Pitfalls in a Post-Bubble World
By Stephen S. Roach
Chairman, Morgan Stanley Asia
A year ago, there was barely an inkling of what was about to transpire in world financial markets and the global economy. There were some early warning signs that all was not well in the subprime slice of the US mortgage market. But as was the case with the dotcom bubble in early2000, subprime was widely judged to be of little consequence for the macro story. Denial, one of the most powerful of human emotions, once again had the upper hand.
The argument a year ago was laced with a painful sense of
déjà vu. At the end of 1999, dot-com accounted for only
6% of the market capitalization of US equities. A powerful,
flexible, and innovative US economy was believed to offer
built-in resilience and ongoing support to the other 94%
of the US equity market and the macro economy. A year
ago, subprime accounted for only 14% of total securitized
mortgage debt outstanding. A still powerful, flexible, and
innovative US economy was once again believed to offer
ongoing support to the other 86% of the mortgage market
and the broader economy (see Figure 1).
How wrong this logic was – in 2000 and, again, just a year
ago. Eight and a half years ago, the bursting of the dot-com
bubble was, in fact, followed by a 49% decline in the broader
S&P 500 index over the next two and a half years. And the
bursting of the subprime bubble a year ago has triggered an
unprecedented contagion throughout the broader credit and capital markets. The lessons are painfully similar. When an
entire asset class – or for that matter, an economy – goes to
excess, the weakest link in the chain often deals a decisive
blow to the system as a whole. The bubble analogy works all
too well. When the thinnest part of the membrane gives way,
the rest of the air escapes all too quickly.
But the imagery misses one critical point. The progression
of bubbles is an insidious process. From equities to property
to credit, the bubbles have expanded in scope and risk. A
bubble-prone US economy became a breeding ground for
a gathering storm of systemic risks in America and in an
increasingly interdependent world economy. And now we are
left to pick up the pieces.
In the Beginning
No economy can live beyond its means in perpetuity. Yet like
others that have tried to do so in the past, the US thought it
was different. America's current account deficit surged from
1.5% of GDP in 1995 to 6% in 2006. At its peak annualized
deficit of $844 billion in the third quarter of 2006, the US required $3.4 billion of capital inflows from abroad each
business day in order to fund a massive shortfall of domestic
saving.
For the longest time, such funding was there for the asking.
There were plenty of new theories concocted to rationalize
why the unsustainable might actually be sustainable. Foreign
lending with impunity was a special privilege that fell to the
nation possessing the world's reserve currency, many argued.
Some went further, celebrating the advent of a new "Bretton
Woods II" arrangement, whereby surplus savers such as China
could forever recycle excess dollars into US assets in order
to keep their currencies competitive and their export-led
growth models humming. In the end, of course, these "new
paradigm" explanations – like those of the past – failed the
test of time and the markets.
A record US consumption binge was at
the root of the problem – sparked by an
audacious shift from income- to assetbased
saving.
At the root of the problem was America's audacious shift
from income- to asset-based saving. The US consumer led the
charge, with trend growth in real consumer demand hitting
3.5% per annum in real terms over the 14-year interval, 1994
to 2007 – the greatest buying binge over such a protracted
period for any economy in modern history. Never mind a
seemingly chronic shortfall of income generation, with real
disposable personal income growth averaging just 3.2% over
the same period. American consumers no longer felt they
had to save the old-fashioned way – they drew down incomebased
saving rates to zero for the first time since the Great
Depression. And why not? After all, they had uncovered the
alchemy of a new asset-based saving strategy – first out of
equities in the latter half of the 1990s and then out of housing
in the first half of the current decade. Laxity in regulatory and
supervisory oversight, in conjunction with excessive monetary
accommodation, led to an explosion of free and easy credit
that turned out to be the icing on the cake.
