Dollar Hegemony and the Rise of China
Hudson to Premier Wen Jaibao, March 15, 2010
Dear Premier Wen Jiabao,
I write this letter to counteract some of the solutions that Western politicians are recommending for China to cope with its buildup of excess foreign-exchange reserves. Raising the renminbi’s exchange rate against the dollar will not cure the China-US payments imbalance. The dollar glut will continue, and so will the currency fluctuation among the dollar, euro and sterling, leaving no stable store of value. The cause of this instability is that each of these three currency areas has grown top-heavy with by debts in excess of the ability to pay.
What then should China should it do with its buildup of excess reserves, if not recycle its inflows into their bonds? Four possibilities have been suggested: (1) to revalue the renminbi, (2) to flood China’s economy with credit (as Japan did after the Plaza Accord of 1985), (3) to buy foreign resources and assets, and (4) to use excess dollars to buy back foreign investments in China, given US reluctance to permit Chinese investment in America’s own most promising economic sectors.
I explain below why China’s best course is to avoid accumulating further foreign exchange reserves. The most workable solution is to use its official reserves to buy back US and other foreign investments in China’s financial system and other key sectors. This policy will seem more natural as a response to an escalation of US protectionist moves to block Chinese imports or block China’s sovereign wealth funds from buying key US assets.
China’s excess reserves will impose a foreign-exchange loss (as valued in renminbi)
Every nation needs foreign currency reserves to ward off currency raids, as the Asia Crisis showed in 1997. The usual kind of raid forces currencies down. Speculators see a central bank with large foreign currency holdings, and seek to empty them out by borrowing even larger sums, selling the target currency short to drive down its price. This is the tactic that George Soros pioneered against the British pound when he broke the Bank of England.
Malaysia’s counter-tactic was not to let speculators cover their bets by buying the target currency. Its Malaysia’s success in resisting that crisis showed that currency controls prevent speculators from “cashing out” on their exchange-rate bets, blocking their attempt to drive down the currency’s value.
China’s case is the opposite. Speculators are trying to force up the renminbi’s exchange rate. Foreign inflows into China’s banks – especially those owned by US, British or other foreign companies – is flooding China with foreign currency. Its central bank finds itself obliged either to recycle this inflow back abroad, or to let the renminbi rise – and ultimately take a loss (as measured in yuan) when its currency rises against its holdings in dollars, sterling and euros. Speculators and other foreigners holding Chinese assets will get a free currency ride upward.
The effect within China’s economy will be to load it down with debt, while obliging it to buy foreign securities denominated in dollars that are falling in price. So the question is, how can China best cope with the foreign exchange flowing into its economy?
China’s major response has been to invest in the mineral resources and other imports it will need to sustain its long-term growth. But this option is limited by foreign protectionism against overseas investment in minerals and agricultural land, and by speculators from foreign countries using their own free credit to buy up these resources. So excess foreign exchange is continuing to build up.
Traditionally, central banks used their payments surpluses to buy gold as “money of the world.” Gold has the advantage of serving as a store of value, enabling central banks (in principle) to avoid taking a loss on their dollar holdings. Settling payments deficits in gold also has the global advantage of limiting the ability of other countries to run chronic payments deficits – especially war spending throughout history. This is why US diplomats oppose a return to gold.
In the 1960s foreign governments asked the US Treasury to provide a gold guarantee. The excess dollars thrown off by America’s overseas military spending in Southeast Asia and Europe ended up in the central banks of France (which dominated banking in Indo-China), Germany (as exporter and host to the major European military base), and Japan (for rest and recreation). France and Germany cashed in these dollars for gold, whose price came under pressure as US monetary gold stocks were depleted. To deter the central banks of France (under General de Gaulle), Germany and other countries from cashing in their dollars for gold, the U.S. Treasury gave a gold guarantee so that if the dollar lost value, these central banks would not lose.
