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ENGLISH VERSION
Too liquid to be solid?
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| HERALD STAFF |
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VERSIÓN ESPAÑOL
¿Demasiada liquidez para tener solidez?
A menudo se critican a las políticas económicas del actual gobierno por resultar excéntricas (por no decir autistas) en el mundo de hoy, pero en términos monetarios al menos la Argentina parece estar totalmente en sintonía. Teniendo siempre en cuenta las vastas disparidades en la escala, no parecería haber mucha diferencia entre el Banco Central de Martín Redrado y la Reserva Federal de Ben Bernanke, dada la mutua alergia a las tasas de interés más altas y dada la asombrosa manera en la que la inyección de liquidez de la Reserva revirtió la crisis de las hipotecas de alto riesgo hace seis meses hasta convertirla en nuevos récords para las bolsas. Parece haber un mecanismo perverso por el que mientras más grande sea la crisis en la economía de los Estados Unidos (y por lo tanto para el dólar), más grande es la “fuga hacia la ca- lidad” (y por lo tanto hacia el dólar o al menos los bonos del tesoro estadounidense) del resto del mundo: un círculo que resultaría más virtuoso que vicioso de no ser porque trepar hacia nuevas estratósferas difícilmente sea la mejor manera de realizar un aterrizaje suave. Pero mientras tanto la Argentina está subiéndose al tren más que la mayoría de los demás países, a pesar de su imagen rebelde, ¿y por qué no?
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The current administration’s economic policies are often criticized as being eccentric (not to say autistic) in today’s world but in monetary terms at least Argentina would appear to be completely in step — always allowing for the vast disparity in scale, there would not seem to be too much difference between Martín Redrado’s Central Bank and Ben Bernanke’s Federal Reserve, given the mutual allergy to higher interest rates and given the astonishing way the Fed’s injection of liquidity has reversed the subprime meltdown of only six months ago into new stock market records. There seems to be a perverse mechanism at work whereby the greater the crisis in the United States economy (and hence for the dollar), the greater the “flight to quality” (and hence to the dollar or at least US Treasury bonds) from the rest of the world — a circle which would be more virtuous than vicious were it not for the fact that a flight to new stratospheres is hardly the best way to make a soft landing. But in the meantime Argentina is joining the ride more than most, despite its maverick image, and why not?
Yet if Argentina’s monetary patterns are broadly in step with a wild wide world, why not have courage to go all the way and let the currency float? The government’s “new convertibility” of depreciating the peso even against a weaker dollar (with industrial pressures on the future presidency for more devaluation, largely out of competitive laziness) effectively imports inflation, which is the chief danger to economic stability today (far more than the presumably temporary burst of electoral spending). Both Kirchners stubbornly continue to react to inflation with denial but the problem can no longer be curbed with statistical juggling, whether by fair means or foul — even the hopes set on applying US “core inflation” methods founders on the fact that INDEC statistics bureau’s current inflation figure without seasonal prices (7.3 percent so far this year) exceeds the grossly understated general index (5.8 percent).
But for now the government can only see the sunny side of its pro-cyclical policies, especially the renewed commodity price boom and the export duty windfalls for government coffers. But the current monetary and exchange rate policies are only stoking up consumer prices at home and public debt abroad (another powerful motive to lie about inflation and thus reduce the outlay on index-linked debt bonds). A change of presidency should be the ideal time to ask seriously whether the policies which have been generally successful for the past four years are necessarily the best for the next four years.
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