Economist記事から
エコノミストが為替ディーラーから学ぶこと
Marking the dealer's cards
From The Economist print edition
What economists can learn from currency traders
YOU can make a career as an exchange-rate economist without ever crossing paths with a currency trader. The dealers who set the dollar's price and the professors who theorise about it are separate breeds, speaking different tongues and operating at quite different metabolic rates. This is how Richard Lyons, an economist at the Haas School of Business (part of the University of California, Berkeley), describes a day spent with a friend of trading stock* .
Most of the time my friend was reading tea leaves that were, at least to me, not so clear. The pace was furious—a quote every five or ten seconds, a trade every minute or two...He looked over in the midst of his fury and asked me, “What should I do?” I laughed. Nervously.
If asked that question at the start of the year, most economists, watching the steady deterioration of America's current-account balance, would have told a dollar trader to sell. That would have been costly. The greenback reached two-year highs against the euro and the pound this month—before slipping back a bit after the president of the European Central Bank indicated that higher euro-zone interest rates were on the way.
The currency market routinely confounds economists. A classic 1983 study by Richard Meese and Kenneth Rogoff, then both at the Federal Reserve, concluded that macroeconomic models could not explain a currency's direction of travel, let alone how far it would go. One would do just as well to assume that next month's exchange rate will be the same as this month's. After another 20 years of interrogation, the macroeconomic data has confessed little more of value. A new review of the evidence† finds that some models, in some periods, beat tossing a coin. But not by very much.
If traders can learn nothing from economists, can economists learn anything from traders? No, is the customary answer. Economists traditionally assume that everything worth knowing about a currency is known by everyone; and that anything new is quickly embodied in the price. They imagine the market governed by an auctioneer, who finds the price that will square everybody's bids and offers before any actual trading takes place. Economists study the auctioneer, not the traders.
After his visit to the trading desks, however, Mr Lyons decided that dealers merited closer examination. He and Martin Evans, of Georgetown University, are part of a wider effort to model the currency market from “the trenches”†† . We cannot understand how currencies behave, they argue, unless we study the thinking and behaviour of those who trade them.
The mythical auctioneer is notably absent from the models they construct. In his place stand the big currency dealers, who act as marketmakers, willing to buy or sell any amount of currency at their quoted prices. The marketmaker will take orders from a mix of clients—from American multinationals repatriating profits, to Asian central banks manipulating their currency—whose beliefs are as diverse as their motives.
These orders represent opinions, backed by money. As such, they convey useful information about what clients believe and how strongly they believe it. The marketmaker is privy to all of these opinions as they accumulate on its order books, while its clients know only their own. It is like a poker game in which only the dealer is allowed to see what each player throws into the pot.
What can be learned from peering over the dealer's shoulder? Messrs Lyons and Evans have access to six and a half years of data, ending in June 1999, from Citibank, one of the largest dollar dealers. The figures show the balance of orders flowing into the bank: on any given day, customers may buy more dollars from Citibank than they have sold to it, for example. This positive “order flow”, as it is called, is valuable evidence of buying pressure that is visible only to the dealer.
Any such pressure will eventually be reflected in a stronger currency. What is surprising is how long it takes. Given that a trade is made every few minutes, a quotation every few seconds, one would think that any information in today's order flow would be swiftly incorporated into the dealer's quotes and the dollar's price. Whatever forecasting power the flow of orders possesses, it should be quickly exhausted.
It turns out, however, that the information in today's order flow will still be percolating through the market weeks afterwards. It takes time for a marketmaker to make sense of his orders, to distinguish signal from noise, plot from happenstance. It takes more time still for that insight to spread to the market as a whole, as dealers reveal what they know through their quotes and trades with each other. This hiatus creates an opportunity for forecasters. Messrs Lyons and Evans reckon that Citibank's order flow can predict almost 16% of the dollar's bobbing and weaving four weeks hence. That may not sound like a lot. But the macroeconomists cannot even explain what is going on today, let alone 16% of what will happen a month from now.
The two economists invoke Friedrich Hayek, who long ago pointed out that the economy runs on “dispersed bits of incomplete and frequently contradictory knowledge”. These scattered insights, Hayek stressed, are communicated to everyone through shifts in market prices. But with the dollar, a big dealer's order books provide a sneak preview. If you can look into those books, you can infer something useful about the dollar next month. If not, then, like the rest of us, you can just flip a coin.
