Nov 12th 2010, 14:11 by The Economist | SEOUL
The G20 summit in Seoul forged a compromise between the world’s most powerful leaders. But it was a decision made in Washington, DC, that made the biggest splash
INSIDE the cavernous Coex centre in Seoul, where the leaders of the G20 group of nations gathered for their fifth summit on November 11th-12th, Korean staff played their role of hosts with great enthusiasm. In quiet moments, some queued up outside digital photo booths to have their picture taken with an image of President Barack Obama superimposed on top. The agreement the G20 leaders sealed, after what one of them described as “late nights and tough talks” between their negotiators, was also a bit of a montage. All members worry about an unbalanced recovery, with big trade surpluses in some countries and big deficits elsewhere; but they do not yet agree on its underlying cause or solution. In their declaration they nonetheless strived to appear in the same frame.
The leaders asked their technical advisors, including the IMF, to come up with “indicative guidelines” that would help to identify big and persistent imbalances. America’s Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, had once hoped this guideline could be very simple: current-account deficits or surpluses (which are roughly equivalent to trade deficits or surpluses) should not exceed 4% of GDP. But that cap did not fit all heads. Australia tends to run big deficits financed by heavy foreign investment in the country’s mines; Saudi Arabia and Russia sensibly accumulate big surpluses whenever the oil price soars. And although Chinese officials expect its surplus to narrow from over 10% in 2007 to less than 4% over the next 3-4 years, it was not ready to turn that forecast into a binding commitment.
So rather than one number, the guidelines will consist of a “range of indicators”. It is not yet clear what the members have in mind. The IMF already supervises the so-called Mutual Assessment Process (MAP), which crunches lots of numbers to make sure that the G20s’ macro-targets add up. (It is not, for example, possible for everyone to increase their net exports to everyone else.) In addition, the fund already uses three different methods to check whether its members’ exchange rates are misaligned. The more indicators the G20 chooses, the more degrees of freedom its members will enjoy. If the Seoul declaration is to count as progress, therefore, the guidelines will have to constrain members more than the MAP already does, even if they do not constrain them as much as Mr Geithner’s magic number would.
The leaders also repeated a line agreed by their finance ministers and central bankers last month, which obliges advanced economies with reserve currencies (such as the dollar, euro and yen) to spare a thought for emerging economies hurt by exchange-rate volatility. But that promise will seem empty to those members, including Brazil, China and South Korea, unnerved by the Federal Reserve’s decision this month to print another $600 billion of the world’s reserve currency in an effort to revive the American economy. The decision will encourage capital to flow elsewhere, weakening the dollar and putting upward pressure on the real, yuan and won.
The Fed’s policy of “quantitative easing” contributed to a qualitative hardening of tone among the summiteers. Germany’s finance minister accused the Americans of hypocrisy—"It's inconsistent for the Americans to accuse the Chinese of manipulating exchange rates and then to artificially depress the dollar exchange rate by printing money," he said. Of course, if the Fed’s policy succeeds, it will raise America’s price level, blunting America’s competitiveness, even as the dollar’s decline sharpens it. But one cannot be confident that any of the G20’s leaders—except India’s Manmohan Singh, an economist by training—understands the difference between the nominal exchange rate and the real one.
To help them cope with inflows of money, emerging economies may introduce capital controls. But they won’t necessarily call them that. The Seoul summit endorsed “carefully designed macro-prudential measures” for countries that had already exhausted other options, such as adding to their foreign-exchange reserves, or simply letting their exchange rate rise. The summiteers probably had in mind the kind of measures introduced by their host nation, South Korea, in June. It imposed ceilings on banks’ holdings of foreign-exchange derivatives, because the banks tend to hedge those positions by borrowing too much from abroad.
Such measures do not always work for long: South Korea’s ceilings were set as a multiple of the banks’ capital, so the banks just raised their capital. But emerging economies are likely to keep trying. Certainly, whatever the Seoul Declaration says, it is hard to imagine the Fed paying much heed to emerging economies—or any other economy for that matter—when setting monetary policy. President Obama remains a popular and photogenic figure in the conference halls of Seoul. But Mr Bernanke cast the longest shadow over the summit.