In retrospect, the equity wealth effect was child's play in
comparison with what the American home eventually was
to offer. At its peak in mid-2006, net equity extraction from
residential property had soared to nearly 9% of disposable
personal income – fully three times the 3% reading only five
years earlier. That enabled income-short American consumers
not only to squander income-based saving but also to push
consumption up to a record 72% of real GDP in 2007 (see Figure 2). Behind this outcome was the confluence of two
monstrous bubbles – property and credit – that transformed
residential dwellings into the functional equivalent of ATM
machines. In the end, US consumers had no compunction
about tapping their main source of future saving – housing
wealth – to fund current consumption. And, of course, they
went on a record debt binge to pull it off. Household sector
indebtedness surged to 133% of disposable personal income
by year-end 2007 – up over 40 percentage points from debt
loads of 90% prevailing just a decade earlier. It was the height
of folly. Yet the longer it lasted, the more it became deeply
ingrained in the American psyche. And now it is finally over.
The Asia Connection
While seemingly made in America, the era of excess was
truly global in scope. The US consumption binge was fodder
to export-led economies elsewhere in the world. That was
especially the case in Developing Asia – the fastest growing
major region in the world since the turn of the century. Large
enough to account for fully 20% of total world output (as
measured on a purchasing power parity basis), real GDP
growth in Developing Asia averaged 8% over 2000-07 – more
than two and a half times the 3% growth trend elsewhere in
the world over the same period. In search of rapid growth
in order to achieve its development and poverty-reduction
objectives, Developing Asia viewed America's consumption
binge as "manna from heaven" Consumption deficient Japan
had a similar response, as did the large newly industrialized
economies in the region such as Taiwan and Korea.
Yet there can be no mistaking the high-octane fuel that drove
the Asian growth boom – an increasingly powerful export-led
growth dynamic. For Developing Asia as a whole, exports hit
a record of more than 45% of pan-regional GDP in 2007 –
up more than ten percentage points from the share prevailing
in the mid-1990s (see Figure 3). That left the world's fastest
growing region more dependent on external demand than ever before. And with the American consumer – the biggest
source of that external demand – finally in trouble, Asia's
export-led growth dynamic is now at risk.
With the American consumer now in
trouble, Asia's export-led growth dynamic
is now at risk.
China is undoubtedly key in that regard. After two years of
nearly 12% GDP growth in 2006-07, Chinese growth slowed
to 10.1% in 2Q08. That downshift was largely an outgrowth
of marked deceleration in the growth of Chinese exports to
the US – +8% y-o-y in June 2008 following average annual
gains in excess of 25% over the 2003-07 period. Significantly,
the US-centric compression of Chinese export and GDP
growth – hitting about 20% of China's total external demand
– was accompanied by ongoing vigor of China's shipments
to Europe (+25% in June 2008) and Japan (+22%). As Japan
and Europe now weaken, the heretofore resilient pieces of
Chinese external demand – collectively accounting for about
30% of China's total exports – will also begin to falter. With
lags, that could well prompt another downleg in Chinese
GDP growth from 10% to 8% within the next six months.
A key question for Asia is whether an external demand shock
will be sufficient to contain the region's recent outbreak of
inflation. China could well be the most important case in
point – namely, whether its likely slowing to 8% growth
represents enough of a "landing" to temper a sharp build-up
of inflationary pressures. With wage inflation surging in the
15%-plus range on the back of recently enacted labor reforms,
administrative controls biasing its "core" inflationary pressures
to the downside, and short-term policy rates extremely low in real terms, China's inflation risks cannot be minimized in
the current climate. China's reliance on increasing its bank
reserve ratios – as opposed to rate hikes – as the principal
instrument of monetary tightening is especially problematic
in this regard.
A key question for Asia is whether an
external demand shock will be sufficient
to contain the region’s recent outbreak of
inflation.
India has adopted a very different approach to deal with its
inflation problem, with the central bank moving aggressively
to boost policy rates by a total of 125 basis points since
early June. Unlike China, who seems to be counting on an
external demand shock to temper excessive GDP growth
and inflationary pressures, the Reserve Bank of India is not
taking any chances in confronting its inflation problem head
on. As a result, Indian GDP growth could fall below the 7%
threshold in 2009 – a major shortfall from average gains of
nearly 9% over the preceding four years, 2005-08.
