RE EXCHANGE RATE WARS INTEREST RATE WARS TRADE WARS AND JUST PLAIN WARS TO COME

Wednesday, October 27, 2010

RE EXCHANGE RATE WARS INTEREST RATE WARS TRADE WARS AND JUST PLAIN WARS TO COME

Economists everywhere are advising their patrons to devalue their currencies, in order to better wage the trade wars at hand.

They never talk much really about better, more, substantial ways to improve their countries absolute positions, by import substitutions, by subsidies and other measures, which might benefit their working classes rather than their monopolists rather than 'export substituting' their working classes to Asia.

Mere currency wars play into the hands of developing countries, which want to see closer currency values anyway rather than rich nation currencies versus poor nation currencies. Maybe some bright economist out there can correct this skewed notion.

There was a time when strong currencies tied to a determinable hard asset, could not be touched by weak currencies, and trading was a tertiary activity in that regard.

Another implication, not drawn by pundits in NYT, although both articles are there today, is that these developing nations are sucking investors' money out of the developed world, and its domestic businesses, and into their higher growth economies, by raising their interest rates while those elsewhere are at or below zero.

The other day, foreign regulators were warned about financial shenanigans in China, and perhaps India, blithely glossing over the other implications of this ongoing trend in huge investments by but away from the developed world.