The financial titans attending this year’s Milken Institute conference in Beverly Hills don’t seem like the types who answer consumer confidence surveys or financial wellness polls: They’re way too bullish on the US economy.
A recurring theme at this year’s annual gathering of financiers, CEOs, and economic influencers is America’s resilience in the aftermath of the COVID pandemic. “There is reason to be happy about the US performance,” Kristalina Georgieva, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), told a ballroom full of people at the conference on May 6. “The US has a remarkably strong labor market. It has ample supply of labor. It has the tremendous advantage of being an energy exporter. It has the privilege of the dollar.”
Money gurus with investments all around the world report that the United States continues to attract far more smart money than anyplace else. Georgieva noted that before COVID, about 18% of global financial flows went to the United States. Now it’s nearly double, at 33%.
Some foreign investors may be overdoing it. But they don’t seem to care. Harvey Schwartz, CEO of Carlyle, said, “The vast majority of investors, when I ask about the US, they say ‘I’m over-allocated to the US. But I’m going to allocate more to the US.’ It’s not an exotic answer to the US phenomenon. There’s incredibly strong earnings growth, interest rates are high, the economic activity underpinning all this is quite profound.”
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