Door: Frank Wiering en George Brugmans
dd. 13 maart 2002

Well, absolutely. I wanted to see the world. There are more important things than making money in the world, believe it or not, and it was a very historic time. It was the turn of the millennium: 1999, 2000, 2001. So I wanted to see as much of the world as I could, learn about the world as much as I could and record the world at the time of the millennium. And mainly I wanted to have fun.

There are dramatic changes taking place in the world. I went around the world once before, in 1991, 1992. And I found some huge surprises. Before I left around the world for instance, this time, in 1999-2001, I thought I would be very, very optimistic about what was going on in South-America, but unfortunately I came away, there are some good things in South-America, but nothing like what I had expected and nothing like what I found the last time. I also found, last time I went around the world, that the world was opening up: globalization, more trade, more open societies. This time I found that there are many counties which are closing off, where different kind of things are happening now.

Look at Zimbabwe, when I was going to Zimbabwe in 1991, they were trying to attract investors, they wanted farmers to come there. Now, if you go to Zimbabwe, they are trying to get all the people, all the white people out of Zimbabwe. It’s closing off. That’s what I mean by closing off. Look at the United States. The United States, perhaps with reason with the attack on the World Trade Centre, is becoming more chauvinistic, more isolationist, and more protectionist. And you are finding that also in other countries around the world. Another dramatic change I found this time which I was vaguely aware of, there is a terrific shortage of women developing in Asia. Just right now in Asia. Ten years from now there are not going to be enough women in Asia. In Korea, for instance, for every 120 twelve-year-old boys there are 100 twelve-year-old girls. Now when those girls are 19 years old and 22 years old, they can have anything they want, they can have any man they want. Their mothers and grandmothers have been servants for their husbands and their own parents. But those girls, when they become women, their society is going to change, professions are going to change, education is going to change, investment is going to change, in fact, the shortage of women in South-Korea will probably do more for Korean unification than anything else you can think of. Because those South-Korean men are going to need women, they are all racist, everybody in the world is racist by the way, everybody is a racist. The South-Korean are not going to marry Filipino's, so they got to get girls somewhere. North-Korea is the only source of women for them, so that will mean that North-Korea and South-Korea will unify. There are a lot of things going on. Japan, I thought I would be very despondent about Japan, because the western press tells you such horrible things. Well I am very optimistic about Japan, at least for the next few years, I did not expect to find that, I thought I would find more distress.

So why are you optimistic about Japan?

Importantly because everyone is so pessimistic in Japan right now. They have the highest suicide rate they have ever had, they have the lowest birth rate they have ever had, the university graduates want to work for the government, because they are scared, you know. They think if we work for the government it’s secure, we have a secure future. It is not a society which is booming and excited looking to the future. But one of the things that you should do as an investor, is buy low and sell high. And when everybody is despondent it’s probably not high. You know, in 1998 and 1999 when I left the US there was nobody despondent, everybody felt shares would go to the moon, everybody wanted to buy shares. That’s not a bargain when you have that kind of attitude. Japan is exactly the opposite. Japan is the richest country in the world, has the largest international reserves, currency reserves of any country in the world, not per capita but they are very, very rich in many ways. So I am very optimistic. Not forever, not forever, but for a while.

Well, it can. Listen, I said many times in my life ’It can’t get any worse’ you know what happens and it gets worse, I lose more money. You know, you can buy a stock at four, that used to be forty and it has gone to four and you said it can’t get any worse, yes it can. It can go to two, it can go to one. So things can always get worse, it can always get worse. But things are very bad and many of the things which I saw demonstrated to me that there was a lot of despondency and maybe it’s not the bottom, but it is certainly not the top. You know, it’s far from the top in Japan.

