♠ Posted by Emmanuel in Credit Crisis
at 10/28/2008 08:49:00 AM
I hereby dub this week "Big Name Economists Try to Save the World" week. Hot on the heels of Joseph Stiglitz offering a five-point plan to fix the global financial crisis comes Jeffrey Sachs's own recipe for avoiding a global recession. Like Stiglitz, Sachs offers a rather Keynesian recipe. Notable wrinkles here are "pro-poor" measures such as low conditionality loans from the IMF and asking presumably loaded Middle Eastern countries to invest in other emerging markets. As if it weren't apparent before, we're in this together now. From the Financial Times:Any co-ordinated expansion should include the following actions. First, the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of Japan should extend swap lines to all main emerging markets, including Brazil, Hungary, Poland and Turkey, to prevent a drain of reserves. Second, the International Monetary Fund should extend low-conditionality loans to all countries that request it, starting with Pakistan. Third, the US and European central banks and bank regulators should work with their big banks to discourage them from abruptly withdrawing credit lines from overseas operations. Spain has a role to play with its banks in Latin America.
Fourth, China, Japan and South Korea should undertake a co-ordinated macroeconomic expansion. In China, this would mean raising spending on public housing and infrastructure. In Japan, this would mean a boost in infrastructure but also in loans to developing nations in Asia and Africa to finance projects built by Japanese and local companies. Development financing can be a powerful macroeonomic stabiliser. China, Japan and South Korea should work with other regional central banks to bolster expansionary policies backed by government-to-government loans.
Fifth, the Middle East, flush with cash, should fund investment projects in emerging markets and low-income countries. Moreover, it should keep up domestic spending despite a fall in oil prices. Indeed, the faster a global macroeconomic expansion is in place the sooner oil prices will recover.
Sixth, the US and Europe should expand export credits for low and middle-income developing countries, not only to meet their unfulfilled aid promises but also as a counter-cyclical stimulus. It would be a tragedy for big infrastructure companies to suffer when the developing world is crying out for infrastructure investment.
Finally, there is scope for expansionary fiscal policy in the US and Europe, despite large budget deficits. The US expansion should focus on infrastructure and transfers to cash-strapped state governments, not tax cuts. This package will not stop a recession in the US and parts of Europe, but could stop a recession in Asia and the developing countries. At the least it would put a floor on the global contraction that is rapidly gaining strength.
