The household debt service ratio and the financial obligations ratio in the USA have risen, but far more slowly and modestly than the ratio of household debt to disposable personal income would suggest: "Household Debt Service and Financial Obligations Ratios," <http://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/housedebt/>. What has kept the interest rates so low here (and consequently elsewhere, too), even as the US current account deficit has become larger than ever?
The doubling of the global labor force since the fall of state socialism and neoliberal capitalism, over all, but the three pillars of the American empire's finance are China,* Japan, and the Middle East.** What makes them invest in the USA? It seems to me that it comes down to faith in the US Empire, past and present (past faith is important, too, because of high costs of transition for countries like Japan and China that have accumulated lots of dollar reserves), and absence of an alternative. What sustains faith in the US empire? Is there anything other than US hegemony in the final instance backed by US military power? That is why Washington can't easily let go of Iraq, for defeat can erode the faith in the empire, though staying there longer can also erode it, too. What a double bind! * <blockquote><http://www.economist.com/business/globalexecutive/dialogue/displayStory.cfm?Story_id=4221685>
From T-shirts to T-bonds
Jul 28th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Beijing, not Washington, increasingly takes the decisions that affect workers, companies, financial markets and economies everywhere GLOBAL tremors in the currency, bond and commodity markets greeted China's announcement that the yuan will no longer be pegged to the dollar. No longer is it just Washington that has the power to cause shockwaves. For many people, the tremors reflected the view that China is the root cause of America's trade deficit, and that the revaluation is a partial cure. In fact, that view is wrong on several counts. China is not the main cause of the American trade deficit. On the other hand, China is behind almost everything else going on in the world economy. For China is beginning to drive, in a new and pervasive way, economic trends that many countries assume to be domestically determined. Americans like to slap the "made in China" label on their huge trade deficit. Yet not only is China's forecast current-account surplus of around $100 billion this year only a fraction of America's likely deficit of $800 billion, but, as chart 1 shows, most of the increase in America's trade deficit has come from outside China. The main cause of America's trade deficit is a lack of domestic saving, not unfair Chinese competition. The deficit is thus made in America, not made in China. As for last week's revaluation, the announcement marked a significant break with the past. China has long been under pressure to revalue its currency from countries that claim the undervalued yuan gives Chinese exporters an unfair advantage. After pegging the yuan to the dollar for a decade, China has shifted to a managed float against a basket of currencies, with an initial revaluation against the dollar of 2.1%. Nobody is yet sure how this will work. It may be just a token move aimed at warding off American protectionism. Or it could be the first of several revaluations, marking the end of the so-called "revived Bretton Woods system", under which China and other Asian countries have bought billions of dollars in foreign-exchange reserves to hold their currencies steady against the greenback. Either way, the tiny revaluation by itself will have little impact on America's huge trade deficit. Indeed, even if the yuan is allowed to rise by another 5-10% over the next 12 months, as many economists expect, that would hardly make a dent in the deficit. Nevertheless, it is still an important change in China's exchange-rate regime, representing a step towards a market-based system. And, as such, it could have implications for the dollar, bond yields, and American consumer spending. To view China's global impact mainly in terms of its exports and its trade surplus is to misunderstand, and to underestimate, the profound forces behind China's growing influence. Everyone knows that most TVs and T-shirts are made in China. But so, in some ways, are developed countries' inflation rates, interest rates, wages, profits, oil prices and even house prices—or at least they are strongly influenced by what happens in China. Of course, China is not the only fast-growing emerging economy that is making waves around the world. But China really does loom much larger: its contribution to global GDP growth since 2000 has been almost twice as large as that of the next three biggest emerging economies, India, Brazil and Russia, combined. Moreover, there is another crucial reason why China's integration into the world economy is today having a bigger global impact than other emerging economies, or than Japan did during its period of rapid growth from the mid-1950s onwards. Uniquely, China combines a vast supply of cheap labour with an economy that is (for its size) unusually open to the rest of the world, in terms of trade and foreign direct investment. The sum of its total exports and imports of goods and services amounts to around 75% of China's GDP; in Japan, India and Brazil the figure is 25-30% (see chart 2). As a result, the dragon's awakening is more traumatic for the rest of the world. Doubling the world's workforce Most analysis of China's growing importance focuses on its rising share of global output and exports. That, in turn, fuels fears that China is stealing production and jobs from the rest of the world. But this misses half the story. It is true that China's trade surplus has increased sharply this year—mainly because the government's efforts to cool fixed investment have cut back imports. But over the past decade, China's imports have risen at the same