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The US stopped exporting oil in the 70's and much of anything else since then. But old habits die hard.
The question is whether people believe BRIC will remain the world's exporter of last resort, as well as be unlikely to default on their sovereign debt. Brazil and Russia have a history of that, not so India or China, but they also don't have a long history of issuing bonds in their own currency. China just issued Yuan bonds internatinally for the first time.
Now people are talking about making the IMF the world's central bank, possibly using SDR as a global reserve currency. Maybe that will give us another 30 years or 5 before it goes bankrupt in its turn, and then what? En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
you are the media you consume.
The US is the world's #3 exporter.
-- World (sum of all countries) $ 16,280,000,000,000 2008 est. -- European Union (minus internal trade) $ 1,690,000,000,000 2007 1 Germany $ 1,530,000,000,000 2008 est. 2 People's Republic of China $ 1,465,000,000,000 2008 est. 3 United States $ 1,377,000,000,000 2008 est. 4 Japan $ 776,800,000,000 2008 est.
List of countries by current account balance - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Rank Country CAB USD, bn 1 People's Republic of China 371.833 2 Germany 252.501 3 Japan 210.967 4 Saudi Arabia 95.762 5 Russia 76.163...177 Italy -52.725 178 Australia -56.342 179 United Kingdom -105.224 180 Spain -145.141 181 United States -731.214 [2]
But as far as balance of trade - all I'm concerned with is the level of imports required to give the US a North/Western European style quality of life (and yes, I know, economic measures are no a good measure of quality of life, but they're a really good place to start). Consumer culture in the US needs to be replaced with something more likely to result in human happiness.
can you illustrate what you mean a little more, please?
you mean a new currency, or any currency, but with a different value?
right now a banknote is a promissory statement, and as fungible a symbol as can exist.
is there any other kind of symbol that could supplant it, that took into consideration the 'externalities' blithely dismissed with the 'deemed' value currencies presently enjoy?
i guess it will be 1's and 0's whatever form it takes in meatspace, and i guess money will not be a simple reward for creating wealth short term, but will also include an appreciation of its (symbolic) value to future generations.
my grandpa always said 'you have to learn the value of money', then when i heard how much one unit of british sterling has devalued since his time, i was really puzzled as to what he really meant.
conversations like this somewhat assuage this bewilderment. though i fumble to language exactly what i think, listening to you all is a great learning... 'The history of public debt is full of irony. It rarely follows our ideas of order and justice.' Thomas Piketty
Everyone knows it's not about rational actors, or even - particularly - about credit and useful things happening because of credit.
We have an interesting situation now where stock market value seems to exist even though economic activity doesn't, much.
This makes no sense - supposedly.
I think in fact it makes perfect sense - but only if you understand what's really being traded, what the motivation for trade is, and why what happens to people who don't trade on the markets doesn't actually matter a damn.
(Except in the limit, when they start starving, rioting and burning things down.)
From there it's possible - eventually - to create new theories of value that are less subjective than the ones we have now.
We have an interesting situation now where stock market value seems to exist even though economic activity doesn't, much. This makes no sense - supposedly. I think in fact it makes perfect sense - but only if you understand what's really being traded, what the motivation for trade is, and why what happens to people who don't trade on the markets doesn't actually matter a damn.
Having read the book for a second time I think it is very relevant to out current predicament (it also contains an explanation of the business cycle as speculative bubbles, of recession as a psychological phenomenon of the business class, etc). En un viejo país ineficiente, algo así como España entre dos guerras civiles, poseer una casa y poca hacienda y memoria ninguna. -- Gil de Biedma
This doesn't seem to be the case, given that the dollar is the global resver currency.
As for issuing bonds internationally, this has to do with the expectation that sovereign default won't happen, not only because you're a net exporter but also because the principle of free contract is deeply ingrained in your country's laws and mores.
More like being so important that if you default, nothing else is secure and anything might happen. Which is why the price of gold (=hedge against systemic financial breakdown) surges when the US weaken. Peak oil is not an energy crisis. It is a liquid fuel crisis.
Because you can always print more. "The future is already here -- it's just not very evenly distributed" William Gibson
either "more of the same-old same old" or something that consists of genuine reform taking account of hard-"learned" (?)-lessons.
For further reading,
Nicolas Bouleau:
Mathématiques et risques financiers
"Has the application of mathematics to finance contributed to the financial crisis?"
http://www.odilejacob.fr/0207/2647/Mathématiques-et-risques-financiers.html
and Paul De Grauwe:
Economics is in crisis: it is time for a profound revamp
By Paul De Grauwe
Published: July 21 2009 22:27 | Last updated: July 21 2009 22:27
link: http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/478de136-762b-11de-9e59-00144feabdc0.html?nclick_check=1 "In such an environment it is not surprising that the ills of technology should seem curable only through the application of more technology..." John W Aldridge
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