| Why exactly it's an anathema for those groups? Every state, city, country has a lot of favored sectors and grant opportunities, it's then up to investors to come up with projects that actually turn a profit. VC/startup investors do this by simply doing a semi-blind search, funding everything they think is at least minimally sound. If investors are still unable to turn a profit they are not taking on enough risk. (They are not thinking big enough.) And that might be okay. There's no moral imperative to keep every investment fund alive, every investor happy. And the only difference between business as usual periods and now is that the numbers are now scary (negative yields!). But the fundamentals haven't changed. Negative yields just mean that too many investors are risk averse, too many people (pension funds, passive funds, low-risk funds, inflation tracking funds, basic savings accounts) just want to park money. And that's okay. Eventually one of the following will happen: the fund managers will take on more risk, the people behind the funds will use the money for something else (eg spend it), or the people behind the funds will pester Congress to spend more and finance it all from debt. |