il testo del discorso del nonnetto a Francoforte oggi
Text-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan's speech in Frankfurt
WASHINGTON, Nov 19 (Reuters) - Following is the text Alan Greenspan's speech to the European Banking Congress 2004 in Frankfurt:
I am pleased to join my central bank colleagues in appraising an increasingly important issue--the globalization of trade and finance. I should emphasize that I speak for myself and not necessarily for the Federal Reserve.
Among the many aspects of the euro addressed in today's discussion, we should include its role in the ongoing globalization of economic activity. The euro ties together a sizable share of the world economy with a single currency and, by doing so, lowers transaction costs associated with trade and finance within the region.
More generally, globalization of trade in goods, services, and assets continues to move forward at an impressive pace, despite some indications of increased resistance to that process and the evident difficulties in completing the Doha Round. The volume of trade relative to world gross domestic product has been rising for decades, largely because of decreasing transportation costs and lowered trade barriers. The increasing shift of world GDP toward items with greater conceptual content has further facilitated increased trade because ideas and services tend to move across borders with greater ease and speed than goods.
Foreign exchange trading volumes have grown rapidly, and the magnitude of cross-border claims continues to increase at an impressive rate. Although international trade in goods, services, and assets rose markedly after World War II, a persistent dispersion of current account balances across countries did not emerge until recent years. But, as the U.S. deficit crossed 4 percent of GDP in 2000, financed with the current account surpluses of other countries, the widening dispersion of current account balances became more evident. Previous postwar increases in trade relative to world GDP had represented a more balanced grossing up of exports and imports without engendering chronic large trade deficits in the United States, and surpluses among many other countries.
Home bias--the propensity of residents of a country to invest their savings disproportionately in domestic assets--prevailed for most of the post-World War II period. Indeed, Feldstein and Horioka found a remarkably high degree of home bias in their seminal 1980 study.1 Through most of the postwar period up to the mid-1990s, the GDP-weighted correlation coefficient between domestic saving and domestic investment across countries accounting for four-fifths of world GDP hovered around 0.95.
That bias, however, diminished rather dramatically over the past ten years, arguably in large measure because of the acceleration in productivity growth in the United States. The associated elevation of expected real rates of return relative to those available elsewhere increased investment opportunities in the United States. The correlation coefficient accordingly fell from 0.95 in 1993 to less than 0.8 by 2002. When one excludes the United States, the correlation coefficient's decline was even more pronounced. Preliminary estimates for a smaller sample of countries over the past two years indicate a continued decline on net.
Basic national income accounting implies that domestic saving less domestic investment is equal to net foreign investment, a close approximation of a nation's current account balance. The correlation coefficient between domestic saving and domestic investment varies inversely over time with the dispersion of current account balances across countries. Obviously, if the correlation coefficient is 1.0, meaning that every country allocates its domestic saving only to domestic investment, then no country has a current account deficit, and the variance of world current account balances is zero. As the correlation coefficient falls, as it has over the past decade, one would expect the near algebraic equivalent--the dispersion of current account balances--to increase. And, of course, it has. Over the past ten years, a large current account deficit has emerged in the United States matched by current account surpluses in other countries.
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How far can the decline in home bias and the increase in the variance of current account balances be expected to proceed, and where will it lead?
Current account imbalances, per se, need not be a problem, but cumulative deficits, which result in a marked decline of a country's net international investment position--as is occurring in the United States--raise more complex issues. The U.S. current account deficit has risen to more than 5 percent of GDP. Because the deficit is essentially the change in net claims against U.S. residents, the U.S. net international investment position excluding valuation adjustments must also be declining in dollar terms at an annual pace equivalent to roughly 5 percent of U.S. GDP.
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più si rialzano i tassi più i Bonds se ne impippano e salgono , ci deve essere dell'altro sotto oppure sta completando la spalla di quel bellissimo testa e spalle ribassista :smile: seesee
