Paul Craig Roberts: The world tires of dollar hegemony

By Paul Craig Roberts
Creators Syndicate, Los Angeles
Monday, November 3, 2008

http://www.creators.com/opinion/paul-craig-roberts.html?columnsName=pcr

What explains the paradox of the dollar's sharp rise in value against other currencies (except the Japanese yen) despite disproportionate U.S. exposure to the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression?

The answer does not lie in improved fundamentals for the U.S. economy or better prospects for the dollar to retain its reserve currency role.

The rise in the dollar's exchange value is due to two factors.

One factor is the traditional flight to the reserve currency that results from panic. People are simply doing what they have always done. Pam Martens predicted correctly that panic demand for U.S. Treasury bills would boost the U.S. dollar.

The other factor is the unwinding of the carry trade. The carry trade originated in extremely low Japanese interest rates. Investors and speculators borrowed Japanese yen at an interest rate of 0.5 percent, converted the yen to other currencies and purchased debt instruments from other countries that pay much higher interest rates. In effect, they were getting practically free funds from Japan to lend to others paying higher interest.

The financial crisis has reversed this process. The toxic American derivatives were marketed worldwide by Wall Street. They have endangered the balance sheets and solvency of financial institutions throughout the world, including national governments, such as Iceland and Hungary. Banks and governments that invested in the troubled American financial instruments found their own debt instruments in jeopardy.

Those who used yen loans to purchase, for example, debt instruments from European banks or Icelandic bonds faced potentially catastrophic losses. Investors and speculators sold their higher-yielding financial instruments in a scramble for dollars and yen in order to pay off their Japanese loans. This drove up the values of the yen and the U.S. dollar, the reserve currency that can be used to repay debts, and drove down the values of other currencies.

The dollar's rise is temporary, and its prospects are bleak. The U.S. trade deficit will lessen due to less consumer spending during recession, but it will remain the largest in the world and one that the United States cannot close by exporting more. The way the U.S. trade deficit is financed is by foreigners acquiring more dollar assets, with which their portfolios are already heavily weighted.

The U.S. government's budget deficit is large and growing, adding hundreds of billions of dollars more to an already large national debt. As investors flee equities into U.S. government bills, the market for U.S. Treasuries will temporarily depend less on foreign governments. Nevertheless, the burden on foreigners and on world savings of having to finance American consumption, the U.S. government's wars and military budget, and the U.S. financial bailout is increasingly resented.

This resentment, combined with the harm done to America's reputation by the financial crisis, has led to numerous calls for a new financial order in which the United States plays a substantially lesser role. "Overcoming the financial crisis" are code words for the rest of the world's intent to overthrow U.S. financial hegemony.

Brazil, Russia, India, and China have formed a new group to coordinate their interests at the November financial summit in Washington.

On Oct. 28, RIA Novosti reported that Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin suggested to China that the two countries use their own currencies in their bilateral trade, thus avoiding the use of the dollar. Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao replied that strengthening bilateral relations is strategic.

Europe has also served notice that it intends to exert a new leadership role. Four members of the Group of Seven industrial nations, France, Britain, Germany, and Italy, used the financial crisis to call for sweeping reforms of the world financial system. Jose Manual Barroso, president of the European Commission, said that a new world financial system is possible only "if Europe has a leadership role."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said that the "economic egoism" of America's "unipolar vision of the world" is a "dead-end policy."

China's massive foreign exchange reserves and its strong position in manufacturing have given China the leadership role in Asia. The deputy prime minister of Thailand recently designated the Chinese yuan as "the rightful and anointed convertible currency of the world."

Normally, the Chinese are very circumspect in what they say, but on Oct. 24 Reuters reported that the People's Daily, the official government newspaper, in a front-page commentary accused the United States of plundering "global wealth by exploiting the dollar's dominance." To correct this unacceptable situation, the commentary called for Asian and European countries to "banish the U.S. dollar from their direct trade relations, relying only on their own currencies." And this step, said the commentary, is merely a start in overthrowing dollar dominance.

The Chinese are expressing other thoughts that would get the attention of a less deluded and arrogant American government. Zhou Jiangong, editor of the online publication Chinastates.com, recently asked, "Why should China help the U.S. to issue debt without end in the belief that the national credit of the U.S. can expand without limit?"

Zhou Jiangong's solution to American excesses is for China to take over Wall Street.

China has the money to do it, and the prudent Chinese would do a better job than the crowd of thieves who have destroyed America's financial reputation while exploiting the world in pursuit of multimillion-dollar bonuses.

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Paul Craig Roberts is an economist and syndicated columnist who was assistant treasury secretary for President Reagan and an editor and columnist for The Wall Street Journal and Business Week.

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