Newsgroup: it.economia.borsa
Titolo: la resa dei conti

--Nell'edizione del 23 novembre dell'Economist si legge che "il gioco a
cui giochiamo dal crollo del sistema di Bretton Woods, all'inizio degli
anni Settanta, volge alla sua conclusione".
La straordinaria constatazione è apparsa nella rubrica Buttonwood sotto
il titolo: "La fine del dollaro: il ruolo del dollaro come riserva
mondiale volge al termine?"
L'Economist nota come molte personalità statunitensi continuino a
parlare di "dollaro forte" ma il resto del mondo non ci crede più. Il
settimanale della City menziona anche Greenspan, che recentemente ha
detto a Francoforte che gli acquirenti di titoli in dollari dall'estero
potrebbero perdere presto la pazienza (vedi il n. 48 di questa
newletter). "Le parole di Greenspan sono significative, perché
tacitamente ammettono ciò che gli economisti assennati in ogni parte del
mondo hanno capito da tempo: che l'imperatore è nudo".
A proposito del "significato più profondo" dell'ammissione di Greenspan,
l'articolo afferma che "il ruolo del dollaro come moneta di riserva
mondiale ... sta gradualmente volgendo al termine. Ironicamente, il
fatto che da qualche anno esso è diventato così diffuso non fa che
accelerarne la fine".
L'Economist spiega poi come le banche centrali, specialmente in Asia,
abbiano accumulato titoli denominati in dollari, ma questo sta cambiando
rapidamente. Il motivo per cui finora hanno tenuto i dollari "è impedire
che le proprie monete si rivalutassero rispetto a quella americana e
mantenere così la competitività dell'export. In pratica esse cercano di
ancorare le loro monete, come si vede esplicitamente nel caso della
Cina. Di conseguenza hanno enormi riserve in valuta straniera". "Qualche
giullare ha denominato questo stato di cose la nuova Bretton Woods. Il
sistema di Bretton Woods (l'accordo del dopoguerra che vincolava il
dollaro all'oro e altre monete al dollaro) è crollato nel 1971. Il
sistema attuale sembra destinato a fallire allo stesso modo. Il grosso
interrogativo è se il mondo subirà effetti altrettanto negativi quando
esso crollerà".
Se le banche centrali asiatiche hanno un eccesso di titoli in dollari,
esse però esitano decisamente nel compiere una "fuga in massa", perché
"la loro fuga condurrebbe il dollaro ad un crac e i tassi d'interesse
USA ad un rialzo, cosa che comporterebbe enormi perdite sui loro buoni
del tesoro USA". La tendenza però resta quella al disinvestimento. "Gli
incentivi a fuggire dal cartello asiatico (per dare loro il nome giusto)
aumenta con l'aumentare della posta in gioco ... Giacché il gioco è
diventato così insostenibile, ovviamente si giungerà alla resa dei
conti, e forse sarà un bel pasticcio".
Intanto il capo economista della Morgan Staley, Stephen Roach, ha
commentato che gli Stati Uniti sono sull'orlo di una "apocalisse
finanziaria".
-- 
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - 
http://www.Mailgate.ORG

