Newsgroup: it.economia.investire
Titolo: Articolo da Yahoo! finance sulla valutazione del dollaro

Leggendo questo articolo da un lato mi sembra un po' stile "complottista",
della serie "quando l'Iran aprira' una borsa per il petrolio in Euro, tutta
l'economia americana crollera'"
D'altro canto le cifre sul debito americano sono quelle che sono, e un
robusto aggiustamento nel futuro mi sembra possibile.
Qualcuno conosce questo Kiyosaki? E' attendibile?
http://finance.yahoo.com/columnist/article/richricher/10932
In 1966, I was traveling the Pacific aboard a freighter. I was 19 years old
at the time and attending the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy at Kings Point,
N.Y.
One of the earliest lessons I learned at sea was about currency exchange
rates. Even though currency valuation was not a subject taught at the
Merchant Marine academy, my ship constantly traveled from one country to
the next, so my education in what is today called FX -- or foreign exchange
-- began.
Back then, the formal exchange rate in the banks was 360 Japanese yen to one
U.S. dollar. On the black market in Hong Kong, I could get 366 yen to the
dollar.
This made me aware of the games banks and countries play with their
currencies: In 1966, the six-yen difference told me that Japan was buying
more from Hong Kong, which is why yen was cheaper in the then-British
colony.
A six-yen difference might not seem like much, but for a student earning
just $105 a month every little bit counts. So I would wait for my ship to
stop in Hong Kong and then trade U.S. dollars for yen. Then I would travel
back to Japan and go shopping with the yen. Although the money I saved
wasn't substantial, the lessons it offered in currency exchange were
priceless.
The End of the Golden Age
It was pretty easy to understand foreign exchange back in the mid-60s,
since much of the world was following the Bretton Woods Agreement. Enacted
in 1944, this agreement made the U.S. dollar the global medium of exchange.
Because the U.S. dollar was pegged to gold, figuring exchange rates was a
cinch. If we purchased too much from Japan, then the Japanese could ask us
for gold. If we had less gold, we had less money.
In 1971, President Richard Nixon changed everything by removing the U.S.
dollar from the gold standard. Suddenly, the dollar was still the world's
currency, but now it was backed by nothing. The United States was free to
print as much money as it wanted, and the world went along.
Because of this change, understanding foreign exchange became a bit more
complex. Today, to understand the world of currency, you need to think a
little differently -- essentially because things don't make sense.
For example, today, the United States is perceived to be the richest country
in the world. In reality, though, we're the biggest debtor nation in the
world. And who are we indebted to? What many consider to be a Third World
country: China.
For Richer and Poorer
The irony is that many Americans think we're rich and China is poor. Exactly
the opposite is true. This is because the removal of gold's backing from
paper money has created a virtual explosion in credit and liquidity. The
sheer amount of liquidity around the globe is incalculable.
This excess funny money causes people to feel rich and almost everything to
be more expensive. Today, stocks, real estate, automobiles, and gasoline
become more expensive as the dollar becomes cheaper.
While some people do become richer in this system, funny money actually
punishes working people who save money. It devalues the value of your work
and your savings, even though you may feel wealthier.
In overly simplistic terms, China and many countries in the world today lend
us billions of dollars to buy their goods. They send us products like
computers, televisions, cars, candies, and wines, and we send them funny
money in return.
Since they can't spend those dollars at home, they simply lend them back to
us so we'll buy more of their products. That would be like me going to my
local grocery store and asking them for a loan so I could buy their
tomatoes. A logical person would say, "That makes no sense." Yet it's
exactly what happened after 1971, and to many highly educated people --
bankers and politicians, for instance -- it somehow does make sense.
An Uneven Trade
You can find current smaller examples of such financial insanity. For
example, many people refinance their homes to pay off their credit cards.
This makes no sense; you and I know that someday that debt will have to be
paid.
Yet getting deeper into debt does make sense as long as you can repay your
lender with cheaper dollars, and as long as your lender is willing to take
those cheaper, less-valuable dollars. To use my earlier analogy, it would
be like buying an orange for $1 on credit and then paying him back for it a
year later with 80 cents. As long as the grocer is happy with this
arrangement, things are fine.
In real-world terms, one of the reasons the U.S. dollar only buys
approximately 110 yen instead of 360 yen today is because the Japanese
allowed us to continually devalue the dollar -- that is, to pay our debts
with cheaper dollars.
Over the years, the yen got stronger and the dollar got weaker simply
because we, as a nation, printed more and more money, all the while
consuming more and producing less. Japan would lend us money and we would
buy their products. Japan's economy boomed, and so did ours.
Game Over?
The problem today is that China isn't willing to play the game the way the
Japanese did. If we drop the purchasing power of the dollar, the Chinese,
by pegging their currency to the dollar, also drop the value of their
currency. The United States then pays back its debt with a cheaper dollar.
The irony is that we accuse China of playing games with their money. It's
more honest to say that China just isn't willing to play the game we want
to play.
But an even bigger problem is looming: It seems like the rest of the world
is less willing to play our money game. That's why the European Union
introduced the Euro. If China creates an Asian equivalent of the Euro
(which, admittedly, is a long shot) then the U.S. dollar could be in real
trouble.
If the oil-producing nations stop accepting the dollar and switch to gold or
the Euro, things will definitely get sticky. The world might be tipped into
a global recession and possibly even a depression.
For now, though, this funny money game continues. How long will it last? I
don't know. I do know that throughout history, all paper money has
eventually come back to its true value, which is zero. That's when the game
truly ends, and a whole new cycle of pass the buck begins.


Non lo conosco personalmente, ma l'articolo mi sembra molto equilibrato
e niente affatto complottista.
Se vuoi saperne di piu` su questa linea di pensiero, cerca qualcosa
sugli economisti di scuola austriaca (Von Mises).
Ciao
Jorge Luis
-- 
--
Truth is sacred; and if you tell the truth too often nobody will believe it.

 Qualcuno conosce questo Kiyosaki? 
certo, è uno speculatore-investitore molto celebre in america per il 
best-seller "Padre ricco padre povero" (che è un ottimo libro per far 
capire che bisogna occuparsi del denaro):
http://www.internetbookshop.it/ser/serdsp.asp?shop=1&c=EEENQUWNNXNEE
l'idea che il dollaro possa crollare non è solo di K, Soros addirittura 
si è sbilanciato dicendo che avverrà nel 2007 e già da qualche anno un 
altro genio dell'investimento (il più grande di tutti) come Warren 
Buffet ha cambiato una parte del patrimonio della sua Berkshire Hathaway 
in altra valuta "come protezione".
Ciao!
L

 
In effetti non conoscevo la scuola austriaca, mi sembra molto interessante
(dovendo riassumerla in una riga, la definirei una critica sia del
socialismo che del monetarismo)
grazie!