Despite the hue and cry that we must keep trade and capital flows open, I have long believed that they would be restricted as financial reforms moved forward. The Carmen Reinhart-Kenneth Rogoff work shows convincingly that periods of high international capital mobility are associated with frequent banking crises. They do not assert that the relationship is causal, but I suspect it is. Capital that can move easily across borders is by nature difficult to regulate. It would require a considerable sacrifice of national sovereignity to devise rules and organizations that could do an adequate job of supervision. So a high level of international investment flows means lawless or seriously underregulated financial firms and activities. And we have just seen that this lawlessness eventually exacts unacceptably high costs to the real economy.
Until 2008, capital colluded in maintaining the myth of prosperity, by providing the credit for excessive consumption. Capital supported the illusion of savings by pumping up equity valuations to ridiculous levels; and it supported the need to speculate, most notably in the housing market, by manufacturing savings that could not be earned. This support ended with a bang, and governments stepped in to prevent the deflation that would have brought poverty all too quickly.The first emergency step was to partially nationalise commercial banks, but government interference with capital allocation will not end there....A transaction tax on financial instruments is very likely. This will raise revenue for governments and make shareholders behave more like owners. Shareholder failure to police risky management activities was largely due to the very short holding periods for equities. A suitably high transaction tax would force investors to hold shares for much longer periods and to engage management to control risk....Capital controls are also more likely than investors believe. The recent G20 meeting has put the world on track for higher savings rates in the west and higher consumption rates in the emerging world. There is an inherent conflict between western governments' need for finance to sustain living standards and capital's need to seek out the greater growth opportunities in emerging markets. Whatever the long-term benefits in boosting returns on savings, the short-term political necessity of public financing is likely to necessitate slowing capital outflows.
The first emergency step was to partially nationalise commercial banks, but government interference with capital allocation will not end there....A transaction tax on financial instruments is very likely. This will raise revenue for governments and make shareholders behave more like owners. Shareholder failure to police risky management activities was largely due to the very short holding periods for equities. A suitably high transaction tax would force investors to hold shares for much longer periods and to engage management to control risk....Capital controls are also more likely than investors believe. The recent G20 meeting has put the world on track for higher savings rates in the west and higher consumption rates in the emerging world. There is an inherent conflict between western governments' need for finance to sustain living standards and capital's need to seek out the greater growth opportunities in emerging markets. Whatever the long-term benefits in boosting returns on savings, the short-term political necessity of public financing is likely to necessitate slowing capital outflows.