pace as its exports. So China is giving a big boost to both global supply and demand. China's impact on the world economy can best be understood as what economists call a "positive supply-side shock". Richard Freeman, an economist at Harvard University, reckons that the entry into the world economy of China, India and the former Soviet Union has, in effect, doubled the global labour force (China accounts for more than half of this increase). This has increased the world's potential growth rate, helped to hold down inflation and triggered changes in the relative prices of labour, capital, goods and assets. The new entrants to the global economy brought with them little capital of economic value. So, with twice as many workers and little change in the size of the global capital stock, the ratio of global capital to labour has fallen by almost half in a matter of years: probably the biggest such shift in history. And, since this ratio determines the relative returns to labour and capital, it goes a long way to explain recent trends in wages and profits. In America, Europe and Japan, the pace of growth in real wages has been unusually weak in recent years. Indeed, measured by the growth in income from employment, this is America's weakest recovery for decades. According to Stephen Roach, an economist at Morgan Stanley, American private-sector workers' total compensation (wages plus benefits) has risen by only 11% in real terms since November 2001, the trough of the recession, compared with an average gain of 17% over the equivalent period of the five previous recoveries (see chart 3). In most developed countries, average real wages have lagged well behind productivity gains. The entry of China's vast army of cheap workers into the international system of production and trade has reduced the bargaining power of workers in developed economies. Although the absolute number of jobs outsourced from developed countries to China remains small, the threat that firms could produce offshore helps to keep a lid on wages. In most developed countries, wages as a proportion of total national income are currently close to their lowest level for decades. The flip side is that profits are grabbing a bigger slice of the cake (see chart 4). Last year, America's after-tax profits rose to their highest as a proportion of GDP for 75 years; the shares of profit in the euro area and Japan are also close to their highest for at least 25 years. This is exactly what economic theory would predict. China's emergence into the world economy has made labour relatively abundant and capital relatively scarce, and so the relative return to capital has risen. It is ironic that western capitalists can thank the world's biggest communist country for their good fortune. China's main impact on the world economy is to change relative prices and incomes. Not only are the prices of the goods that China exports falling; the prices of the goods that it imports are rising, notably oil and other raw materials. China is already the world's biggest consumer of many commodities, such as aluminium, steel, copper and coal, and the second-biggest consumer of oil, so changes in Chinese demand have a big impact on world prices. China has accounted for one-third of the increase in global oil demand since 2000 and so must bear some of the blame for higher oil prices. Likewise, if China's economy stumbles, then so will oil prices. However, with China's oil consumption per person still only one-fifteenth of that in America, it is inevitable that China's energy demands will grow over the years in step with its income. There is currently only one car for every 70 people in China, against one car for every two Americans. That implies a huge increase in oil demand, which could keep prices high for the foreseeable future, because of scarce global spare capacity. China's consumption per person of raw materials, such as copper and aluminium, is also still low, so rising demand will continue to support commodity prices. Cheap money Overall, the upward pressure that Chinese imports of raw materials have put on the prices of oil and other commodities has been more than offset by the downward pressure of Chinese manufactured exports. As a result, another important aspect of the China effect is low inflation. Central bankers like to take all the credit for the defeat of inflation, but China has given them a big helping hand in recent years. China's ability to produce more cheaply has pushed down the prices of many goods worldwide, as well as restraining wage pressures in developed economies. For instance, the average prices of shoes and clothing in America have fallen by 10% over the past ten years—a drop of 35% in real terms. A study by Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein reckons that China has knocked almost a full percentage-point off America's inflation rate in recent years. The recent 2% revaluation of the yuan will probably be absorbed by Chinese manufacturers trimming their profit margins and so will not be passed on into export prices. But Americans calling for a 25-30% revaluation may come to regret it: the result would almost certainly be faster inflation. As it is, China's reduction of inflationary pressures has allowed central banks to hold interest rates lower than they otherwise would be. Three and a half years into its recovery, America's real short-term interest rates are only 0.7%, almost two percentage-points below their average at the equivalent stage in previous recoveries since 1960. This is good news for borrowers, but some economists worry that the entry of China and other emerging countries into the global economy may have affected monetary policy in ways that central banks do not fully understand. In its latest annual report, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) asks whether it is really desirable to maintain positive inflation rates when China is boosting the world's productive potential so