JК
Dogs and Demons :: Керр Алекс
Страница: 69 из 270This brings us to another artificial financial system, one that has perhaps the most far-reaching repercussions of all: Japan never took the dollars earned over decades of trade surpluses and exchanged them back into yen.
The economist R. Taggart Murphy and Mikuni Akio, a pioneer of independent rating agencies in Japan, have examined this issue in some detail, and the gist of their analysis is as follows: For Japan to repatriate all the dollars earned abroad (net holdings came to a colossal $1.3 trillion by the end of 1998) would put pressure on the yen and drive it upward, increasing imports and weakening Japan's ability to export, and the point of MOF's financial system was to repress imports and allow Japan to keep exporting at all costs; so manufacturing firms and the government left these dollars abroad, while funding their external balance with «virtual yen» – that is, yen borrowed at almost no interest from domestic lenders. This system worked well for decades, but by the 1990s it had come under huge strain. It is now more difficult than ever for Japan to repatriate its foreign reserves, since if it did, the dollar would drop like a stone, which would drive up inflation in the United States, raise interest rates, and put an end to America's long economic expansion; at the same time, it would result in a shockingly high yen, bringing Japan's exports to a crawl. So it is not only Japan that wields power over the United States; it goes both ways. Murphy says, «Japan and the United States have realized the financial equivalent of the nuclear balance of terror-mutually assured destruction.»
It's sobering to realize that the supposedly «rational» United States, too, relies on an artificial system to support its economy, persistently ignoring the mountain of dollars piling up in foreign ownership-it has been called America's «deficit without tears.» For the time being, foreigners continue to finance the U.S. economy with money earned from America's huge trade deficits, but sooner or later they will cash in those dollars and the American economy will suffer severe pain.
Or maybe not. If Japan suddenly sold off its dollars, it would hurt the U.S. economy but damage Japan's far more. Furthermore, Japan is not the only country to hold dollars; all of America's trading partners do, and China, running the largest trading surplus with the United States, is building up the biggest reserves of all. In coming years, Japan may not necessarily exert the determining influence on what happens to the dollar.
The economist R. Taggart Murphy and Mikuni Akio, a pioneer of independent rating agencies in Japan, have examined this issue in some detail, and the gist of their analysis is as follows: For Japan to repatriate all the dollars earned abroad (net holdings came to a colossal $1.3 trillion by the end of 1998) would put pressure on the yen and drive it upward, increasing imports and weakening Japan's ability to export, and the point of MOF's financial system was to repress imports and allow Japan to keep exporting at all costs; so manufacturing firms and the government left these dollars abroad, while funding their external balance with «virtual yen» – that is, yen borrowed at almost no interest from domestic lenders. This system worked well for decades, but by the 1990s it had come under huge strain. It is now more difficult than ever for Japan to repatriate its foreign reserves, since if it did, the dollar would drop like a stone, which would drive up inflation in the United States, raise interest rates, and put an end to America's long economic expansion; at the same time, it would result in a shockingly high yen, bringing Japan's exports to a crawl. So it is not only Japan that wields power over the United States; it goes both ways. Murphy says, «Japan and the United States have realized the financial equivalent of the nuclear balance of terror-mutually assured destruction.»
It's sobering to realize that the supposedly «rational» United States, too, relies on an artificial system to support its economy, persistently ignoring the mountain of dollars piling up in foreign ownership-it has been called America's «deficit without tears.» For the time being, foreigners continue to finance the U.S. economy with money earned from America's huge trade deficits, but sooner or later they will cash in those dollars and the American economy will suffer severe pain.
Or maybe not. If Japan suddenly sold off its dollars, it would hurt the U.S. economy but damage Japan's far more. Furthermore, Japan is not the only country to hold dollars; all of America's trading partners do, and China, running the largest trading surplus with the United States, is building up the biggest reserves of all. In coming years, Japan may not necessarily exert the determining influence on what happens to the dollar.