One more question for Stephen Schwarzman: Thoughts on capital markets?

Global Business

CCTV America’s Shraysi Tandon interviewed Stephen Schwarzman, founder of Blackstone Group, the world’s largest alternate investment company. Tandon asked him one more question about his views about capital markets today and what concerns him the most about them.

Here’s what Schwarzman, who has been called the most influential financier in the world — and worth $12 billion — said:

“We’ve had a good long run in the united states, our economy continues on. We continue to grow so the us is getting more fully valued, but Europe has just really popped up in response to the [quantitative easing] and I guess what really concerns me the most is I’ve never really been in the world of negative interest rates I don’t even understand this. The idea that you borrow money from a country and you pay them interest is pretty close to nonsensical for any sustained period of time,” Schwarzman said.

“When you look at excess it’s not really in the stock markets it’s in the bond markets and it’s in the sovereign bond markets as a result of [quantitative easing] and competitive devaluation around the world. I don’t know where that takes us, but I’ve been in the financial business for over 40 years and I’ve only seen that once in Switzerland… for a very brief period of time abut now you have a number of counties… and that kind of sort of unnatural positioning of sovereign debt raises questions and seems to me to be unsustainable.”

One more question for Stephen Schwarzman: Thoughts on capital markets?

CCTV America's Shraysi Tandon interviewed Stephen Schwarzman, founder of Blackstone Group, the world's largest alternate investment company. Tandon asked him one more question about his views about capital markets today and what concerns him the most about them. Here's what Schwarzman, who has been called the most influential financier in the world -- and worth $12 billion -- said: