Sensex
|
-742123.jpg)
Mar 19th 2009
From The Economist print edition
IT IS an ill wind that blows no one any good. For many in China even the buffeting by the gale that has hit the global economy has a bracing message. The rise of China over the past three decades has been astonishing. But it has lacked the one feature it needed fully to satisfy the ultranationalist fringe: an accompanying decline of the West. Now capitalism is in a funk in its heartlands. Europe and Japan, embroiled in the deepest post-war recession, are barely worth consideration as rivals. America, the superpower, has passed its peak. Although in public China’s leaders eschew triumphalism, there is a sense in Beijing that the reassertion of the Middle Kingdom’s global ascendancy is at hand (see article).
China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, no longer sticks to the script that China is a humble player in world affairs that wants to focus on its own economic development. He talks of China as a “great power” and worries about America’s profligate spending endangering his $1 trillion nest egg there. Incautious remarks by the new American treasury secretary about China manipulating its currency were dismissed as ridiculous; a duly penitent Hillary Clinton was welcomed in Beijing, but as an equal. This month saw an apparent attempt to engineer a low-level naval confrontation with an American spy ship in the South China Sea. Yet at least the Americans get noticed. Europe, that speck on the horizon, is ignored: an EU summit was cancelled and France is still blacklisted because Nicolas Sarkozy dared to meet the Dalai Lama.
Already a big idea has spread far beyond China: that geopolitics is now a bipolar affair, with America and China the only two that matter. Thus in London next month the real business will not be the G20 meeting but the “G2” summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. This not only worries the Europeans, who, having got rid of George Bush’s unipolar politics, have no wish to see it replaced by a Pacific duopoly, and the Japanese, who have long been paranoid about their rivals in Asia. It also seems to be having an effect in Washington, where Congress’s fascination with America’s nearest rival risks acquiring a protectionist edge.
Before panic spreads, it is worth noting that China’s new assertiveness reflects weakness as well as strength. This remains a poor country facing, in Mr Wen’s words, its most difficult year of the new century. The latest wild guess at how many jobs have already been lost—20m—hints at the scale of the problem. The World Bank has cut its forecast for China’s growth this year to 6.5%. That is robust compared with almost anywhere else, but to many Chinese, used to double-digit rates, it will feel like a recession. Already there are tens of thousands of protests each year: from those robbed of their land for development; from laid-off workers; from those suffering the side-effects of environmental despoliation. Even if China magically achieves its official 8% target, the grievances will worsen.
Far from oozing self-confidence, China is witnessing a fierce debate both about its economic system and the sort of great power it wants to be—and it is a debate the government does not like. This year the regime curtailed even the perfunctory annual meeting of its parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), preferring to confine discussion to back-rooms and obscure internet forums. Liberals calling for greater openness are being dealt with in the time-honoured repressive fashion. But China’s leaders also face rumblings of discontent from leftist nationalists, who see the downturn as a chance to halt market-oriented reforms at home, and for China to assert itself more stridently abroad. An angry China can veer into xenophobia, but not all the nationalist left’s causes are so dangerous: one is for the better public services and social-safety net the country sorely needs.
So China is in a more precarious situation than many Westerners think. The world is not bipolar and may never become so. The EU, for all its faults, is the world’s biggest economy. India’s population will overtake China’s. But that does not obscure the fact that China’s relative power is plainly growing—and both the West and China itself need to adjust to this.
For Mr Obama, this means pulling off a difficult balancing act. In the longer term, if he has not managed to seduce China (and for that matter India and Brazil) more firmly into the liberal multilateral system by the time he leaves office, then historians may judge him a failure. In the short term he needs to hold China to its promises and to scold it for its lapses: Mrs Clinton should have taken it to task over Tibet and human rights when she was there. The Bush administration made much of the idea of welcoming China as a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. The G20 is a chance to give China a bigger stake in global decision-making than was available in the small clubs of the G7 and G8. But it is also a chance for China to show it can exercise its new influence responsibly.
China’s record as a citizen of the world is strikingly threadbare. On a host of issues from Iran to Sudan, it has used its main geopolitical asset, its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, to obstruct progress, hiding behind the excuse that it does not want to intervene in other countries’ affairs. That, sadly, will take time to change. But on the more immediate issue at hand, the world economy, there is room for action.
Over the past quarter-century no country has gained more from globalisation than China. Hundreds of millions of its people have been dragged out of subsistence into the middle class. China has been a grumpy taker in this process. It helped derail the latest round of world trade talks. The G20 meeting offers it a chance to show a change of heart. In particular, it is being asked to bolster the IMF’s resources so that the fund can rescue crisis-hit countries in places like eastern Europe. Some in Beijing would prefer to ignore the IMF, since it might help ex-communist countries that have developed “an anti-China mentality”. Rising above such cavilling and paying up would be a small step in itself. But it would be a sign that the Middle Kingdom has understood what it is to be a great power.
