The Fed, China and Oil

My answers to three questions at the start of 2016 (from Chosun Ilbo, leading Korean newspaper):

1. How do you analyze the recent US interest hike, and how will it influence the global economy in the coming year?

The Fed had telegraphed its decision to raise the interest rate so far in advance and (by December) so clearly, that the policy change was already fully reflected in markets.  For example most of the substantial appreciation of the dollar since 2014 can be attributed to anticipation of the Fed tightening.   Furthermore, the movements in relative monetary policy — the end of quantitative easing in the United States, the first increase in interest rates, simultaneous monetary easing in other countries and the appreciation of the dollar – all reflect relatively greater strength in the US economy compared to most others.  It will create difficulties for some commodity-producing countries that had gone back to large-scale borrowing in terms of dollars.  But the pattern of US growth, monetary tightening, and dollar appreciation is not bad news for the rest of the world overall.

 

2. What is your view on China’s economy, and how will it economy influence the global economy this year?

It was inevitable that China would not be able to sustain a fourth decade of growth rates in the neighborhood of 10%.   Some of the sources of its growth have begun to run into diminishing returns, such as rural-urban migration, heightened capital/labor ratios and an over-stretched environment.

The open question is whether the transition to a more sustainable and moderate rate of growth that we are now seeing will be a soft landing or a hard landing (e.g., a crisis arising from unneeded construction, shadow banking, and bad loans).   A good scenario, the soft landing, is by no means ruled out yet.  The 2015 stock market bubble and crash was not as important as observers thought.  Much of what we are seeing could be the desired shift in the composition of China’s economy, away from the production of manufactured goods and their sale for exports or physical investment, and toward the production of services and their sale to the consumer sector.

Even though China is slowing down a lot, its economy occupies a much larger share of the world economy than it used to.  For this reason, it will continue to be an engine of growth in the world, just not as quite as strong an engine as had been forecast by those who rely on simple extrapolation of past trends.

3. What is your view on oil prices recently? How will the oil price change impact the global economy this year?

The fall in dollar oil prices has many causes, both on the supply side (US fracking, Saudi decisions) and the demand side (weakened demand from much of the world, especially China).   One cause that is often overlooked is the strength of the dollar against other currencies.

Needless to say, the fall in oil prices hurts oil exporters and benefits oil importers.   The benefits for oil importing countries in Asia and Europe in 2016 will probably be greater than what has been evident so far.

Low retail prices for fossil fuels are bad for the environment.  All countries should take advantage of the recent fall in oil prices by either shifting their taxes onto fossil fuels or else, if they currently have wasteful subsidies to fuel consumption, then they should cut them.  They should take their cue from developing countries such as Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico and the UAE that have done that recently.

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