As it has grown, it has attracted a broader range of institutional investors, notably big public pension funds, lured by the prospect of decent profits not correlated with volatile stockmarket returns.
"And a new paper by Mr. Summers and Antonio Fatás, in addition to supporting other economists' conclusion that the crisis seems to have done enormous long-run damage," says Krugman, "shows that the downgrading of nations' long-run prospects is strongly correlated with the amount of austerity they imposed".
One nurse highlighted this concept by stating, "I've had patients say, you may as well go ahead and shoot me if I have to go on that machine", illustrating the intense emotions that correlate with the prospect of dialysis.
In contrast, several aspects of life satisfaction" (i.e. myself, overall life, where I live, and future prospects) correlated positively with the disease acceptance factors, again "Positive Life Construction, Contentedness and Well-Being" revealed the strongest associations.
"The difficulty of correlating,….
So they started to diversify into "alternative" asset classes that were not correlated with equities yet offered the prospect of hefty returns.
Commodities promised a decent long-term narrative (Chinese and Indian demand) and the prospect of diversification, the only free lunch in the investment world: positive returns that are not correlated with other asset classes.Then something went wrong.
Brokers may be incensed by the prospect of a fiduciary requirement because they are afraid of having to create a merit based business model in which their profits are correlated with the quality of their recommendations.
"A Prospect of Eternity".
The prospect of flying blind.
