Over the past decade, the world’s largest central banks — in the United States, Europe, China and Japan — have expanded their balance sheets from less than $5 trillion to more than $17 trillion in an effort to promote the recovery. Much of that newly printed money has found its way into the financial markets, where it often follows the path of least regulation.
Ten years ago this week, Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, and the world suddenly changed. That date, Sept. 15, 2008, was hardly the starting point of the Depression-sized financial crisis that would soon threaten to sink the entire world economy; it had begun more than a year earlier. But most scholars agree Lehman’s failure marked the moment when everyone realized at once that the so-called experts had no idea how deep the interconnections ran.
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In the decade since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the start of the global financial crisis, the world economy has registered stronger growth than many realize, owing in large part to China. But in the years ahead, global economic imbalances and troubling trends in the business world will continue to pose economic as well as political risks.
Thanks to US President Donald Trump and his “America first” policy, the global economic and trade outlook perhaps has never been so uncertain. Nowhere are these economic and policy shock waves being felt more than in China. And, Beijing is responding the same way it does every time it anticipates trouble – by pumping cash into its system.
The legacy of 2007 is still with us. Its most devastating and destructive effect was to put a premium on unconventional monetary measures. Unfortunately, when policymakers scrambled in search of “big bazookas” ten years ago, they set the stage for the return of an old character: a strongman willing to pull the trigger.
The new central bank network created since 2008 is of a piece with the new networks for stress testing and regulating the world’s systemically important banks. The international economy they regulate is not one made up of a jigsaw puzzle of national economies, each with its gross national product and national trade flows. Instead they oversee, regulate and act on the interlocking, transnational matrix of bank balance sheets. This system was put in place without fanfare. It was essential to containing the crisis, and so far it has operated effectively. But to make this technical financial network into the foundation for a new global order is a gamble.
Reform is always easier when a crisis leaves policy makers no other options. But without further change, Asia will continue to rely too much on debt instead of productivity gains for growth. In poorer nations, improvements in household welfare will lag. As in the years before 1997, economic irregularities could build up to the point where the region faces another crisis. Will the next Kim Dae-jungs be there when you need them?
North Korea might be reined in, the thinking goes, if China could be persuaded to lean harder on its largest trading partner, and so the Trump administration is contemplating a variety of inducements that run from secondary sanctions on some Chinese banks and companies to a better trade deal for Beijing.
Twenty years ago next month, the British government gave the Bank of England the freedom to set interest rates. That decision was part of a trend that made central bankers the most powerful financial actors on the planet, not only setting rates but also buying trillions of dollars’ worth of assets, targeting exchange rates and managing the economic cycle. Although central banks have great independence now, the tide could turn again.
Other countries such as Mauritius and South Africa have been hailed as China’s gateway to Africa, but few countries have positioned themselves aggressively for the position in the way that Morocco has. Last year, the government of Morocco hosted the first Sino-African Entrepreneurs Summit in Marrakech, where Morocco later hosted the COP22 summit. Similar forums are planned in the future.
