Investment tips from Lee Kuan Yew. Wall Street Journal:
Singapore’s founding statesman, Lee Kuan Yew, has long been critical of the profligacy of Western governments, even before the recent debt crises in the U.S. and the Eurozone brought the world’s financial system to its knees.
But now he’s singing a slightly different tune and advising some investors – notably China – to load up on European debt. …
“China has US$3.18 trillion in foreign exchange reserves. If the EU becomes mired in Greece’s economic difficulties, China’s exports to Europe will decline,” Mr. Lee said in a column published in Singapore’s The Business Times Friday.
“Now is a good time to invest in distressed and undervalued European assets, euro debts and euro bonds,” he wrote in the column, which also appears in the March 26 edition of Forbes Asia. …
But his most recent musings contrast somewhat with a more cynical assessment of Europe’s fortunes he made last September.
Back then he said that Singapore, despite its large financial reserves, would not be able to rescue Europe by buying its bonds due to the island nation’s relatively small economic size.
Moreover, he indicated he believed that buying bonds in general would not necessarily solve the structural problems facing the 27-member state region.
“There’s a fundamental problem in the euro in that it makes (each member) country march to the same drummer. Whereas each country has its own tempo, and you cannot expect the Greeks to march like the Germans,” he said in September.
