- Anthony Scaramucci, founder of the $9.5 billion investment firm SkyBridge Capital, isn't sold on a Trump victory in 2020 due to a consensus view at Davos.
- He says that "85% of the people here think he's going to win."
- Scaramucci, who had a brief stint as the White House director of communications, draws a parallel to the financial crisis, citing how the crowd at Davos said "growth was limitless" in 2007 - right before the collapse of the global economy.
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DAVOS, Switzerland - Despite being smack dab in the middle of a Senate impeachment trial, President Donald Trump's odds of remaining commander-in-chief for four more years have been hovering near record highs.
But Anthony Scaramucci, the founder of $9.5 billion SkyBridge Capital who served a brief stint as the White House director of communications, thinks a Trump victory in November is anything but certain.
"I'm more confident today that Trump is going to lose than I was yesterday," he said in an exclusive interview with Business Insider at the World Economic Forum in Davos.
"Can I tell you why? Eighty-five percent of the people here think he's going to win."
He continued: "This is a very good contrary indicator. They get it wrong. Elitist conventional wisdom usually is terrible."
Clearly, Scaramucci is not (and never has been) coy about sharing his controversial and inflammatory opinions.
But his take on the election isn't without merit - and he draws parallels to a similar scenario that preceded the financial crisis to bolster his thesis.
"I was here in 2007 and they said the growth was limitless," he said.
Exuberance and certainty were high in 2007. After all, the economy was firing on all cylinders and the future looked promising.
But few people could see that the global economy was inching closer and closer to massive day of reckoning. Shortly thereafter, the world would experience the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression.
It goes without saying that almost everyone - not just the Davos elite - was unprepared for the financial crisis and a Trump victory in 2016.
In March of 2007, Federal Reserve Chair Ben Bernanke said "At this juncture, however, the impact on the broader economy and financial markets of the problems in the subprime market seems likely to be contained."
He was wrong.
What's more, on November 8th, 2016, Hillary Clinton was reported to have an 85% chance of winning the presidency in a New York Times article. Similarly, CNN forecasted a 91% chance of victory - and Reuters said Clinton had a 90% chance of winning just two days before the election.
They were wrong.
Time will tell if Scaramucci's forecasts prove to be clairvoyant. But if there's anything we learned from 2016, it's that consensus views cannot necessarily be relied upon, and that it is impossible to know who's going to call 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue home until every ballot has been accounted for.