6 Big Insights From Ultra-Wealthy Investors: Tiger 21 Conference

Ross also commented on Related's Hudson Yards development on the Hudson River, which he said would become the "new heart" of New York City. "The center of New York is Rockefeller Center, but that is now shifting west."

He said Hudson Yards' public square would be adorned by a monumental sculpture. "We are putting in what will be a 365-day-a-year Rockefeller Christmas Tree."

Paul McCulley, former chief economist and managing director of PIMCO

McCulley said that the global economy as a whole was looking relatively good, especially in light of predictions five or six years ago. "It is a multi-speed economy with the U.S. at the top of the heap," he said.

McCulley said his number one investment idea was the U.S. dollar. "From the standpoint of the opportunistic portion of a portfolio, where you are trying to actually make some serious money, don't look at the U.S. — with one exception. Wherever you invest in the world, you want to hedge the currency back into U.S. dollars. I am an absolute bull on our currency."

He also said that now was a good time to be a seller of real estate. "The huge revaluation of real estate and the cap-rate decline is over. Real estate is simply a rich, low-yielding asset now."

Hans Rosling, co-founder of Rosling Education AB, who uses data to explain world events

Rosling discussed the effect of health, education and money on population trends.

He noted that the number of children in the world had stopped increasing. "This is the biggest event in the history of mankind that was ever completely missed by millions in the last five to 10 years."

He said that as income and life in the U.S. had improved, children survived and women decided to have fewer and fewer children. "Now it is a quite stable demographic situation — which may be one of the main assets of this nation and may be one of the reasons for the now better economic growth in the U.S. than in Europe."

Rosling also observed that a major shift is in population to urban areas had occurred. "The number of people in rural areas has stopped increasing."

Jay Walker, curator of TEDMED

Walker, an entrepreneur who focuses on using digital networks to create new business systems, talked about the forces that will reshape the global economy. "The world will change more in the next 20 years than it has changed in the last 20,000 years when it comes to health and medicine," he said.

Walker observed that the world was entering the age of biology. This will be "an age where computer science and computer technology and industrialization from the last century, which was largely not about us, is about to become all about us."

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