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Every Central Bank for Itself
April 12, 2014
Every Central Bank for Itself
The QE-Induced Bubble Boom in Emerging Markets
Anatomy of a “Balance of Payments” Crisis
The Taper Reveals What QE Was Hiding
Rajan Shows His Cards
What’s a Country to Do?
Amsterdam, Brussels, Geneva, and San Diego
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
– Mike Tyson
For the last 25 days I’ve been traveling in Argentina and South Africa, two countries whose economies can only be described as fragile, though for very different reasons. Emerging-market countries face a significantly different set of challenges than the developed world does. These challenges are compounded by the rather indifferent policies of developed-world central banks, which are (even if somewhat understandably) entirely self-centered. Argentina has brought its problems upon itself, but South Africa can somewhat justifiably express frustration at the developed world, which, as one emerging-market central bank leader suggests, is engaged in a covert currency war, one where the casualties are the result of unintended consequences. But the effects are nonetheless real if you’re an emerging-market country.
While I will write a little more about my experience in South Africa at the end of this letter, first I want to cover the entire emerging-market landscape to give us some context. Full and fair disclosure requires that I give a great deal of credit to my rather brilliant young associate, Worth Wray, who’s helped me pull together a great deal of this letter while I am on the road in a very busy speaking tour here in South Africa for Glacier, a local platform intermediary. They have afforded me the opportunity to meet with a significant number of financial industry participants and local...
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