dramatically and thus reducing the prices of so many goods. In other words, are central banks targeting too high a rate of inflation now that China has joined the global market economy? During the late 19th-century era of rapid globalisation, falling average prices were quite common. This "good deflation", which was accompanied by robust growth, is very different to the bad deflation experienced in the 1930s depression. Today, we would again have had "good deflation"—but central banks have instead held interest rates low in order to meet their inflation targets. The BIS frets that this has encouraged excessive credit growth. This echoes a fierce debate in the 1920s. At that time, a similar jump in the world's productive potential (then caused by technology-driven productivity growth) was reducing manufacturing costs. Some economists suggested that, in such circumstances, overall price stability might be the wrong policy goal. Instead, they argued, average prices should be allowed to fall to pass the productivity gains on to workers and consumers as higher real incomes. But just like today, monetary policy prevented prices from falling. And an overly loose policy then inflated the late-1920s stockmarket bubble. The Austrian school of economics offers perhaps the best framework to understand what is going on. The entry of China's army of cheap labour into the global economy has increased the worldwide return on capital. That, in turn, should imply an increase in the equilibrium level of real interest rates. But, instead, central banks are holding real rates at historically low levels. The result is a misallocation of capital, most obviously displayed at present in the shape of excessive mortgage borrowing and housing investment. If this analysis is correct, central banks, not China, are to blame for the excesses, but China's emergence is the root cause of the problem. Not only has China's disinflationary impact caused low short-term interest rates, but China is also partly responsible for the low level of long-term bond yields. To keep its exchange rate pegged to the dollar, China was the biggest buyer of American Treasury bonds over the past year. In the first six months of 2005, its foreign-exchange reserves increased by more than $100 billion, to $711 billion, of which about three-quarters are in dollars. This has also kept capital costs artificially low. Who calls the shots? For many decades, global monetary policy has been set in Washington. When the Fed raised interest rates, global monetary conditions would tighten. Today, however, thanks in part to China's purchases of T-bonds, low long-term bond yields have offset the rise in American short-term interest rates over the past year. The yield on ten-year bonds is currently lower than before the Fed started to lift interest rates in June 2004. America's sovereignty over its monetary policy has therefore been eroded, with a given rise in short-term rates producing much less monetary tightening than in the past. To that extent, global monetary policy is increasingly being set in Beijing as well as in Washington. By helping to hold down interest rates in rich economies, China may have indirectly created a global liquidity bubble. Total global liquidity last year rose at its fastest pace in three decades after adjusting for inflation. This excess liquidity has not pushed up conventional inflation (thanks to cheap Chinese clothes and computers), but instead it has inflated a series of asset-price bubbles around the world. Thus, pushing this argument to its limit, it could be said that the global housing boom is indirectly "made in China". Not only has China played a role in holding down short-term interest rates, but the People's Bank of China has also supported America's mortgage market by buying vast amounts of mortgage-backed securities. What does the breaking of the yuan's peg to the dollar mean for bond yields? American Treasury yields rose by 12 basis points after Beijing made its announcement last week. Having played a hand in inflating America's housing bubble, could China now prick it by pushing up mortgage rates, which are closely tied to long-term bond yields? If abandoning its dollar peg causes China to reduce its purchases of T-bonds, then yields will rise. But this depends on several uncertainties. For instance, will last week's revaluation reduce inflows of speculative capital into China, and hence its need to intervene in the foreign-exchange market by buying dollars? A large chunk of China's foreign-exchange intervention over the past year has been to offset not its current-account surplus but inflows of hot money. Some economists believe that, in the short term, the small revaluation will intensify speculation of further revaluations and so attract even more capital inflows, forcing the People's Bank of China to buy more Treasury bonds to stabilise its currency. If so, bond yields will remain low. On the other hand, the switch from a dollar peg to a currency basket may cause China to diversify its reserves away from dollars. It is unlikely to dump its dollars, but it could well reduce its new purchases of Treasury bonds in favour of other currencies. And, if China really has broken the yuan's link with the dollar, then this could be the trigger for another general slide in the greenback against the euro, the yen and other currencies, prompting investors to demand higher yields. The fate of American house prices could thus be determined by unelected bureaucrats in Beijing rather than the unelected central bankers of the West. This article has argued that global inflation, interest rates, bond yields, house prices, wages, profits and commodity prices are now being increasingly driven by decisions in China. This could be the most profound economic change in the world for at least half a century. And its effect could last for another couple of decades. By some estimates, China has almost 200m underemployed workers in rural areas, and it could take at least two decades for them to be absorbed by industry. As this process takes place, it will continue to subdue wage growth and global inflation. Profit margins could also remain historically high for a period (though not for ever, as stockmarket valuations in many countries seem to imply). China creates immense opportunities, but it also brings new risks. If it stumbles, or if it decides to buy fewer American T-bonds, pushing up yields, then America might really have something to complain about: the first global downturn made in China.</blockquote> ** <blockquote><http://www.economist.com/finance/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5136281> Oil producers' surpluses Recycling the petrodollars Nov 10th 2005
