A US Sovereign Wealth Fund At Last

Posted September 9, 2024

President Biden and former President Trump both announced their support for the establishment of a US Sovereign Wealth Fund over the weekend. I read this news with enormous gratification since advocating such a fund has been the main focus of my work for the last 15 years.

I first called for a multi-trillion-dollar government-funded investment in the industries and technologies of the future in my second book, The Corruption of Capitalism, in 2009. I repeated that message in The New Depression in 2012, in an interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin and Becky Quick on CNBC’s Squawk Box later that year, and in countless other media interviews and presentations to most of the world’s leading investment management firms during the years that followed.

My latest book, The Money Revolution: How To Finance The Next American Century, published in early 2022, was entirely devoted to persuading the American public and US policymakers of the wisdom of—and the urgent need for—a very large-scale government-funded investment in the industries and technologies of the future. All 500 pages of that book were written to demonstrate how easy it would be for the United States to make a multi-trillion-dollar investment in its future over the next decade.

The typical reaction to this policy proposal was something like: “That’s an interesting idea. But you know the government is never going to do anything like that.”

Then, in August 2022, the CHIPS and Science Act, allocating $280 billion for investments in the industries of the future, was signed into law. That Act was an important first step in the right direction.

In February 2023, I had the honor to present the arguments from The Money Revolution in a speech before 15 members of the House Ways and Means Committee at a policy dinner in Washington, D.C.

By then, the threat posed to US national security by China’s rapid, government-funded technological advances was becoming well understood on both sides of the aisle in Congress. The rapid development of COVID vaccines made possible by government financing had also provided proof of what can be accomplished through government investment.

Americans should rejoice that the leaders of both political parties are now calling for an American Sovereign Wealth Fund. This is a historic development that, if enacted on a large enough scale, will ignite a technological revolution that will create vast new wealth, greatly enhance human well-being, and ensure the country’s continued geopolitical preeminence for generations to come.