“The current account deficit of over 7 per cent has long passed its danger levels of 4-5 per cent. In 2005 the U.S. government paid $325 billion dollars only in interest payments alone. Then there are the future obligations such as Medicare, Social Security and government pensions. These obligations amount to $54 trillion dollars. This huge problem worried the former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan. He told congress: “As a nation, we may have already made promises to coming generations of retirees that we will be unable to fulfil”
As can be seen the government has not the ability to meet its existing financial obligations to the American people, let alone starting infrastructure projects to reduce unemployment or help the economy.
With regards to the interest rates, the Federal Reserves has very little room for manoeuvre. Already the real interest rates are in negative territory (lower than inflation), although the government and the experts say otherwise. Further interest rate cuts will only increase inflation and devalues the shaky dollar even further. But this is exactly what the Federal Reserves is doing. This is most likely to rescue big financial institutions, the very institutions that were earning huge profits from unsuspecting American consumers. In effect, the Fed is abandoning the poor and helping the rich. If the government was serious in helping the working American, it would have paid the money directly to the people, so that they could pay their debt. Instead it is pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into the banks. If you count the monies that have been poured into the financial markets, you’ll see that $160-$200 billion dollar tax rebate to the people was only mere peanuts as compared to what banks and others have received.
All in all, one can say that this recession, if it doesn’t turn into a depression, will be severe and will last at least 2 to 4 years. Now you must realise that I am talking about the effects of the recession and not technical recession. The recent technical recessions that we have seen is listed below:
· January-July 1980: 6 months (worst quarter GDP Growth -7.8% )
· July 1981-November 1982: 16 months (worst quarter GDP Growth -6.4%)
· July 1990-March 1991: 8 months (worst quarter GDP Growth -3.0%)
· March 2001-November 2001: 8 months (worst quarter GDP Growth -1.4%)
Technically a recession may last one year, but the effect of that recession on families may last a decade. Some lose their homes, some their jobs, some families will break-up and so on and so forth. The human misery of technical recession lasts much longer than the recession itself. Anyway, if the price of the houses is dropped by 40% in two years, how many years of growth will it take to retake that 40%? Usually much longer than people think.
I wrote an article in September 2006 titled “Who Will Pay the US Debt”. In this article I explained who will be most affected by the coming financial crisis. This is the direct excerpt from that article:
The World Economy“The truth is that at the end of the day it is the American people that have to pay. This will be in the form of higher taxes and reduced governmental services. In other words lower living standards. The poor and the working poor do not have anything to give. Their contribution will be in form of statistics. The number of people living below poverty line will increase. They will suffer because they rely on many services that will be cut or reduced. The rich will always find some loop-hole to avoid paying the major part of their share. Even if their wealth is reduced by 10%, they will see no hardship. This leaves us with the Middle class. This group will be hit the hardest. They will see their taxes and expenses increase simultaneously. A good portion will have to live on far less than they are used to. Many will work longer hours just to stay solvent. Many may also join the working poor. It all may sound rather apocalyptic but the numbers do not lie. Politicians may avoid this problem for now, but sooner or later someone has to pay the piper.”
It is said that when the US sneezes the world catches cold. This was true before but the world has started to think that it can decouple itself from the US economy. Here the umbilical cord is the US dollar; once that is cut, slowly but surely the decoupling will take place; with dire consequences for the US. As I mentioned before, already some important oil producing nations have decided to abandon the dollar. Others have decided to de-peg their currencies. Others such as China have started thinking about reducing their reserves in dollars. Once others begin to do the same the dollar will cease to be the international reserve and trade currency of choice. Meanwhile, major trading partners have to just bite the bullet and accept the consequences of holding to the dollar.
You know the saying that if you owe the bank one hundred thousand dollars you are in trouble, but if you owe the bank one hundred million dollars, the bank is in trouble. Currently US owes foreigners over two trillion dollars. In addition many trillions of dollars are also held in foreign central banks. These countries are in trouble and they will try hard to stabilise the US economy, if only for saving their own money.
But they don’t do this out of love. They just need stability to reduce their dollar holdings gradually and hence save as much of their reserves as possible. If they mention this openly, the dollar will collapse over-night and they lose. So the long-term plan would be to reduce their exposure to the dollar as gradually and as quietly as possible. This of course doesn’t mean that the value of dollar will not fluctuate; it simply means that over time dollar will become just like any other currencies and will be treated similarly. The Federal Reserves will no longer be able to just print money and refuse to publish the M3 statistics.
US will also need to begin building reserves in other currencies. Today US dollar has no backing. People accept dollar on faith alone. Imagine if that faith suddenly disappears. Will you exchange 1 kg of green paper for 1000 Microwaves? I doubt it.
But meanwhile the world’s economy will experience the negative effects from the US economic downturn. The most affected areas will be China and other Asian “emerging” economies and European Union.
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