Access Investments-European Union- ROMANIA

Patrick L Young: Greece is in a hideous situation. The only sane approach - presuming you do not endorse beggaring the population (which curiously it seems the current Marxist Prime Minister does...) - is Grexit. The whole affair is a disaster for Europe and Greece. The latter is impoverished, the former looks entirely incompetent and incapable. A third bailout merely renews the fuse of Grexit and the longer the fuse burns, the more likely the whole Eurozone will collapse. The political classes are incapable of evaluating the risks objectively (or are in denial about it). As an entrepreneur and investor, I cannot afford to avoid economic reality in the way the dysfunctional blob of Europe goes about conducting its (to put it mildly) rather disorganised affairs.  Reporter: What investments do you consider to be most interesting at the moment? What estimations do you have for the next period? What events should investors pay attention to, this year?  Patrick L Young: I happen to still like exchanges. We are working on several projects in this area, as the digital world perfectly fits with the benefits of exchanges. These network opportunities are enormous - everywhere.  At the same time, I have a considerable involvement in startups per se and am closely involved in Poland (through a startup group I cofounded "Mission ToRun) and across the world.  Technology is fundamentally interesting and there are huge opportunities for everybody at every age in the current environment. I am however worried about the overall macroeconomic picture and hence have been selling/pruning my portfolio of conventional assets in real estate, equities and so forth. I have no bond holdings right now - in fact I am more likely to be short of bonds/equities currently...awaiting much juicier yields in the near future (I like P2P / marketplace lending for this reason incidentally).  The biggest issue to pay attention to is the state of the world economy. China is in difficulty, the US remains sluggish thanks to the leftward lurch of the Obama administration, yet the US expansion is surely closer to an end for this cycle. Europe is a basket case overall. Sorry I cannot be more optimistic on the short to medium term but look at it this way - we live in a world of opportunity and technology on the horizon is simply incredible....albeit we have to work hard to get government to move out of the analogue era and accept our exciting digital future, even at the cost of the upheaval it can create. Then again that could work hugely to Romania's advantage if we can break the remaining influence of corruption and empower a better, broader meritocratic society for the nation which thrives with a nimbler bureaucracy such as, say Estonia's wondrous digital government...