|
| 阅读上一个主题 :: 阅读下一个主题 |
| 作者 |
 先是上海股市暴跌，紧接着上海徐家汇的房地产下跌21％，缺口打破，一泻千里 |
 |
| 所跟贴 |
先是上海股市暴跌，紧接着上海徐家汇的房地产下跌21％，缺口打破，一泻千里 -- dck - (0 Byte) 2007-3-08 周四, 上午4:45 (219 reads) |
dck
加入时间: 2004/04/02
文章: 2801
经验值: 4649
|
|
|
作者：dck 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org
March 4, 2007
The World
Shanghai What-If: How a Shock Can Become a Shock Wave
By EDUARDO PORTER
COULD this be the global financial meltdown? Less than
a week ago, it might have seemed preposterous to
suggest that a 9 percent fall in the Shanghai stock
exchange could jolt markets across the world,
triggering declines in everything from European stocks
to American corporate bonds.
Yet such unlikely chains of events have been known to
occur. Less than 10 years ago, the devaluation of the
Thai baht on July 2, 1997, triggered a wave of
currency collapses across East Asia and beyond.
By December of that year, the currencies of Indonesia,
Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines had depreciated by
about 75 percent, on average. Then the ruble fell. The
Russian government defaulted on its domestic debt. By
the time the dust settled, Brazil had devalued the
real, Turkey had devalued the lira and the Argentine
peso had collapsed.
Economies contracted from Ecuador to Singapore. And
the high-flying hedge fund Long Term Capital
Management, which had borrowed heaps of money to make
risky bets across the globe, was only saved from the
brink through a bailout organized by the Federal
Reserve.
“These panics can be set off by any number of things
and spread in many wondrous ways,” said Alan Blinder,
an economist at Princeton University who was vice
chairman of the Federal Reserve from 1994 to 1996.
“Every one of these is different.”
The world, of course, is a different place than it was
in the late 1990s. Developing countries are in much
better shape, mostly growing fast and running trade
surpluses rather than deficits. Many have repaid much
of their foreign debt. And they have piled up
humongous reserves.
Moreover, despite a slowdown in the United States, the
global economy appears to be doing swimmingly. Growth
in Europe and Japan has picked up. The International
Monetary Fund expects the world economy to grow around
5 percent in 2007, about the same pace as last year.
Even so, there are some dangers lurking, notably
America’s enormous trade deficit. But decisions by
investors last week to dump risky assets like stocks
in China or Brazil and instead buy safer bets like
United States Treasury bonds actually makes it easier
to finance America’s shortfall.
Still, the financial commotion last week underscored
the extent to which financial markets everywhere are
propped up by the same shaky crutch that has played a
prominent role in the events leading up to crises in
the past: overconfidence. “It was a bit of a wake-up
call to investors about the risks out there,” said
Kristin J. Forbes, an economist at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology who was on President Bush’s
Council of Economic Advisers from 2003 to 2005. “Up to
now investors had become too complacent about risk.”
Facing paltry yields on high quality assets like
United States Treasury bonds, and diminishing returns
on more stocks in industrial countries, investors have
delved farther afield in pursuit of higher returns.
They rushed again into developing countries — pouring
more than $500 billion into “emerging markets” last
year and a similar amount in 2005. At its peak on Feb.
8, the Bombay stock market index was 49 percent higher
than a year earlier. The Mexican market index was up
about 55 percent in the year at its peak on Feb. 21.
Even after the crack on Tuesday, the Shanghai stock
market index is still twice as high as it was a year
ago.
Investors have also rushed to buy dicey assets closer
to home, like corporate bonds with a relatively high
risk of default.
Last year, even as the housing market started
tottering, investors snapped up $483 billion in bonds
backed by sub-prime mortgages issued to the riskiest
borrowers. The year before they bought over $500
billion worth of the shaky paper.
And many large investors, from pension funds to hedge
funds, have doubled up their risk-taking not only by
making these bets with borrowed money, but by
borrowing it in Japan, where short-term interest rates
have been exceptionally low. This could expose them to
abrupt losses were the dollar to fall against the yen.
The question is, how does this all unwind?
According to the benign scenario, which most
economists are betting on, including Ms. Forbes and
Mr. Blinder, last week’s financial troubles will be
short-lived — merely an instance of investors
recovering their sense of risk and pulling back from
some of their crazier investments, but doing no harm
to the real economy.
“So far the betting is this is more a healthy
correction rather than a plunge,” said William Cline,
a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for
International Economics.
Still, crises move in mysterious ways. And there are
plausible paths for the financial turbulence to
worsen. As Ms. Forbes acknowledged, “The crisis of the
future never looks like the crisis of the past.”
Let’s imagine, for instance, that one unlucky hedge
fund borrowed oodles of yen to invest in sub-prime
mortgage-backed bonds and Turkish debt.
Let’s also say that the yen continued to rise, as it
did last week, as more investors caught by the
financial crunch sold their losing investments to buy
yen in order to repay their Japanese borrowings.
Meanwhile, mortgage-backed bonds and Turkish debt
continued to fall.
This could mean trouble for the hedge fund, which
would find itself owing yen that were rising in value
but owning assets that were falling in value.
That might mean trouble for the banks that lent it
money. And if the hedge fund were forced into a fire
sale of Turkish bonds, say because it needs more
collateral to back up a loan, it could be a problem
for Turkey, because the sudden flood of its bonds on
the market would cause their prices to drop. And if
the price of its bonds fell, Turkey would have a
tougher time trying to raise the cash it needs to
finance its current deficit.
If Turkey were to go ...
As Mr. Cline put it, “these things are so predictable
in hindsight.”
作者：dck 在 罕见奇谈 发贴, 来自 http://www.hjclub.org |
|
|
| 返回顶端 |
|
 |
| |
|
|
您不能在本论坛发表新主题
您不能在本论坛回复主题
您不能在本论坛编辑自己的文章
您不能在本论坛删除自己的文章
您不能在本论坛发表投票
您不能在这个论坛添加附件
您不能在这个论坛下载文件
|
based on phpbb, All rights reserved.
|
