The safe-haven must recycle its waters.
Sir you write of the need to “Reopen the taps of global finance” May 1, but that must surely be the responsibility of the current borrower of last resort, the USA.
Ricardo Hausmann, during the spring meetings of the World Bank, at a conference titled “Latin America and the Global Crisis: Towards a Rapid Regional Recovery” argued that the US should take on debt and relend to the world. Hausmann, coming from an oil rich country must have remembered that this was exactly what the oil countries did during the 1974-79 oil bonanza when foreign bankers virtually forced credits on them… and the oil exporting countries recycled and imported and recycled and imported... until.
But is this politically viable? Perhaps not, but even so there are major troubles brewing down the line.
First the US, as the safe-haven par excellence, cannot expect to crowd out the rest of the world from the financial markets, for a lengthier period, without its own waters becoming stale or even having the rest of the world starting to think in terms of sabotaging that safe-haven.
Second if the US, in order to reflate its own economy and which might also help to stop the world from deflating too much, for a while, does so by investing only in its own back-yard, then the returns from those overcrowded back-yards will not be sufficient to repay what will be owed, and so the US taxpayer will start to seriously object having to become the taxpayer of last resort…and with that, again, waive bye, bye to the sweet dollar safe-haven.
Let us not forget that in truth the dollar bill should have imprinted on it “In the American Tax Payer We Trust” but that the US Mint, more pragmatic, more marketing minded and much wiser preferred the much more fundamental “In God We Trust”.
Ricardo Hausmann, during the spring meetings of the World Bank, at a conference titled “Latin America and the Global Crisis: Towards a Rapid Regional Recovery” argued that the US should take on debt and relend to the world. Hausmann, coming from an oil rich country must have remembered that this was exactly what the oil countries did during the 1974-79 oil bonanza when foreign bankers virtually forced credits on them… and the oil exporting countries recycled and imported and recycled and imported... until.
But is this politically viable? Perhaps not, but even so there are major troubles brewing down the line.
First the US, as the safe-haven par excellence, cannot expect to crowd out the rest of the world from the financial markets, for a lengthier period, without its own waters becoming stale or even having the rest of the world starting to think in terms of sabotaging that safe-haven.
Second if the US, in order to reflate its own economy and which might also help to stop the world from deflating too much, for a while, does so by investing only in its own back-yard, then the returns from those overcrowded back-yards will not be sufficient to repay what will be owed, and so the US taxpayer will start to seriously object having to become the taxpayer of last resort…and with that, again, waive bye, bye to the sweet dollar safe-haven.
Let us not forget that in truth the dollar bill should have imprinted on it “In the American Tax Payer We Trust” but that the US Mint, more pragmatic, more marketing minded and much wiser preferred the much more fundamental “In God We Trust”.
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