Absolutely, one of the things I most noticed about coming back is how much I want to simplify my life. I mean, I have a lot of clutter, I realise now, I got a big house, I got a lot of stuff, sure a lot of it is wonderful stuff, but, you know, I don’t need it anymore. If you drive through Africa you probably realise that a lot of the stuff the people in New York worry about is really not very important. I sat down with some people who started to talk about a hot, new restaurant in New York. And I said to myself, what do I care about the hot, trendy new restaurant in New York, what does anybody care about the hot, trendy new restaurant in New York? Listen, that there are people who care is all right by me if they care, but I don’t care anymore. I want to simplify my life. Remember Hercules in Greek mythology who has been given the task of cleaning out the Aegean stables, well I want clean out my own stables. I don’t want a lot of people say lets go for dinner. I don’t want to do most of that anymore.

Well, the simplification thing I can understand. Many days of my life I was trying to stay alive, you know, because I had to have something to eat or there was a war or there was some kind of danger where ever I was. That was a lot more important to me than which was the new restaurant and when you drive through Africa, for instance, you realise that there are a lot of things much more important in life than a new movie, a new whatever, a new dress, a new style, it doesn’t matter. Important things are survival, eating, having fun, being true to yourself and having a real life instead of a phoney life, what might become a phoney life, who am I to judge another person’s life? Drive through Africa or try to survive for three years out there in the world, it will probably change your perspective.

Well, I want to simplify my life a great deal, so yes. I have always been an investor, not a trader. A trader is always jumping around everyday doing something, but I am much more a person who invests and owns something for a decade or two or three and I make money that way. So I was always more passive, if you will, now I want to be even more passive.
When I went around the world in the early nineties I found myself investing in a lot of countries because they were cheap and there was positive change, you could see them opening up to the world and attracting investors and attracting knowledge and know how.

This time I found myself closing as many accounts around the world as I opened. We have had these great cycles throughout history, in which the world gets more and more international and then something happens and it becomes less international. Before the first worldwar, the world was very, very international, there was globalization, they didn’t call it that, but there was. Then the first worldwar came along, things went wrong and so everybody started protectionism, isolationism and the world closed of and we had the second world war. But that didn’t mean, you and I could have sat there in 1932 and have told the world: ‘This is wrong, this is going to lead to problems!’. But it would not have mattered, nobody would have listened to us. We couldn’t have stopped the second worldwar. So you know, the world has had these great cycles of opening up and then closing off.

In 1962 Burma was the richest country in Asia, and they decided: we don’t need the rest of the world, the hell with the rest of the world, let’s close off, we will do everything ourselves. Well, Burma became the poorest country in the world. Now, you and I could have sat there and said to them every year this is going to be a mistake, you are going to be worse of, they wouldn’t have listened to us. Ghana did the same in 1957. Ghana was the richest country in the British Empire in 1957. Then they got independent and Nkrumah (1960-1966), who was the great liberator, said ‘to hell with the rest of the world’ and eight years later Ghana was bankrupt and Nkrumah was gone. It doesn’t matter, these things happen in the world. So I am afraid, that the world is now, many parts of the world are trying to become more tribal, more local, more isolationist and that’s one reason I don’t want to invest in a country like that because I know a little bit of history.

One of the reasons it is happening now, is because globalization has been happening. We are all going to drive Toyota’s, we are all going to drink Pepsi Cola, we are all going to dance to Madonna - perhaps. But it’s too much for many people, they are scared of it, they don’t understand it, they are reaching out to something they can understand or control or whatever word you want to use. Plus, of course, for 300 years we have had major empire builders, technology was such that countries could get bigger and bigger and they did as empire builders. But it doesn’t work, the Soviet Union didn’t work part of it because it was so gigantic and hopeless. It has broken up into 15 countries, it will break up into 50 countries, it is going to break up into a hundred. Yugoslavia is now 6 countries, Czechoslovakia is now two countries, Ethiopia is now two countries, you are going to see more of this as people to have their own ethnic group, religious group, linguistic group, they want something they can control.

