I remember reading about the inevitability Economic Cycles of Boom and Bust in a Laissez Faire Capitalistic System, as if these cycles are inherent weaknesses of the System and must be accepted as a necessary evil or imperfections as it is with Democracy as a System.
In my adult life, I have personally experienced at least 3 downturns: the early 1980s just as I was freshly graduated from Business School, the Great Asian Currency Crisis of the late 1990s and now, the Global Economic Crisis of 2008.
The classical theory behind economic cycles is the inherent mismatch of production to match consumption demand to the point of overproduction, not unlike the situation of cash crops demand and supply feedback phenomenon. When the supply of a certain cash crop cannot meet the existing demand due say to bad weather or diseases, many farmers jump into the bandwagon and start planting the same crop at the same time, and inevitably ripens, harvested and put on sale in the market at the same time, a glut in the market drives down prices, less planting, less supply and the next upward price spiral repeats the cycle.
The other modern theory is that if hot money is not put into the real economy, but merely into the financial market like stocks and shares, derivatives, real estate speculation, this drives the financial market bubble causing it to inevitable explode one fine day when the frantic music stops in a game of musical chairs.
Having gone through 3 cycles, I am beginning to doubt if there is going to be a 4th and subsequent cycles as the politicians, economists and all vested interested people have wanted us to believe and put our faith in Economic Cycles.
The seduction to have us believe that Economic Cycles are natural and inevitable reinforces our acceptance of assurance that whatever goes up must come down and in defiance of gravity, whatever that goes down, will rise up too.
My take of the situation is the creation of money and credit to stimulate aggregate consumption and drive economic growth is not sustainable for the simple reason that unless the real resources is there to support the man made monetarily and financially created wealth, any additional virtual wealth is only going to drive up prices as too much money chases after too few goods and services.
Another real threat to the survivability of homo sapiens lies in the ability to feed, clothe and heat ourselves given the past half decade of potential global famine in the later part of the 2oth Century was only avoid thanks to cheap fossil fuel.
The so called "Green Revolution" in food production was only sustainable not due exclusively to superior high yielding crops but also the application of petroleum based plants fertilizers.
As oil peaks, pollution sickens and climate change threatens the status quo, a new point of balance or homeostasis in world population versus sustainable resources would present itself.
Like mice in an overcrowded cage, Malthusian attrition is the inevitable prognosis, I am afraid.
Globally, we have reached the tipping point in population explosion.
The picture are happy healthy goldfishes swimming about in an overpopulated fishbowl and when the blackout cuts off the electricity that powers the aeration pump, we see fishes bellying up.
We are kept alive in all intend and purpose by past cheap oil and the time has come when no amount of money buy any commodities any more, because we have eaten our last fish and drank our last glass of fresh water.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Monday, October 5, 2009
A New World Order Starts With A New World Currency?
Preamble
With the global economic crisis triggered off by the US financial and banking crisis in September, 2008, the world is still teetering in fear of a potential failure in the US Dollar, a store of value for many a nation's reserve of wealth.
There is now an urgent call in unison by a diverse mix of nations ranging from China, Russia and even Brazil for an alternative global trading currency to replace the US Dollar.
A journalist from the STAR Newspaper had even wrote a long article about the wisdom of replacing the US Dollar in this Sunday's (04October, 2009) newspaper.
He has argued for an Asian centric currency to replace the US Dollar to facilitate trading transactions between Asian countries, probably one that is underwriting by the world's second and third biggest economies: China and Japan.
The basic justification is cost (the avoidance of forex related works) and risk management (avoid potential erosion of stored wealth kept in US Dollars).
Rise of the Asian Mammon?
Whilst the idea of an Asian based regional currency seems very seductive to Asians, I would caution it on the side of wisdom.
In understanding the roles and functions of exchange rates in their "invisible hands" self regulating and self adjusting mechanism of international trade, settlement of accounts and store of reserves, there are merits and justifications for the retention of individual nation's local currency amidst a commonly international currency rather than the abandonment of all local currencies in adopting just one common global currency.