Japan brackets the other end of the spectrum in terms of Asia's
repercussions to a US-led external demand shock. Overall
Japanese export volume growth went into negative territory in
June (-1.6% y-o-y) for the first time in 16 months. At work
in this case was emerging sluggishness in Japanese exports to
Europe and elsewhere in Asia – once resilient markets that
previously had been masking emerging weakness to the US.
China and Japan are at the opposite ends of Asia's external
vulnerability chain. China has a huge cushion – nearly 12%
growth over the past two years – to ward off the blow of an
external shock. Japan, by contrast has been only a 2% growth
economy in recent years and has no such cushion. In a weaker
external demand climate, the downside to Chinese economic
growth appears to be around 8%. For Japan, the downside
is probably closer to "zero" – underscoring the distinct
possibility of a recessionary relapse in the region's largest
economy.
The global boom of 2002 to mid-2007 was an outgrowth
of the powerful cross-border linkages of globalization. No
region of the world benefited more from this connectedness
than export-led Asia. That has been especially the case in the
region's high-flying developing economies, dominated by
China. Decoupling – the supposed untethering of developing
economies from the developed world – is antithetical to
the linkages that have become central to the powerful
globalization trends of the past five years. Those linkages are just as intact on the downside of the global business cycle
as they were on the upside. And through well-developed
cross-border feedback mechanisms, the responses to a major
weakening in US demand by Asia's export-led economies are
now triggering powerful repercussions across markets and
economies in an interdependent world.
Taking Stock
Alas, the bloom is now off the rose – the global business
cycle has turned. World GDP growth, which averaged close
to 5% annually over the 2004-07 period – the strongest four
consecutive years of global growth since the early 1970s –
now seems headed back down into the 3.5% to 4% range for
a couple of years. While that is hardly a disastrous outcome,
it does represent a 20-30% deceleration in the growth rate of
the previous four years.
This likely downturn in the global business cycle has
not occurred in a vacuum. It has been accompanied by
unprecedented outbreak of credit market contagion that
has wreaked havoc throughout world financial markets. The
interplay between financial markets and the real economy
undoubtedly holds the key to the global macro outlook over
the next few years. For expositional purposes, I have found
it helpful to break down the macro pyrotechnics into three
stages (see Figure 4):
The credit crisis is the first stage. Sparked by the subprime
meltdown that began in the summer of 2007, a cross-product
contagion quickly spread to asset-backed commercial paper,
mortgage-backed securities, structured investment vehicles
(SIVs), interbank offshore (LIBOR) financing, leveraged
lending markets, auction rate securities, so-called monoline
insurers, and a number of other opaque products and
structures. Unlike the Asian financial crisis of ten years earlier,
which was a powerful cross-border contagion, the "originate
and distribute" characteristics of today's complex instruments
and structures ended up infecting offshore investors as well.
That puts the current crisis in the rarefied breed of being
both cross-product and cross-border. US financial institutions
generally have been aggressive in marking down the value of distressed securities. Largely for that reason, I believe that
this first phase is about 65% complete – more behind us
than ahead of us but still a good deal more to come as the
business cycle now kicks in and produces yet another round
of earnings impairment for financial intermediaries.
A three-stage interplay between financial
markets and the real economy holds the
key to the global macro outlook over the
next few years.
The second stage reflects the impacts of the credit and
housing implosions on the real side of the US economy. As
noted above, the main event in this phase of the adjustment
is the likely capitulation of the over-extended, saving-short,
overly-indebted US consumer. For nearly a decade and a half,
real consumption growth averaged close to 4% per year. As
consumers now move to rebuild income-based saving and
prune debt burdens, a multi-year downshift in consumer
demand is now likely. Over the next two to three years, I
expect trend consumption growth rate to be cut in half to
around 2%. There will be quarters when consumer spending
falls short of that bogey and the US economy lapses into a
recessionary state. There will undoubtedly also be quarters
when consumption growth is faster than the 2% norm and
it will appear that a recovery is under way. Such rebounds,
unfortunately, should prove short-lived for post-bubble
American consumers. This aspect of the macro-adjustment
scenario has only just begun. As a result, Phase II is only
about 20% complete, in my view.