I did find that I was taking money out of more countries on thís trip, while on my previous trip I put money ínto a lot of countries when I went around the world. You see what is happening to the US right now: the US is certainly becoming more isolationist. You would think after September that everybody in the US would say: ‘There is something going on and we don’t know what it is, why do they hate us so much?’. That is what I thought would happen, but no. First reaction, which is understandable, was 'let’s kill everybody'. I said okay that’s an understandable reaction, you are angry and you want to kill everybody. But at the same time somebody would be saying well let’s learn about the rest of the world. The reaction now in the US is: everybody else in the world is wrong, whatever they think it’s wrong and let’s kill them or let’s at least ignore them. But that is not reality, it’s denial, but it’s worse than denial - it’s not reality. This country can not do a lot of things if that attitude hardens and continues and it will mean that in 20 years the US is in worse shape than it is now.

Well, it won’t go thát far thát fast. You know right now the US is the world’s largest debtor nation, for instance, many times. First you can not be the world’s largest debtor nation without being nice to the world, because you get your money, you know, the rest of the world is financing all of this debt, so if you start to get really nasty to them, somebody is going to say, "well I don’t want to lend you any money no more, I don’t want to invest in you no more". No country that has ever been in this position, has worked its way out without a crisis, without a serious crisis first. In the US we have an expression that is ‘Dutch uncle’ after the Dutch. Do you know what a Dutch uncle is?

That’s your rich uncle, you know, and it comes from the fact that at the beginning of the 19^th century, as you probably know, the Netherlands was unbelievably rich. You financed Napoleon’s wars, you know, you were the bankers to many parts of the world. You had a huge empire, you were rich, and so everybody wanted a Dutch Uncle, because a Dutch Uncle would give you presents, give you money, he had all the money in the world because the Dutch used to have all the money in the world. But things change, as things changed in the Netherlands, things may change here. We are this huge debtor nation and if we are not nice to people, they may start taking their money out of here and we may have our own crisis, whether it is a financial crisis or a military crisis or a political crisis or all of the above. We have to be very careful especially in the beginning of the 21^st century.

Well, I prefixed it by saying if unless someone starts figuring out in the US that we need the rest of the world. And yes the same thing happened to Burma, the same thing happened to Ghana. A lot of great and rich societies have decided they didn’t need the rest of the world and then they regretted it many years later.

Well, the European Union in many ways is an internationalising entity. The Portuguese and the Fins are now all part of the same country and so theoretically you are all now a great mixing pot, which would be good for the world, because you wouldn’t have any more wars in Europe anyway. On the other hand, the European Union, as you probably well know, is also closing off around fortress Europe, if you will, instead of embracing the rest of the world. You have a desperate shortage of people in Europe right now, of young people, you know, in 50 years there would not be any Italians. Unless something dramatic happens, there won’t be any Germans. The birth rate in Italy is 1.2 per woman, too low for a nation to survive on. You desperately need foreigners, but you won’t let them in. You know, you are doing everything:"get out of here Turks, get out of here blacks, get out of here all of you". You won’t let people in even though you desperately need them, your pension funds are going bankrupt, you know, all the 59 year olds, 60 years olds in Europe right now should be very, very worried because they are not going to have a pension in twenty years unless they get some young people, I know this, a lot of Europeans know this, at the same time you are saying you won’t let other people get into Europe.

You should be standing on the strates of Gibraltar, you have the navy, the Spanish navy mainly down there shooting these people and saying, "get away, get away, get away". You should be standing there saying "come on, come on we need you". Anybody who would swim across the strates of Gibraltar, if you don’t want them in Europe they can come work for me!

I guarantee you anybody who is thát ambitious and thát brave and thát enterprising can come and work for me any day of the year. You should be doing your best to get these people: first of all you need them, but second you should get them there anyway because they are really good people.