赤坂溜池周辺の観察
首相官邸の周りの交差点に、警察官が大勢動員されている。すべての交差点に、封鎖検問の準備をしている。今まで、封鎖検問は、アメリカ大使館へ続く道だけだった。一体何があったのだろうかと思ったら、今日ニュースがあった。
以下引用
「小泉暗殺」アル・カイーダ系組織ネットで予告
ブッシュ、ブレアも標的
 暗殺予告を受けた小泉純一郎首相 |
声明では、ブッシュ、小泉両氏のほか、ブレア英首相やハワード・オーストラリア首相、ベルルスコーニ・イタリア首相らを暗殺計画のターゲットとして明言。「お前たちの犯罪は罰せられる。適当な時期と方法で首を切断されるだろう」などと恫喝（どうかつ）している。
同サイトはイスラム過激主義の宣伝を行っていることで知られ、ヨルダン人テロリスト、ザルカウィ容疑者が率いる「イラク・アル・カイーダ機構」も、しばしばテロの犯行声明などを投稿している。
声明の真偽は不明だが、日本に対するテロ予告としては、昨年３月、二千数百人の死傷者を出したマドリード列車爆破テロ直後、アル・カイーダ系の「アブハフス・アルマスリ旅団」が犯行声明の中で、「誰がお前（スペイン）や英国、日本、イタリア、ほかの同盟国をわれわれ（の攻撃）から守ってくれるのか」と名指しで指摘。
また、昨年５月、アル・カイーダ系過激派組織「ルーペ団」の首謀者、リオネル・デュモンと称する男が、２００２年から翌年にかけて、計４回も日本国内に偽造パスポートで潜入を繰り返していたことも発覚している。
イラク国内では１２月１５日の総選挙を前に、武装勢力による攻撃やテロが続いている。
中東事情に詳しい日本大学国際関係学部の大泉光一教授は「問題は多いが、米国の思惑通りにイラク情勢が進んでいることに、テロリストたちが反発を強めている証拠だろう。追い詰められた彼らは存在感を示すために、想定外の行動に走る可能性がある。警戒は必要だ」と語っている。
ZAKZAK 2005/11/25
economist誌からアラブ世界について
Unfamiliar questions in the Arab air
From The Economist print edition
As al-Qaeda scores own-goals in its backyard, many Arabs, including some Iraqis, are beginning to rethink their position on violence in the name of resistance
OF ALL the films to extol the fight for freedom from imperialism, one of the most cheering to Arab hearts is the rousing 1981 epic, “Lion of the Desert”. A richly bearded Anthony Quinn plays the role of Omar Mukhtar, the simple Koran teacher who became a guerrilla hero, and for 20 years, from 1911-31, harassed the Italian forces bent on subduing Libya. In one memorable scene his Bedouin warriors, armed only with old rifles, hobble their own feet to ensure martyrdom as Mussolini's tanks roll inexorably towards them.
Such imagery, mixed with big doses of schoolbook nationalism and more recent real-life pictures of stone-throwing children facing Israeli guns, has bolstered a common Arab perception of “resistance” as an act that is just and noble. The romanticism is understandable, and not much different from how, say, the French view their own underground in the second world war. Yet the morphing in recent years of resistance into terrorism, and the confusion in Iraq, where a humiliating foreign occupation also brought liberation from Baathist tyranny, has increasingly called this iconography into question.
The undermining of entrenched myths is a slow and halting process. But it is subject to sudden, shattering jolts, such as the November 9th suicide bombing of three hotels in the Jordanian capital, Amman. In the minds of the killers, American-allied Jordan had become a rear base for the “crusader” invaders of Iraq, and so its hotels, the sort of places where crusaders and their minions congregate, were legitimate targets for the resistance.
Yet it is perhaps more than incidentally ironic that among the 60 people they killed was Mustapha Akkad, the Syrian-born director who created “Lion of the Desert”. His film, glorifying the bravery of Muslim resistance fighters, happened to be one of the few productions explicitly endorsed on jihadist websites, albeit in a version that replaced the musical soundtrack with religious chants, and cut out all scenes showing women.
The global al-Qaeda franchise, whose Iraqi branch claimed responsibility for the Amman atrocity, has scored many own-goals over the years. The carnage in such Muslim cities as Istanbul, Casablanca, Sharm el-Sheikh and Riyadh has alienated the very Muslim masses the jihadists claim to be serving. By bringing home the human cost of such violence, they have even stripped away the shameful complacency with which the Sunni Muslim majority in other Arab countries has tended to regard attacks by Iraq's Sunni insurgent “heroes” against “collaborationist” Shia mosque congregations, funeral processions and police stations.
In Amman, al-Qaeda's victims included not only Mr Akkad and his daughter Rima, a mother of two, but also dozens of guests at a Palestinian wedding. The slaughter of so many innocents, nearly all of them Sunni Muslims, in the heart of a peaceful Arab capital, inspired a region-wide wave of revulsion. Far from being perceived now as a sort of Muslim Braveheart, the man who planned the attack, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, may be the most reviled person in Jordan, the country of his birth. His own tribe, which had previously taken some pride in its association with the Iraqi resistance, has publicly disowned him. Tens of thousands of Jordanians have taken to the streets of Amman to denounce terrorism. Opinion polls, which had previously shown Jordanians to be at best ambivalent about jihadist violence, now show overwhelming distaste for it (see tables).
Similar changes in attitude have overtaken other Arab societies. Some 150,000 Moroccans marched in Casablanca earlier this month to protest against al-Qaeda's threat to kill two junior Moroccan diplomats kidnapped on the road to Baghdad. The execution by Mr Zarqawi's men of two Algerian diplomats and the Egyptian chargé d'affaires in Iraq earlier this year aroused similar indignation in their home countries. Two years of bloody jihadist attacks in Saudi Arabia have rudely shaken the once-considerable sympathy for radical Islamism in the conservative kingdom. A top Saudi security source reckons that 80% of the country's success in staunching violence is due to such shifts in public feeling, and only 20% to police work.
