Imagine that you have lost two hundred billion of other people's money.
Two. Hundred. Billion.
And that you then, before anyone even gets around to calling you to account, yourself commission and yourself pay for the investigation that is to determine whether you have managed that money responsibly.
And then imagine that the investigation concludes…
That you have done excellently.
It sounds like a satirical exaggeration. Almost Monty Pythonesque. But it isn't. It is what was presented this week.
ATP, which manages Danes' collective pension, has for years defended an investment strategy that cost the savings around two hundred billion, and in response to the criticism they promised "fresh eyes". The fresh eyes came. They were paid for by ATP itself. And they were therefore perhaps… extra fresh!?… Because they found that the organisation was strong, that the execution had been excellent, that no major mistakes had occurred.
- Ooooo….kaaayyy…!?? …Two. Hundred. Billion. Kroner. Blown away with the wind. You said?
- Yes?
- Ok…
Regardless. The decisive thing is actually not what they praised. The decisive thing is what they carefully refrained from looking at.
The model itself, the leveraged construction, where losses don't just hurt but are magnified, and which all the criticism for years has been about, was not examined at all. Instead they assessed how skilfully the strategy was carried out, but not whether the strategy made sense at all.
It's a bit like praising a man's steady hand on the wheel… without just mentioning that his car is lying at the bottom of a lake.
The only real recommendation concerns the illiquid assets, those that cannot be sold on an exchange, and which ATP has bet big on, including the Swedish battery factory Northvolt, where 2.3 billion disappeared when the dream - predictably, evil tongues are tempted to say - turned out not to be able to sustain itself. That the expert group now cautiously suggests that that proportion probably ought to be smaller is in itself an admission, but is packaged so softly that it can be read as a compliment.
And meanwhile the promise itself they have given stands there and flutters in the wind in silence.
Because ATP has one task. ONE single task that towers above all other tasks.
To secure for Danish wage earners the highest possible pension for life, by without consideration investing our money in the best possible way - and even the expert group must concede that the payouts cannot keep pace with inflation. The guarantee is there. It just guarantees less and less.
We are used to believing that "an investigation" is something that comes from outside, from someone who has no interest in the answer. That is sort of the very meaning of the word. An investigation you commission about yourself, pay for yourself and are praised in, has nothing to do with investigation.
It has just borrowed the word.
Like so many others in our time.
And that is the quietly disturbing part. Not that they lost the money, because people lose money. But that the loss can be turned into praise, that the words can be arranged so that reality disappears behind them, and that we are all expected to nod as-if with blank hundred-kilometre stare.
You can perhaps buy yourself the praise.
But you cannot buy yourself that it is True.
❤️🔥🪽