Aren’t we always in the intersection of autonomous and accommodating flows?

Sir, Tony Thirlwall in “US consumers are the global gluttons” June 15, makes a reference to Nobel Prize winning James Meade’s differentiation between “autonomous” and “accommodating” flows while trying to sort out the “savings glut” or “money glut” discussions initiated by Martin Wolf’s “Who are the villains and the victims of global capital flows?” June 13. I am not sure how much this really helps, as we are always in the intersection of the autonomous and the accommodating flows, without being much wiser for that.

The explanation lies also in the absence of the normal “shavings”

Sir, I would absolutely side with Martin Wolf when he favours the “saving glut” (the US as a helpful consumer bumper) over the “money glut” (the US as an abusive imperial money printer) in “Who are the villains and the victims of global capital flows” June 12, as the main explaining factor for the compression of risk spreads and financing of the robust growth of US consumption. 

Having said that I would like to remind that there are many more characters to this story. Over the last decade, much the result of the Basel regulators’ efforts to drive out banking risks from banking, many of the financial risks have gone into hiding, frequently with the help of derivatives and credit rating agencies, and the world has therefore not suffered as many of the financial shavings that crisis and bankruptcies traditionally produce. 

You might mention Enron and the likes but the fact is they add up to almost nothing when compared to the tsunami dimensions of the flows. At the end of the day we will perhaps find much of the global capital flows evaporate into hot air when risks begin to show their face again and as perhaps has already started with the subprime mortgages in the US.

PS. Martin Wolf's http://blogs.ft.com/wolfforum/2007/06/villains_and_vi.html#comments does not any longer appear. I wonder why.