The third stage is a global phase – underscored by the linkages
between the US consumer and the rest of the world. As also
noted above, those linkages are only now just beginning to
play out. Ordering and cross-border shipping lags suggest that
this phase of the adjustment will take a good deal of time to
unfold. Early impacts are already evident in China and Japan
– largely on the basis of US-led export adjustments. With
ripple effects now only beginning to show up in Europe, these
cross-border impacts should gather in force over the months
and quarters to come. That suggests to me that Phase III is
only about 10% complete.
In short, this macro crisis is far from over. The main reason
is that the bubbles that have burst – property and credit
– became so big they ended up infecting the real side of the
US economy. And as the US now adjusts to much tougher
post-bubble realities, the rest of an interdependent, globalized
world should follow. Moreover, there are undoubtedly feedback effects between the various stages – especially as
the business cycle now starts to bear down on financial
institutions that were initially buffeted by the credit
contagion. A new round of earnings pressures on banks and
other lending institutions could exacerbate the credit crunch
further, reinforcing the cyclical pressures on debt-dependent
economies in the US and around the world. All in all, macro
adjustments should last well into 2009 and possibly spill over
into 2010.
Rebalancing the Hard Way
A voracious appetite for economic growth lies at the heart
of the boom that has now gone bust. An income-short US
economy rejected a slower pace of domestic demand. It
turned, instead, to an asset- and debt-financed growth binge
that had little to do with the time-honored underpinnings of
income generation forthcoming from current production. For
the developing world, rapid growth was a powerful antidote
to a legacy of wrenching poverty. And the hyper-growth that
was realized in regions like Developing Asia became the end
that justified all means – including the negative externalities
of inflation, pollution, environmental degradation, widening
income disparities, and periodic asset bubbles. The world's
body politic wanted – and still wants – growth at all costs.
But now the bill is coming due.
The global economy is facing a multi-year
rebalancing as it now reins in its appetite
for unsustainable hyper growth.
The global economy is facing a multi-year rebalancing.
For the US, this spells a sustained deceleration in personal
consumption growth as households abandon newfound
asset-dependent saving and consumption strategies in favor
of the income-led fundamentals of the past. Hope springs
eternal that a weaker dollar will enable America to finesse this
transition without skipping a beat – that consumer led growth
will now give way to currency-led export growth. Anything
is possible, but I have my doubts of a US export renaissance
– especially in the aftermath of a multi-decade hollowing
out of America's manufacturing and export base. Jobs and
industries that were once "lost forever" do not spring back to
life over night. The US, in my view, will now have to come to
grips with a much slower growth trajectory – with real GDP
growth likely to slow from the 3.2% trend of the past 13 years
to no higher than 2% over the next 2-3 years, or longer.
This should prove to be a very challenging outcome for the
rest of the world – especially for those developing nations,
which have derived so much of their economic sustenance
from exporting goods to over-extended American consumers.
The task here is essentially the opposite of that which faces
the United States – for export-led developing economies to
shift the mix of growth toward domestic demand, especially
private consumption. That won't be easy for nations who have
relied on cheap currencies, surplus saving, and infrastructure
strategies as the principal means to achieve spectacular
progress on the road to economic development. But with
their major export market – the US – now under pressure and
with little consumption offset likely elsewhere in the world,
the developing world has little choice other than to embark
on a consumer-led rebalancing of its own. This probably
means slower economic growth in the developing world as
well for the next several years – with the 7.3% average annual
growth pace of the past years conceivably slowing into the 5%
vicinity over the next 2-3 years.
