kameraad mhambi

“Welcome to 2009. This is a year in which the fate of the world economy will be determined, maybe for generations. Some entertain hopes that we can restore the globally unbalanced economic growth of the middle years of this decade. They are wrong. Our choice is only over what will replace it. It is between a better balanced world economy and disintegration. That choice cannot be postponed. It must be made this year.” Martin Wolf in the FT.

When I read another brilliant piece by Martin Wolf during my Christmas holiday break in Spain I knew I was reading something significant.

It’s weird how one learns a lot about something we take for granted, when it breaks down and dumbfounded commentators pick up old text books on how the economy actually works.

Kameraad Mhambi has been absorbing economic theory of late. It’s fascinating. It’s terrifying.

That were in the biggest economy upheaval since the second world war has become fact.

We reached the point where even arch free marketeers begrudging accept that without government protection of large banks the world would be facing an economic nuclear winter.

Some financial gurus are calling for governments to nationalise banks completely now so as to insure enough lending – essential to economic activity – is maintained.

And of course governments are talking about ‘quantitative easing’ or so-called helicopter theory. An emergency tactic whereby central banks splurge cash to get people spending again. Martin Wolf explains how that works behind this link.

But this is not what worries me. Lets presume with or without nationalisation governments manage to save the banks and maintain lending. Let’s say that vasts amounts of capital is injected in economies and consumers actually use it to spend, and not to save.

Everything will be fine? No.

Yesterday I listened to the radio as news broke of ever wider wild cat strikes breaking out over the UK. The strikers mantra? British jobs for British workers.

We face a situation where the open world economy is under a high risk of ever tigther spasms, eventually to choke. Why?

Kameraad Mhambi has been listening and reading to a number of economic commentators over the last few weeks. Most persuasive of the all has been Martin Wolf. Where Robert Peston is wonderfully didactic, Wolf is just ominous.

“To understand this, one must understand how the world economy has worked over the past decade. A central role has been played by the emergence of gigantic savings surpluses around the world. In 2008, according to forecasts from the International Monetary Fund, the aggregate excess of savings over investment in surplus countries will be just over $2,000bn.”

That is more than 7 times the market value of all goods and services produced or rendered (the GDP) in South Africa for 2008. A number which came to $283bn.

“The oil exporters are expected to generate $813bn. Remarkably, a number of oil-importing countries are also expected to generate huge surpluses. Foremost among them are China ($399bn), Germany ($279bn) and Japan ($194bn). As a share of gross domestic product, China’s current account surplus is forecast at an astonishing 9.5 per cent, Germany’s at 7.3 per cent and Japan’s at 4 per cent. In aggregate, the oil exporters, plus these three countries, are forecast to generate 83 per cent of all surpluses.”

Both Germany and China have surpluses of savings over spending larger than the entire South African economy.

Wolf notes that these countries accuse others of profligacy:

“But it is impossible for some countries to spend less than their incomes if others do not spend more. Lenders need borrowers. Without the latter, the former will go out of business.”

Who are the borrowers? In 2008 they were mainly the US, Spain, the UK, France, Italy and Australia.

“The US is far and away the biggest borrower of them all. These six countries are expected to run almost 70 per cent of the world’s deficits.”

For Wolf the most interesting feature of the global imbalances has been the corresponding pattern of local (domestic) financial imbalances. This is because:

“The sum of net foreign lending and the government and private sector financial balances must be zero.”

Foreign lending does not happen if a country has enough excess money to fund its needs.

First housing booms helped make huge household deficits possible in the US, the UK, Spain, Australia and other countries. House buyers needed cheap money. It came from outside their borders.

But during recessions, the private sector retrenches and the government deficit widens as the government spends more on social security and gets less tax income.

Currently government deficits in countries like the UK are exploding. This is because,

“businesses uninterested in spending more on investment than their retained earnings, and households cutting back, despite easy monetary policy”.

In other words, businesses are not investing, people are not buying stuff, despite the government lowering interest rates. Tax receipts are falling. On top of this governments have to pay benefits and social security for a larger number of people. Explosion.

But this explosion of government money is not good enough.

“Even so, deficits have not been large enough to sustain growth in line with potential. So deliberate fiscal boosts are also being undertaken.”

