hear both sides. We need to work there but we need to move beyond that.
Yeah. It feels like you have to triangulate your way to the truth today. You know o over the course of this conversation you know you met the president of the United States a month ago. You're meeting the governor of New York tomorrow. Last time I visited you in your office, you had a high-profile ambassador in right before me.
I think I'm sitting right now with someone who has more behind closed doors meeting with more some of the most powerful people across the globe. What is happening behind closed doors? What are the theme that the the concerns that emerge or the narrative that emerges the commonality that emerges from these conversations across the globe?
Well, probably in the last few weeks, I've I've had four to five different heads of state conversations um worldwide. And quite frankly, they all have the same desire. How do we make our great our country better? And everybody has a you know, you're being elected in every one of these democracies chiefly and they're trying to make it better.
I you know when I go to the Middle East I mean I see the heads of state there and they're not necessarily a full democracy but they are really trying to make their citizens have a better future. So if you start with they all have a common desire to broaden their economy to broaden the success of the the economy to diversify their economy so they're not dependent on one industry or another.
And and so they're all they all ask the same type of questions by the way. Uh and right now a lot of questions are related to you know where is where are tariffs going? What does it mean? How can we play it? Um and but I get back to every country and said we all basically almost every major democracy in this world has huge deficit issues and they have a lot of and most of these democracies have aging populations.
this does cannot end well unless we grow and and so I'm you know I'm I'm very pragmatic I'm willing to listen to everybody but there is a common thread with every conversation you have with every country how can we make our you know what can black rockck do and helping us lift our country how do we how can we create better jobs how do we create more certainty you know so our our you know we're the largest retirement manager in the UK.
Okay. We So, we have a big social responsibility. We're the largest retirement manager of non-Japanese uh banks in Japan. Uh I mean, I could go across the whole world. Our role that we play in um and so as a fiduciary to each and every client, our job is to try to making sure that we're giving them the best advice.
And it's all about focus having them focus on the long term. It's not about a trade. It's not about the moment. It's not about the events of the week. It's not about a tweet, you know, and and so there's a lot of common themes about and how how to grow and how to build. And as I said earlier, for the United States and all the, you know, major democracies right now, they have to find ways to grow, unlocking private capital.
Now, in the United States, that's happening faster than Europe. Europe's waking up to that idea. Uh Japan is opening up to that. I mean, they they doubled the size of their taxexempt um retirement account a year and a half ago and and that's it's no accident you seen this big rise in the Japanese stock market.
Why? Because more Japanese are participating in it and they're investing in it instead of keeping their trillions of dollars or trillions of yen sitting in a bank account. Larry, one last question. What's your legacy? How do you want your kids to think of you 20, 30 years down the road? Well, my kids and my grandchildren that you know that he was a nice man.
That's probably the only that nothing more than that. I don't think my accomplishments are something that you know that's less important. But was I there for them? Did I help them build out their their lives and their future? That am I was I there to give them advice all the time. And to me, you know, providing the, you know, a a a a financial backs stop is not how I want to be remembered.
I want to be remembered that I was, you know, I gave them the tools to lead a good, healthy life at Black Rockck. Most importantly, my legacy has to be is the next generation of leaders. So my whole idea is to uh leave at the top of my game, but to leave with uh with leadership behind me that are doing the job better than I ever did.
That would be the that's the great legacy. On that note, thank you, Larry. Thank you, Peter.
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