Naked Economics: Undressing the Dismal Science pdfdrive com
partner instead. We’re buying cars now by giving up future income
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Naked Economics Undressing the Dismal Science ( PDFDrive )
partner instead. We’re buying cars now by giving up future income. That’s not our only choice. We can buy our merchandise on credit. We can ask some willing party in the global financial community to loan us $50 million. ask some willing party in the global financial community to loan us $50 million. In that case, we “pay for” our $100 million in Japanese cars with $50 million in planes and $50 million in borrowed capital. That, too, has obvious future costs. We have to pay back the loans, with interest. Again, we are paying for current consumption by borrowing against the future—literally in this case. Why is the United States running chronic current account deficits? It has virtually nothing to do with the quality of our goods and services or the competitiveness of our labor force, as conventional wisdom would have it. (To my earlier point, do you think Azerbaijan and Botswana are running current account surpluses because they are producing better stuff with more productive workers?) The United States is running chronic current account deficits because year after year we are consuming more than we produce. In other words, we are doing the opposite of saving (in which you produce more than you consume and set the extra aside). As a nation, we are literally doing what economists call “dissaving.” The connection between the current account balance and a nation’s savings rate is crucial. Any country that is consuming more than it produces must by definition be running a current account deficit because (1) the stuff you are consuming beyond what you produce must come from somewhere else in the world; and (2) you can’t trade goods and services for the extra stuff that you’re getting from the rest of the world because you’ve consumed everything you have. As usual, a farming analogy will help. Suppose Farmer America grows corn. He is a highly productive farmer, handsome and smart, who uses only the most modern farming techniques. (These details are irrelevant here, just as they are when describing whether a national economy runs a current account surplus or deficit.) There are only four broad things that Farmer America can do with what he grows: He can eat it (consumption); he can plant it for next year’s crop (investment); he can send it to the government to pay for services (government spending); or he can trade it for other stuff (exports traded for imports). That’s it. So let’s imagine that Farmer America’s year looks like the following: He grows 100 bushels of corn. He eats 70. He sends 30 to the government. He needs 20 to plant next year. But if you do the math, you’ll see that Farmer America is using 120 bushels a year but growing only 100. He must be a net borrower of corn—20 bushels in this case. That is the equivalent of a current account deficit, and it’s just math—if he uses more corn than he grows, the rest has to come from somewhere else. Farmer China works across the way. He grows only 65 bushels of corn, because he is new to farming and uses relatively primitive methods. Farmer China consumes 20 bushels, sends 10 to the government, and sets 15 aside to China consumes 20 bushels, sends 10 to the government, and sets 15 aside to plant next year. Again, some quick math suggests that Farmer China is not using everything he grows. He has an extra 20 bushels. As convenience would have it, these bushels can be traded to Farmer America, who has come up short. Of course, Farmer America doesn’t have any crops to trade, so he offers an IOU instead. Farmer China gives Farmer America the corn (an “export”)—and loans him the money to buy it. Let’s jump from farm analogies to reality: So far, the United States owes China about a trillion dollars. Normally these kinds of global imbalances have self-correcting mechanisms. The currency of a country with a large current account deficit will usually begin to depreciate. Assume that New Zealand is running a current account deficit. The rest of the world is steadily accumulating New Zealand dollars because they are selling more goods to New Zealand than they are buying from it; foreign firms will want to trade their accumulated New Zealand dollars for their home currency. On the foreign exchange market, the supply of New Zealand dollars for sale will exceed the demand for them, pushing the value of the New Zealand dollar down relative to the currencies of its trading partners. The falling New Zealand dollar helps to correct the trade imbalance by making New Zealand’s exports more competitive and imports more expensive. For example, if the New Zealand dollar depreciates relative to the yen, then Toyotas become more expensive in New Zealand while New Zealand’s farm products (kiwis?) look cheaper in Japan. Meanwhile, the same thing happens with other countries; New Zealand will begin to import less and export more, narrowing the