Brad Setser has a post, the perrenial dollar story, which IMHO, has one large and significant ommission: it doesn’t really mention the euro. Personally I don’t really see how you can consider the future evolution of the dollar without taking the euro into account. This realisation provoked a rather long comment from me on Brad’s blog, and it is this comment, in a slightly modifed form, that I am now posting here. (Update: incidentally, I notice that Claus Vistessen has two highly relevant summaries of the great greenback debate (here, and here) which. among other things, serve as an excellent introdiction to the issues involved).
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Tag Archives: Ben Bernanke
Italy: Aging But Saving?
This is a very convenient moment to put up this post. Alan Greenspan has just admitted that he’s human like the rest of us, and that he doesn’t have a very good explanation for why long-term interest rates have been falling at a time when he and his Fed colleagues have been busy raising short-term rates. I think he’s being a bit coy here, since I’m sure he has some idea. Among other things he will be well aware of the contents of a speech made recently by Ben Bernanke, a US economist who is considered high on the list of possible Greenspan successors.
What Bernanke said in the speech ( The Global Savings Glut ) was this:
“Iwill argue that over the past decade a combination of diverse forces has created a significant increase in the global supply of saving–a global saving glut–which helps to explain both the increase in the U.S. current account deficit and the relatively low level of long-term real interest rates in the world today. The prospect of dramatic increases in the ratio of retirees to workers in a number of major industrial economies is one important reason for the high level of global saving.”
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Things That Can’t Go On Forever, Don’t
Ok, the sun is shining nicely down here in Barcelona right now, so maybe this is a good moment to come out and provoke a storm. The euro: something gives, but what? Actually it is perhaps ironic that I have chosen today of all days to write this, since for once it seems the euro may fall rather than rise: well to someone who is accustomed to marching out of step, this almost seems par for the course. Never mind, tomorrow, or the day after, we will be back to normal, and the seemingly unstoppable rise will continue. The only remaining question really is: where is breaking point, and what will happen when we get there?
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