an Academic with international Credentials (Okay, with PKR links2...n case you donno!)
A borrowing in the stael of broad daylight from mGf DJ blogger Sdr DIN MERICAN's:)
09
Dec
08
Return to Depression Economics, says Jomo
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By dinobeano
Categories: Uncategorized
December 9, 2008
After reading this Jomo interview, I am struck by his prescription for resolving the present international economic crisis. This crisis arose as a result of the present financial crisis due to the collapse of the sub-prime mortagage crisis in the United Statesand has severely impaired the banking and financial system’s capacity to provide credit with ripple effects on the stock exchanges and soon the real economies around the world. Dr. Jomo has been involved in thinking, researching and writing about this subject fro a number of years. His views are well articulated in this radio with some interesting pointers for us to ponder about. Unfortunately, the reality of crisis has yet to reach the political leaders of the government of BolehLand.
As claimed by our economic pundits and policy makers, Malaysia is an exceptional nation in our region. Why? It said that our economic fundamentals are strong and that our economy is now well diversified, no longer dependent on the health of the US economy. Dr Jomo believes that we cannot do it alone, and has called for coordinated international action to deal with the crisis.
I am also glad that Dr. Jomo said the “decoupling thesis (also the Badawi thesis)”…” was a myth. On the one hand, some people will talk about the virtues of globalisation, how financial globalisation for instance has done so much for wealth creation and so on and so forth. And at the same time they also were claiming that Asia and perhaps other emerging markets had decoupled from the global system. You can’t have your cake and eat it. You either globalise or do not globalise.”
For me it is very clear that, as Bill Clinton said the other day, in an increasingly interdependent world, we have only one option and that is to globalise. National governments and central banks acting in their own self interest cannot deal with the present situation. The problems we face are massive. If we fail to seize the moment and prepare ourselves to deal with competition in a open trading environment, we are going to find it difficult to rejoin the fold of advanced nations. Latecomers in a fast paced globalised world will finish last.
I agree with Dr. Jomo on the urgent need to regulate and improve oversight to prevent the re-emergence of financial and property bubbles. In this regard, I congratulate our Bank Negara Governor, Dr. Zeti Aziz and her team for keeping a hawk’s eye on our banking system. Yes, also to a more focussed stimulus package to benefit all Malaysians, not just political families and cronies. Our resources must be managed with the future generation in mind as we are custodians and trusteed for future generation.
The recent lowering domestic interest rates is an important step, of limited potential says, Dr. Jomo, but we need to do more about our politics. The time has come, as Anwar Ibrahim has suggested, that we form a sort of unity government starting initially with a bipartisan parliamentary caucus to deal with the economy. We must restore public trust in government which is virtually absent. We can do that with upholding the rule of law and having good governance and credible institutions. We must also accept that dissent is healthy, and start to build on our diversity. —-Din Merican
source: nstonline (www.nst.com.my)-december 9, 2008
Coordinated International Actions answer to crisis
Serina Joon of Malaysia’s BFM 89.9 interviewed Dr Jomo Kwame Sundram, assistant secretary-general for economic development in the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs at 10.07 am on December 4. Here is the transcript of the interview.
BFM 89.9: Good morning. First, can you give us a prelude to the lecture that you will be giving on the Global Financial Crisis (referring to the public lecture organised by the Chevening Alumni of Malaysia on December 4).
Jomo: Well I think one of the real tragedies about this crisis is that it is a crisis foretold. In the sense that many of us had been warned about the likelihood of this crisis unfolding. At the UN for instance, we had published a number of reports over the recent years where we drew attention to the very large global imbalances which existed, and more importantly to the vulnerability which existed in certain financial markets.
It was just a matter of time before a perfect storm sort of came together and hit the world with such devastating consequences. If this was a completely sort of black swan event, then I think it would be much easier to forgive the people responsible. But precisely because it is something which is identifiable, something which is relatively well understood given past experience and so on and so forth, it is really very tragic and the consequences for billions of people, I’m not exaggerating, will be very dire.
BFM 89.9: What is the root cause of this financial crisis? If you can put it in layman’s terms.
Jomo: Well, let me try. I think what we basically have is a situation where the most important authorities concerned overseeing financial markets did not really seek to regulate. They took the view that minimal regulation was best for market forces and they did not seek to regulate the market, allowing financial bubbles to emerge, and it was these bubbles particularly in this case, the housing bubble in the US and stock market bubbles all over the world. It was clearly unsustainable, and as we know the bubbles burst from around August 2007, and then we had the train of events that has led to the recent increase in turbulence with such devastating consequences.
BFM 89.9: How have international institutions responded though? I mean the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been rather quiet amid all that’s been happening.
