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And What can be Done? This will lead to capital being consumed over time, and will only appear to 'work' as long as the economy is still able to create more net wealth than is in effect consumed.
China's policymakers are correct to be worried about the unfair advantage that accrues to the issuer of the 'reserve currency'. After all, it can hardly be denied that exchanging pieces of paper that can be produced at virtually no cost in unlimited quantity for real goods must be advantageous to the issuer of the paper.
The limit to this is obviously given by the willingness of Chinese merchants to exchange their goods for dollars, i. China's officials are rightly worried that the value of the large pile of dollars their central bank as accumulated as reserve assets may one day be subjected to a sudden negative reassessment by the market. In this sense, there is a motive for the Fed not to 'overdo' its monetary pumping, but how can it possibly know where the limits actually are? The fact of the matter is that it does not know — the money supply could be growing very fast for a long time without negative effects that are immediately obvious , but this could change suddenly and with little warning in what is known as a 'non-linear event' or a 'black swan'.
In turn, the inflow of dollars has led to vast growth of the PBoC's balance sheet. Much of this has 'leaked' into China's economy in the form of very high rates of domestic monetary inflation, although the PBoC is trying to quell this by continually increasing the reserve requirements of China's commercial banks the mix of the central bank's liabilities tilts toward bank reserve accumulation when this is done.
Bank reserves are not part of the money supply, as they remain sequestered at the central bank. Nevertheless, this 'sterilization' has been less than perfect, as China's government has allowed the rate of domestic monetary inflation to proceed at double digit rates for many years. After the bust the government ordered the banks to greatly expand their lending, further egging on credit and money supply growth.
This has had precisely the effects economic law dictates: an orgy of capital malinvestment has ensued. Everybody knows about the many empty apartment blocs and office towers, even entire empty cities in China.
A huge network of high-speed railways has been built at enormous cost, but very few people are actually traveling on these trains — gigantic, brand-spanking new train stations are standing empty all day long. Untold amounts of scarce capital have been wasted in what appears to be the functional equivalent of pyramid building. We can conclude that yes, there is indeed a 'dilemma' — but it consists of the practice of central-bank backstopped fractional reserves banking, the use of unsound money and the unchecked growth in the supply of money and credit this is enabling.
In an unhampered market economy using a market-chosen money no such dilemma would exist. This bring us to what the world's central banks have been up to lately. As we have noted in previous articles recently, a concerted move toward easing monetary policy further appears to be underway.
The ECB has implemented its new 'long term refinancing facilities' to ensure funding of the stricken banks in the euro area, the BoE has embarked on a fresh round of 'quantitative easing', the SNB has decided to peg the Swiss Franc to the euro actually, it is not really a 'peg', rather, the SNB has established an 'upper limit' to the CHF's exchange rate , and even the BoJ has stepped up its asset purchase programs.
The Fed meanwhile, after having announced that 'ZIRP' will remain in place until at least and implementing 'Operation Twist' is already talking about starting yet another round of MBS monetization. In major emerging market nations, only the Reserve Bank of India and the PBoC are still in a tightening cycle, but even that seems to be close to reversing the RBI for instance hinted that its most recent rate hike would likely be the last.
In other emerging market nations central banks have already begun to ease, such as e. The monetary spigots are in other words wide open now. What all these activities have in common is that they involve more creation of money from thin air. Hence it should be expected that some prices in the economy will begin to rise, with varying lags.
Below are a few chart detailing central bank balance sheets and reserve balances. Bank of Japan, monetary base and reserve balances. BoJ, monetary base and reserve balances, long term to September — the recent spike seems extraordinary, comparable only to what happened after the Nasdaq bust — click for higher resolution. The ECB's balance sheet. After going sideways since early , growth in the ECB's balance sheet has lately resumed with some vigor — click for higher resolution.
The Federal Reserve's balance sheet. Since the cessation of 'QE2', the Fed's balance sheet has slightly declined; note however that US money supply growth has nonetheless accelerated markedly, not least due to dollars flowing back to the US from Europe's stricken banking system.
We expect the Fed's balance sheet to soon resume its growth, once 'QE3' begins — click for higher resolution. To our knowledge the SNB is not sterilizing its foreign exchange purchases at this time. As indicated by press reports at the time when the 'euro quasi-peg' was announced, the SNB has 'flooded the money markets with francs' — click for higher resolution.