Such global rebalancing arises from an unprecedented
disparity that opened up over the past several years between
nations with current account deficits and those with
surpluses. By the IMF's reckoning, the absolute sum of
current account deficits hit a record of nearly 6% of world
GDP in 2006-07 – fully three times the 2% share prevailing
in the mid-1990s (see Figure 5). Where the apologists went
seriously wrong, in my view, was not in coming up with new
ways to rationalize unprecedented external imbalances but in
failing to appreciate the impact of asset and credit bubbles in
spawning these excesses. Now that those bubbles have burst,
global rebalancing has become an urgent task for a lopsided
world. And the global economy will undoubtedly pay a steep
price for years of neglect by moving to a much slower growth
trajectory in the years immediately ahead.
Financial Market Implications
The events of the past year have certainly not been lost
on financial markets. As forward looking discounting
mechanisms, much of the macro adjustments that have
unfolded are now "in the price" of major asset classes. But
denial remains deep as to the full extent of the adjustments.
To the extent that there is more to come in the global
economy, the same can be said for financial markets. Four key
conclusions in that regard:
To the extent that there is more to come
in the global economy, the same can be
said for the broad classes of financial
assets – equities, bonds, currencies, and
commodities.
With equity markets now in bear-market territory in most
parts of the world, it is tempting to conclude that the worst
is over. I am suspicious of that prognosis. The trick, in my
view, is to resist the temptation to view equity markets as a
homogenous asset class. Instead, it is important to make the
distinction between financials and nonfinancials. The former
have certainly been beaten down. While the adjustments of
Phases II and III as outlined above will undoubtedly put more
cyclical pressures on the earnings of financial institutions,
share prices now seem to be discounting something close
to such an outcome. That is not the case for nonfinancials,
however. For example, consensus earnings expectations for the
nonfinancials component of the S&P 500 are still centered on
prospects of close to 25% earnings growth over 2007-08. As
US economic growth falters, however, I fully expect earnings
risks to tip to the downside for nonfinancials – underscoring
the distinct possibility of yet another important downleg in
global equity markets. The equity bear market is likely to shift
from financials to nonfinancials.
For bonds, the prognosis centers on the interplay between
inflation and growth risks – and the implications such a
tradeoff has for the policy stance of central banks. As inflation
fears have mounted recently, yields on sovereign government
bonds have risen as market participants have started to
discount a return to more aggressive monetary policy stances
of major central banks. In a faltering growth climate, however,
I suspect cyclical inflation fears will end up being overblown
and monetary authorities will turn skittish out of fear of
overkill. Over the near term, that leads me to conclude that
major bond markets could rally somewhat on the heels of a
rethinking of the aggressive central bank tightening scenario. Over the medium term – namely, looking through the cycle
– I concede that the jury is still out on stagflation risks,
especially in inflation-prone developing economies. The bond
market prognosis is more uncertain over that time horizon.
For currencies, the dollar remains center stage. I have been
a dollar bear for over six years for one reason – America's
massive current account deficit. While the US external
shortfall has been reduced somewhat over the past year and
a half – largely for cyclical reasons – at 5% of GDP, it is still
far too large. And so I remain fundamentally bearish on
the dollar. At the same time, it appears that the dollar has
overshot on the downside over the past 10 months on the
fear that subprime is mainly a US problem. As the global
repercussions of the macro crisis spread as outlined above,
I believe that investors will rethink the belief that they can
seek refuge in euro- and yen-denominated assets. As a result,
I could envision the dollar actually stabilizing or possibly
even rallying into yearend 2008 before resuming its decline in
2009 due to America's still outsized current account deficit.
