Wilbur Ross, WL Ross & Co. chairman & CEO, reveals where he is seeing the best investment opportunities in Europe and weighs in on comments written by Kevin Roose, New York Magazine, about the “one percent.”
Transcript:
well, i think europe is going through some of the structural readjustment that it needs to make itself more viable. needs more labor market flexibility, the needs a little better control of the fiscal situation in the various countries. so i think there’s a lot of change at the moment. in terms of the u.s., i share some of the pes nimp of the congressional budget office. i think the structural issue of so many people dropping out of the — something like 37% age population neither has a job nor is seeking one. that’s a very heavy burden to lug along when you’re seeking economic growth. okay. very good. we do have — we have sam zell coming on a little bit later. he’s talked about the 1%er. i don’t want you to say anything about the 1% getting picked on. you’re another billionaire. you’re going to say something about the people, the have notes sucking it up and working harder and look like a rich fat cat taking a shot at the have nots. i’m not going to ask you about that. unless you want to volunteer yourself. i’ll move on to something else. there’s a guy we had him on. i don’t know what you do at that secret meeting you have. i think you know what i’m talking about. apparently you’re all dressed up in terrible costumes. you are the steven wright of comedians. you tell a joke and people will be in the aisles no matter what with your dead pan delivery. what goes on at these secret meetings of your fastly 1 percenters. it’s a misnomer to call it a secret meeting. it’s a private organization and it was having a private party. seemingly, what some of the people from outside were complaining about was the theory that this was all people who had bbailed out by the government and now they were making fun. i certainly didn’t get bailout money. chris williams, my predecessor as head of the organization who runs one of the larger minority investment firms in the country, he didn’t get a bailout. my successors, the harriss, they didn’t get a bailout. so i think there’s been a little bit of hyperbole introduced into the equation. it is true that there were a couple of hundred members there. it is true they were spoofing each other for a couple of hours. and when you have that kind of environment, unfortunately, some people say some things that they probably wish they hadn’t said.