The same reason everybody is always afraid of the unknown. I just have been around the world for three years, perhaps the single most consistent reaction to our travel plans was: ‘That’s very dangerous! Those people are crazy! They will kill you!’. When you get here and they say ‘Where have you been?’, they say ‘ How did you survive?’. And they say: ‘Where are you going next?’, I’d say ‘I’m going there’, then they’d say ‘ You are nuts, you will get killed!’ . So everybody is terrified of the unknown, of people who are the slightest bit different from them, it is a normal human reaction unfortunately because we are all exactly the same, it is astounding how exactly the same we all are, whether we are Koreans, Ethiopians or Argentineans who ever we are, we are all exactly the same. But everybody is scared to death, you and Europe are scared to death, we in America are now very scared of foreigners, we want to close off the US. You give somebody a reason to say ‘A-ha, see, his religion is different from mine’ and then something bad happens and everybody says ‘See? I told you, you should stay away from those people, they are Christians, Christians are bad people, Jews are bad people, Muslims are bad people, Hindus are bad people’. Unfortunately that’s the reason people are afraid of the world.

Well, there are some bad people in the world, there always have been and there always will be. But Islam did not do that, it was a few very angry guys who have declared war on, not so much America, but the US government and its policies. Should people be afraid of Christians because some of the things Christians have done throughout history? I mean I can tell you some horrible things that Christians have done, you know, there was a Christian guy in Texas who murdered six people last week, should we all be afraid of Christians because this guy murdered six young people? That’s not the way the world is. Just because some Christians do something bad, because some Hindus do something bad, doesn’t mean that Hinduism is a bad group of people or a bad religion. In war time a lot of people do a lot of bad stuff.

Do yóu think we are never going to have a war again? I am delighted if you think we might never have a war again anywhere in the world, but if you really think that, I have some wonderful lies I like to tell you. You know, it is, unfortunately, it is, I don’t want to say a natural state, but it is a state which constantly has evolved throughout history and will evolve throughout history. Nobody has ever won a war by the way. I am probably the most anti-war person you will ever meet in your life. Nobody has ever won a war, one reason I am so anti-war is because I have seen nobody has ever won a war, even though the people who think they won a war, don’t win the war in the end. It is just madness, it’s devastation, it’s stupid and it’s all because of a few politicians throughout history, it has been a few greedy madmen, who lead everybody else into war and everybody else goes along with it. So I am not in favour of war at all, but I have absolutely no confidence that the world is not going to see lots of wars and devastation between now and the end of time.

I know of no country in history whose borders and governments have lasted as long as two hundred years, ever. So the world is always changing. We will have dramatic change, look at how much has changed in the last twenty years, just look back at 1982 and see how much the world has changed in that period of time and then you can imagine in the next fifty years I would suspect, in America 1776 is theoretically our birthday, in 1976 we had a big 200 year celebration. In 2076 the US will look nothing like it looks right now, there are lots of things already happening in the US even if we do everything right, a lot of stuff is going to change. You know large parts of the US already don’t speak English anymore, they speak Spanish, which is unheard off. There is a newspaper in Brownsville, Texas, which is a newspaper that has been published for 160 years, it is now published in Spanish, it is not published in English anymore, because there is a gigantic Hispanic influence. Which I think is wonderful, by the way, that we are constantly mixing it all up and bringing in new people. But huge parts of the US are now Spanish speaking - it doesn’t make the newspapers, doesn’t make the press a lot, but in 20 to 30 years if they are unhappy, you will see agitation and people saying America stole this part of the world. Anyway, we have always been Hispanic, we should be Hispanic again and there will be problems. So if you can find any coins from 1976, you should collect them because they should be very collectible in 2076 because America will not celebrate its 300 year anniversary, as we know it.

Well, I am an American so I still have the bulk of my assets here. I am not sold out in the US by any stretch; I do move more and more of my dollars out of the US, you know gradually over time, because I see better opportunities elsewhere, that is not a negative statement, if in 1902 if you were English and you would move more and more of your money out of England, you weren't making a very smart move. England was the richest, most powerful country in 1902, but there were much better business opportunities elsewhere, the United States for instance, a lot of places. So thát I am doing, because I do see problems but there are better opportunities elsewhere. Now you asked where to put your money. You mean countries, you mean industries?

