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Chapter 1: Who is Ken Griffin and what is his background?
Ken Griffin is the CEO of one of the world's most successful hedge funds, Citadel. Griffin is a billionaire and among the largest Republican donors. But during this administration, he's been outspokenly critical of some of President Trump's policies, especially around the Fed, tax cuts, and tariffs.
This week, Griffin sat down with Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Emma Tucker in West Palm Beach, Florida. They were at the Wall Street Journal's Invest Live event, and they discussed the weakening of the dollar, the growing national debt, and the role of government in corporate affairs. Welcome to The Journal, our show about money, business, and power. I'm Ryan Knudson.
It's Thursday, February 5th. Coming up on the show, a conversation with Ken Griffin.
Good morning, everyone. And a big thank you to Ken for joining us today for a discussion about who knows where it's going to take us, Ken. We'll see. But it's almost impossible to know where to start. There's so much going on in the markets, in the world, certainly in the news cycle. So I thought I'd start with a very simple question.
Chapter 2: What are Ken Griffin's criticisms of Trump's economic policies?
Somebody's just handed you a suitcase of freshly minted dollars. What are you going to do with those dollars?
This sounds like a trick asset, a know your customer ALM question. Sounds like I need to call the FBI and go, I've got a suitcase full of cash here.
OK, after you've done that and they've said it's fine, you can keep them.
So we've got clean money.
Clean money?
Clean money. Great. So first of all, thank you for being here in South Florida.
It's my pleasure, the weather notwithstanding.
It's still about 40 degrees warmer than New York. So yes, 55's freezing, but it's not truly freezing. So if I was handed a suitcase of money today, this is like such a strange way to frame a question. Look, what investors need to focus on is what is the purpose of their portfolio.
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Chapter 3: How does Ken Griffin view the current state of the U.S. dollar?
And so if you're in your early 20s, your investment objective is very different than if you're in your mid 70s. And you need to always invest your money from the vantage point of what you need to achieve with your investment portfolio.
So if you're in your 20s, even though the equity markets is somewhat frothy right now, you're still going to be investing the preponderance of that money in equity markets around the world. And if you're in your mid-70s, obviously, you worry about inflation. You worry about downside risk. You worry about the fact that you don't have 20 or 30 years, potentially, as your investment horizon.
You're going to have much more of that money invested in tips or in commercial real estate or in other assets that have greater protection from the potential damaging influence of inflation.
Good. What he hasn't said is what he said to me backstage, which is he'd put it under his mattress. Sorry.
She had way too much fun with that.
Right. OK. On to more serious matters. Debt. Now, you've always made it very clear that you think debt levels in this country have got too high. The national debt is now running at 30%. exceeding 38 trillion. And off the back of that, there's some evidence of a sort of sell America trade going on.
So my question to you is, do you think we're witnessing the early stages of a genuine challenge to dollar primacy?
Look, the US dollar has lost some of its luster over the last 12 months. There's no doubt about that. And I do believe that the United States is unquestionably still one of the great safe harbors in the world. And at the same time, policies relating to tariffs, some of the rhetoric from the administration has taken some of the shine off the dollar.
And at the end of the day, I do believe that when it's all said and done, if you are the strongest nation in the world, you are going to be predisposed to having a strong currency. And that strong currency, that reserve currency status, reduces your cost of capital, brings down interest rates, all else being equal, increases the quality of living for those citizens of that nation.
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Chapter 4: What investment strategies does Ken Griffin recommend for different age groups?
Most CEOs just don't want to find themselves in the business of having to, in some sense, suck up to one administration after another to succeed in running their business. They want to focus better products, better marketing, better distribution. more value created for their customers, some of which is shared with their shareholders.
So these are all great points. And we live in a world in a country where people really look up to corporate leaders. Why is it so difficult for the corporate world to voice publicly the sort of thing you're saying now?
So I think there's a couple of challenges that corporate executives face on this front. What we saw over the last, we go back over the last 10 years, companies that found themselves in the middle of the whole woke movement would find their products either embraced or ostracized by tens of millions of Americans overnight.
And that's created a level of fear and apprehension amongst the corporate CEO class to insert themselves in any publicly facing issues these days. Like the power of social media to persuade millions or tens of millions of consumers to make a product choice is really terrifying to corporate executives. And I think it's put them in a very just intrinsically like withdrawn position.
I wanted to ask you as well specifically about there has been a trend of people in the administration using their positions to enrich themselves personally. I don't know if you saw that the journal, we did a story a couple of days ago about a half a billion donation that was made from a It was an Abu Dhabi Royal to the Trump crypto vehicle days before the inauguration.
Does that sort of behavior matter to you? Does it bother you?
I mean, of course it bothers me. Of course it does, right? One of the things that you want to believe is that those who serve the public interest have the public interest at heart in everything they do. And I think that this administration has definitely made missteps in choosing decisions or courses that have been very, very enriching to the families of those in the administration.
And that calls into question, is the public interest being served? And I think that there's just a necessity for us as a society to re-embrace some of the critical concepts of ethics in public service. We saw the same problem with the Supreme Court several years ago.
Wherever you see the signs of conflicts of interest, you give rise to concerns about are the interests of the public being put first and foremost by those in public service.
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Chapter 5: How does Ken Griffin assess the national debt and its implications?
I mean, the president and I worked on Operation Warp Speed together in the first administration. The flights out of Wuhan, Mike Pompeo and I made most of that happen together. So I've found that this administration, and for that matter, the Obama administration, were administrations that you could make meaningful things happen that benefited the American people.
In the Biden administration, we were able to take an idea that we funded in Chicago, a small group of us funded, providing every child in Chicago in the pandemic with internet access. I mean, it's like incomprehensible to believe that there are kids in America that did not have access to the internet. and there were tens of thousands of such kids in Chicago.
That concept was rolled into one of the national infrastructure bills in the Biden administration. So I'd like to believe that I can continue to pursue philanthropic efforts and efforts that do help to improve, let me use different words, to ensure that every single child in America can still get on that on-ramp to the American dream.
Great. Well, that's a very positive answer to the bold question. Thank you very much, Ken Griffin. Thank you so much.
We reached out to the Trump administration for comment about some of the things Griffin said in this interview. A spokesman said the president is committed to the strength of the U.S. dollar, but his tax cuts will eventually start reducing the deficit. And the quote, the only special interest guiding the Trump administration's decision making is the best interest of the American people.
That's all for today, Thursday, February 5th. The Journal is a co-production of Spotify and The Wall Street Journal. If you like our show, follow us on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. We're out every weekday afternoon. Thanks for listening. See you tomorrow.
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