Whilst the primary merit of adopting one global currency to replace all individual nations' currencies lies in the avoidance of exchange losses, the lost of national sovereignty and local government fine tuning flexibility through local micro management often offsets whatever gains that may be obtained by abandoning the status quo of having a local currency in the midst of another international trading currency or currencies.
The free floating exchange rate mechanism in the context of a free international market setting is supposed to self adjust itself to equilibrium.
For example, in the event where a country buys more than it sells with another country, the demand for the surplus country's currency will rise and cause the import price of goods to go up and therefore , hopefully the demand to go down and self adjust without the need for any government intervention.
Moreover,the reason why the US Dollar became the global de-factor trading currency is not something that had been forced upon us by USA, but something that the world outside USA had come to adopt as a matter of expediency.
In avoiding the lost in currency exchanges, we thus as countries like oil exporting Saudi Arabia, selling oil internationally denominated not in Saudi Riyal, but in US Dollars and importing goods and services also denominated in US Dollars.
The factory of the world, China likewise buys raw materials internationally denominated in US Dollars and sells her manufactured goods international, denominated not in Renminbi (RMB) but but in US Dollars as well, because China need to import raw materials like oil, iron ore etc and there are obvious advantages to buy and sell in one common currency to avoid exchange losses as currencies are converted from RMB to USD, USD back to RMB or any other local currencies where raw materials are bought from or manufactured goods sold to.
If based on pure economic dynamics, given that USA had over the decades, been importing more than she exports, the demand for USD should have dropped in value as demand for USD lag behind the supply of USD.
The only reason why the value USD remained high is a distortion in demand where the demand for USD is not purely for the purpose of settling accounts, but other reasons including the store of reserves, speculations and others.
For example, Saudi Arabia could have insisted that her oil be paid in Saudi Riyal, but the reason USD is adopted as the currency of quotation and settlement is because Saudi Arabia has to import virtually everything aside from oil.
The US Dollar is therefore internationalized out of expediency and prior to the advent of the European Union Euro in 2000 AD, the US Dollar is peerless and is the sole international currency available for international trade, settlement of payments and store of value.
However, with the advent of the Euro juxtaposition to the USD, not only does the USD now has a competitor; it now has a benchmark of value as people can now alternate between the two alternative international currencies.
I can still remember the cautious skeptical reception to the Euro's debut into the international scene in 2000, when it was valued slightly below the USD.
Today, in October 2009, 1Euro is exchanged for USD1.472 and whilst any crystal balling the future exchange rate is as good as a random walk, the gut feeling is that the Euro will remain stronger vis-a-vis the USD simply on the basis of aggregate confidence that fuels aggregate demand and the market supply of the respective currencies.
Why has the Euro strengthens against the USD or why had the USD weakened against the Euro since the advent of the Euro in 2000AD?
Before one can even attempt to answer this simple question, a tour of history and grounding of the mechanics behind the intricate linkages of currencies, exchange rate to trade, debts, settlement of accounts, currency trading & speculation and economics is essential.
Back to Basics: Back to Barter
Prior to the invention of money, trade and exchanges of goods and services between individuals are based on the premise of free and fair value transactions and assuming that it is in the context of a free market, exchanges occur only when agreements are met. In other words, it is only when the both parties in the single transaction agrees to the terms and conditions supporting the transaction, then only can the transaction be completed and settled.
For example, if I have a few extra live chickens that I would like to exchange for say, some vegetables which I do not grow myself, I will approach my neighbor farmer if he would like to exchange his vegetables for chickens. If the answer is affirmative, the question that follows is at what parity? That is how much vegetables can I expect to get in exchange for a live chicken.
We may haggle or we may just agree on the spot and he gets my chicken and I get his vegetables at a mutually agreed exchange rate and totally without the use of money. This is known as "barter trade" and commonly done before the advent of money and still carried out today, locally as well as between individuals from two different countries.
Trading with money vis-a-vis barter trade will obviously manifest itself, the convenience and advantageous of the monetary system.
Money, a token of common accepted media of exchange can be anything, real or virtual, what matters is both buyer and seller mutually accepts the tokens for the exchange of goods and services.