The commodity market outlook is especially topical
these days. A year from now, I believe that economicallysensitive
commodity prices – oil, base metals, and other
industrial materials – will be a good deal lower than they
are today. Soft commodities – mainly agricultural products
– as well as precious metals could well be the exception
to that outcome. Two reasons underpin the case for a
correction in economically-sensitive hard commodities – a
marked deceleration in global growth leading to a related
improvement in the supply-demand imbalance, as well
as a pullback in commodity buying by return-seeking
financial investors. This latter impetus to the commodity
bubble cannot be underestimated, in my opinion. I am
not sympathetic to the view that hedge funds and other
speculators have driven commodity markets to excess. At
work, instead, are mainly long-only, real money institutional
investors such as global pension funds – all of whom have
been advised by their consultants to increase their asset
allocations into commodities as an asset class. Such herding
behavior of institutional investors invariably turns out to be
wrong. I expect that to be the case this time as well – although
I would be the first to concede that my own record in calling
the end of this commodity bubble has been nothing short of
terrible over the past three years.
Perpetuating the Madness?
For reasons noted above, the current financial crisis is hardly
lacking in superlatives. Whether it is truly the worst debacle
since the Great Depression, as many have argued, remains
to be seen. But it is certainly a watershed event in many important respects – especially since it draws into sharp
question the fundamental underpinnings of a US economy
that has long ignored its imbalances and excesses. Sadly,
America's body politic seems both unwilling and unable to
fathom the magnitude of the problems that have come to a
head in this crisis.
America's body politic seems unwilling to
fathom the magnitude of the problems that
have come to a head in this crisis. That's
true of tax policy, the housing "fix", and
management of the financial system.
Tax policy is a case a point. Rebates to over-extended
American consumers have been the first line of defense, and
there is new talk in Washington of a second round of such
stimulus measures. Yet with personal consumer spending
hitting a record 72% of real GDP in 2007, the government's
injections of spendable income are aimed at perpetuating the
biggest consumption binge in modern history. For a nation
that desperately needs to save more and spend less – and
thereby pay down debt and reduce its massive current account
deficit – politically expedient personal tax cuts are the wrong
medicine at the wrong time.
Washington's response to the housing crisis is equally
problematic. The Congress seems determined to make
foreclosure containment a key aspect of any fix; moreover,
new legislation provides government guarantees for up
to $300 billion of home mortgage refinancing for lowincome
families. This is consistent with a philosophy that
has long stressed ever-rising rates of homeownership as a
key objective of US public policy. Yet truth be known, an
obvious and painful lesson of the subprime crisis is that there
are some Americans who simply cannot afford to purchase
a home. Foreclosure is a tragic, but ultimately necessary,
consequence of misguided home buying. For low-income
victims of the housing bubble, assistance should be directed
at income support rather than at perpetuating uneconomic
homeownership. By opting for the latter, Congress is
inhibiting the requisite decline in home prices that ultimately
will be necessary to clear the market and bring the housing
crisis to an end.
Nor have the financial authorities – the Federal Reserve and
the US Treasury – distinguished themselves in this crisis.
Ten years ago, it was a hedge fund (Long Term Capital
Management) that was too big to fail. Now it is an investment bank (Bear Stearns) and the country's twin mortgage
behemoths (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac). And the Fed's
temporary liquidity facility for primary dealers in government
securities is now starting to look less and less temporary.
Undisciplined risk taking has been a central element of this
crisis. By tempering the consequences of the bursting of the
risk bubble, the authorities are shielding irresponsible risk
takers and thereby enabling a "moral hazard" that has become
increasingly ingrained in today's financial culture. At the same
time, a Federal Reserve that continues to ignore the perils
of asset bubbles in the setting of monetary policy is equally
guilty of reckless endangerment to the financial markets and
to an increasingly asset-dependent US economy.
In short, Washington has responded to this financial crisis
with a politically-driven, reactive approach. Policy initiatives
have been framed more by the circumstances of the moment
than by a strategic assessment of what it truly takes to
put the US economy back on a more sustainable path. By
perpetuating excess consumption, low saving, unrealistic goals
of home ownership, and moral hazards in financial markets,
this patchwork approach has the biggest flaw of all – it does
little to change bad behavior. Far from heeding the tough
lessons of an economy in crisis, Washington is doing little to
break the daisy chain of excesses that got America into this
mess in the first place.
