Monday, June 07, 2010

A Good Crisis, Wasted


It is official.  The rest of the world assumes the economy can pick up were we left off in 2006, with the US  as the driver of global demand.

Don Geithner, tilting at windmills.   His battles are futile.  Financial markets know it, sensing that the global growth cannot be sustained on the back of the US alone.  Of course, this was always the case; demand in the US alone was never sufficient to recreate the fabled "V" recovery of the 1980s.  Market participants also know that US policymakers have their finger in the dam of a tidal wave of competitive devaluations.  The Dollar, for all its warts, remains the big dog of reserve currencies, and Geithner fears the global pandemonium that would result from an actual US response to the currency manipulation of others.  Thus the postponed report on currency manipulators becomes another case of "extend and pretend." 

 blog it

No comments:

Post a Comment