Top-Ökonomen: Rogoff – Zählen Sie nicht auf einen stabilen Euro-Dollar-Kurs

FTD, 8/11

© Bild: 2010 Bloomberg

Kommentar Die Währung der Europäer ist gegenüber der amerikanischen überbewertet. Dabei gibt es nur schwache Argumente, die das untermauern. Aber es gibt einen Grund, warum der Euro fallen muss. von Kenneth Rogoff 

Kenneth Rogoff ist Professor für Ökonomie und Public Policy an der Universität Harvard und ehemaliger Chefökonom des Internationalen Währungsfonds.

Mir ist bewusst, dass Wechselkurse nie leicht erklärbar oder verständlich sind. Trotzdem empfinde ich den gegenwärtig relativ robusten Kurs des Euro als etwas mysteriös. Glauben die Gnomen an den Devisenmärkten ernsthaft, dass das letzte “umfassende Rettungspaket” für den Euro mehr als ein paar Monate Bestand haben wird? 

Der neue Plan beruht auf einer fragwürdigen Mischung zweifelhafter finanztechnischer Gimmicks und vager Versprechen eines bescheidenen asiatischen Engagements. Selbst der beste Teil des Plans – der vorgeschlagene (aber nicht wirklich vereinbarte) Haircut für Inhaber griechischer Schuldverschreibungen aus dem Privatsektor von 50 Prozent – reicht zur Stabilisierung der profunden Schulden- und Wachstumsprobleme des Landes nicht aus.

The world is in a balance sheet depression which will make a second and perhaps more dangerous credit crisis almost inevitable. That should break out next year or in 2013.

Simon Hunt Strategic Services, 22/11/2011

Simon Hunt November/December Economic Report

“Four years into the crisis it is surely time to accept that the underlying problem is one of solvency not liquidity – solvency of banks and solvency of countries. Of course, the provision of additional liquidity support to countries and institutions in trouble can buy valuable time. But that time will prove valuable only if it is used to tackle the underlying problem…….But the underlying problems of excessive debt have not gone away. As a result, markets are now posing new questions about the solvency of banks and indeed governments themselves.” Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, 18th October 2011.

1. Summary

• The world is in a balance sheet depression which will make a second and perhaps more dangerous credit crisis almost inevitable. That should break out next year or in 2013.
• The three global pillars of the world economy, the USA, Europe and China each have their own problems, but their impact is global because of the feedback loops from the financial sector to the economy.
• The USA has a debt and deficit profile which is unsustainable; the Euro Zone has to decide whether it can forge a fully fiscal union or whether the costs are too great in which event membership will be restructured; and China is trying to put its economy on a more sustainable growth path at a time of leadership change.
• Debt and demographics will be the determining forces to global growth.
Markets will no longer countenance indecision and pushing debt problems under the table by lending more funds to indebted governments. Politicians want to postpone what they know is inevitable: debts must be repaid.
• European banks are under duress; government debt represents a large proportion of their asset base. They are also the largest lender to all the major regions of the world. To shore up their own balance sheets they will be cutting credits etc.
• The world will suffer from rolling recessions starting either next year or in 2013 lasting to about 2018. Global industrial production should fall by an average of 0.25% a year during this period.
• By then the process of deleveraging should have run its course. The world beyond 2018 will be a different place. World industrial production should average around 3% a year to 2030 compared with an average of 3.3% in the period 1990-2010. Monetary policy will also be quite different; global money supply will match global GDP, not the massive increase experienced since 2008.
• Asset inflation will be virtually non-existent as funds will experience solid long term growth in equities. CPI inflation will be contained at around 3% a year as a world average. This will be a golden period after the turmoil of the 2000 to 2018 years.

Boring Cruel Romantics

Date: 21-11-2011
Source: PAUL KRUGMAN, NYT

There’s a word I keep hearing lately: “technocrat.” Sometimes it’s used as a term of scorn — the creators of the euro, we’re told, were technocrats who failed to take human and cultural factors into account. Sometimes it’s a term of praise: the newly installed prime ministers of Greece and Italy are described as technocrats who will rise above politics and do what needs to be done.

I call foul. I know from technocrats; sometimes I even play one myself. And these people — the people who bullied Europe into adopting a common currency, the people who are bullying both Europe and the United States into austerity — aren’t technocrats. They are, instead, deeply impractical romantics.

They are, to be sure, a peculiarly boring breed of romantic, speaking in turgid prose rather than poetry. And the things they demand on behalf of their romantic visions are often cruel, involving huge sacrifices from ordinary workers and families. But the fact remains that those visions are driven by dreams about the way things should be rather than by a cool assessment of the way things really are.