From The Economist print edition
Exporters of oil are saving more of their recent windfall than in previous price booms. It's hard to spot where the money is going MANY American politicians and pundits explain their country's enormous current-account deficit by pointing at the surpluses of Asian economies, especially China. Undervalued currencies and unfairly cheap labour, they complain, have undermined America's competitiveness. In fact, looking at the world as a whole, the group of countries with the biggest current-account surpluses is no longer Asia but oil exporters, on which high prices have bestowed a gigantic windfall. This year, oil exporters could haul in $700 billion from selling oil to foreigners. This includes not only the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) but also Russia and Norway, the world's second- and third-biggest earners (see chart 1 below). The International Monetary Fund estimates that oil exporters' current-account surplus could reach $400 billion, more than four times as much as in 2002. In real terms, this is almost double their dollar surpluses in 1974 and 1980, after the twin oil-price shocks of the 1970s—when Russia's hard-currency exports were tiny. The combined current-account surplus of China and other Asian emerging economies is put at only $188 billion this year (see chart 2 below). Relative to their economies, the oil producers' current-account surpluses are far bigger than China's. Whereas the IMF forecasts China's surplus to be about 6% of GDP this year, it predicts Saudi Arabia's—not much different in money terms, at just over $100 billion this year—to be a whopping 32%. On average, Middle East oil exporters are expected to have an average surplus of 25% of GDP. Russia might record 13% and Norway 18%. The rise in oil prices represents a big redistribution of income from those who buy oil to those who produce it. Past periods of high prices have not lasted long, but this time oil producers' extra revenues might prove to be more durable. The futures market expects oil to stay expensive, even though the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate, an industry benchmark, recently slipped back to around $60. An enviable choice What will happen to all these petrodollars? In essence, they can be either spent or saved. Either way, a lot of the money can be recycled to oil-consuming economies and thus soften the impact on them of higher oil prices. If oil exporters spend their bonanza, they import more from other countries and thus help to maintain global demand. They are unlikely to spend the lot, however, because they tend to have higher saving rates than oil consumers: saving is around 40% of GDP in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait, for instance. A transfer of income from oil consumers to oil producers will therefore lead to a slowdown in global demand. If they save their windfall, but invest it in global capital markets, they can finance oil importers' bigger current-account deficits—in effect, lending the increase in fuel bills back to consumers. And by increasing the demand for foreign financial assets, they can boost asset prices and push down bond yields in oil-importing countries. This in turn can help to support economic activity in these economies. Experience shows that oil booms can be a blessing or a curse for producing economies, depending on how wisely the extra revenue is spent or saved. Too often, past windfalls have been celebrated with budgetary blow-outs, while the abundance of money has encouraged the postponement of economic reforms. This time, however, oil exporters seem to be spending less, instead running larger external surpluses, repaying debts and building up assets. In 1973-76, 60% of the increase in OPEC's export revenues was spent on imports of goods and services. In 1978-81, the proportion rose to 75%. But the IMF estimates that only 40% of the windfall in the three years to 2005 will have been spent. In Russia, the government has taken the sensible step of setting up an oil stabilisation fund, which will be used to reduce its large foreign debt. That said, the country has been more eager than members of OPEC to spend its extra money. Around two-thirds of the increase in Russia's export revenues since 2002 has gone on imports. Some analysts also suspect that the government may yet raid the stabilisation fund for a spending spree. The main concern, however, is that while the economy is flush with cash important structural reforms will be postponed. In most of the Middle East, governments are being more cautious than usual with their extra revenue. Mohsin Khan, the director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia department, reckons that most governments in the region are budgeting on an oil price of only $30-40 a barrel for next year. He estimates that governments have on average spent only 30% of their extra oil revenue since 2002, compared with 75% in the 1970s and early 1980s, after previous steep climbs in the oil price. Their average budget surplus has increased from 2% of GDP in 2002 to nearly 15% this year. Lessons learned, perhaps too well Oil-exporting governments seem to have taken to heart the