Managing CIO Greg Jensen Shares Our Global Outlook

The global economy stands at a critical juncture where the rapid acceleration of artificial intelligence, modern mercantilism, and geopolitical instability are creating an increasingly unrecognizable landscape. AI development has crossed a threshold of human capability, promising significant productivity gains while simultaneously introducing systemic risks from rogue agents and compute concentration. Meanwhile, governments face unsustainable fiscal pressures, forcing a choice between painful austerity or reliance on a hypothetical productivity boom to manage rising debt. Current market pricing remains disconnected from these realities, failing to account for the potential for compute shortages, currency volatility, and the disruptive impact of these interconnected forces. Navigating this environment requires recognizing that traditional economic models are being challenged by a shift toward self-sufficiency and transactional international relations, leaving investors and policymakers to manage a volatile transition where historical precedents no longer reliably predict future outcomes.