The direct impact of tragedy has not been the only impetus for change. Arab governments used to treat local terrorism as something that dented their prestige and should be covered up. Now they eagerly exploit the images of suffering to justify their policies. The way such events are reported in the press no longer hints at a reflexive blaming of external forces. The Arab commentariat, much of which had promoted sympathy with the Iraqi insurgency, and focused on perceived western hostility to Islam as the cause of global jihadism, has grown vocal in condemning violence. Jihad al-Khazen, the editor of al-Hayat, a highbrow Saudi daily, is a frequent and mordant critic of western policy. Yet his response to the Amman tragedy was an unequivocal call for global co-operation to combat what he blasted as the enemies of life, of joy, and of the light of day.
Popular culture, too, has begun to reflect such shifts in attitude. Recently, during the peak television season of Ramadan, satellite channels watched by millions across the region broadcast several serials dramatising the human toll of jihadist violence. One of these contrasted the lives of ordinary Arab families, living in a housing compound in Riyadh, with a cartoonish view of the terrorists who eventually attack them. Another serial focused, with eerie foresight, on a group of jihadist assassins in Amman. Their plot to murder a television producer who is critical of their methods goes awry, killing three children instead. Unusually for an Arabic-language serial, even the villains are presented as conflicted souls, alienated from society and misled by dreams of glory and heavenly reward.
Religious leaders have chipped in. Moderate Muslim clerics have grown increasingly concerned at the abuse of religion to justify killing. In Saudi Arabia, numerous preachers once famed for their fighting words now advise tolerance and restraint. Even so rigid a defender of suicide attacks against Israel (on the grounds that all of Israeli society is militarised) as Yusuf Qaradawi, the star preacher of the popular al-Jazeera satellite channel, denounces bombings elsewhere and calls on the perpetrators to repent.
In Jordan, Mr Zarqawi's former cell-mate and mentor, Sheikh Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, long a firebrand proponent of widening holy war, has publicly given warning that excesses in Iraq have “defiled the image” of jihad. Another mentor, al-Qaeda's overall second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is believed to have written a letter of advice to Mr Zarqawi that suggests he should desist from such provocatively grisly acts as sawing off captives' heads when a simple bullet would do.
Noteworthy in all these subtle shifts is the fact that they are, by and large, internally generated. Few of them have come about as a result of prodding or policy initiatives from the West. On the contrary, the intrusion of foreign armies into Iraq, the consequent ugly spectacle of civilian casualties and torture, and the continuing agony of Palestine, have clearly slowed down the Arab public's response to the dangers posed by jihadism.
Now, or so it seems, it is the cooling of the Palestinian intifada, a slight lowering of the volume of imagery featuring ugly Americans in Iraq, and a general weariness with jihadist hysteria that have allowed attention to refocus on the costs, rather than the hoped-for rewards, of “resistance”. At the same time, the rising tide of American domestic opposition to the war has begun to reassure deeply sceptical Arabs that the superpower may not, after all, be keen to linger on Arab soil for ever.
Is a shift in attitudes on the fabled Arab street important? The answer is, very much so. It surely affects, for example, the scale of private funding directed to the Iraqi insurgents. The volume of those very secret sums is impossible to determine, though the enthusiasm among, say, rich and conservative Sunni Saudis for thwarting both an infidel superpower and the perceived influence of Shia Iran in Iraq must be pretty strong. Even a trickle of cash translates quite directly into damage. And if it can be assumed that for each of the 700-2,000 foreign fighters in Iraq (the current estimate of the Brookings Institution), there are many others who prefer to play jihad with their cheque books, there has been much more than a trickle.
A more tangible measure of change is the behaviour of Arab states. Undemocratic though they may be, shaky Arab governments in many cases owe their baseline legitimacy to their own historical record of perceived resistance to foreign hegemony. The deeply unpopular invasion of Iraq placed them in a quandary. Any gesture towards aiding the success of this “American project” risked a fierce popular backlash. That equation has now altered, and the results are already evident.
The two Arab heavyweights, Egypt and Saudi Arabia, have lately begun to lend their diplomatic clout to resolving Iraq's troubles. The sudden urgency to do something, after years of fence-sitting, is prompted by several fears. One of these, seemingly justified by the Amman bombing, is that Iraq has turned from being a sponge for jihadist violence into a fountainhead that threatens the region.
Another is that Iraq's Sunni minority, by backing the insurgents, has isolated itself and paved the way for Iran, whose government is now in the hands of revolutionary Shia radicals, to expand its influence. Since the Iraqi elections scheduled for December 15th will create, for the first time, not an interim government but one with a four-year term, it has dawned on many fellow Sunni Arabs that Iraq's Sunnis must stake a role in their country's future or face further marginalisation.
Egyptian and Saudi efforts bore first fruits at a conference held in Cairo this week in a bid to reconcile Iraqi factions. The decisions reached were neither binding nor dramatic, and the whole event was pitched as preliminary to a broader meeting to be held in three months' time. Even so, the gathering of some 100 politicians of different stripes marked a big step in the crucial process of coaxing Sunnis back into the political game. The hosting of the event by the Arab League, an organisation that had previously kept aloof from Iraq's troubles, encouraged groups such as the Muslim Scholars' Association, which contests the legitimacy of Iraq's Shia-dominated government and has so far boycotted the political process, to join in. Although neither senior Baathists nor active leaders of the insurgency were present, several of the Sunni delegates are known to be close to these factions.
Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, who is a pro-American Kurd, set the tone by saying that he would personally be happy to meet with active fighters in the resistance. Further gestures to appease the Sunnis came in the final communiqué, which asserted the right of “all peoples” to resist occupation, and called for a timetable for the withdrawal of foreign troops. Significantly, these clauses had been watered down, after heated debate with Sunni leaders who initially insisted on a direct endorsement of resistance action “against occupation forces”. The resolution also expressly declared that terrorism cannot be considered a form of resistance, and appeased Shia feelings further by rejecting the Sunni jihadists' contention that Shi'ism is a heretical sect.
Obviously, the vague wording over the key issue of “resistance” is open to interpretation. Shia parties, such as the Islamist-oriented United Iraqi Alliance, led by Iraq's prime minister, Ibrahim al-Jaafari, have long insisted that they are engaged in “political resistance”; the fastest way to end the occupation, they argue, is to achieve the security that will enable the troops to leave.
For their part, pro-resistance Sunni parties contend that they, too, have been subject to terrorism. They point to incidents such as the recent exposure, by American forces, of a secret jail, run by the Shia-controlled police, where hundreds of Sunni captives were mistreated. Attacks on foreign soldiers remain legitimate in their eyes. As for political resistance, a senior member of the Muslim Scholars' Association, Abd al-Salam al-Kubaisi, acidly remarked that its strongest proponents seem to be the American public, “since they are calling daily for the troops to leave.”
Hardline insurgent leaders remain even more adamant. Baathist websites denounce Iraq's government as “spies and agents”. A statement from Mr Zarqawi denounced the Cairo conference as an American ploy “to make Sunni Muslims accept the dirty political game”. The only dialogue permissible, he said, was “by the sword and seas of blood”.
Yet despite such verbal sparring and the vicious bloodletting on the ground, a degree of convergence can be detected. A huge majority of Iraqis want the occupation to end—some 82% according to a poll conducted by the British Ministry of Defence in August. The argument is over how to go about it. Most Iraqis also shun jihadist zeal, including many members of the broader Sunni resistance who feel that the radicals tarnish their cause. Despite deep mistrust of political institutions that have failed to provide security and a decent infrastructure, and despite the heightening of sectarian loyalty generated by two years of fear and chaos, the weary Iraqi public does not appear to have lost faith in the possibility of a political solution.
The two largest forces in the fragmented Sunni spectrum, the Iraqi Islamist Party and the Iraqi National Front, a more secular grouping that includes former Baathist officers, are actively rallying Sunnis to turn out to vote. Other Sunni politicians report a growing willingness among the non-jihadist groups, which make up the bulk of the insurgency, to consider a deal to wind down the fighting.
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Moroccans, after their diplomats were seized in Baghdad, convey a new message |
Their main stated demands so far have been an immediate pullback of foreign troops from Iraqi cities and a timetable for full withdrawal. With even the Pentagon now hinting at plans to draw down troop levels significantly next year, and with Congress pushing for a phased withdrawal, such demands no longer look beyond possibility. Iraq's own, much-maligned security forces, meanwhile, are slowly getting fitter. Troop strength in the reconstituted army recently passed 100,000, nearing the targeted level of 135,000. The quiet re-enlistment of Baathist officers, who had been sacked wholesale early in the occupation, has also worked to restore a measure of Sunni confidence—though there are few Iraqi units where the insurgency is fiercest.
At the same time, subtle realignments are changing the shape of Shia politics. The party of Muqtada al-Sadr, the young cleric whose fiery attacks on the occupation proved hugely popular with the urban poor, has joined the governing United Iraqi Alliance, a broad group dominated by two pro-Iranian Islamist parties. Meanwhile, prominent secularists have abandoned the alliance, leaving it a straightforward representative of activist Shia Islamism. Since many Iraqi Shias feel uncomfortable mixing religion and politics, and associate the alliance with the perceived weakness of the government, this might strengthen the nationalist centre.
The fact remains that Iraq is a nasty and dangerous place, where even a widening commitment to political solutions may not prevent disintegration into civil war. Recent revelations about police death-squads targeting Sunnis, and the bombing of Shia mosques, have intensified sectarian animosities. The vexed questions of federalism and how to share oil revenues remain to be settled. The secret objectives of Iran—whether it just wants to burn American fingers or to install a look-alike theocratic state—are unknown. The jihadists who have made Iraq their playground may have lost their wider appeal, but they are not going to disappear.
Yet there appears to be a growing consensus, within Iraq and outside, that the time has come to settle down and get on with life. A columnist in a Saudi daily, al-Sharq al-Awsat, Mashari Zaydi, suggests that Arabs have been torn by a struggle between two world-views, one hard, absolutist and aspirational, the other realist, compromising and practical. While the realist approach, he says, may not win all you want, the absolutist one risks losing everything you have.
