About the Author

A trader's pragmatism.
A strategist's vision.

Roger Ohan portrait

Credentials

INSEAD
J.P. Morgan
International Asset Management
Emerging Markets Strategy

Roger Ohan spent years in the high-stakes world of global finance, from the trading floors of Chemical Bank (J.P. Morgan) to the boardrooms of international development and asset managers, before realising that the world's most powerful people were using the wrong map.

A graduate of INSEAD, Ohan's perspective was shaped by a career spent at the intersection of capital and policy. Whether navigating the complexities of emerging markets or observing the "paradox of growth" in the wake of national disasters, he became convinced that our obsession with GDP is a fundamental accounting error that blinds us to our actual wealth.

He first began writing what would become The Ledger in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis, a moment when the gap between the official numbers and lived reality became impossible to ignore. Nearly two decades of research, debate, and refinement followed.

In his first work, Roger brings a trader's pragmatism and a strategist's vision to the field of macroeconomics. He doesn't just critique the system; he provides the blueprint for a new one.

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The Five-Year Mission

To give the world the other half of the ledger.

"My mission over the next five years is to establish the Gross National Assets framework and National Balance Sheet Economics as the essential, missing dimension of national economic measurement."

GDP is a genuinely valuable metric of annual economic flow, but it was never intended to tell the whole story. By relying on it as our sole barometer of prosperity, we have institutionalised a catastrophic blind spot: we measure activity while ignoring wealth.

Without a balance sheet, policymakers are flying by looking only at a speedometer, without an altimeter. They are incapable of seeing when "growth" is actually the result of liquidating a nation's long-term assets. Roger's work provides the complementary framework that turns a one-dimensional view of flow into a three-dimensional understanding of stock.

I.

Building the Body of Work

Expanding National Balance Sheet Economics through focused works, applying the GNA lens to natural resources, the governance multiplier, and institutional integrity. The aim: a body substantial enough to be taught alongside traditional macroeconomics. The Stock to GDP's Flow.

II.

Engaging the Policy Community

Bringing GNA into dialogue with finance ministries, central banks, and sovereign wealth funds, drawing on three decades in financial services, NED experience in the hedge fund industry, and the INSEAD network. GDP need not be abandoned. It must finally be read in the context of a National Balance Sheet.

III.

Building a Public Language for Wealth

The governing classes are accountable to electorates who currently lack the language to demand a better accounting of their national inheritance. The Ledger was written to bridge this gap, translating complex financial concepts into a clear vision of the Sovereign Share.

The Practitioner's Edge

The analytical discipline of an engineer. The strategic formation of an INSEAD MBA. The frontline instinct of a financial practitioner who has managed complex global risks and served on institutional boards. Answerable to no institution, and therefore independent enough to advocate for a more transparent accounting of our global future.

The world does not need to replace GDP, but it desperately needs to contextualise it. The next five years are the period in which Roger intends to make the case for a National Balance Sheet so comprehensively that the world can no longer afford to ignore half of the ledger.