Questo č il pezzo dell'Economist.
Per chi se la cava con l'inglese č da leggere.
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The dollar’s demise
Nov 23rd 2004
From The Economist Global Agenda
Is the dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency drawing to a close?
WHO believes in a strong dollar? Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s treasury 
secretary, most certainly did. John Snow, his successor but two, says he 
does but nobody believes him—if only because he wants other countries’ 
currencies, in particular the Chinese yuan, to go up. Mr Snow’s boss, 
President George Bush, in one of his mercifully rare forays into economics 
last week, also said he wants a muscular currency: “My nation is committed 
to a strong dollar.” Again, it would be fair to say that this was not taken 
as a ringing endorsement. “Bush’s strong-dollar policy is, in practical 
terms, to maintain a pool of fools to buy it all the way down,” a fund 
manager was quoted by Bloomberg news agency as saying. It does not help when 
the chairman of your central bank, Alan Greenspan, whose utterances on the 
economy are taken rather more seriously than Mr Bush’s, has said the day 
before that the dollar seems likely to fall: “Given the size of the 
current-account deficit, a diminished appetite for adding to dollar balances 
must occur at some point,” were his exact words. The foreign-exchange market 
immediately decided that it was sated, and the dollar fell to another record 
low against the euro.
Mr Greenspan’s words were of huge moment, and not just because he spoke 
clearly, unusual though this was, nor because the Federal Reserve rarely 
comments on foreign-exchange movements. No, Mr Greenspan’s words were 
significant because he was tacitly admitting what right-thinking economists 
the world over have long believed: that the emperor has no clothes.
Mr Greenspan’s previous line had been that America’s ever-expanding 
current-account deficit was not a problem when capital could flow so freely 
around the world; and that, in effect, it would continue to flow to America 
because the country is such a wonderful place in which to invest. Now he is 
saying that it won’t, or at least that investors will demand a cheaper 
dollar, or cheaper assets, or both, to carry on financing America’s deficit.
But Buttonwood suspects that the deeper significance of Mr Greenspan’s 
admission is that the game that has been played since the collapse of the 
Bretton Woods system in the early 1970s is drawing to a close. The dollar’s 
status as the world’s reserve currency—its preferred store of value, if you 
will—is gradually coming to an end. And, ironically, the fact that it has 
become so popular in recent years will only hasten its demise.
One man who undoubtedly believes in a strong dollar is Japan’s prime 
minister, Junichiro Koizumi. Unlike America, Japan has been putting its 
money where its leader’s mouth is. On behalf of the finance ministry, the 
Bank of Japan has bought more dollars than any other central bank has ever 
done. At last count, it had the equivalent of $820 billion in 
foreign-exchange reserves, most of it denominated in the American currency.
As goes Japan, so goes the rest of Asia. In an interview this week with the 
Financial Times, Li Ruogu, the deputy governor of China’s central bank, the 
People’s Bank of China, said that his country would not be rushed into 
revaluing the yuan, and that America should put its own shop in order. Mr 
Ruogu’s bank, too, has been a huge buyer of dollars in recent years. China 
and the rest of developing Asia now have $1.4 trillion of reserves, mostly 
dollars. This is more than the combined reserves of the rest of the world 
(excluding Japan). Thanks mostly to Asian intervention, foreign-exchange 
reserves at the world’s central banks have climbed from $2 trillion in 2000 
to $3.5 trillion in 2004.
It used to be that countries amassed reserves as a war chest to protect 
against a run on their currencies of the sort suffered by East Asia in 1997, 
or Russia in 1998. But Asian countries have snaffled up far more than would 
be justified to prevent such crises. Their aim in accumulating these 
reserves is generally different now: to stop their currencies rising against 
the dollar and so keep their exports competitive. In effect, they are trying 
to peg their currencies; China’s peg is explicit. Huge foreign-exchange 
reserves are the result.
Some pundits have dubbed this arrangement the new Bretton Woods. The Bretton 
Woods arrangement (a post-second world war agreement that tied the dollar to 
gold and other currencies to the dollar) collapsed in 1971. The present 
arrangement seems similarly doomed to failure. The big question is whether 
the world will suffer similarly ill effects when it collapses.
Past saving?
The upward pressure on Asian countries’ currencies stems either from their 
saving too much and consuming too little, or from America saving too little 
and spending too much. American politicians, naturally, tend to concentrate 
on the first interpretation, because it stops them having to recommend 
unpleasant remedies, such as cutting deficits or encouraging Americans to 
save more. But Mr Greenspan’s most recent comments show that he recognises 
the problem is more home-grown. Personal saving in America, as a percentage 
of household income, slumped to just 0.2% in September, close to a record 
low. Indeed, the savings rate has been declining remorselessly since 1981, 
when it reached a high of 12.5%. This lack of saving shows up in the 
current-account deficit, which is a record near-6% of GDP and rising.
In effect, foreigners are saving on America’s behalf. In a recent study for 
the New York Fed, two economists, Matthew Higgins and Thomas Klitgaard, 
point out that the United States now absorbs more than the measured net 
saving of the rest of the world combined (suggesting someone’s got their 
figures wrong somewhere). The American economy cannot continue to expand at 
its current rate without those foreign savings. The question is whether 
foreigners will be happy to carry on financing this growth with the dollar 
and asset prices at their present level. The private sector is already 
voting with its wallet: it has been financing an ever smaller percentage of 
the deficit, and there has been a net outflow of direct investment. That 
leaves the public sector—ie, central banks—and those, in particular, of 
Asia.
At the heart of the central banks’ calculations is a trade-off: intervening 
to keep your currency down can be costly, but it is good for exports. Though 
the costs of intervention are hard to quantify, they are potentially big. 
Because the domestic money supply is expanded—those dollars must be paid for 
with something—it can cause inflation (though this can be neutralised 
through “sterilisation”, ie, bond sales). But the big potential cost is in 
amassing a huge stash of dollars with precious little exit strategy. Quite 
simply, Asian central banks now own too many of them to exit en masse, for 
their exit would cause the dollar to crash and American interest rates to 
soar, which would cause huge losses on their holdings of Treasuries.
Get out while you can
The biggest risk, of course, is that lenders would lose pots of money were 
the dollar to fall. As the printer of the world’s reserve currency, America 
can pass on foreign-exchange risk to the lenders because, unlike other 
indebted countries, it can borrow in its own currency. Messrs Higgins and 
Klitgaard reckon that for Singapore, the most extreme example, a 10% 
appreciation against the dollar and other reserve currencies would lead to a 
currency capital loss of 10% of GDP. Though loading up with even more 
dollars might of course stop the dollar from falling for a while, it would 
increase the risk of still larger losses were it eventually to do so. 
America already needs almost $2 billion a day from abroad to finance its 
spending habits, and the situation deteriorates by the week because America 
imports more than it exports, which worsens the current-account deficit.
The incentives to flee the Asian cartel (to give it its proper name) thus 
increase the bigger the game becomes. Why take the risk that another central 
bank will leave you carrying the can? Better to get out early. Because the 
game is thus so unstable it will come to an end, and probably a messy one. 
And what will then happen to the dollar? It is hard to imagine its hegemony 
remaining unchallenged when so many will have lost so much. And doubly so 
given that America has abused the dollar’s reserve-currency role so 
egregiously that its finances now look more like those of a banana republic 
than an economic superpower. 

 Per chi se la cava con l'inglese č da leggere.
Piccolo il mondo io l'ho letto sul sunday times
http://www.suntimes.co.za/articles/article.aspx?ID=ST6A91421
Con me sfondate una porta aperta anche se credo che si avviera' qualche
meccanismo di aggiustamento come un'altra grande guerra, economica o
militare.
Ciao
Snake.