Money therefore can be in the form of a signature as in the backing of a valid Credit Card a.k.a. "plastics", cowrie shells, gold, silver and even electronic credits as in phone and internet credits.
In the days of old, it is not uncommon for individual domains to trade internally with paper money, but beyond its own borders, the sovereign paper money is not worth even the cost of the paper that was printed on.
Opium
A classic case in point is the famous "Opium Wars" or Anglo-Chinese Wars between England and China in the mid 19th Century (First Opium War from 1839 to 1842 and the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860).
To cut a long story short, the problem was the imbalance of trade and payments between two sovereign countries: England and China.
The English, addicted to tea, a commodity only available in China, discovered that silver, the only form of money China wants in exchange for tea, is fast flying out from England to China as tea flows into England.
Realizing that England is in dire straits, England tried to convince China to buy English cotton goods and other products in exchange for tea. The Chinese refused on grounds that the Chinese has no lack of or desire to have English products.
Convincing the Chinese to accept British Pounds in paper money was also a non mover because only gold and silver is the only accepted form of payment for international trade back then.
The problem escalated into the English addicting the Chinese with British Indian grown opium and in a matter of decades, the reverse flow of silver from China to England as opium poured into China forced the Chinese to take drastic actions to ban the consumption of opium.
This trade war culminated in two Opium Wars resulting in an unmodernized China being carved out by the European colonizers and even her neighbor, modernizing Japan.
The American Dream; The World's Nightmare
In the days of old, paper currencies are backed by gold and silver, so no governments, no matter how corrupt could irresponsibly print money without any backing.
However, at the turn of the 2oth Century and with the passing of two world wars and the Great USA Depression and the world in turmoil, a solution has to be found and the backing of printed money by gold was reckoned to be unsustainable, illogical and stifling.
The Americans decoupled the USD from any backing of precious metals like gold and adopted the "a fait" system: i.e. based on trust or "faith".
With the decoupling and easing of the monetary supply by the "a fait" printing of money, stimulus spending etc, USD was brought out of the great depression of the 1930's.
Since then many other countries had followed the example do the USA and taken their currencies off the backing of any precious metal and issue them ala "a fait".
With the meteorite rise of the US economy and international trade post Second War World, the adoption of the USD as the de-factor global currency became an entrenched phenomenon until the advent of the Euro alternative in 2000AD.
The easing and therefore the availability of easy money and credit did accelerated the growth of the US as well as the global economy vis-a-vis had it have to be tandem with the rate of the discover and refinery of precious metals.
Without the stifling of the economy by the physical production of precious metal, the 2oth century saw the unprecedented and simultaneous growth the economies in diverse places like post WWII Germany and Japan aside from the USA.
But the system of the a fait money is by no means without its inherent problems.
Faith requires honesty and honesty is indeed a rare commodity, be it personal or in an organization called the "government".
When government starts to fiddle with the monetary system and overprint money so that they can spend frivolously, the lost of value of printed money or inflation is the inevitably consequence as we can see in the Zimbabwe economy of late under President Robert Mugabe.
Faith money prerequisites honest governments and if the leader (USA) is far from honest herself, one wonders how can other developing world's leader can be expected to follow otherwise.
As I write today, 7th October, 2009, jitters around the world over the imminent fall in exchange value of the USD starting with the dumping of USD by oil exporting nations like Saudi Arabia, has caused the USD to drop and gold commodity price (again denominated in USD) to rise.
Why has the love for the USD turned so sour lately?
Confidence or rather the lack of it.
The consensus nowadays is that the USD is unsustainable because it is issued based on nothing but 100% faith in the USA and her economy, and with the US economy now in shambles, it does not take a fool to dump the USD for anything else including gold, Euros, commodities etc.
For nations who keep their savings, surpluses and reserves in USD, the erosion of wealth via the weakening of the USD is utmost unnerving.
At the same time, it is a catch 22 situation.
The unison ditching of the USD by all will only cause the USD to fall further but on the other hand, the fear of being the last person holding the unwanted hot potato is an unwelcome nightmare of default by inaction.
Amongst the biggest losers of a weakening USD are countries that had invested heavily in US bonds having gained from exchanging goods and service with USA for a fait USD.
