Miks Austraalias on asjad hästi, miks Lõuna-Ameerikas ja Lätis aga mitte?

Miks Austraalias on asjad hästi, miks Uus-Meremaal enam-vähem, mis Lõuna-Ameerikas ja Lätis aga lood sitad? John Hempton teab. Hea ülevaatlik postitus iseseisvast rahanduspoliitikast ja usaldusväärsususest:

* If your currency is fixed you will get a classic monetary recession. People will speculate against the currency (or withdraw their lending to you) and (due the central bank being forced to defend the currency) the local monetary supply will crash. The extreme version is what is happening to Latvia. It’s why Latvia should float their currency.

* If however your currency is floating and you are highly indebted in foreign currency then your currency collapse will bring into sharp relief and immediately the difficulty of repaying your debt. The lower currency increases the principal and interest repayment in domestic terms of your debt. In extrema it causes almost immediate default. This is what is stopping Latvia floating their currency.

* The Argentine solution is float the Peso in a crisis – but to rejig all old debts to new pesos at some new exchange rate and formalise the default. If you do that nobody trusts you again. If you are South American you do it a few times and you wind up looking like South America rather than Australia or the United States. In 1900 the three richest countries in the world per capita were Argentina, New Zealand and Australia (in order). Look how that worked out.