November 14, 2010

G20 a step in a direction




















The G 20 in Seoul Korea was really only about reaching a financial agreement. President Obama, and the secretary of treasury Tim Geithner just kept pushing their same message for China to allow fluctuation with its pegged yuan. If China would let its currency rise more quickly then China would consume more domestically causing their exports to decrease, which would ease our trade deficits. However the G 20 has no way to enforcing china to rely less on exports and more on their domestic market, especially while the US does the opposite. China is claiming now that the US's move to pump 600 billion dollars into the economy will only devalue the dollar, which means our exports will go up. What it looks like is the US is being hypocritical trying to get the Chinese to rely more on their imports and value their money higher, when in fact we are doing the exact opposite of what we want them to do, and we really expect them to do it? Another problem or future problem discussed in the G20 is that if US and Europe maintain interest rates at near zero levels, investors will chase bigger returns and borrow money in the US and Europe with interests rate near 0 then they lend to developing nations like Brazil. This will cause an Asset bubble, which is formed when assets are over inflated due to excess demand. Once investors decide to move their money somewhere else, all the overvalued currency plunges, which also means exports lose their edge because their goods are costlier abroad. That explains why Brazil's real has risen 35% against the US dollar since the start of last year. There is no one solution for this problem because you can tell developing nations to lower their interest rates to avoid this from happening but you have no way of enforcing it, also the developing nations need high rates because with widening deficits and debt loads reaching almost 60% in a country like Brazil they need high interest rates to attract loans. There was obviously nothing agreed upon for a resolution but it has been called a work in progress. Its highly unrealistic to come up with an agreement.

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