Investors face risks they haven't seen before due to the aggressive actions of global central bankers, Paul Singer of Elliott Management said Tuesday.
Repeating a theme at the Delivering Alpha conference, Singer faulted the Federal Reserve and others for creating unusual dangers that are unique in the "5,000 years-ish" history of finance due to low and negative interest rates.
"What they have done is created a tremendous increase in hidden risk, risk that investors don't exactly know or have faced about their holdings," he said at the conference presented by CNBC and Institutional Investor. "I think it's a very dangerous time in the global economy and global financial markets."
Singer spoke as the Fed weighs whether to enact just its second rate increase in more than 10 years and its first since December, the hedge funder said policy makers acted with "amazing arrogance" when he and others were warning of the financial crisis that would explode in 2008.
In the current situation, he said, the best central bankers can do is say that things would have been even worse had they not acted after the crisis.
He issued cautionary words for the path ahead.
"With roughly $15 trillion on the major central bank balance sheets, with all of these rates at zero or even crazily below zero, you have a very delicate situation which cannot be solved by a sledgehammer," Singer added. "You need some finesse."