Even with governments taking up the slack economic activity will be much lower.

Which brings us to the point where we are now. Governments announcing massive stimulus packages, pumping money into economies and increasing their deficits even further. The helicopter stuff.

“This then is the endgame for the global imbalances. On the one hand are the surplus countries. On the other are these huge fiscal deficits.

So deficits aimed at sustaining demand will be piled on top of the fiscal costs of rescuing banking systems bankrupted in the rush to finance excess spending by uncreditworthy households via securitised lending against overpriced houses.”

Got that? Read it again and take it in.

Goverments are throwing more money at the problem (to sustain demand for products in the economy) on top of saving the banks. And the Banks needed saving because they financed spending by people who did not have the money and were not credit worthy – that were secured against their properties, but they were over priced. Phew.

“This is not a durable solution to the challenge of sustaining global demand. Sooner or later – sooner in the case of the UK, later in the case of the US – willingness to absorb government paper and the liabilities of central banks will reach a limit. At that point crisis will come. “

Or in other words, at some point lenders of money to the UK and US governments will have doubts about their ability to repay their debts. Then there’ll be kak (Sorry).

One can avoid this. By the private sector in these countries lending again. But currently the private sector is in so much debt, so much strain, that this is unlikely.

The only other option is to rebalance. Smaller domestic deficits and an commensurate external surplus is the answer.

In normal times countries that produce more than they use, like China, can be useful. They suck in excess demand. But in times like these, times of deficient demand, its downright dangerous. They are effectively “importing” demand into their economies.

Countries like China need to create their own demand, because “importing” it is going to create political trouble big time.

“In short, if the world economy is to get through this crisis in reasonable shape, creditworthy surplus countries must expand domestic demand relative to potential output. How they achieve this outcome is up to them. But only in this way can the deficit countries realistically hope to avoid spending themselves into bankruptcy.”

“The world has run out of creditworthy, large-scale, willing private borrowers. The alternative of relying on vast US fiscal deficits and expansion of central bank credit is a temporary – albeit necessary – expedient. But it will not deliver a durable return to growth. Fundamental changes are needed.”

Don’t get it? Wolf goes on to illustrate the point he is making. The current huge US government stimulus (three times the size of South African economy at $760bn or 5.3 per cent of the US GDP) is not going to be enough to save many Americans from unemployment.

Assuming that the US private sector will now save more than they spend, and that America has a structural deficit of 4% of its GDP (it consumes 4% more than it produces every year) the government stimulus and deficit would have to be 10% per year indefinitely in order to keep Americans in their jobs at previous levels.

But Obama’s huge stimulus is only half of this level.

“Now think what will happen if, after two or more years of monstrous fiscal deficits, the US is still mired in unemployment and slow growth. People will ask why the country is exporting so much of its demand to sustain jobs abroad. They will want their demand back.”

In other words the US government will be getting deeper into debt so that the country can keep on spending more than it produces. And this spend will be going to excess production countries like China.

The US people will want their government to prohibit goods from China to be bought. They would want goods to be bought locally.

“The last time this sort of thing happened – in the 1930s – the outcome was a devastating round of beggar-my-neighbour devaluations, plus protectionism. Can we be confident we can avoid such dangers? On the contrary, the danger is extreme.”

Take note, Martin Wolf is not an alarmist kind of guy.

“Once the integration of the world economy starts to reverse and unemployment soars, the demons of our past – above all, nationalism – will return. Achievements of decades may collapse almost overnight.”

Poor Barack Obama…

“Yet we have a golden opportunity to turn away from such a course. We know better now. The US has, in Barack Obama, a president with vast political capital. His administration is determined to do whatever it can. But the US is not strong enough to rescue the world economy on its own. It needs helpers, particularly in the surplus countries. The US and a few other advanced countries can no longer absorb the world’s surpluses of savings and goods. This crisis is the proof. The world has changed and so must policy. It must do so now.”

Whether Obama fails or succeeds a big change is coming for South Africa. I will deal with that next time.

Related deployments:

1. A year of change – 2009
2. Martin Wolf and Robert Peston at Davos
3. This Banana Republic should go east