Normally, no fool will be dumb enough to exchange goods and services for mere pieces of printed papers and for so long are there are people out there willing to accept USD as money, the crisis of confidence does not exist and the USD remains bankable.
What if indeed the USD does not command any more confidence?
Well, unless world trade ceases in concert with the USD, there will still be need of a global currency or currencies to facilitate trade and avoid the loss in currency exchange.
Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea
Would the Euro be the replacement to the USD?
It could very well be, but there is no guarantee that the Euro would not go down the same road as the USD.
These symptoms are manifestations of a larger and more insidious global economic problem festered by dishonestly, greed and corruption.
The biliions and billions of dollars that are presumably "lost" in the global economic crisis is still too baffling.
Where have all the money gone to?
Surely not into the thin air.
If its mere "paper losses" due to valuation bubble, it can be accepted, but with actualized gains that are "lost" attributable to the payment of vulgar bonuses and compensations, it is sinfully wrong.
With the lessons learned from the 2008 Global Economic Crisis, I would hope that the world leaders would have come to realize that the old economic model is broken and unsustainable.
While the world gropes in the dark from the global economic brown out, hopefully, world leaders will begin to take a long term view and start rebuilding the global economy based not on a "business as usual" paradigm; but a sustainable system of real and honest economics.
While we hope, we pray the world leaders would have the moral courage to do what is right and good for the people in the long run.
May God help us all, we need it.
With the global economic crisis triggered off by the US financial and banking crisis in September, 2008, the world is still teetering in fear of a potential failure in the US Dollar, a store of value for many a nation's reserve of wealth.
There is now an urgent call in unison by a diverse mix of nations ranging from China, Russia and even Brazil for an alternative global trading currency to replace the US Dollar.
A journalist from the STAR Newspaper had even wrote a long article about the wisdom of replacing the US Dollar in this Sunday's (04October, 2009) newspaper.
He has argued for an Asian centric currency to replace the US Dollar to facilitate trading transactions between Asian countries, probably one that is underwriting by the world's second and third biggest economies: China and Japan.
The basic justification is cost (the avoidance of forex related works) and risk management (avoid potential erosion of stored wealth kept in US Dollars).
Rise of the Asian Mammon?
Whilst the idea of an Asian based regional currency seems very seductive to Asians, I would caution it on the side of wisdom.
In understanding the roles and functions of exchange rates in their "invisible hands" self regulating and self adjusting mechanism of international trade, settlement of accounts and store of reserves, there are merits and justifications for the retention of individual nation's local currency amidst a commonly international currency rather than the abandonment of all local currencies in adopting just one common global currency.
Whilst the primary merit of adopting one global currency to replace all individual nations' currencies lies in the avoidance of exchange losses, the lost of national sovereignty and local government fine tuning flexibility through local micro management often offsets whatever gains that may be obtained by abandoning the status quo of having a local currency in the midst of another international trading currency or currencies.
The free floating exchange rate mechanism in the context of a free international market setting is supposed to self adjust itself to equilibrium.
For example, in the event where a country buys more than it sells with another country, the demand for the surplus country's currency will rise and cause the import price of goods to go up and therefore , hopefully the demand to go down and self adjust without the need for any government intervention.
Moreover,the reason why the US Dollar became the global de-factor trading currency is not something that had been forced upon us by USA, but something that the world outside USA had come to adopt as a matter of expediency.
In avoiding the lost in currency exchanges, we thus as countries like oil exporting Saudi Arabia, selling oil internationally denominated not in Saudi Riyal, but in US Dollars and importing goods and services also denominated in US Dollars.
The factory of the world, China likewise buys raw materials internationally denominated in US Dollars and sells her manufactured goods international, denominated not in Renminbi (RMB) but but in US Dollars as well, because China need to import raw materials like oil, iron ore etc and there are obvious advantages to buy and sell in one common currency to avoid exchange losses as currencies are converted from RMB to USD, USD back to RMB or any other local currencies where raw materials are bought from or manufactured goods sold to.
If based on pure economic dynamics, given that USA had over the decades, been importing more than she exports, the demand for USD should have dropped in value as demand for USD lag behind the supply of USD.
