Paper Lion?

A recent study by Bain& Co. forecasts a “superabundance of capital” between now and 2020. Bain projects that there might be up to ten times the level of global financial assets relative to global GDP within the next several years. This divergence, driven by surpluses in Asia and the Middle East, should exacerbate bubble like behavior over the next 6-7 years the study reports. While we would normally ignore such drivel, it does make one think about all of the existing excess liquidity that exists today, and will most likely continue to exist going forward. The study assumes however, quite naively we might add, that this liquidity will flow mainly to public capital markets/financial assets. We maintain that smart capital seeking a home does not necessarily look only to traditional conduits of investment such as stocks and bonds but rather seeks out where it will be treated the best (return and safety). We highly doubt that the conditions which would warrant a sustained divergence between the real economy and the paper economy would be sustainable over any extended period of time.  Very recent history would suggest that negative real rates of interest have oftentimes caused excess liquidity to bleed over into areas of the real economy, sometimes in highly unpredictable and highly disruptive manners.