In Episode 199 of Hidden Forces, Demetri Kofinas speaks with investor and financial historian Russell Napier. Napier’s latest book, “The Asian Financial Crisis: 1995-1998,” covers a period of time that many investors are either not familiar with or haven’t studied anywhere near as closely as they should given its relevance to the investment regime in which we are living today.

Today’s investment regime—what Russell Napier called “The Age of Debt”—is characterized by excessive private and public debt levels, financial repression, market concentration, and all of the unintended consequences that arise from the perverse incentives that these dynamics create. We spend the first hour of our conversation discussing the crisis itself, it’s drivers, as well as the practices and policies that made it possible. The second hour is spent on the resolution of the crisis and applying the lessons learned from that period to today, with implications for the future path of interest rates, inflation, growth, political stability, and most practically, opportunities for investing in the new market regime that we are moving into.

Since this episode deals with markets and investing, we want to make absolutely clear that nothing we say on this podcast can or should be viewed as financial advice. All opinions expressed by Demetri Kofinas and Russell Napier are solely their own opinions and should not be relied upon as the basis for financial decisions.

You can access the episode overtime, as well as the transcript and rundown to this week’s episode through the Hidden Forces Patreon Page. All subscribers gain access to our overtime feed, which can be easily added to your favorite podcast application.

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Producer & Host: Demetri Kofinas

Editor & Engineer: Stylianos Nicolaou

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Episode Recorded on 07/09/2021

Russell Napier is author of “The Solid Ground” investment report for institutional investors and co-founder of the investment research portal ERIC. Russell has worked in the investment business for over 30 years and has been advising global institutional investors on asset allocation since 1995. He is author of the book “Anatomy of The Bear: Lessons From Wall Street’s Four Great Bottoms” (‘a cult classic’ according to the FT) and is founder and course director of The Practical History of Financial Markets course that is part of the Edinburgh Business School MBA. Russell is Chairman of the Mid Wynd International Investment Trust. He is a member of the investment advisory committees of two fund management companies, Cerno Capital and Kennox Asset Management. In 2014 Russell founded the charitable venture “The Library of Mistakes,” a business and financial history library in Edinburgh that now has branches in India and Switzerland. Russell has degrees in law from Queen’s University Belfast and Magdalene College Cambridge. He is a Fellow of The CFA Society of the UK and is an Honorary Professor at both Heriot-Watt University and The University of Stirling.