Martin Wolf is still pushing the savings glut theory in his column yesterday and, predictably, calls for countries with large surpluses (China and Germany first and foremost) to increase their spending to save the world economy, as the debtor nations can no longer increase their debt to sustain activity, as they used to until the crisis. and he promises (should this be worth a Godwin alert?) 1930s turmoil if this does not happen:

think what will happen if, after two or more years of monstrous fiscal deficits, the US is still mired in unemployment and slow growth. People will ask why the country is exporting so much of its demand to sustain jobs abroad. They will want their demand back. The last time this sort of thing happened - in the 1930s - the outcome was a devastating round of beggar-my-neighbour devaluations, plus protectionism. Can we be confident we can avoid such dangers? On the contrary, the danger is extreme. Once the integration of the world economy starts to reverse and unemployment soars, the demons of our past - above all, nationalism - will return. Achievements of decades may collapse almost overnight.

But I think he misses the point. The problem is not one of insufficient demand (which he proposes to boost via US budget deficits and, idieally, spending by China and Germany), the problem is one of insufficient incomes. If the US spends more debt-provided money, it will only generate distortions and imbalances to the economy, which will still need to be corrected later. If Germany or China spend more, it will only mean that they will be buying their own goods instead of Americans doing so: it will not improve global welfare, as it means Americans with less junk and Germans with more (presumably making both unhappy). No, what is needed is for spending to be increased in a sustainable way, and that can only happen if incoems increase. Wages (income for workers) need to be increased, and taxes (income for govenrment) ditto. Otherwise demand will shrink.

Martin Wolf is back (see this earlier article which I discussed back in June) with his theory that the imbalances that led to the current crisis were caused to a significant extent by Asia's saving glut:

Any country that receives a huge and sustained inflow of foreign lending runs the risk of a subsequent financial crisis, because external and domestic financial fragility will grow. Precisely such a crisis is now happening to the US and a number of other high-income countries including the UK. These latest crises are also related to those that preceded them - particularly the Asian crisis of 1997-98. Only after this shock did emerging economies become massive capital exporters. This pattern was reinforced by China's choice of an export-oriented development path, partly influenced by fear of what had happened to its neighbours during the Asian crisis. It was further entrenched by the recent jumps in the oil price and the consequent explosion in the current account surpluses of oil exporting countries.

While there is truth to the fact that Asian countries sought to protect themselves from capital deficits, the reason for their capital surpluses comes from our deficits, which were themselves the result of coordinated policy choices - what I have dubbed the Anglo Disease: the ideological choice to favor the income of the rich, by a combination of deregulation of corporations and finance, downwards pressure on wages, lower taxes, and the idolisation of financial investment and financial valuation of everything.

We now see the second part of the strategy to push the blame somewhere else, ie on China and Germany: it's not the borrowers, and it's not the financiers either who are to blame: they were "forced" to deal with the surpluses of the countries that save more than they should, and so much money put in their highly competitive hands brought financial returns down and pushed them to seek riskier pastures to use that money. So they misallocated funds, and blew them, only because they had too much because the stupid Chinene and Saudis just have too much money!

Seriously.

This not only pushes the blame away from the policies of the neolibs (income concentration for the very rich, leading to income stagnation for everybody else, hidden from view by cheap and plentiful debt allowing consumption to continue), it also provides a convenient reason not to re-regulate the financial world. It's NOt the financier' fault, don't blame them! (*)

Sweet.

I expect this concept to be massively pushed in the coming months, with all the accompanying China- and Germany-bashing. The Germany-bashing is already in ful swing, as it includes the added bonus of an Europe.Is.Doomed angle... see all the articles about how Germany is pushing the whole world into a depression by refusing to be bamboozled into a massive spending spree - how Germany diplomacy is failing, and how Merkel's star is fading, and the mocking, snickering tones about the Germans who thought they were being prudent by not joining the fun and now are suffering as much as those that had fun while it lasted.