Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Must Read

A great interview on what is happening in the global economy...I will highlight the part about China's currency. I was thinking of selling off some of my RMB, but after reading this, maybe not.

And China?

Now we have the delicate China question. That is a complicated, touchy question.

The reasons for China to hold dollar-denominated assets no longer exist, for the most part. However, the desire to have a weaker currency is everybody's desire in terms of stimulus. China recognizes that the exchange-rate peg is not as important as it was before, because the idea was to make its goods competitive in the world. Ultimately, they are going to have to go to a domestic-based economy. But they own too much in the way of dollar-denominated assets to get out, and it isn't clear exactly where they would go if they did get out. But they don't have to buy more. They are not going to continue to want to double down.

From the U.S. point of view, we want a devaluation. A devaluation gets your pricing in line. When there is a deflationary environment, you want your currency to go down. When you have a lot of foreign debt denominated in your currency, you want to create relief by having your currency go down. All major currency devaluations have triggered stock-market rallies throughout the world; one of the best ways to trigger a stock-market rally is to devalue your currency.

But there is a basic structural problem with China. Its per capita income is less than 10% of ours. We have to get our prices in line, and we are not going to do it by cutting our incomes to a level of Chinese incomes.

And they are not going to do it by having their per capita incomes coming in line with our per capita incomes. But they have to come closer together. The Chinese currency and assets are too cheap in dollar terms, so a devaluation of the dollar in relation to China's currency is likely, and will be an important step to our reflation and will make investments in China attractive.

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