The only reason why the value USD remained high is a distortion in demand where the demand for USD is not purely for the purpose of settling accounts, but other reasons including the store of reserves, speculations and others.
For example, Saudi Arabia could have insisted that her oil be paid in Saudi Riyal, but the reason USD is adopted as the currency of quotation and settlement is because Saudi Arabia has to import virtually everything aside from oil.
The US Dollar is therefore internationalized out of expediency and prior to the advent of the European Union Euro in 2000 AD, the US Dollar is peerless and is the sole international currency available for international trade, settlement of payments and store of value.
However, with the advent of the Euro juxtaposition to the USD, not only does the USD now has a competitor; it now has a benchmark of value as people can now alternate between the two alternative international currencies.
I can still remember the cautious skeptical reception to the Euro's debut into the international scene in 2000, when it was valued slightly below the USD.
Today, in October 2009, 1Euro is exchanged for USD1.472 and whilst any crystal balling the future exchange rate is as good as a random walk, the gut feeling is that the Euro will remain stronger vis-a-vis the USD simply on the basis of aggregate confidence that fuels aggregate demand and the market supply of the respective currencies.
Why has the Euro strengthens against the USD or why had the USD weakened against the Euro since the advent of the Euro in 2000AD?
Before one can even attempt to answer this simple question, a tour of history and grounding of the mechanics behind the intricate linkages of currencies, exchange rate to trade, debts, settlement of accounts, currency trading & speculation and economics is essential.
Back to Basics: Back to Barter
Prior to the invention of money, trade and exchanges of goods and services between individuals are based on the premise of free and fair value transactions and assuming that it is in the context of a free market, exchanges occur only when agreements are met. In other words, it is only when the both parties in the single transaction agrees to the terms and conditions supporting the transaction, then only can the transaction be completed and settled.
For example, if I have a few extra live chickens that I would like to exchange for say, some vegetables which I do not grow myself, I will approach my neighbor farmer if he would like to exchange his vegetables for chickens. If the answer is affirmative, the question that follows is at what parity? That is how much vegetables can I expect to get in exchange for a live chicken.
We may haggle or we may just agree on the spot and he gets my chicken and I get his vegetables at a mutually agreed exchange rate and totally without the use of money. This is known as "barter trade" and commonly done before the advent of money and still carried out today, locally as well as between individuals from two different countries.
Trading with money vis-a-vis barter trade will obviously manifest itself, the convenience and advantageous of the monetary system.
Money, a token of common accepted media of exchange can be anything, real or virtual, what matters is both buyer and seller mutually accepts the tokens for the exchange of goods and services.
Money therefore can be in the form of a signature as in the backing of a valid Credit Card a.k.a. "plastics", cowrie shells, gold, silver and even electronic credits as in phone and internet credits.
In the days of old, it is not uncommon for individual domains to trade internally with paper money, but beyond its own borders, the sovereign paper money is not worth even the cost of the paper that was printed on.
Opium
A classic case in point is the famous "Opium Wars" or Anglo-Chinese Wars between England and China in the mid 19th Century (First Opium War from 1839 to 1842 and the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860).
To cut a long story short, the problem was the imbalance of trade and payments between two sovereign countries: England and China.
The English, addicted to tea, a commodity only available in China, discovered that silver, the only form of money China wants in exchange for tea, is fast flying out from England to China as tea flows into England.
Realizing that England is in dire straits, England tried to convince China to buy English cotton goods and other products in exchange for tea. The Chinese refused on grounds that the Chinese has no lack of or desire to have English products.
Convincing the Chinese to accept British Pounds in paper money was also a non mover because only gold and silver is the only accepted form of payment for international trade back then.
The problem escalated into the English addicting the Chinese with British Indian grown opium and in a matter of decades, the reverse flow of silver from China to England as opium poured into China forced the Chinese to take drastic actions to ban the consumption of opium.
This trade war culminated in two Opium Wars resulting in an unmodernized China being carved out by the European colonizers and even her neighbor, modernizing Japan.
