Investor survival advices in a financial system running out of fuel

The ultra-low policy that a growing number of Central banks is pursuing is damaging the entire economic system. In his monthly Investment outlook Bill Gross warns investors about it and points out the way Janus Capital unconstrained portfolios deal with it.
According to the last Investment outlook by Bill Gross, in a world where the environmental issue and the culture of re-use are growing in success, there is a kind of recycling which is not good: “the recycles of finance for the benefit of financiers. Making money on money seems to be the system’s flickering objective. Our global finance-based economy is becoming increasingly dormant, not because people don’t want to work or technology isn’t producing better things, but because finance itself is burning out”. 
Why is it? Because of the quantitative easing and negative interest rates policies. “Private sectors savers are growing leery of debt piled upon debt and government regulators have begun to build fences against further rampant creation. In addition the return offered on savings/investment whether it be on deposit at a bank, in Treasuries/Bunds, or at extremely low equity risk premiums, is inadequate relative to historical as well as mathematically defined durational risk”. 
Why would someone lend money to a borrower with the certainty of getting less money back at a future date?  This is the question Gross is posing (but Central banks are not). “Negative yields – keeps on explaining Gross – threaten bank profit margins as yield curves flatten worldwide and bank net interest rate margins narrow”. The recent collapse in worldwide bank stock prices can be explained by future return on equity (Roe) similar to the one of utility stocks. “In addition to banks, business models with long term liabilities that depend on 7%-8% future returns from risk assets are themselves at risk of future profitability. Puerto Rico follows Detroit not just because of overpromised benefits but because they cannot earn enough on their investment portfolios to cover the promises”. 
Investment implications
The advice Bill Gross gives to investors is to not be lured by “the tantalizing apple of high yield or the low price/book ratio of bank stocks” whose prices are where they are “because of low/negative interest rates. “The secret – he explains – in a negative interest rate world is to keep bond maturities short and borrow at those attractive yields in a mildly levered form that provides a yield and an expected return of 5%-6%”. Right the thing Janus unconstrained portfolios try to do. 

Investment outlook – Janus Capital