Europe’s largest asset manager Amundi is reducing its exposure to US dollar assets and turning to European and emerging markets, its chief executive has said.
Valerie Baudson, whose firm has €2.4 trillion of assets under management, said Amundi would advise clients to shift away from the greenback over the coming year, warning that if US economic policy remains unchanged, “we will go on seeing a [weakening] of the dollar”.
Few people here are talking about radical reforms that would change the existing power dynamics and politicians are even less ambitious. Centrists are continually looking for off-ramps so that we don’t “go too far” (e.g., don’t abolish ICE, reform the courts, ban money from politics, reestablish the balance of powers). Even with a blue wave and a reformist president, expect there to be enough of those sorts to bog down any momentum for change and enough voters eager to reconcile and return to business as usual that nothing changes.
Other countries should be planning to insulate themselves from us, because we’re not going to become safe to trust. We may go back to Obama levels of foreign engagement and the slow grind of neoliberal economic policy, but we’re going to be teetering on the edge of another Trump for decades at least. His 40% of supporters are fanatical and have no exposure to outside viewpoints that would deprogram them, and the judges he’s put in place will allow insanity to stay mainstream.