lessons of the 1970s and 1980s. First: don't assume that oil prices will stay high for ever: in real terms, OPEC's annual average oil revenue in 1981-2000 was only one-third of that in 1980. Second, don't waste your windfall. In previous booms, oil-producing countries gaily spent their petrodollars on lavish construction projects that required imported equipment and skilled foreign workers, but did little to create local jobs or to diversify economies. In its recently published Regional Economic Outlook for the Middle East and Central Asia, the IMF advises governments to give priority to spending that will have a more lasting impact on growth and living standards. In fact, believes Mr Khan, Middle East oil exporters have greater capacity to spend petrodollars at home than in the 1970s and 1980s, because their populations have been rising rapidly and because their infrastructure needs upgrading after many years of dwindling government revenues. High unemployment means that there is social pressure for more spending on education and health, and for schemes to encourage private-sector employment. Saudi Arabia, with one of the world's fastest growing populations, has an unemployment rate of perhaps 20%. After nearly two decades of large budget deficits, the government's debt was 100% of GDP by 2000. Even this year, Saudi Arabia's oil revenues per head will be about 70% less in real terms than in 1980, owing in part to a near tripling of its population. It is using some of its extra money to repay debt, and the government has recently raised civil servants' pay by 15%—the first across-the-board increase in more than 20 years. As well as spending more on health, education and infrastructure, the Middle East also needs to invest in oil production and refining capacity, to ease future supply shortages and so stabilise prices. The International Energy Agency gave warning this week that oil prices will keep rising over the next two decades unless the region's producers invest substantially more than they currently intend. The IMF is also—unusually—encouraging these economies to be less thrifty. Increased spending will not only, through diversification, allow Middle East countries to support their future economic development, but by boosting imports from the rest of the world it will also allow a more orderly narrowing of global imbalances. This should help to cushion the world economy against the negative impact of rising oil prices. So far most of the extra money is being saved, not spent, so where is it going? In the 1970s and early 1980s surplus petrodollars were largely deposited in banks in America or Europe. These banks then lent too many of them to oil-importing developing countries, sowing the seeds of Latin America's debt crisis. This time it is proving much harder to track the money, but much more seems to be going into foreign shares and bonds rather than into western banks. This may reflect a greater reluctance to hold deposits in foreign banks, because of the increase in official scrutiny after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. Figures from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) show that in 2002 and 2003 OPEC deposits with banks in the BIS reporting area actually fell. Since last year, they have increased, but only modestly. In contrast, Russian bank deposits abroad have risen much more sharply, as have the central bank's official reserves, from $73 billion at the end of 2003 to $161 billion this October. Russian investment, whether in bank deposits, London property or football clubs, is relatively conspicuous. But even the experts at the IMF and the BIS are finding it hard to track Middle Eastern money, because a large chunk of the surplus is held not as official reserves, but as foreign investment by government oil stabilisation and investment funds and by national oil companies. Official reserves of Middle East oil exporters (including the total net foreign assets of the Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency) have risen by around $70 billion this year, accounting for less than 30% of their current-account surplus. Follow the money One puzzle is that, according to data published by America's Treasury Department, OPEC members' holdings of American government securities fell from $67 billion in January this year to $54 billion in August. But Middle East purchases of American securities are probably being channelled through London. Mr Khan reckons that although the bulk of OPEC's surplus revenues has so far gone into dollar-denominated assets, those assets are increasingly held outside the United States. A big chunk is also going into hedge funds and offshore financial institutions, which are unregulated and so impossible to track. There has also been a flood of petrodollars into private equity abroad. In January, Dubai International Capital took a $1 billion stake in DaimlerChrysler. In March, it bought the Tussauds Group, a theme-park firm. This month, DP World, Dubai's state-owned ports operator, made a £3 billion ($5.2 billion) bid for P&O, Britain's biggest ports and ferries group. Many smaller private investors in the Middle East are keeping their money closer to home. In the 1970s and early 1980s equity markets barely existed in the Gulf. This time money has flooded into them. Share prices in Saudi Arabia have increased fourfold since 2003, and its bourse now has the largest capitalisation of any emerging stockmarket. The average price/earnings ratio in the region is over 40 and recent share offerings have been oversubscribed several hundred times. A spectacular property boom is under way in many places, notably Dubai, which has become a regional financial centre and leisure playground. The world's biggest shopping mall is being built there and Emirates, the state's airline, has virtually underwritten the launch of the Airbus A380, ordering no fewer than 45 of the super-jumbos, a third of the total (see article). Despite