In 1992, I was given what became my favorite hotel bill keepsake when I stayed in Mexico City and was charged one million for a brief business stay.
It wasn't a mistake. That was one million pesos and the Mexican peso was becoming worthless. By 1993, then-President Carlos Salinas de Gortari stripped three zeros from the currency and renamed it the Nuevo (or New) Peso.
The transition from worthless to one Nuevo Peso to one U.S. dollar was done in three years from January 1, 1993 to January 1, 1996. The word "nuevo" was removed from the currency and it returned to be called "peso".
Now it is 2009 and what appears to be looming, according to one authoritative press report this weekend, is a massive pre-emptive devaluation of the U.S. dollar as Team Obama readies itself to announce the "Big Bang" -- a gigantic bailout of the frozen U.S. economy involving trillions of dollars.
So far, Washington has allocated US$750 billion for banking rescues and another US$825 billion for job creation projects. But that's nothing.
The venerable Financial Times of London described this "Big Bang". My guess is that it was part-speculation and part-trial ballooning by an embattled White House.
Here's what the FT said the "Big Bang" could involve:
Those are the highlights of what can only be described as a Nuevo Financial System and a currency debasement which will involve the printing of trillions of dollars, Euros and all the others.
It's ironic that the "Big Bang" was used to describe this comprehensive re-regulation and restructuring of a broken financial system worldwide. The first "Big Bang" in the late 1980s started in the UK and led to a massive deregulation and restructuring of financial markets.
Diane Francis blogs at the Financial post.
A "run," on treasury bonds could cause a "second shock," and push us right back into depression. Think about how China and Japan, whose banks hold about a trillion dollars of T-bills, would react to those assets plunging? Even if they don't sell, all they have to do is stop buying and the source of government spending dries up. Then the Federal Government can't make interest payments on the debt. Follow that line of thought for a bit.
I suspect what you saw was a "trial balloon," to start people thinking about the possibility of a dollar decline in hopes of reducing the damage of a bond sell off (which would obviously also drop the value of the dollar). People tend to react less impulsively to something they already expected, so telling people about the T-bill and dollar crash will mitigate it somewhat.
Right now, because of investors losing confidence in the stock and corperate bond markets, hundreds of billions, if not trillions of dollars were taken out of those investments. At the same time, the value of those assets declined by trillions of dollars. People were desperatly looking for a "safe," investment, and bought US bonds (and other governmental bonds, but the US ones are the ones that worry me, plus maybe the UK bonds). Right now these bonds pay pretty close to 0% interest, less than inflation.
We are currently in a period of mild deflation as stores and businesses cut prices to encourage customers to buy.
Now here is the danger:
What if people regain confidence? They will want to buy stocks and corperate bonds again. Well, they have some cash in banks, but they also have these T-bills that pay pitiful interest, why not sell the bonds to buy stocks.
Continued...
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2009/02/bad-bank-assets-proposal-worse-than-you.html
Granted, it would be nice to dump the whole stinking, steaming mess at the feet of the people who made it, but that isn't going to clean it up. Essentially social consumption has become so important to our economy that it has to be salvaged, even if that means society must buy overpriced assets from the greedy idiots that financed them.
There seems to be growing consensus that instead of rebooting the old system we should start thinking about a new one - perhaps one that isn't as dependent on consumption. I suggest you read One Economics Many Recipes (Dani Rodrik). Rodrik makes a good case that the primary goals of an economy (high employment, social parachutes, etc) can be achieved in many different ways -- that perhaps the US is as mired in its economic structures as it is in the Imperial System, 110V mains voltage, gas-guzzling vehicles, panhandle intersections, cigarette-lighter based automotive power jacks, ...
Big Bang does The Trick.
Usually 'the trick' ends up meaning to restore confidence.
That's because the unprecedented financial catastrophe that we are now beginning to embrace is often described, especially on biznews, as a crisis of confidence.
Who can argue with that?
The question is whether the present trend towards economic inexuberance is irrational, or not.
If it is irrational, then maybe Obama's 'bigness of bang', if you will, could re-transformate the economic paradigm to exuberance again.
Having renewed confidence in rational exuberance is the name of the game.
Confidence.
The confidence game.
That's the trick.
I see no commentary on the exact nature of the financial problem we are facing.
I have no faith in the myriad of solutions that the creativeness of the Obamites can bring to Volcker and Geithner, the deciders.
Volcker says that we are facing a crisis in not being capable of making our debt service payments.
If that's true, then we need to take a look at our debt-money system.
It has failed to provide full employment and economic stability, and has left us with untenable debt obligations that we are not capable of making ever.
It is broken.
Fix the money system FIRST.
Republicans getting rich by running ...UNCHECKED!
We need action on the economy....and we need it now.
Employment Insurance wouldn't even come close to covering my bills.
I would like to think that matters to someone.
I know it didn't matter to the previous administration.