For months now, China’s exchange-rate policy has roiled global financial markets, because officials have done a poor job communicating their intentions. But criticizing Chinese policymakers is easier than offering constructive advice: In fact the authorities no longer have any good options.
Following British Prime Minister Boris Johnson's suspension of Parliament, and an appeals court ruling declaring that act unlawful, the United Kingdom finds itself in a state of political frenzy. With rational decision-making having become all but impossible, any new political agreement that emerges is likely to be both temporary and deeply flawed.
Although low interest rates have traditionally been viewed as positive for economic growth because they encourage businesses to invest in enhancing productivity, this may not be the case. Instead, Ernest Liu, Amir Sufi, and Atif Mian contend, extremely low rates may lead to slower growth by increasing market concentration and thus weakening firms' incentive to boost productivity.
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NEW YORK – For months now, China’s exchange-rate policy has been roiling global financial markets. More precisely, confusion about that policy has been roiling the markets. Chinese officials have done a poor job communicating their intentions, encouraging the belief that they don’t know what they’re doing.
But criticizing Chinese policy is easier than offering constructive advice. The fact is that China’s government no longer has any good options. No question, the country would be better off with a more flexible exchange rate that eliminated one-way bets for speculators and acted as an economic shock absorber. But the literature on “exit strategies” – on how to replace a currency peg with a more flexible exchange rate – makes clear that the moment when China could have navigated this transition smoothly has now passed.
Countries can exit a pegged rate smoothly only when there is confidence in the economy, encouraging the belief that the more flexible exchange rate can appreciate as well as weaken. This may have been true of China once; it is no longer true today.
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