FT.com / Comment & analysis / Analysis – Asia’s revenge
If what they say is true, that ‘journalists write the first draft of history’, then Martin Wolf (one of the world’s top financial journalists) has begun to sketch.
“So among the most important tasks ahead is to create a system of global finance that allows a more balanced world economy, with excess savings being turned into either high-return investment or consumption by the world’s poor, including in capital- exporting countries such as China. A part of the answer will be the development of local-currency finance in emerging economies, which would make it easier for them to run current account deficits than proved to be the case in the past three decades.”
Wolf is arguing that a large part of the credit boom in the West has been driven by large surpluses in emerging economies. Essentially, poorer nations have been unwilling to invest into their own economies, fearing insecurity and lack of return, and have been moving their money into rich economies in the form of cheap credit. The collapse of this system should lead to a better distribution of wealth and investment across world economies.
A good thing, I should think.