current account deficit. The current situation involving China and the United States is different. The two countries are arguably locked in an unhealthy symbiotic relationship that has the potential to come unglued at any time. China has created a very successful development strategy built upon “export-led growth,” meaning that the bulk of job growth and prosperity has been generated by firms making products for export. Many of those exports come to the United States. China’s export-oriented development strategy depends on keeping the renminbi relatively cheap (as we saw with the Big Mac Index). To accomplish that, the Chinese government recycles accumulated dollars primarily into U.S. treasury bonds, which are loans to the U.S. federal government. Both parties get what they want (or need), at least in the short run. The Chinese government has used exports to generate jobs and growth. America has funded its dissavings with enormous loans from China. The situation really isn’t much different than Farmer China and Farmer America: The United States gets loans from China to Farmer China and Farmer America: The United States gets loans from China to buy its exports. In the long run, the situation poses serious risks for both parties. The United States has become a large debtor nation. Debtors are always vulnerable to the whims and demands of their creditors. America has a borrowing habit; China feeds it. James Fallows has noted, “Without China’s billion dollars a day, the United States could not keep its economy stable or spare the dollar from collapse.” 13 Worse, China could threaten to dump its huge hoard of dollar- denominated assets. That would be a ruinous thing to do. As Fallows points out, “Their years of national savings are held in the same dollars that would be ruined; in a panic, they’d get only a small share out before the value fell.” Still, that’s an awfully powerful weapon to give a nation with which we often disagree. The Chinese have it worse. Suppose America’s debt burden grows beyond what U.S. taxpayers can (or are willing) to pay back. The U.S. government could default—simply refuse to honor its debts. That is highly unlikely, mostly because there is another irresponsible option that is more subtle: America can “inflate away” much of its debt to China (and other creditors) by printing money. If we recklessly print dollars, the currency will lose value—and so will our dollar-denominated debts. If inflation climbs to 20 percent, then the real value of what we have to pay back will fall by 20 percent. If inflation is 50 percent, then half of our debt to China effectively goes away. Is this a likely outcome? No. But if someone owed me a trillion dollars and also had the authority to print those dollars, I would spend a lot of time worrying about inflation. This dysfunctional economic relationship will end. The crucial questions are when, why, and how. James Fallows has summarized where we stand now: “In effect, every person in the (rich) United States has over the past 10 years or so borrowed about $4,000 from someone in the (poor) People’s Republic of China. Like so many imbalances in economics, this one can’t go on indefinitely, and therefore won’t. But the way it ends—suddenly versus gradually, for predictable reasons versus during a panic—will make an enormous difference to the U.S. and Chinese economies over the next few years, to say nothing of bystanders in Europe and elsewhere.” 14 Given the stakes involved, are any adults supervising all of this? Yes, but they are getting long in the tooth. In the waning days of World War II, representatives of the Allied nations gathered at the Mt. Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. (It’s a delightful place in both summer and winter, if you are looking for a New England getaway.) Their mission was to create a stable financial infrastructure for the postwar world. They created two international institutions, or “the two sisters.” The institution at the center of the global fight against poverty is the Washington-based World Bank. (The first $250 million loan was to France in 1947 for postwar reconstruction.) The World Bank, which is owned by its 183 member countries, raises capital from its members and by borrowing in the capital markets. Those funds are loaned to developing nations for projects likely to promote economic development. The World Bank is at the center of many of the international development issues covered in Chapter 13 . If the World Bank is the world’s welfare agency, then its sister organization, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is the fire department responsible for dousing international financial crises. Iceland called the IMF. So did Argentina, Mexico, and all the others. The IMF was also conceived at Bretton Woods as a cooperative global institution. Members pay funds into the IMF; in exchange they can borrow in times of difficulty “on condition that they undertake economic reforms to eliminate these difficulties for their own good and that of the entire membership.” No country is ever required to accept loans or advice from either the IMF or the World Bank. Both organizations derive power and influence from the carrots they wield. Few institutions have attracted as much criticism as the World Bank and the IMF from such a broad swath of the political spectrum. The Economist once commented, “If the developing countries had a dollar for every proposal to change the ‘international financial architecture,’ the problem of third-world poverty would be solved.” 