Today, the United States is unlikely to give a gold guarantee, or to expect Congress to agree to such an arrangement. (Often in the past, US presidents and the Executive Branch have made agreements on foreign trade and finance, which Congress has refused to confirm.) It could guarantee China’s official dollar holdings vis-à-vis a basket or whatever the Government of China preferred to hold its reserves, from euros to a new post-Yekaterinburg currency mix. But no currency today is stable. All the major Western currencies are buckling under the burden of unpayably large debts. The US Treasury owes $4 trillion to foreign central banks, but there is no foreseeable way in which it can make good this foreign debt, given its chronic structural deficit of foreign military spending, import dependency and capital outflows. That is why so many countries are treating the dollar like a “hot potato” and trying to avoid holding them. And holding euros or British sterling does not provide a better alternative.
Most central banks today hold down their exchange rates by recycling their dollar inflows to buy US Treasury IOUs. This recycling enables the United States to finance its overseas military spending and also its domestic budget deficit (largely military in character) since the 1950s. So Europe and Asia have used their foreign exchange earnings to finance a unipolar US buildup of military bases to surround them.
This situation is inherently unstable, and hence self-terminating. The era is ending where international reserves are based on the unpayably high debts of any single government, especially when these debts are run up for military purposes. Certainly the US dollar cannot continue to fill this role, given the chronic US payments deficit. For most years since 1951, US overseas military spending (mainly in Asia) has accounted for the largest part of this deficit. And increasingly, the US trade balance has fallen into deficit (except for agriculture, entertainment and military arms). Most recently, capital outflows have accelerated from the United States, especially to China and Third World countries. US money managers have concluded that the US and other Western economies are entering a period of debt-burdened, permanently slower growth. So they are looking to China, hoping to obtain its surpluses for themselves by buying out its banking and industry.
This relationship is too one-sided to continue for long. The question is, how can it best be resolved? Any solution will involve China’s avoiding further accumulation of foreign exchange as long as these take the form of “free loans” back to the US and European governments.
China’s exchange rate vis-à-vis the dollar
American China bashers blame China for being so strong. They urge it to raise the renminbi’s exchange rate to be less competitive. And indeed, over the past three months China’s currency has risen by more than 10% against the euro and sterling as one euro-using government after another is facing insolvency.
The dollar’s recent strength does not reflect intrinsic factors, but merely the fact that the euro and sterling are even more highly debt leveraged. The main problem areas to date have been Greece, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Portugal, but much larger problems are soon to come from the Baltics, Hungary and other post-Soviet economies. For a decade, they financed their structural trade deficits by borrowing in foreign currency to fuel a real estate bubble. This foreign-currency inflow (from Austrian banks to Hungary and Romania, from Swedish banks to the Baltic States) inflated prices for their housing and office buildings. But now that their real estate bubbles have burst, there is no foreign lending to support their currencies. As their real estate sinks into negative equity, the banking systems of Sweden and Austria face widespread defaults.
The EU and IMF have pressured post-Soviet governments to borrow to bail out EU banks. This shifts the bankruptcy from the private sector to the public sector (“taxpayers”), imposing a severe economic depression on these countries. Governments are slashing spending on education, health care and infrastructure so deeply as to cause personal and business mortgage defaults, emigration, and even shortening life spans.
This shrinkage is the end-result of the neoliberal Washington Consensus imposed on these countries since 1991, aggravated by the global financial bubble since 2000. It is an object lesson for what China needs to avoid.
The United States for its part is manipulating its currency to keep the dollar low, by flooding its economy with low-interest credit. This manipulation runs counter to normal practice over the past five centuries. Any economy running a balance-of-payments deficit traditional has raised interest rates to attract foreign loans and slow domestic spending. But the US Federal Reserve is doing just the opposite. Low interest rates to keep the real estate bubble fro bursting further have the effect of aggravating rather than curing the trade deficit and capital outflow.
Yet more dollars are ending up in the hands of foreign central banks. Foreign economies are expected to recycle these inflows into yet more purchases of US Treasury securities, saving US taxpayers and investors from having to finance this deficit themselves.
Revaluing the renminbi would exacerbate China’s financial problem, not stabilize its trade
US economic diplomats argue that increasing the renminbi’s exchange rate will help restore balance to Chi
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