Okay. If there were six of me I would move to China right now because China is going to be the country of the 21^st century. The 19^th century was the century of the UK, the 20^th century was the century of the US, the 21^st century is going to be the century of China, you should make sure your children and grandchildren learn Chinese, if you are not going to move to China, at least make sure they learn Chinese because that will be the most important language in their lifetime. If there are more of you, you might consider moving to Angola, Angola soon will be the richest country in Africa. The stupid war may become to an end, the devastating, unbelievable stupid war looks like it is coming to an end. Angola is going to be extraordinary exciting in the next 50 years. Tanzania, one of me would go to Tanzania, one of me would go to Bolivia, East-Timor. There is a huge war in East-Timor recently, that war was not about Christianity versus Islam by the way, it was not about dictatorship versus democracy, it was not about self determination versus aggression. If you looked at the TV you would think it was. It was about natural gas. They have discovered unbelievable amounts of natural gas in the waters around East-Timor, well everybody wants that natural gas, there are only a few hundred thousand East-Timorese, so it doesn’t take too much to figure out we could all be very, very rich, whoever we are. But East-Timor is a place that if you got the time, go there, because it is about to be a new Kuwait, a small country with huge natural resources, Bolivia…

Why Bolivia?

Bolivia, everybody thinks it is a drug haven, it has been, especially if you listen to the American State Department, one word of advise, do not get your investment advise from the US government or any government for that matter, including the Dutch government, but especially not from the US State Department, you will go broke in no time. Yes, there have been drugs in Bolivia for hundreds of years by the way. But in Bolivia they have now discovered huge amounts of natural gas, again natural gas, there is lots of it. The last five years they have found tremendous amounts of natural gas which is going to change the whole country. Plus the whole infrastructure, they are building a new highway system, that is going to open western Brazil, western Brazil and eastern Bolivia, that whole geographic area to the Pacific. This can be and is and will be more a huge agricultural area, but the problem has been that it was so isolated that you couldn’t get the stuff out. No matter how many soy beans you raised, you couldn’t get them out, you couldn’t sell them, it wouldn’t do you any good, but now they are building the infrastructure. I rode on the road, it’s a brand new road, it’s a fantastic road leading to the Pacific Ocean. And now you can get the stuff from western Brazil, eastern Bolivia. it’s like the railroad, when the railroad went west from America it opened up the whole country, well the same thing is happening in that geographic area, huge natural resources, huge agricultural potential, huge natural gas, lots of spectacular opportunities.

Well, the US has this, we are the worlds largest debtor nation a fact I mentioned many times no country has ever worked itself out of that position without something going desperately wrong, no one that has ever been the worlds largest debtor nation has suddenly said well we are all going to save our money now, we are going to pay of our debts and everything is going to be okay, it has never worked that way, never in history, wont work here either.

Plus, the West has a horrible demographic problem, we are not having any babies. I mean Europe doesn’t have any babies, just look at the demographics, the pension plans in Europe are actuary, they are all bankrupt right now, the politicians don’t admit it, aren't dealing with it because they hope they are going to be gone by that time. But look at the US: we have a terrible actuarial problem right now. The rest of the world is having al lot of babies, they are not going to have pension problems, debt problems, labour problems…They are not going to have problems of enough people buying the stuff. So, of course a lot of places are going to be rising, a lot of places are going to be falling. But it has happened throughout history, there is nothing new about it. This may sound radical, some of these statements may sound radical.

But why? It has happened throughout the history of the world. It has always happened, there is nothing frightening, there is nothing radical about it. Smart people, intelligent people, motivated people throughout history have moved when there has been a problem, when they were at the wrong place at the wrong time, it has been going on for thousands of years.

So what, we always have. The Dutch used to rule the world, they don’t anymore, maybe they will again someday, you know, the Portuguese used to rule the world, they don’t anymore, has the world come to an end, if Portugal no longer rules the world? Look at Zimbabwe: 800 years ago Zimbabwe was a major African empire, now it is a nightmare, well, the world hasn’t come to an end because Zimbabwe is no longer a major trading place on the east coast of Africa, and huge massive cities are abandoned?