-728119.jpg)
|
| The cat is out of the bag. The Federal Reserve is waging an all-out inflationary war on the economic contraction. Two days ago, Mr. Bernanke announced that the Federal Reserve would buy US$300 billion worth of US Treasuries and another US$700 billion worth of government-agency mortgage debt. In order to finance these purchases, the Federal Reserve would simply create this money out of thin air. It is worth noting, that the Federal Reserve has already dropped the Fed Funds Rate to a historically low range of 0–0.25% and now it is desperately trying to use other unconventional methods (Quantitative Easing) to stimulate the economy. In my view, this latest development of the Federal Reserve monetising debt is inflationary and confirmation that the Federal Reserve wants to debase the US Dollar. It is worth noting that the total debt in the US now exceeds US$60 trillion and its economy is around US$14 trillion. So, the US is already bankrupt and the only way it can ever hope to repay this gigantic sum is through monetary inflation and debasement. Allow me to explain: Suppose your grandparents borrowed US$100,000 from their friends roughly 50 years ago. Back then, US$100,000 was a lot of money and the chances of your grandparents ever repaying this loan were slim at best. However, thanks to monetary inflation and the debasement of the US Dollar, today, US$100,000 isn't a very large sum of money and your grandparents would find it much easier to repay their debt. Turning to the present situation, the US owes its creditors a gigantic amount of money and a debt so large that it can never hope of repaying it in today's dollars! So, the US has two options: a. Default or bankruptcy Given the fact that the US is still the world's largest economy, owns the world's reserve currency and has a democratically elected government, I think we can pretty much rule out the possibility of sovereign default. Therefore, you can bet your bottom dollar that the US will try its best to inflate its way out of trouble. Remember, politicians borrow money when it buys them a loaf of bread and they repay it when the same money is worth only a slice of bread! It is my firm belief that over the years ahead, the US and all other debt-laden nations in the West will engage in massive money-creation in order to debase their currencies and dilute the purchasing power of paper money. Remember, monetary inflation is a debtor's best friend as it makes the debt easier to service and repay. On the other hand, monetary inflation goes against the interests of savers and creditors. Given the fact that most of the 'developed' nations are up to their eyeballs in debt, you don't have to be a genius to figure out that monetary inflation is our future. At present, the global economy is dealing with deflationary forces due to credit contraction in the private-sector. However, even now, total credit in the US is expanding due to rampant borrowing by the US government. So, I don't expect deflation to take hold; rather, I anticipate accelerating inflation which has always led to rising asset and consumer prices. It is worth noting that apart from the Federal Reserve, other nations have also started monetising their debt. Recently, the Bank of England announced that it plans to buy GBP150 billion worth of its government debt by creating money out of thin air. Needless to say, such a move is inflationary and terrible for the health of the British currency. Now that we have established that monetary inflation is our future, let us examine which currencies and assets will maintain their purchasing power. If history is any guide, nations which engage in monetary inflation always diminish the purchasing power of their currency. So, in the years ahead, we can expect currencies in the West to depreciate in terms of purchasing power but the trouble is that none of the fundamentally sound nations want a strong currency either! As the world engages in competitive currency devaluations, I expect all the currencies in the world to lose significant purchasing power against hard assets. Therefore, in the years ahead, precious metals and other commodities with intrinsic value should appreciate considerably. Even the values of fundamentally sound businesses with clean balance-sheets should sky-rocket as a result of inflation. Over the past couple of days, in the aftermath of the latest announcement by the Federal Reserve, we have seen significant strength in precious metals, crude oil and grains. Conversely, we have seen a huge decline in the US Dollar. If the Federal Reserve continues on this inflationary path, we can expect a resumption of the commodities bull-market and renewed weakness in the US Dollar. Contrary to popular opinion, I am of the view that most commodities and stock markets have seen the lows for the entire bear-market and we may be in the early stages of a new cyclical bull-market which could last for a few years. Now, I am aware that my bullish stance may lead to ridicule from some of my readers, but I would like to point out that new bull-markets are always born during abject pessimism and scepticism. Even if some asset prices break to fresh lows in the near-term, I suspect such a move will prove to be a 'head fake' and prices will soon rebound. So if you have a 4 – 5 year investment horizon, now may be a good time to convert some of your temporarily powerful cash into hard assets (precious metals, energy and industrial metals), related producing-companies and sound businesses in the fast-growing Asian economies. At the current levels, the energy complex looks extremely attractive and should prove to be a fantastic long-term investment. After years of extensive research, I am convinced that the world's oil production is peaking and we are likely to see much higher energy prices in the future. So, investors may want to add to their positions in upstream oil/gas companies and the energy service stocks. Finally, it looks as though the precious metals complex is becoming over-heated and long-term investors may want to wait for the usual summer correction before adding to their positions in physical gold and silver. |
From: The Sharekhan Research Team [mailto:marketwatch
Sent: 30 March 2009 16:16
To: The Sharekhan Research Team
Subject: Sharekhan Post-Market Report dated March 30, 2009
| |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
