Tuesday, November 18, 2008

From Financial Crisis to Currency Crisis: Is Britain Next?

The suggestion by Willem Buiter that Britain may already be on its way to a collapse of its currency and possible sovereign default has been making waves in the UK, but deserves attention here as well. First of all, the mechanism he describes is exactly the one I have been harping on for the US:

If there is doubt in the markets about whether the solvency gap of the banking system is smaller than the fiscal spare capacity of the government, we could have a UK public debt crisis. Fear of default would cause an across-the-board rush of out sterling assets. Fear that the authorities would choose to monetise the UK public debt and deficits rather than defaulting, would also cause a sharp decline in the value of sterling.


There are fiscal limits to what governments can do, and pledging to bail out all investors who have claims on the financial system is not the same as being able to actually carry out this pledge. Moreover, a run on sterling would not only signal the failure of the British bailout plan; it would set in motion currency shockwaves that would ricochet through the global economy. Money fleeing the pound would have to go somewhere else, but this somewhere would then find itself on a hair trigger, as fears of currency and default risk escalate. My reference period for the earlier Depression is not 1929, for which there were domestic solutions, but 1931-32, when a cascade of currency runs rendered national monetary policymakers helpless.



Having signed on to Buiter’s main point, I want to emphasize some divergences:

1. Britain’s risk is, like Iceland’s, a function of the size of its banking sector liabilities relative to the economic size of its currency area. It can crank up the denominator by joining the eurozone—if it can. The political impediments in this environment are simply too great, however. If Britain starts to melt, would the euro powers risk their own solvency to save it?

2. The US has a far larger GDP, but its numerator is also much larger, since the epicenter of the crisis was in US-generated assets, all of which matter because the Fed has committed itself to making good on all claims on US financial institutions, whatever their country of origin.

3. The dollar is a reserve currency as the pound is not. This gives the US much more breathing space, and the amount of claims needing to be satisfied would not be altered by a potential devaluation, since it’s all in dollars. What this means, though, is simply that the dollar can hold on longer than the pound; it doesn’t mean the dollar is invincible. It is ultimately subject to the same constraints laid out in Buiter’s analysis (and mine).

4. The British exposure is somewhat less than meets the eye. The City is the repository for an undisclosed but certainly very substantial pool of mideast petro-profits. Their placement is essentially a political, not a market-based choice. No doubt the failed occupation of Iraq has reduced the geopolitical subservience of the Gulf potentates, but it is hard to believe that they would simply withdraw their funds in a crisis. They remain vulnerable domestically—even more so as oil prices fall—and still depend on Anglo-Saxon guarantees of their continued rule.

5. Buiter’s solution, to move first on trimming the claims (haircuts) before assuming public liability for them, is entirely sensible, and roughly equivalent to the asset window I briefly described in my own proposal two months ago. The problem is that he gives no attention to the collapse of the real economy. In fact, he would exacerbate it by cutting back fiscal stimulus, which he sees as unaffordable. Here I think he misses perhaps the most important point: that a principle reason for reversing the bailout strategy is to have the resources to sustain employment and income. Moreover, the finance for renewed growth is essential, and if the strict austerity Buiter (rightly) seeks to impose on financial markets only dulls the private appetite for assuming new risk, a public financial entity must pick up the slack.

5 comments:

Andrew said...

Hi Peter,

I'm emailing you in regards to an email I sent to you last month about a partnership, have you had a chance to think about it?

If you have any questions or would more information, please advise me and we can go from there.

Kind Regards,
Andrew Knight
Website Manager
Banking & Finance Division

OMG.com.au Pty Ltd
p: (07) 3368 2666
f: (07) 3368 2670
e: andrew.knight@omg.com.au
w: www.omg.com.au

Anonymous said...

Great Britain joining eurozone?? I can't imagine that - I think Englishmen would prefer to eat rocks than to sacrifice their pound!
I think economy of the UK has one advantage - big flexibility of labor force. Few years ago, short term immigrants from Eastern Europe helped to avoid creating an bottle-neck in economy. Now, thousands of them are leaving the country, helping to maintain the level of unemployment...
Regards,
Julie

TheTrucker said...

The following paragraph does not compute.

"The dollar is a reserve currency as the pound is not. This gives the US much more breathing space, and the amount of claims needing to be satisfied would not be altered by a potential devaluation, since it’s all in dollars. What this means, though, is simply that the dollar can hold on longer than the pound; it doesn’t mean the dollar is invincible. It is ultimately subject to the same constraints laid out in Buiter’s analysis (and mine)."

I think this says that the real economy may not be able to support the debt service required for the world bailout. But that makes no sense. The American government can create as many dollars as are needed to buy down the debt. If that means that the dollar will be worth much less then so be it. I cannot see that the dollar would be "worthless" or that the rest of the economies of the world would suffer unduly because of the dollar devaluation. The immediate "sufferers" will have been the holders of currency and they can certainly afford the loss. Americans will find themselves riding motor assisted bicycles and teleconferencing a lot more, but that is reality. We are on the oil standard and we Americans cannot afford the oil we have been consuming. This is where the "real economy" rears its head. We do not produce enough and we consume way too much oil.

I know that what I say here is heresy and that all of you think that money is real capital. But it simply isn't. It is merely a unit of account that does not necessarily serve as a long term store of wealth. It seems to me that we are looking to "balance the scales". And the question is really one of "how much dislocation will the real people have to endure in order to balance the scales?". Left to the holders and controllers of money it is going to be a very difficult adjustment that may end in a Marxist revolution. And it is all so totally unnecessary.

So I'll be the resident nut case. It's a crappy job, but it needs doing even if I am wrong. I have never thought of myself as "stupid". What you have presented makes no sense to me.

Peter Dorman said...

Trucker,

In a closed economy you'd be right about money. In the world we live in it matters whether foreigners wish to hold dollars.

Anonymous said...

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