the lack of hard data, many economists are sure that a big dollop of petrodollars is going into American Treasury securities. If so, the recycling of money via bond markets could have very different effects on the world economy from the bank-mediated recycling of previous oil booms. If petrodollars not spent flow into global bond markets, they reduce bond yields and thus support consumer spending in oil-importing countries. Buy from Europe, lend to America Indeed, this leads Stephen Jen, an economist at Morgan Stanley, to challenge the popular notion that Europe is being hurt less by higher oil prices than America. It is certainly true that Europe's exports to oil producers have risen faster than America's in recent years. Europe's share of OPEC's imports has climbed to 32%, compared with America's 8%. A recent report by ABN Amrofinds that while America's trade deficit with OPEC has grown markedly since 1999, the European Union's balance has barely changed (see chart 3). On the other hand, around two-thirds of petrodollars are thought to have gone into dollar assets, pushing down American bond yields. In addition, America's economy is more sensitive to interest rates than that of the euro zone. Mr Jen therefore suggests that America may have gained more from lower interest rates than the euro area has from higher exports, especially because OPEC still buys less than 5% of the currency zone's exports. Although higher oil prices have increased America's current-account deficit, Mr Jen reckons that it probably runs a balance-of-payments surplus in oil, with capital inflows from exporting countries exceeding its net oil import bill. How might the flow of oil money affect the dollar? Because oil is traded in dollars, rising prices initially increase the demand for greenbacks. But what happens next depends on whether oil producers buy dollar assets or swap their dollars for euros. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and most other Gulf states peg their currencies to the dollar, which might suggest that, like Asian central banks, they will continue to favour dollars. But unlike China's export surpluses, petrodollars are mostly not managed within official reserves, but by oil stabilisation funds and so forth. These are not subject to the same constraints as central banks to hold liquid assets and their aim is to maximise returns. This means, says Mr Jen, that oil exporters' assets are more footloose than those of Asian central banks. So far, the bulk of petrodollars may have gone into relatively liquid dollar assets, helping to support the greenback this year. But this money could flit if the dollar starts to slide again. And there is lots of it: for example, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, with assets of maybe $250 billion, is one of the wealthiest players in global financial markets. Russia's central bank has reduced the share of dollars in its foreign reserves over the past couple of years, but it is still around 65%. The central bank has said that it wishes to hold more euros. That leaves the dollar dangerously vulnerable. But what about the exchange-rate policies of the oil exporters themselves? Most oil exporters peg their currencies to the dollar or resist appreciation through heavy intervention, in much the same way as China and other Asian countries have done. So should America and others demand that oil exporters revalue their currencies, as they have called on the Asians to do? In fact, revaluation of oil exporters' currencies would do little by itself to reduce America's deficit (nor, for that matter, would a dearer Chinese yuan). The correct solution to global imbalances is for America to save more and for surplus countries, including both the oil exporters and the Asians, to spend more. Nevertheless, Brad Setser of Roubini Global Economics, a research firm, argues that oil economies should not peg their currencies to the dollar in any case. The currencies of commodity producers, he says, should follow commodity prices. Instead, Middle East oil exporters' currencies have tracked the dollar—mainly downwards—since 2002, even as oil revenues have soared. By raising the relative price of foreign goods, this has discouraged imports. Equally perversely, economies were hurt in the late 1990s when the dollar rose at the same time as oil prices sank. By pegging their currencies to the dollar, these economies have in effect had to adopt America's monetary policy. With interest rates too low, excess domestic liquidity has stoked inflation and asset prices. The broad money supply of the Middle East oil exporters has grown by almost 24% in each of the past two years and the average inflation rate has risen to almost 9% this year. To curb inflation, Gulf economies need more flexible exchange rates and monetary policies. Russia officially operates a "managed float" for its exchange rate. But the rouble's rate against the dollar has been held relatively steady over the past couple of years by heavy intervention. Consequent excess liquidity and a boom in domestic consumption have pushed inflation to 12%. It does not make sense for a country with a large current-account surplus to tie its currency to that of a country with a large deficit—such as America. A fully floating exchange rate may not be desirable, because it may be too volatile, but more flexibility could help oil exporters to adjust better to fluctuations in commodity prices. If oil prices remain high, so will oil exporters' surpluses. The IMF forecasts an average annual current-account surplus of $470 billion over the next five years (assuming an average oil price of $59 a barrel). The oil exporters will have to play a role in helping to reduce global imbalances. Importing more and letting their currencies rise, as well as increasing government spending and liberalising their economies, would be steps in the right direction.</blockquote> -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>