You know, the Phoenicians, once upon a time ruled the Mediterranean or a large part of the Mediterranean, right now you don’t know any Phoenicians because there is no such place as Phoenicia. The Phoenician navy was feared all over the world, you know. Hannibal crossed the Alps. It was a great threat to the Roman Empire, you don’t even know where Hannibal was from, you have forgotten where Hannibal was from, if you went to where Hannibal was from, there is nothing there, you think the world has come to an end? For those people the world came to an end, yes, but the world was still going on. Even though the Romans went down there and levelled the whole city.

There are lots of problems in the world, but there always have been and always will be. One of the things I am least worried about are ecological problems in the world. Next time I go around the world, you come with me and you will see that there are vast amounts of empty space in the world, there are lots of trees around the world, the world is not running out of space, the world is not running out of food, the world is not running out trees, maybe in western Europe you are running out of trees, but I can assure you the world is not running out of trees. Do you remember Malthus? Malthus was an Englishman who wrote a book at the end of the 18^th century which said that we are all going to starve to death because we can not produce, the population was going up so much and we can not produce enough food and crops and all the rest of that stuff. Somehow the world population has grown by ten times or whatever since then and we are still eating and the world is okay. Don’t listen to the doomsayers, I can assure you that humanity is going to survive, maybe not in places that are hot right now, but humanity is going to survive, the world is going to survive, it maybe in different places from right now and maybe they are wearing different clothes from those you are wearing, and speak in different languages from yours and eating different food, so what? That’s always happened throughout history, it is going to continue to happen, if you travel around the world you can go to Egypt, you can go to many places, you could go to Pakistan, you can see that they once upon a time were so unbelievably rich and developed and advanced that you wonder how they possibly could have been that advanced 5000 years ago or 3000 years ago or 2000 years ago.

Now, if you look at some of the things the Egyptians were doing 3000 years ago, you say how could people be doing that 3000 years ago, they didn’t have electricity, they didn’t have tv, they didn’t have cars and yet they were building these gigantic monuments and they were diverting the Nile and they could predict within two centimetres what the Nile would be doing next year or whether or not they would have crops or not. I mean, they were extraordinary advanced and then of course something went wrong and their society collapsed and their civilisation collapsed, but another civilisation arose, it is going to happen. Whoever is rich and famous right now, will not be rich and famous in 500 years but it doesn’t matter, somebody is going to be. Mankind is going to survive, do not listen to the doomsayers. I assure you mankind is going to survive.

Spreads across the globe as yoú know the globe, spreads across yóur globe. In 1997 the Pacific collapsed, Asia collapsed, well lots of people in South-America didn’t have a clue. In 1998 Russia collapsed, went bankrupt, it didn’t effect most peoples lives at all. I’m sure it didn’t effect your life, it affected a few financiers who were at the wrong place at the wrong time, but it didn’t effect most people in the world. Now if you happen to be working on Wall Street, everybody thought well, this is a disaster for the whole world. Look, in South-Africa they were still playing football, in Iowa they were still playing basketball, they were still raising corn. The world didn’t come to an end, even if we go into a huge war, let’s say somehow another world winds up in big war, that’s going to affect a lot of people, a whole lot of people, but it’s not going to affect all people in the world, there are plenty of people that are not going to get involved in the war, they are not going to be affected, at least not in the big picture, their standard may decline for a while, a lot of their friends may get killed, a lot of bad things will happen, but there are going to be some people, somewhere, who are not involved and when that war is over, they are going to be the ones on the rise again.

As far as wars are concerned? I said don’t worry about it, mankind is going to survive, don’t be a doomsayer. I’m the optimist here, I know mankind is going to survive, I know that there are some countries, some families, some companies that are going to be rising in the next 10 years, 20 years, 50 years, there are going to be others that go down the tubes, yes. But that is not depressing as far as I’m concerned. It is going to happen, it has happened, throughout history.

