Inflation was last year's story, says Brookfield CEO Bruce Flatt

Let’s just stop broad because big picture, I think the question investors have is the inflation progress has stalled and now the Fed is waiting to see what happens next. From your vantage point, what do you think it is? I think inflation was last year’s story like it’s stalled, but it’s going down, the trend is down, the markets are coming back. What indicates to us is liquidity is coming back into the markets and every month for 12 months, liquidity has been coming back. That drives more transactions, It drives more activity, It drives buyers and sellers together. And so the world is opening back up after a tough 24 months and it’s getting better. So I just say, yes, we have inflation stalled, but we’re on the right trend. We’re on the trend and that’s what’s really, really important. Even if rates have to stay high for a little bit longer, high for a little longer and they’re not that high and they will come down. And that’s what’s driving people to do to do more. And you can just we see it every day in the markets. We went out with a bond last week for our Intel fabrication plant and I think we’re 15 times oversubscribed. So there’s just more money coming back into the system projecting rates are coming down and that’s just good for transaction activity. So do you think that the Fed’s going to be able to stick the landing and get away with this tightening cycle without causing any kind of bigger downturn? They’ve done an excellent job so far and and the economy’s strong. Markets around the world are pretty good and we had a very unusual cycle this time, but they’ve done a really good job. So let’s hope so. There was no real default cycle or distress. No, no and and not much. You know, we’ll see some. There’s always a tale. There’s always a tale of some things and every. Some private equity businesses didn’t make it through. Some real estate didn’t make it through. There’s a tale, but but there’s not if. If the economic environment as we think of it today is what plays out, there’s not going to be a lot of huge stress. But there’s always opportunities for people with money and there’s a lot of companies that won’t make it through. But that’s just, that’s just business. What about commercial real estate? You are in this sector. There has been some distress and people are worried that there’s more coming. What do you see? Yeah, again, that’s last year’s story. There’s always a tail. So there’s some real estate that isn’t doing that well. But we’re well we’re on the rebound. We’ve seen the bottom, we’ve seen the bottom. We’re past the bottom. Rates are remember what when as rates were going up people were freaking out. They were going to go 500 basis points higher. They’ve they’ve gone here now we’re on with rates coming down, it means capitalization rates are going to turn the opposite direction, values are going back up or going back to normal places. And so we’re we’re on the other side of it. That’s not to say that there isn’t an opportunity to invest just like in private equity deals to invest in some commercial real estate because people borrow too much money or the OR the businesses or assets didn’t perform to plan and those always are the opportunities. So it’s going to be an excellent environment over the next 18 months to put money to work in commercial real estate where specifically geographically category, look, I would say around the world, commercial real estate’s really good and there’s a lot of sectors in commercial real estate where things are really good. Hotels are good, industrial’s pretty good. Multifamily’s good. Data centers, data centers are amazing. So there’s a lot that’s good. And internationally things are good. You know our US office space that’s not prime. I would, yes, yes, US in general things that are over financed or or not financed for this environment in general and bad office in general, good office is amazing and if you can find, if you can find an opportunity to recap something that’s in good office, that’s a great opportunity. But so I’d say US this cycle, the most opportunities will be in the United States, which is not normal.