面白いブログ見つけたーマンション倒壊問題
今回の強度計算偽造には驚いた。
建築士って一体何を考えているんだろう。強度計算を偽造するなんて、言語道断だが、
それをちゃんとチェックしなかった建築許可も問題だろう。なんとその建築確認が民営化されてしまっていたのだ。そして、民営化後、チェックが甘くなっていたらしい。特急料金なんてのもあって、プラスいくらかを払うと、1週間で建築許可が下りるそうだ。
このさるさる日記にいろいろと書いてあった。
グルメレポート
昨日、丸の内オアゾに行ってきた。
新丸ビルよりも全般的に、安そうだった。とはいっても、夜のメニューは、なかなか豪華だ。
時間がなかったので、中華の一品料理にした。
ジ･オーチャードという六階の中華レストランだ。工事中のビルが見えて、すばらしい夜景とは言いがたかったが、暗めのインテリアに、紫がかったテーブルクロスと、ろうそくのはいったガラスボール（左手奥）が似合っていた。
あんかけチャーハンを頼んだ。さっぱり目のスープとザーサイがついて1470円。
目の前で、チャーハンにあんかけの中華あんをかけてくれる。土鍋が熱いらしく、ジュッという音がおいしそうだ。
中華あんは、具がおいしかった。いかがやわらかくて、ぷりぷりで、特によかった。えびや豚肉などがふんだんにはいっていた。欲を言えば、野菜が足りないかも。いんげんを飾り切りしたようなものが入っていたが、なんだかわからない。
土鍋が厚いので、取り分けて食べた。
味のバランスもよく、値段に文句はないというところだろうか。
Economist記事から
産油国が莫大な黒字を溜め込んでいる。
Oil producers' surpluses
Recycling the petrodollars
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Exporters of oil are saving more of their recent windfall than in previous price booms. It's hard to spot where the money is going
Get article background
MANY American politicians and pundits explain their country's enormous current-account deficit by pointing at the surpluses of Asian economies, especially China. Undervalued currencies and unfairly cheap labour, they complain, have undermined America's competitiveness. In fact, looking at the world as a whole, the group of countries with the biggest current-account surpluses is no longer Asia but oil exporters, on which high prices have bestowed a gigantic windfall.
This year, oil exporters could haul in $700 billion from selling oil to foreigners. This includes not only the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) but also Russia and Norway, the world's second- and third-biggest earners (see chart 1 below). The International Monetary Fund estimates that oil exporters' current-account surplus could reach $400 billion, more than four times as much as in 2002. In real terms, this is almost double their dollar surpluses in 1974 and 1980, after the twin oil-price shocks of the 1970s—when Russia's hard-currency exports were tiny. The combined current-account surplus of China and other Asian emerging economies is put at only $188 billion this year (see chart 2 below).
Relative to their economies, the oil producers' current-account surpluses are far bigger than China's. Whereas the IMF forecasts China's surplus to be about 6% of GDP this year, it predicts Saudi Arabia's—not much different in money terms, at just over $100 billion this year—to be a whopping 32%. On average, Middle East oil exporters are expected to have an average surplus of 25% of GDP. Russia might record 13% and Norway 18%.
The rise in oil prices represents a big redistribution of income from those who buy oil to those who produce it. Past periods of high prices have not lasted long, but this time oil producers' extra revenues might prove to be more durable. The futures market expects oil to stay expensive, even though the price of a barrel of West Texas Intermediate, an industry benchmark, recently slipped back to around $60.
What will happen to all these petrodollars? In essence, they can be either spent or saved. Either way, a lot of the money can be recycled to oil-consuming economies and thus soften the impact on them of higher oil prices. If oil exporters spend their bonanza, they import more from other countries and thus help to maintain global demand. They are unlikely to spend the lot, however, because they tend to have higher saving rates than oil consumers: saving is around 40% of GDP in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Kuwait, for instance. A transfer of income from oil consumers to oil producers will therefore lead to a slowdown in global demand.
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If they save their windfall, but invest it in global capital markets, they can finance oil importers' bigger current-account deficits—in effect, lending the increase in fuel bills back to consumers. And by increasing the demand for foreign financial assets, they can boost asset prices and push down bond yields in oil-importing countries. This in turn can help to support economic activity in these economies.
Experience shows that oil booms can be a blessing or a curse for producing economies, depending on how wisely the extra revenue is spent or saved. Too often, past windfalls have been celebrated with budgetary blow-outs, while the abundance of money has encouraged the postponement of economic reforms. This time, however, oil exporters seem to be spending less, instead running larger external surpluses, repaying debts and building up assets. In 1973-76, 60% of the increase in OPEC's export revenues was spent on imports of goods and services. In 1978-81, the proportion rose to 75%. But the IMF estimates that only 40% of the windfall in the three years to 2005 will have been spent.
In Russia, the government has taken the sensible step of setting up an oil stabilisation fund, which will be used to reduce its large foreign debt. That said, the country has been more eager than members of OPEC to spend its extra money. Around two-thirds of the increase in Russia's export revenues since 2002 has gone on imports. Some analysts also suspect that the government may yet raid the stabilisation fund for a spending spree. The main concern, however, is that while the economy is flush with cash important structural reforms will be postponed.
In most of the Middle East, governments are being more cautious than usual with their extra revenue. Mohsin Khan, the director of the IMF's Middle East and Central Asia department, reckons that most governments in the region are budgeting on an oil price of only $30-40 a barrel for next year. He estimates that governments have on average spent only 30% of their extra oil revenue since 2002, compared with 75% in the 1970s and early 1980s, after previous steep climbs in the oil price. Their average budget surplus has increased from 2% of GDP in 2002 to nearly 15% this year.
Oil-exporting governments seem to have taken to heart the lessons of the 1970s and 1980s. First: don't assume that oil prices will stay high for ever: in real terms, OPEC's annual average oil revenue in 1981-2000 was only one-third of that in 1980. Second, don't waste your windfall. In previous booms, oil-producing countries gaily spent their petrodollars on lavish construction projects that required imported equipment and skilled foreign workers, but did little to create local jobs or to diversify economies. In its recently published Regional Economic Outlook for the Middle East and Central Asia, the IMF advises governments to give priority to spending that will have a more lasting impact on growth and living standards.