If this crisis is anything, it is a wake-up call. For all too
long, the United States broke many of the most important
rules of conduct for a leading economy. It failed to save. It
levered asset bubbles in both equities and homes to sustain
unparalleled excesses in current consumption. It went deeply
into debt to sustain that course of action and borrowed
heavily from the rest of the world to close the funding gap.
The authorities were complicit in this binge – especially
a central bank that condoned unbridled risk taking and
excessive monetary accommodation.
The longer the United States sustained the unsustainable, the
more it believed in the perpetuity of its charmed existence.
The real message of this crisis is that this game is now over.
But steeped in denial and feeling the heat of voters in a
politically charged presidential election year, Washington
politicians insist that the game can go on.
More than anything, America now needs "tough love" – a
new course that owns up to years of excess and the remedies
those excesses now require. It is not that difficult to fathom
the broad outlines of what that new approach might entail
– more saving, as well as more investment in both people and
infrastructure. An energy policy might be nice as well – as would be more prudent stewardship of the financial system.
This program won't win any popularity contests. But in the
end, it is America's only hope for a sustainable post-bubble
prosperity.
Lessons
It didn't have to be this way. America went to excess and the
rest of an export-dependent world was more than happy to go
along for the ride. Policy makers and regulators – the stewards
of the global economy – looked the other way and allowed
the system to veer out of control. Investors, businesspeople,
financial institutions, and consumers were all active
participants in the Era of Excess.
The key question going forward is whether an adaptive and
increasingly interrelated global system learns the tough lessons
of this macro upheaval. At the heart of this self-appraisal must
be a greater awareness of the consequences of striving for
open-ended economic growth. The US couldn't hit its growth
target the old fashioned way by relying on internal income
generation, so it turned to a new asset- and debt-dependent
growth model. Export dependent Developing Asia took its
saving-led growth model to excess: Unwilling or unable to
stimulate internal private consumption, surplus capital was
recycled into infrastructure and dollar-based assets – in effect,
forcing super-competitive currencies and exports to become
the sustenance of a new development recipe.
Can the world learn the tough lessons of
this macro upheaval? The US and China
are likely to be key in this regard, and
recent signs are not encouraging.
This crisis is a strong signal that these strategies are not
sustainable. They have led to multiple layers of excess
– underscored by a precarious interplay between internal and
external imbalances within and between the world's largest
economies. It took unsustainable credit and risk bubbles
to hold this system together in an unstable equilibrium.
But now those bubbles have burst, unmasking a worrisome
disequilibrium that demands a new approach to policy and
an important shift in behavior by households, businesses, and
financial market participants.
The early verdict on such a new approach is not encouraging.
That's especially the case in the US and China – the two key
players of the new globalization. As noted above, Washington
is reverting to timeworn recipes that perpetuate the excess
consumption and moral hazard problems of the past decade. And Beijing is sending new pro-growth signals that seem to
back away from recent tightening measures – an especially
disconcerting development in light of China's ongoing
problems on the inflation front. The body politic in both
nations is clinging steadfastly to its core values – that rapid
economic growth is the antidote to any and all problems.
Concerns regarding the sustainability of that growth are being
deferred to that proverbial "another day."
Financial and economic crises often define some of history's
greatest turning points. They can be the ultimate in painful
learning experiences. But there can be no escaping the urgent
imperatives of learning these lessons and addressing the
systemic risks that have given rise to the crisis. Such heavy
lifting rarely sits well with the body politic. A path of least
resistance is invariably selected that leads to more of a reactive
response – the quick fix that tempers immediate dislocations
but does little to tackle deep-rooted systemic problems. That's
the risk today. And if that's where the Authorities end up, a
globalized world will have squandered a critical opportunity to
put its house in order. That would be the ultimate tragedy. If
this crisis demonstrates anything, it's that it only gets tougher
and tougher to pick up the pieces in a post-bubble world.
Stephen S. Roach is Chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia,
serving as the Firm's senior representative to clients,
governments, and regulators across the region.
Prior to his appointment as Asia Chairman,
Mr. Roach was Morgan Stanley's Chief Economist.
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