15 Conservatives charge that the World Bank and the IMF are bureaucratic organizations that squander money on projects that have failed to lead nations out of poverty. They also argue that IMF bailouts make financial crises more likely in the first place; investors make imprudent international loans because they believe the IMF will come to the rescue when a country gets into trouble. In 2000, the Republican-led Congress convened a commission that recommended shrinking and overhauling both the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. 16 At the other end of the political spectrum, the antiglobalization coalition accuses the World Bank and IMF of acting as capitalist lackeys, forcing globalization on the developing world and leaving poor countries saddled with large debts in the process. The organizations’ meetings have become an occasion for violent protest. When the two institutions held their fall meeting in Prague in for violent protest. When the two institutions held their fall meeting in Prague in 2000, the local Kentucky Fried Chicken and Pizza Hut both ordered replacement glass ahead of time. As the global recession of 2007 unfolded, the United States criticized several European nations for not doing more to stimulate their economies. The specific criticism is debatable, but it makes a crucial point nonetheless. For the American economy to recover, the European economies needed to recover, too. And Japan. And China. And every other major economy. Nations are not competitors in the traditional sense of the word. After all, the Red Sox would never complain that the Yankees were not doing enough in the off-season to improve their team. Baseball is a zero-sum game. Only one team can win the World Series. International economics is the opposite. All countries can become richer over time, even as individual firms within those countries compete for profits and resources. Global GDP has grown steadily for centuries. We’re richer collectively than we were in 1500. Who got poorer to make that possible? No one. The goal of global economic policy should be to make it easier for nations to cooperate with one another. The better we do it, the richer and more secure we will all be. * Soros borrowed a huge sum in British pounds and immediately traded them for stronger currencies, such as the German deutsche mark. When the Brits eventually dropped out of the ERM and devalued the pound, he swapped his currency holdings back for more pounds than he had originally borrowed. He paid back his loans and kept the difference. Numbers make this all more intuitive. Suppose Soros borrowed 10 billion pounds and swapped them immediately for 10 billion deutsche marks. (The exchange rates and amounts are contrived to make the numbers easier.) When the pound was devalued, its value fell by more than 10 percent, so that 10 billion deutsche marks subsequently bought 11 billion pounds. Soros swapped his 10 billion deutsche marks for 11 billion pounds. He paid back his 10-billion-pound loan and kept the tidy balance for himself (or, more accurately, for his investment funds). Soros supplemented his currency gains with ancillary bets related to how the devaluation would affect European stocks and bonds. † Economists make a distinction between the nominal exchange rate, which is the official rate at which one currency can be exchanged for another (the numbers posted on the board at the currency exchange), and the real exchange rate, which takes inflation into account in both countries and is therefore a better indicator of changes in purchasing power of one currency relative to another. For example, assume that the U.S. dollar can be exchanged at your local bank for 10 pesos. Further assume that (1) inflation is zero in the United States and 10 percent annually in Mexico; and (2) a year later your local bank will exchange $1 for 11 pesos. In nominal terms, the U.S. dollar has appreciated 10 percent relative to the peso (each dollar buys 10 percent more pesos). But the real exchange rate hasn’t changed at all. You will get 10 percent more pesos at the currency exchange window than you did last year, but because of inflation over the course of the year, each peso now buys 10 percent less than it used to. As a result, the total purchasing power of the pesos that you get from the bank teller this year for your $100 is exactly the same as the purchasing power of the (fewer) pesos you got for your $100 last year. Any reference to exchange rates in the balance of this chapter refers to real exchange rates. |
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