Editor's note: Thanks to jude22, in the comments section below, for reminding readers of Stephen Harper's credentials as academic economist. Manmohan Singh, who holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University and also taught economics there, would probably be the best-qualified leader of a G20 country to run a seminar on exchange rates. But Mr Harper would doubtless make a good teaching assistant were Mr Singh to be unavailable.
source
INSIDE the cavernous Coex centre in Seoul, where the leaders of the G20 group of nations gathered for their fifth summit on November 11th-12th, Korean staff played their role of hosts with great enthusiasm. In quiet moments, some queued up outside digital photo booths to have their picture taken with an image of President Barack Obama superimposed on top. The agreement the G20 leaders sealed, after what one of them described as “late nights and tough talks” between their negotiators, was also a bit of a montage. All members worry about an unbalanced recovery, with big trade surpluses in some countries and big deficits elsewhere; but they do not yet agree on its underlying cause or solution. In their declaration they nonetheless strived to appear in the same frame.
The leaders asked their technical advisors, including the IMF, to come up with “indicative guidelines” that would help to identify big and persistent imbalances. America’s Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, had once hoped this guideline could be very simple: current-account deficits or surpluses (which are roughly equivalent to trade deficits or surpluses) should not exceed 4% of GDP. But that cap did not fit all heads. Australia tends to run big deficits financed by heavy foreign investment in the country’s mines; Saudi Arabia and Russia sensibly accumulate big surpluses whenever the oil price soars. And although Chinese officials expect its surplus to narrow from over 10% in 2007 to less than 4% over the next 3-4 years, it was not ready to turn that forecast into a binding commitment.
So rather than one number, the guidelines will consist of a “range of indicators”. It is not yet clear what the members have in mind. The IMF already supervises the so-called Mutual Assessment Process (MAP), which crunches lots of numbers to make sure that the G20s’ macro-targets add up. (It is not, for example, possible for everyone to increase their net exports to everyone else.) In addition, the fund already uses three different methods to check whether its members’ exchange rates are misaligned. The more indicators the G20 chooses, the more degrees of freedom its members will enjoy. If the Seoul declaration is to count as progress, therefore, the guidelines will have to constrain members more than the MAP already does, even if they do not constrain them as much as Mr Geithner’s magic number would.
The leaders also repeated a line agreed by their finance ministers and central bankers last month, which obliges advanced economies with reserve currencies (such as the dollar, euro and yen) to spare a thought for emerging economies hurt by exchange-rate volatility. But that promise will seem empty to those members, including Brazil, China and South Korea, unnerved by the Federal Reserve’s decision this month to print another $600 billion of the world’s reserve currency in an effort to revive the American economy. The decision will encourage capital to flow elsewhere, weakening the dollar and putting upward pressure on the real, yuan and won.
The Fed’s policy of “quantitative easing” contributed to a qualitative hardening of tone among the summiteers. Germany’s finance minister accused the Americans of hypocrisy—"It's inconsistent for the Americans to accuse the Chinese of manipulating exchange rates and then to artificially depress the dollar exchange rate by printing money," he said. Of course, if the Fed’s policy succeeds, it will raise America’s price level, blunting America’s competitiveness, even as the dollar’s decline sharpens it. But one cannot be confident that any of the G20’s leaders—except India’s Manmohan Singh, an economist by training—understands the difference between the nominal exchange rate and the real one.
To help them cope with inflows of money, emerging economies may introduce capital controls. But they won’t necessarily call them that. The Seoul summit endorsed “carefully designed macro-prudential measures” for countries that had already exhausted other options, such as adding to their foreign-exchange reserves, or simply letting their exchange rate rise. The summiteers probably had in mind the kind of measures introduced by their host nation, South Korea, in June. It imposed ceilings on banks’ holdings of foreign-exchange derivatives, because the banks tend to hedge those positions by borrowing too much from abroad.
Such measures do not always work for long: South Korea’s ceilings were set as a multiple of the banks’ capital, so the banks just raised their capital. But emerging economies are likely to keep trying. Certainly, whatever the Seoul Declaration says, it is hard to imagine the Fed paying much heed to emerging economies—or any other economy for that matter—when setting monetary policy. President Obama remains a popular and photogenic figure in the conference halls of Seoul. But Mr Bernanke cast the longest shadow over the summit.
Editor's note: Thanks to jude22, in the comments section below, for reminding readers of Stephen Harper's credentials as academic economist. Manmohan Singh, who holds a doctorate in economics from Oxford University and also taught economics there, would probably be the best-qualified leader of a G20 country to run a seminar on exchange rates. But Mr Harper would doubtless make a good teaching assistant were Mr Singh to be unavailable.
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