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In fact, believes Mr Khan, Middle East oil exporters have greater capacity to spend petrodollars at home than in the 1970s and 1980s, because their populations have been rising rapidly and because their infrastructure needs upgrading after many years of dwindling government revenues. High unemployment means that there is social pressure for more spending on education and health, and for schemes to encourage private-sector employment.
Saudi Arabia, with one of the world's fastest growing populations, has an unemployment rate of perhaps 20%. After nearly two decades of large budget deficits, the government's debt was 100% of GDP by 2000. Even this year, Saudi Arabia's oil revenues per head will be about 70% less in real terms than in 1980, owing in part to a near tripling of its population. It is using some of its extra money to repay debt, and the government has recently raised civil servants' pay by 15%—the first across-the-board increase in more than 20 years.
As well as spending more on health, education and infrastructure, the Middle East also needs to invest in oil production and refining capacity, to ease future supply shortages and so stabilise prices. The International Energy Agency gave warning this week that oil prices will keep rising over the next two decades unless the region's producers invest substantially more than they currently intend.
The IMF is also—unusually—encouraging these economies to be less thrifty. Increased spending will not only, through diversification, allow Middle East countries to support their future economic development, but by boosting imports from the rest of the world it will also allow a more orderly narrowing of global imbalances. This should help to cushion the world economy against the negative impact of rising oil prices.
So far most of the extra money is being saved, not spent, so where is it going? In the 1970s and early 1980s surplus petrodollars were largely deposited in banks in America or Europe. These banks then lent too many of them to oil-importing developing countries, sowing the seeds of Latin America's debt crisis. This time it is proving much harder to track the money, but much more seems to be going into foreign shares and bonds rather than into western banks. This may reflect a greater reluctance to hold deposits in foreign banks, because of the increase in official scrutiny after the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. Figures from the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) show that in 2002 and 2003 OPEC deposits with banks in the BIS reporting area actually fell. Since last year, they have increased, but only modestly. In contrast, Russian bank deposits abroad have risen much more sharply, as have the central bank's official reserves, from $73 billion at the end of 2003 to $161 billion this October.
Russian investment, whether in bank deposits, London property or football clubs, is relatively conspicuous. But even the experts at the IMF and the BIS are finding it hard to track Middle Eastern money, because a large chunk of the surplus is held not as official reserves, but as foreign investment by government oil stabilisation and investment funds and by national oil companies. Official reserves of Middle East oil exporters (including the total net foreign assets of the Saudi Arabia Monetary Agency) have risen by around $70 billion this year, accounting for less than 30% of their current-account surplus.
One puzzle is that, according to data published by America's Treasury Department, OPEC members' holdings of American government securities fell from $67 billion in January this year to $54 billion in August. But Middle East purchases of American securities are probably being channelled through London. Mr Khan reckons that although the bulk of OPEC's surplus revenues has so far gone into dollar-denominated assets, those assets are increasingly held outside the United States. A big chunk is also going into hedge funds and offshore financial institutions, which are unregulated and so impossible to track.
There has also been a flood of petrodollars into private equity abroad. In January, Dubai International Capital took a $1 billion stake in DaimlerChrysler. In March, it bought the Tussauds Group, a theme-park firm. This month, DP World, Dubai's state-owned ports operator, made a £3 billion ($5.2 billion) bid for P&O, Britain's biggest ports and ferries group.
Many smaller private investors in the Middle East are keeping their money closer to home. In the 1970s and early 1980s equity markets barely existed in the Gulf. This time money has flooded into them. Share prices in Saudi Arabia have increased fourfold since 2003, and its bourse now has the largest capitalisation of any emerging stockmarket. The average price/earnings ratio in the region is over 40 and recent share offerings have been oversubscribed several hundred times. A spectacular property boom is under way in many places, notably Dubai, which has become a regional financial centre and leisure playground. The world's biggest shopping mall is being built there and Emirates, the state's airline, has virtually underwritten the launch of the Airbus A380, ordering no fewer than 45 of the super-jumbos, a third of the total (see article ).
Despite the lack of hard data, many economists are sure that a big dollop of petrodollars is going into American Treasury securities. If so, the recycling of money via bond markets could have very different effects on the world economy from the bank-mediated recycling of previous oil booms. If petrodollars not spent flow into global bond markets, they reduce bond yields and thus support consumer spending in oil-importing countries.
Indeed, this leads Stephen Jen, an economist at Morgan Stanley, to challenge the popular notion that Europe is being hurt less by higher oil prices than America. It is certainly true that Europe's exports to oil producers have risen faster than America's in recent years. Europe's share of OPEC's imports has climbed to 32%, compared with America's 8%. A recent report by ABN Amrofinds that while America's trade deficit with OPEC has grown markedly since 1999, the European Union's balance has barely changed (see chart 3).
On the other hand, around two-thirds of petrodollars are thought to have gone into dollar assets, pushing down American bond yields. In addition, America's economy is more sensitive to interest rates than that of the euro zone. Mr Jen therefore suggests that America may have gained more from lower interest rates than the euro area has from higher exports, especially because OPEC still buys less than 5% of the currency zone's exports. Although higher oil prices have increased America's current-account deficit, Mr Jen reckons that it probably runs a balance-of-payments surplus in oil, with capital inflows from exporting countries exceeding its net oil import bill.