It could! I may go broke, I may be living in the Netherlands on welfare. Who knows, yes, I could go broke, lot of people go broke, I hope I’m not one of them, I hope I keep my wits about me, but, you know, even if I go broke the world isn't coming to an end, my world may come to an end as I know it, but the world isn't coming to an end, mankind is going to survive and have a wonderful time. Not all of it, but through out history there have always been people rising, falling, countries, companies, families. On this trip around the world I met a family who lived in Russia in the Twenties and they got out because the communists came and they said this is going to be a mess, they went to China, well, you know, they said oh God this is terrible so in the fifties they got out of China, they have been in this horrible war, they have been this terrible communism and said we got to get out of here. They went to Argentina which everybody thought was great one parole and etcetera. You know I said to this family, where are you going next because I’m going to know it is going to be the next disaster, I mean, the man was the fourth generation. But, you know, some families always get involved, some families always get it right. I mean there were people, I’m sure, who left England in 1902 and went to the US or where ever and I’m sure their families left the US in the fifties and went to Germany or the Netherlands or somewhere, you know, places that were on the rise, there were always families who are getting it right and always families getting it wrong.

Well, speaking purely from the financial markets, which is what you are speaking about correctly, the place it went wrong, it has happened throughout history, that everybody felt there was a free lunch, that you could have something for nothing and that something new and miraculous and wonderful had happened and that there was a new era and a new society and that this new technology was going to change the world and that we could all be rich... That was what went wrong, there is no such thing as a free lunch, there never has been, there never will be. The same thing has happened before, there was a time when people thought that railroads were going to change history. It happened with the railroads, some 150 years ago, everybody thought and everybody begged to buy railroad stocks and they lost their fortunes. Electricity, oh my God, electricity was going to change the world, and it did change the world, but people lost vast amounts of money when they went into the electricity mania. Radio, I know I can’t talk about radio here on TV, but there was a time when radio was the biggest and best thing anybody ever conceived of. And vast amounts of money where lost. Radio was the real thing, radio developed, huge companies were developed and yet people who bought radio stocks went bankrupt. Airlines, the airplane was one of the biggest things that had happened in the past 500 years. But most people who invested in airlines lost money, I mean, there are airlines all over the world now, we all fly everywhere we go. The airlines and the development of the technology and the change is one thing, investing in a mania and thinking that there is a free lunch is an entirely different thing. Where did we go wrong? We all felt there was a free lunch and it was very easy, just buy the shares and you’ll be rich, no, no, it has never worked that way.

Well, the best way you can organize the world is with markets, there is no question about that. Let me take you to Africa, let me take you to Siberia, let me take you anywhere you want to go. You will see that the only way to organize a society is with free and open markets because it is going to grow and develope. That’s an entirely different thing because whatever… it’s not the best, it has enormous problems, but it is better than anyone else ever came up with. History will demonstrate that to you over and over again. If anybody says to you that markets are perfect and don’t worry just open up to a free market - No, of course, that is going to lead to problems down the road, because mankind is always greedy, mankind always makes mistakes, there are always bad people in the world. Compared to the alternatives, give me markets any day. But if anybody says to you that markets are going to solve all our problems, please, that is ludicrous.

I am optimistic, but there are times when the only people that survive are the pessimists, because they see bad things coming and they do something about it. Optimists may get killed or go bankrupt or whatever because they are not realistic enough so there are times when it is best to be an optimist and other times and places it is best to be a pessimist. In all of that you should try to be a realist and try to figure out what is really happening and not be swayed by people who say the world is coming to an end or by people who say these good times will go on forever because neither is going to happen. You know: find the balance. The world will come to an end in some places and good times will go on for many years in other places. The trick is to be at the right place at the right time. But that’s life. You know, there are plenty of people in the history of the world who had brilliant ideas but they were 20 years ahead of their time. I know the guy who invented videocassettes, he had a company called Cartovision, yoú have never heard of Cartovision, but in 1970 and 1971 they had a company, they were making TV consoles which could record tv-programs and you could buy the cartridges… it was called Cartovision because we had the cartridges. You never heard of it, and you know why? Because he failed, he went bankrupt. You heard of Sony, you heard of VHS, you heard of all that, but you never heard of the guy who invented it, so he was a genius, but his timing was wrong so it doesn’t do good, it doesn’t do any good to be a genius: you got to get your timing right...