Larry Fink: Government Should Force Mandatory Savings [VIDEO]

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Larry Fink: Government Should Force Mandatory Savings [VIDEO]

Short Term Mentality Hurts Investors: Larry Fink says in CNBC interview

Larry Fink, CEO, Blackrock, was on CNBC this morning. He spoke about a variety of topics. Below are the segments from the interview followed by a computer transcript.

“Quick trades” usually have negative outcomes for most people, explains Larry Fink, Chairman & CEO at BlackRock.

Transcript:

welcome back, everybody. let’s get back to our guest host this morning. larry fink the chairman and ceo of blackrock. one of the things we’ve talked about recently that you had brought up when we were talking off camera is just how investors look at things with a really short-term mentality. how that’s changed over time and some of the damage it’s done just in terms of how ceos now manage their company to respond to that. well, i think everything that we’re faced today is more — whether it’s the news 24/7 news cycle. if you look at the dynamics of how the markets behave, most players in the markets make money on the velocity of money. and they’re trying to, you know, talk about quick trades and option trading and all this other things which all studies show it has negative outcomes for most people. and yet we perpetuate ideas like that. and then you have things even from corporate governance issues. from my perspective, some of our more too short-termism, the annual election of board members. board members are needed when you have problems with companies. and so the question when you have — you know the desire of having annual election of board members strikes me as something totally against what you need. you need board members to be there, not worried about their annual election trying to focus on the needs of shareholders and the needs of — what would make sense? every four years? going back to a board of sort. or make it every three years and not stagger it, but you need to have some form of some form of elongation. everything we do now is more short-term news cycles and all that. one of the big issues is confidence. we’re sitting with $1 trillion in money. even more than that in terms of money market funds. and corporations. confidence is still weak, another reason why i like the market until i see confidence really strong, i may change my view. one of the big issues in america today, we’re not investing as plants and equipment. we’re not hiring as fast as we used to. well, you were talking about how that’s a problem because ceos, what’s the average term? five years. why would you invest in plants if that’s not going to be something that will be completed after you’re gone anyway? well, and most ceos are looking to have elongation of their career too. they hope to be longer than five years. yes, you see behavior changes that are more short-term in their behavior. so the whole world is about short-term. washington, we can’t focus on one long-term event, tax or

Where to Put Your Money Now: BlackRock’s CEO

If investors are looking for diversification, they should consider putting some money in very large multinational companies, says Larry Fink, Chairman & CEO at BlackRock.

Transcript:

actually, we’re going to get back to our guest host larry fink, chairman and ceo of blackrock. and that is a lot of smart people. you feel this is not a cyclical recovery. we had quite a move from 1982 to 2000. and earn says, please let it happen again because i squandered it all the first time around. but people have been saying that for 10 to 12 years. people are not that excited or long-term believers. also, when you think about the tech rally in the late ’90s, we were talking about. and if you look where the p/es are, they’re in a reasonable level. very different than it was the last big equity rally. just here or elsewhere? well, i think if you want to be more diversified build multinational companies that participate in the world. so one of the things we’ve seen, though n the big equity rally, if you look at the markets. the emerging markets haven’t rallied that much. people going in the equities, they’re going in the equities that are more stable, they’re looking for equities paying higher dividends. they’re not looking for equities that have much more upside. they’re looking for equity returns, but not with a high vol. they’re looking for equities that have lower volatility than norm. and this is one of the reasons the u.s. has done so well and our company’s performance has done well unlike some of the emerging world. i would tell you today’s emerging world equities are probably pretty cheap relative to where you were. i don’t know if you wanted to be in administration or treasury secretaries. that’s — let’s assume that you were right now. we’re interested or were what? no, let’s assume. i’m going to make you treasury secretary for a day. great. would your next pressing issue be what you’ve been talking about this morning? would you be looking at something else like infrastructure or stimulus or tax reform or — what would you be doing? what do you need to do government wise? well, i think the role of any governmental official is trying to respond to the needs in the short-term. and the short-term is stimulating some type of infrastructure buildout. trying to find ways to finance more infrastructure in this country and elsewhere. would you just borrow like larry summers thinks? it is cheap, right? you could do it through that, public/private, or some form as you focus on tax reform. maybe you make any investment over 10 years to have, you know long-term capital gains tax. so you could — you could make a tax scheme, a tax program that would be a carrot and a stick. maybe you change capital gains from one-year anniversary to a 30-year anniversary of ownership. and maybe if you own it where infrastructure is you have some tax advanype of — you think we’re missing out on doing something right now? we’re not doing anything, we’re not going to. there’s no question we witnessed another bridge problem because of — something hit it, though? something hit it, but things generally hit bridges but — the lack of repairing our infrastructure is at a crisis now. what do you think of keynesian stimulus? there’s a role for a governmental plan in stimulating the economy. but i do believe in many ways the federal reserve has been playing that role through their quantitative easing. it’s not like we have not seen any stimulus. we’ve not seen — you would do more? i think there’s a combination of spending that is necessary for infrastructure today. i believe there’s great investor appetite for infrastructure debt. so if you can get ten plus year debt that’s paying you a fairly good return, you could have huge, huge interest. insurance companies would be interested in it. the real issue is where the equities are going to be coming from for infrastructure. that’s a bigger issue. you know, we do have a big infrastructure fund. our problem is finding the appropriate investments today. so if you were in government today, you should be focusing on short-term issues. you defily have to start sounding the alarm. as i said earlier, i don’t believe you’re going to get anything done unless you start educating americans

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