How might the flow of oil money affect the dollar? Because oil is traded in dollars, rising prices initially increase the demand for greenbacks. But what happens next depends on whether oil producers buy dollar assets or swap their dollars for euros. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE and most other Gulf states peg their currencies to the dollar, which might suggest that, like Asian central banks, they will continue to favour dollars. But unlike China's export surpluses, petrodollars are mostly not managed within official reserves, but by oil stabilisation funds and so forth. These are not subject to the same constraints as central banks to hold liquid assets and their aim is to maximise returns.
This means, says Mr Jen, that oil exporters' assets are more footloose than those of Asian central banks. So far, the bulk of petrodollars may have gone into relatively liquid dollar assets, helping to support the greenback this year. But this money could flit if the dollar starts to slide again. And there is lots of it: for example, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, with assets of maybe $250 billion, is one of the wealthiest players in global financial markets. Russia's central bank has reduced the share of dollars in its foreign reserves over the past couple of years, but it is still around 65%. The central bank has said that it wishes to hold more euros.
 |
The correct solution to global imbalances is for America to save more and for surplus countries, including both the oil exporters and the Asians, to spend more |
That leaves the dollar dangerously vulnerable. But what about the exchange-rate policies of the oil exporters themselves? Most oil exporters peg their currencies to the dollar or resist appreciation through heavy intervention, in much the same way as China and other Asian countries have done. So should America and others demand that oil exporters revalue their currencies, as they have called on the Asians to do? In fact, revaluation of oil exporters' currencies would do little by itself to reduce America's deficit (nor, for that matter, would a dearer Chinese yuan). The correct solution to global imbalances is for America to save more and for surplus countries, including both the oil exporters and the Asians, to spend more.
Nevertheless, Brad Setser of Roubini Global Economics, a research firm, argues that oil economies should not peg their currencies to the dollar in any case. The currencies of commodity producers, he says, should follow commodity prices. Instead, Middle East oil exporters' currencies have tracked the dollar—mainly downwards—since 2002, even as oil revenues have soared. By raising the relative price of foreign goods, this has discouraged imports. Equally perversely, economies were hurt in the late 1990s when the dollar rose at the same time as oil prices sank.
By pegging their currencies to the dollar, these economies have in effect had to adopt America's monetary policy. With interest rates too low, excess domestic liquidity has stoked inflation and asset prices. The broad money supply of the Middle East oil exporters has grown by almost 24% in each of the past two years and the average inflation rate has risen to almost 9% this year. To curb inflation, Gulf economies need more flexible exchange rates and monetary policies.
Russia officially operates a “managed float” for its exchange rate. But the rouble's rate against the dollar has been held relatively steady over the past couple of years by heavy intervention. Consequent excess liquidity and a boom in domestic consumption have pushed inflation to 12%.