As we have mentioned in recent days, the bout of strength exhibited by global stock markets over the past few weeks can likely be best explained by the fact that expectations of additional monetary inflation are currently on the rise.
If the latest euro area crisis band-aid helps to delay the denouement for the euro area a little while longer, then market participants are quite correct in focusing on the increase in global liquidity. However, it would be a mistake to believe that this means an instantaneous resumption of the bull market.
A report at Marketwatch yesterday speculated on this possibility:. We would note to this that since the year or more precisely, since the Russian crisis in , there has been a reversal in the cause-effect vector that pertained during the preceding secular bull market and the associated economic boom.
It used to be the case that a lowering of the central bank's administered interest rate tended to immediately boost the stock market. However, since , the relationship between interest rates and stock prices has reversed — in our opinion this is circumstantial evidence indicating that the economy's pool of real funding has been in growing trouble ever since.
Therefore we have since then seen cyclical bull markets in stocks coincide with rising interest rates, whereas falling interest rates were associated with cyclical bear markets. It seems unlikely that the recently begun bearish trend will be reversed immediately be new monetary pumping measures.
On the contrary, the fact that these measures are being adopted confirms that global economic activity has begun to turn down. It is unlikely that this downturn was already fully discounted at the recent stock market lows and that we can look forward to a quick resumption of the asset price inflation party — short term gyrations notwithstanding.
Additional stock market strength should be greeted with great caution — the risks remain very high in our view and keep growing by the day. Furthermore, as we have previously noted , an increase in free liquidity is not a guarantee that stock prices will rise. There have been historical cases when the opposite happened, such as e. The reason is that once market participants conclude that more wealth is in fact consumed than is produced by the economy, they will tend to deploy excess liquidity in what are deemed to be the safest possible instruments such as US treasury bonds and gold at present.
On Tuesday many commodity prices initially advanced strongly in spite of weakness in the stock market. Similar to the stock market, the most important industrial commodity crude oil has so far merely tested its day moving average from below:.
WTI crude runs into resistance provided by its day moving average. Similar to the stock market, it is now at a critical short term juncture — click for higher resolution. We still believe though that the rallies in stock and commodity markets should be given the benefit of the doubt in the short term after the recent breakouts over lateral resistance, provided the about to be launched euro-area band-aid is seen as sufficient by the markets to buy some more time for this extremely well-telegraphed ongoing financial and economic catastrophe.
This is of course not certain yet — the market reaction can probably only be properly appraised after a few days have passed. Alas, 'performance chasing' by fund managers in the final quarter remains a distinct possibility if the euro area crisis calms down again for a while. More on that point follows in today's euro area credit market chart update.
Here is something that is germane to the above discussion: Keith Weiner, one of our readers and occasional guest author, also a writer for the ' Daily Capitalist ' and other sites, has recently delivered a lecture on irredeemable currency vs. The lecture can be watched at Youtube link to Part One. Charts by: Bloomberg, StockCharts. In fact, the year is almost over! We assure you this is not merely evidence of our chutzpa; rather, it is indicative of the fact that ad income still needs to be supplemented in order to support upkeep of the site.
A special thank you to all readers who have already chipped in, your generosity is greatly appreciated. Regardless of that, we are honored by everybody's readership and hope we have managed to add a little value to your life. If there is a place for gold, it is in international trade.
But, I doubt the bankers that run the G really care for a free market in trade funds. In part, it made sense to keep the dollars and earn interest, while using the bonds to back domestic currencies than to send the cash back to the US and get the gold and thus shrink the domestic credit pool. Bankers never give back the gold, as history has shown.
I have been drawing this correlation a long time, the debt trail. But, their game runs off debt. If we had a sound money system in place, government deficit spending would automatically have to decline a great deal — in fact, government would be forced to shrink considerably.
This is one of the main reasons why the current system — in spite of its obvious failure — is defended tooth and claw. You must be logged in to post a comment. Reviewed by Lew Rockwell. Now Available at Amazon. We use cookies to ensure that we give you the best experience on acting-man. By continuing to browse this site you give consent for cookies to be used.
The Problem of Global Imbalances. October 26, Author Pater Tenebrarum. October 26, at Log in to Reply. Pater Tenebrarum :. October 28, at Your comment: Click here to cancel reply.
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