Yawn..... 
By Martin Hutchinson
Contributing Editor
Imagine that you’re the investment director for one of the new sovereign wealth funds (SWFs). A very important guy - you get to invest several hundred billion dollars, with far fewer committees and shareholder interest groups harassing you than if you the head
of U.S. institutions such as CalPERS or TIAA-CREF.
Last winter, you had delegations from all the big banks in New York explaining that
they’d just had this teensy weensy hiccup in subprime mortgages and so were giving you an unparalleled opportunity to buy shares - or convertible bonds - at a modest discount to the market price. You bit and you bought - a few billion dollars in each of two or three of them maybe, a fleabite in terms of your overall funds to invest but real money for ordinary mortals.
Now you open The Wall Street Journal handed you by a flunky to see how your investment is doing….
And find it’s down an average of 15%. And that’s in dollars, which themselves appear to be turning into some kind of peso.
The Politburo will not be happy (if yours is the Chinese fund). You may even find yourself minus a hand (if it’s one of the Middle East funds). Worst of all, if you’re from Singapore’s Temasek Holdings, you may have to explain your poor investment decision to the razor-sharp intellect of the 84-year-old island patriarch Lee Kuan-Yew!