The American Dream; The World's Nightmare
In the days of old, paper currencies are backed by gold and silver, so no governments, no matter how corrupt could irresponsibly print money without any backing.
However, at the turn of the 2oth Century and with the passing of two world wars and the Great USA Depression and the world in turmoil, a solution has to be found and the backing of printed money by gold was reckoned to be unsustainable, illogical and stifling.
The Americans decoupled the USD from any backing of precious metals like gold and adopted the "a fait" system: i.e. based on trust or "faith".
With the decoupling and easing of the monetary supply by the "a fait" printing of money, stimulus spending etc, USD was brought out of the great depression of the 1930's.
Since then many other countries had followed the example do the USA and taken their currencies off the backing of any precious metal and issue them ala "a fait".
With the meteorite rise of the US economy and international trade post Second War World, the adoption of the USD as the de-factor global currency became an entrenched phenomenon until the advent of the Euro alternative in 2000AD.
The easing and therefore the availability of easy money and credit did accelerated the growth of the US as well as the global economy vis-a-vis had it have to be tandem with the rate of the discover and refinery of precious metals.
Without the stifling of the economy by the physical production of precious metal, the 2oth century saw the unprecedented and simultaneous growth the economies in diverse places like post WWII Germany and Japan aside from the USA.
But the system of the a fait money is by no means without its inherent problems.
Faith requires honesty and honesty is indeed a rare commodity, be it personal or in an organization called the "government".
When government starts to fiddle with the monetary system and overprint money so that they can spend frivolously, the lost of value of printed money or inflation is the inevitably consequence as we can see in the Zimbabwe economy of late under President Robert Mugabe.
Faith money prerequisites honest governments and if the leader (USA) is far from honest herself, one wonders how can other developing world's leader can be expected to follow otherwise.
As I write today, 7th October, 2009, jitters around the world over the imminent fall in exchange value of the USD starting with the dumping of USD by oil exporting nations like Saudi Arabia, has caused the USD to drop and gold commodity price (again denominated in USD) to rise.
Why has the love for the USD turned so sour lately?
Confidence or rather the lack of it.
The consensus nowadays is that the USD is unsustainable because it is issued based on nothing but 100% faith in the USA and her economy, and with the US economy now in shambles, it does not take a fool to dump the USD for anything else including gold, Euros, commodities etc.
For nations who keep their savings, surpluses and reserves in USD, the erosion of wealth via the weakening of the USD is utmost unnerving.
At the same time, it is a catch 22 situation.
The unison ditching of the USD by all will only cause the USD to fall further but on the other hand, the fear of being the last person holding the unwanted hot potato is an unwelcome nightmare of default by inaction.
Amongst the biggest losers of a weakening USD are countries that had invested heavily in US bonds having gained from exchanging goods and service with USA for a fait USD.
Normally, no fool will be dumb enough to exchange goods and services for mere pieces of printed papers and for so long are there are people out there willing to accept USD as money, the crisis of confidence does not exist and the USD remains bankable.
What if indeed the USD does not command any more confidence?
Well, unless world trade ceases in concert with the USD, there will still be need of a global currency or currencies to facilitate trade and avoid the loss in currency exchange.
Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea
Would the Euro be the replacement to the USD?
It could very well be, but there is no guarantee that the Euro would not go down the same road as the USD.
These symptoms are manifestations of a larger and more insidious global economic problem festered by dishonestly, greed and corruption.
The biliions and billions of dollars that are presumably "lost" in the global economic crisis is still too baffling.
Where have all the money gone to?
Surely not into the thin air.
If its mere "paper losses" due to valuation bubble, it can be accepted, but with actualized gains that are "lost" attributable to the payment of vulgar bonuses and compensations, it is sinfully wrong.
With the lessons learned from the 2008 Global Economic Crisis, I would hope that the world leaders would have come to realize that the old economic model is broken and unsustainable.
While the world gropes in the dark from the global economic brown out, hopefully, world leaders will begin to take a long term view and start rebuilding the global economy based not on a "business as usual" paradigm; but a sustainable system of real and honest economics.
While we hope, we pray the world leaders would have the moral courage to do what is right and good for the people in the long run.
May God help us all, we need it.
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