KEY POINTS:
Greetings from Coolum, Australia, where Apec finance ministers have just wrapped up a most illuminating meeting.
Apec refers to the Asia-Pacific Economic Consternation forum, errr, the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation forum. While it really does mean the latter, the former name better represents what the 21-member group has become.
Asia-Pacific nations like to think they work together. Yet if this year's finance ministers' meeting highlighted anything, it's that as much as they say they're co-operating, they're standing very much alone.
It illuminated how the United States still blames Asia for saving too much and holding down currencies. Asians blame the US for saving too little and relying too much on Asia's money.
Japan criticises China for an undervalued currency, while South Korea criticises the Japanese for the same reason. China is perturbed that it's being criticised at all.
Apec's gathering unfolded amid increasing volatility in global markets. One heard more consternation over who's to blame for imbalances than how to fix things. And Henry Paulson's decision to blow off the event was a bigger problem than the US Treasury Secretary may realise.
"A lot of this market volatility is about sub-prime, mortgage-market contagion from the US," said Diwa Guinigundo, deputy governor of the Philippine central bank.
It has to be one of the biggest ironies in global finance. Ten years ago, it was contagion from Asia imperilling the global economy.
For months after Thailand devalued its currency in July 1997, US officials reassured markets that Asia's woes were containable. Once the Dow Jones industrial average began plunging several hundred points in a day, investors knew better.
Eerily familiar noises are coming from Paulson these days. In Beijing last week, he said the US economy was "healthy" enough to weather ongoing market declines. One hears similar reassurances from top economic officials near and far.
Yet Paulson's confidence in an economy facing the worst housing recession in 16 years and enormous current-account and budget deficits isn't reassuring. It smacks of denial at a time when policy-makers like Guinigundo say "the risks of contagion can't be downplayed".
Asia has come a long way since 1997, as Asian Development Bank president Haruhiko Kuroda said. Banks are far more stable, currency reserves have been amassed and governments are modernising and integrating financial systems.
"There are many risks to consider but Asia seems able to handle it."
Asia's post-crisis recovery is a work in progress, though, and one shouldn't overstate the extent to which it has decoupled from the US economy.
While Asia's growth and booms in China and India mean it's less reliant on the US, the region isn't ready to live without American demand.
The hedge fund angle also offers another bit of irony. In 1997, they were blamed for the speculative attacks on Asian currencies. By 1998, the resulting volatility was claiming weighty casualties. Yet memories are short in the age of financial globalisation and the years to follow were banner ones for aggressive investors. Asia alone has seen an exponential increase in the number of hedge funds since 2002. Now that trend is being tripped up not by events in Asia but the US.
Australia is on the front line of how problems in the US are spreading to Asia. On August 2, shares in Macquarie Bank fell the most in five years after Australia's largest securities firm said investors in some of its funds might lose as much as 25 per cent of their money.
Taiwan Life Insurance stock had its worst week in three years amid hedge fund losses.
It's one thing for Bear Stearns' hedge funds to get slammed by the sub-prime mess; it's another for casualties to begin piling up a world away. The Morgan Stanley Capital International Asia-Pacific index plunged 3.9 per cent in the five days ended July 27, the worst weekly drop since July last year.
"The correction is coming about because of weakness in the US," said Australian Treasurer Peter Costello. "It illustrates how interconnected the world is."
It's a breathtaking role reversal. Just as Asia downplayed the odds of its 1997 contagion oozing worldwide, the US says its problems are containable. Only now are investors waking up to how global risk has been mispriced. Markets became too greedy in selling collateralised debt obligations and financing leveraged buyouts and investors underappreciated the hazards.
Costello said Apec talked about "what can be put in place to ensure these imbalances don't work out in an even more radical readjustment".
That would be reassuring if Apec had come up with something concrete. Instead, we got hollow calls for flexible exchange rates.
There was no demand for Japan to reduce incentives for the so-called yen-carry trade.
Borrowing cheaply in Japan and investing the funds in higher-returning assets elsewhere has fuelled many of today's riskiest hedge-fund trades. Yet Japan is reluctant to let the yen rise and countries still wimp out on demanding it. Amid so many risks, it would be comforting to get more co-operation than consternation out of Apec officials.
- Bloomberg
