The Safest of Them All: What If Safe Assets Aren't Safe? (ft. Vincent Mortier, Group CIO of Amundi and Deputy CEO of Amundi AM)

So, Kokou, this is shaping up to be a philosophical debate, determinism versus existentialism, Spinoza against Sartre.

To be or to become, that is the question, Siri.

So yes, we'll explore some of these philosophical tensions in the first part of this episode, but before we do, we need to start with a simple question: What defines a safe asset? [gentle music] For thousands of years, one asset has survived the test of time: gold.

Civilizations that never met each other, such as the Egyptians, the Incas, and many others, all independently decided that this once soft yellow metal was money.

Why?

Because it shines, and humans are irresistibly drawn to shiny things? My precious.

Partly, but mostly because it is scarce, durable, and impossible to print.

Typically, you need to process one to five tons of rock to extract just a few grams of gold.

So a safe asset at its heart is a store of value, something that holds its purchasing power across time.

Correct.

I love the biological metaphor here.

[upbeat music] Think of fat.

Your body stores energy as fat so it can draw on it during lean times.

A safe asset does the same thing for an economy.

It stores economic energy.

That is future claims on goods and services, so you can release it later.

Gold has done that for 5,000 years.

It's why Bitcoin's evangelists talk about digital gold, a finite, decentralized reservoir of economic energy that can be moved through time and across borders with low transaction costs.

costs.And the modern version of safe assets?

Well, we can talk about government bonds from creditworthy states, above all, US Treasuries.

The scale is genuinely difficult to picture.

According to SIFMA, the US Treasury market stood at roughly $31 trillion outstanding in May 2026, with well over a trillion dollars changing hands on an average day.

This is the deepest, most liquid pool of assets humanity has ever built.

That depth is the safety.

You can sell an enormous position at 3:00 AM in the morning and barely move the price.