May 09, 2010
The folks who couldn’t see an $8 trillion housing bubble are spouting off like crazy about what the Greek debt crisis means. The NYT told us that: “While the immediate causes for worry are Greece’s ballooning budget deficit and the risk that other fragile countries like Spain and Portugal might default, the turmoil also exposed deeper fears that government borrowing in bigger nations like Britain, Germany and even the United States is unsustainable.”
Fears that government borrowing in the United States is unsustainable should manifest themselves in higher interest rates on long-term government bonds. Unfortunately for this story, the interest rate on long-term government bonds fell last week. So, the NYT wants us to believe that investors are more fearful about the status of U.S. debt, but they were willing to hold it at lower interest rates?
Umm, no, this is a “night is day” line. The NYT is telling us something that it 180 degrees at odds with what we see in the world. There are large numbers of wealthy and politically powerful people who want to scare the public about the U.S. debt in order to advance their agenda of cutting Social Security and Medicare, but the events of last week point in the opposite direction. Investors still have great confidence in the ability of the U.S. government to pay its bills.
The theme of deficit hawks was further reinforced in the next paragraph which told readers:
“‘Greece may just be an early warning signal,’ said Byron Wien, a prominent Wall Street strategist who is vice chairman of Blackstone Advisory Partners. ‘The U.S. is a long way from being where Greece is, but the developed world has been living beyond its means and is now being called to account.'”
The savings for the developed world as a whole is determined by its trade deficit or surplus with the developing world. The latter is determined primarily by currency values of the level of output in various countries. As a result of conscious policy by the United States and the IMF, the dollar rose sharply in value against the currencies of most developing countries in the late 90s (following the East Asian financial crisis). This laid the basis for the huge imbalances associated with the stock bubble and the housing bubble.
The complaint about inadequate savings belongs at the door of the U.S. Treasury and IMF. It was the explicit and intended result of their policies. The moral haranguing about people not saving enough is utter nonsense that belongs in gossip pages, not in a serious newspaper.
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