Jomo: To be fair to the IMF, they began to belatedly acknowledge the problem, however, they continued to remain rather optimistic because they initially characterised it as a temporary blimp. More recently however, I think it’ll be fair to acknowledge that the managing director of the IMF and many of the senior officials of the IMF have begun to recognise the gravity of the situation. And have called for coordinated international response. However this remains elusive partly because the IMF has lost considerable authority in the international financial architecture which has emerged since the 1970s.
So it is very much left to the major economies to coordinate. They of course have a mechanism for this called the G7. The G7 finance ministers meet at least twice a year. But so far they have not been able to get their act together. And more recently there has been an attempt to involve the other major economies in a grouping called the G20. But the G20 as well has not been able to do very much beyond promising to study various proposals to regulate. Which is a fairly important endeavour but what is urgently needed are two things in our view:
Number one is the need to have international coordinated micro economic responses, otherwise you’ll get a beggar thy neighbour type of response with some countries doing certain things and other countries reacting and sort of negating what the other countries are trying to do.
The other major problem of course is the credit crunch which exists in international financial markets. And it is very important to ensure there is adequate liquidity, and lowering interest rates alone clearly is not able to achieve this. Japan tried to do this in the middle of the 1990s without much success. And we see that there are limits to how much you can achieve by lowering interest rates. So we have a very difficult situation which can only be resolved through well coordinated international actions. There are of course other elements as well, which are desperately needed.
But most importantly now, we find most developing countries do not have significant reserves. China of course has significant reserves, some of the oil exporting economies of course have significant reserves. But many other countries do not have those reserves which allow them to do very much in this situation according to IMF’s advice. The IMF should reconsider its advice and allow a strong fiscal stimulus. And also monetary measures which would allow developing countries and other countries to respond more adequately to the crisis.
BFM 89.9: I want to bring this issue back to Asia right now. The financial crisis started in the US and Europe and now has trickled into emerging markets like Malaysia and the rest of Asia. How did that actually happen? Because it has been said before that Asia may be shielded from the crisis in the West because India and China will support the economies here. So how did it actually happen?
Jomo: Yes. What you have refered to is sometimes called the “decoupling thesis”. This in my view was a myth. On one hand, some people will talk about the virtues of globalisation, how financial globalisation for instance has done so much for wealth creation and so on and so forth. And at the same time they also were claiming that Asia and perhaps other emerging markets had decoupled from the global system. You can’t have your cake and eat it. You either globalise or do not globalise.
But they tried to make these kinds of arguments and created this myth that Asia and other economies had decoupled as they called it and that they therefore (will) not be affected by this crisis. In various different ways I think it is very difficult to generalise. Different economies in Asia are very integrated into the international economy and international financial system. But depending on how they were integrated and depending on their vulnerabilities and exposure, they have been affected differently.
BFM 89.9: You’ve mentioned to solve this problem, it needs coordinated effort by the G7 and G20. You also mentioned just lowering interest rates alone will not do it. So what is your perspective on how to deal with this financial crisis? Any measures above and beyond providing liquidity, what do you think we should do?
Jomo: Well liquidity provision is extremely important. And I wasn’t suggesting that lowering interest rates would not help. All I’m trying to emphasise is that there are limits to what lowering interest rates can achieve as we saw in the case of Japan during the mid 1990s. So while we should try to keep interest rates down, rather than raise interest rates as is sometimes advocated by some quarters, we must also recognise that that instrument alone has some potential, but limited potential. And while trying to see how much can be achieved by those means, there should be other measures as well.
I think it’s generally agreed right now that most countries should try to adopt fiscal stimuli to try to counteract the effects of reduced demand, reduced investments so on and so forth by increasing public investment, by increasing public consumption. Of course this means that fiscal deficits are likely to increase in the short term, but there is no alternative to that as many economists now recognise. In a sense, this moment right now is not unlike the early 1970s when President Nixon declared that we are all Keynesians now.
And this is very evident in some of the more thoughtful writing of Paul Krugman for instance, recent op-ed pieces all emphasise the needs for such coordinated efforts, but at the same time recognising that each of the instruments available also have their limitations.
BFM 89.9: Thank you so much for taking time off your busy schedule and we hope to speak to you again soon.
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BFM 89.9 is a 24-hour radio station focused on business news and topics. Core programmes include latest business news, local and regional stock market updates, personal finance (Money Wise), life/workplace issues, health (Health is Wealth), and personality interviews (Breakfast Grille). BFM targets listeners who are in the position to make purchase decisions for their families and companies. No other media has the potential to capture the exclusive attention of listeners for 1.5 to 2.5 hours every day.
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