3.1 Global imbalances and low interest rates
The starting point of the analysis is the observation, already present in the
previous section, that capital’s ability to produce output is only imperfectly
linked to its ability to generate assets. A higher capacity to produce output
makes the underlying capital more valuable, but the possibility to sell the
rights over that output in advance, and hence to create an asset from it,
depends on a series of institutional factors that vary widely across the world.
On one end, developed Anglo-Saxon economies, and the US in particular,
have managed to combine good growth conditions with an unmatched
ability to generate sound and liquid financial assets appealing to global investors
and savers. On the other end, emerging market and oil-producing
economies have seen large increases in their disposable income, but remain
largely unable to generate an adequate supply of good quality assets. Lastly,
continental Europe and Japan have been hampered by limited growth and
by lagging behind the Anglo-Saxon economies in terms of their ability to
produce financial assets.
Other things equal, such configuration leads naturally to the so-called
“global imbalances,” as the Anglo-Saxons supply financial assets to the rest
of the world and experience current account deficits as an unavoidable counterpart.
These “imbalances” can go on for a long time and are exacerbated
by the rapid growth of China and emerging markets more broadly. Moreover,
it turns out that “other things” are not equal, and they tend to reinforce the
direction of flows, as a series of demographic and precautionary motives have
increased the demand for assets in the global economy.
Much has been said about China’s policy of international reserves accumulation
and its responsibility for global imbalances. Some of this concern
may be justified, but I believe this to be a second-order issue. Ultimately,
China is a fast-growing economy with ever-increasing demand for store of
value instruments, which its economy is largely unable to generate at the
moment. If China had an open capital account, its citizens would seek these
assets abroad directly. Since it does not, it is the government that accumulates
the international assets and instead issues implicitly collateralized
sterilization bonds to its citizens. Unlike the typical sterilization episode,
these bonds yield very low returns, which simply reflects the excess demand
for store of value they partially satisfy.
The shortage of assets also helps explain the secular decline in long-run
real interest rates over the last decade, despite occasional efforts from central banks around the world to raise them (recall the interest rate conundrum).
While central banks may be able to control short rates, the long rates are
kept low by the high valuation of scarce assets.
These secular forces behind low real interest rates and large net capital
flows toward the Anglo-Saxon economies are occasionally interrupted by
speculative episodes which raise local asset values in emerging markets. This
is the mechanism described in the previous section. The emerging market
crises of the late 1990s corresponded to an abrupt and systemic end of one
such episode. The result was a massive rise in capital flows to the US and
a sharp decline in safe interest rates. In fact it does not seem unreasonable
to conjecture that some of the dot-coms bubble in the US resulted from that
rapid reallocation. By the same token, the crash in the real estate and stock
markets in Japan in the late 1980s was probably an important factor behind
the US current account deficits that began to build in the early 1990s.
In summary, endogenous real interest rate drops are market-mechanisms
to raise the value of existing assets and therefore replace some of the lost
assets after a crash, and to cover part of the asset shortage created by secular
forces.