It does not make sense for a country with a large current-account surplus to tie its currency to that of a country with a large deficit—such as America. A fully floating exchange rate may not be desirable, because it may be too volatile, but more flexibility could help oil exporters to adjust better to fluctuations in commodity prices.
If oil prices remain high, so will oil exporters' surpluses. The IMF forecasts an average annual current-account surplus of $470 billion over the next five years (assuming an average oil price of $59 a barrel). The oil exporters will have to play a role in helping to reduce global imbalances. Importing more and letting their currencies rise, as well as increasing government spending and liberalising their economies, would be steps in the right direction.
From The Economist print edition
国際収支の内容が変化
所得黒字が貿易黒字を初めて上回る…上半期国際収支
財務省が１４日発表した２００５年度上半期（４～９月）の国際収支状況によると、海外への証券投資や直接投資がもたらす金利収入などを示す所得収支の黒字は前年同期比２３・７％増の５兆７２２４億円となり、年度上半期ベースとしては統計が比較できる１９８５年度以来初めて、モノの取引を示す貿易収支の黒字（４兆９２７１億円）を上回った。
米ドル建て債やユーロ建て債などの金利収入が増えたほか、世界経済の好調さを背景に、海外子会社からの配当などが増えた。
一方、輸出額から輸入額を差し引いた貿易黒字は、原油高による輸入増が響いて３０・８％減となった。ただ、輸出額、輸入額とも過去最高で、貿易活動の活発化を示している。
この結果、海外とのモノやサービスの取引などを示す経常収支の黒字は、５・８％減の８兆８１８５億円となった。
北朝鮮の履物事情ー朝鮮日報から
朝鮮日報
北朝鮮の深刻な履物事情…雨の日に素足で歩く子供たちも
北朝鮮は先月28日、開城（ケソン）で開かれた南北経済協力推進委員会の第11次会議で、韓国側に履き物の原材料6000万足分を要求した。北朝鮮の総人口を2300万人とし、計算すれば1人当り2.5足になる。、このように膨大な量を要求する背景には、北朝鮮のどのような履き物事情があるのだろうか。
脱北者たちは、「北朝鮮の履き物問題は、南側の人の想像を絶するもの」と述べた。もっとも事情が良好な平壌（ピョンヤン）で、まともな靴を履いて歩く人の場合、靴のほとんどは1足に1000ウォンから5000ウォンもする中国製の履き物だ。北朝鮮労動者の平均給料は月2500ウォン程度だ。平壌の履き物工場で運動靴を生産しているが、その量は圧倒的に不足しており、一般の商店では見当たらない。
朝鮮・チェコ合弁会社の社長を務めていた脱北者のキム・テサンさんは、北朝鮮の履き物不足は1994年以前から始まったと述べた。
キムさんは、「1994年に金福信（キム・ボクシン）政務院副総理兼軽工業委員長（長官）が、休戦線付近の部隊を訪問した際、軍人の履き物が足りなく、交互に靴を利用する場面を見て、涙を流して履き物の供給を保障すると約束した」とし、「しかし、経済全般が崩れる状況で、この約束は守られなかったし、そのあおりを受けて金福信委員長は数年後、職を退いた」と述べた。
キムさんは、「北朝鮮は履き物生産に必要な原料であるゴムをマレーシアから輸入してきたが、外貨不足でほとんど輸入が中断された」とし、「今は銀河（ウンハ）貿易総局が、衣類加工合弁工場を経営して得る年間収入600～700万ドルで、生ゴムを輸入している」と述べた。その規模では、全平壌市民が必要とする量も満たせない。
軍人の場合も、靴がまともに供給されていない。軍人出身の脱北者は、「新兵が初めて配置されると、訓練所でもらった履き物を上司が強制に奪って市場に売ることが頻繁に起きている」と伝えた。このため、ぼろぼろになった「地下足」（非戦闘用靴）を使う兵士が数えられないほどいる。その姿は、まるで馬賊団を彷彿とさせると、この脱北者は述べた。はなはだしくは、北朝鮮の軍人がそれぞれ違う履き物をはいている姿を南側の観光客たちが目撃したこともある。
地方に行くほど状況はさらに深刻だという。山岳地方で厳しい仕事をする農民や林業に携わる人々に履き物は命だ。咸鏡（ハムギョン）北道出身の脱北者は、「農村では、一方の足には靴を、また他の足には運動靴をはいて歩く人が見られるが、その場合はまだましで、木の履き物、草履、廃タイヤで作った履き物も見られる」と述べた。
ゴムが足りないので、履き物と関連しもっとも重要な「原資料」は廃タイヤだ。平壌でも廃タイヤを当て靴のかかとにする市民が多く、女性の靴も同じ事情だ。
同脱北物は、北朝鮮で履き物が早くすり減る理由は、運送手段がほとんどなく、舗装道路もない険しい道をあまりにも頻繁に歩くためだと述べた。品質の落ちるほとんどの運動靴は、1か月で靴の底が全部すり減ってしまう。
最近、羅津（ナジン）・先鋒（ソンボン）を訪問したある人権団体の関係者は、「案内を務めた国家保衛部員が履いていた運動靴も破れており、街で見受けられる子どもたちは、ぼろぼろになった靴をはいていた。一部は素足だった」と述べた。同関係者は、「ぼろぼろの服を着て歩く姿より、雨の日や寒い日に素足で歩く子どもたちの姿を見るのがもっとつらかった」と述べた。
朝鮮日報
朝鮮日報から大統領のグローバル批判
米紙、盧大統領発言をチャベス大統領になぞらえる
盧武鉉（ノ・ムヒョン）大統領の「国家間格差解消」発言をめぐって政府が9日、釈明を
行う一幕があった。
盧大統領は8日、ソウルに駐在する外電の支局長らと懇談会を行なった。盧大統領はAPEC
の主要議題を説明するなかで、「市場から貧困層が排除され、結果的に市場が縮小する結
果になるので、長い目でビジネスの環境にも、返って悪い環境になる可能性があるという
点について注意を喚起した方がいいと考える」と述べた。
また、盧大統領は「APEC各国の内部、または国家と国家との間で社会的格差が広がった
問題を緩和するため、共同の努力を提案する考え」と述べた。
米国の有力日刊紙ワシントンポストは9日付けで、盧大統領のこうした発言を南米諸国の
中で反米主義の先頭に立っているベネズエラのウーゴ・チャベス大統領と結びつけた。チ
ャベス大統領は今月6日、米州首脳会議に出席したブッシュ大統領に対し、「米国のような
金持ち国家は、グローバル化で利益を得るなかで、低開発国家はグローバル化の基準に合
わせるため貧困に陥っている」とし、激しく非難している。
当時、ブッシュ大統領の南米訪問の最優先目標は、米国と南米国家間の貿易自由化を目
指す米州自由貿易協定（FTAA）の締結だった。しかし、チャベス大統領の米国非難と南米
内の反米主義やデモによって流れてしまった。
ワシントンポストはこうした分析とともに「盧大統領の発言でブッシュ大統領は、1か月
間2度もグローバル化の負の側面に対する世界的な不満を耳にした」と報じた。
潘基文（パン・ギムン）外交長官はこれと関連し、9日の内外の記者団に対する定例ブリ
ーフィングを通じて「盧大統領の言及は、世界的貿易自由化のための補完策として、社会
的格差の是正努力も必要だという意味」と述べた。あくまでも主な議題は「貿易自由化」
であり、「社会葛藤の解消」ではないという意味だ。
従来、金泳三（キム・ヨンサム）元大統領や金大中（キム・デジュン）大統領も同様な
旨の発言をしているが、問題化したことはない。しかし、どうして盧大統領の発言につい
てのみ、外電がこのような反応を示したかは定かではない。
ワシントンポストは、同日の記事で「韓国は輸出大国として自由貿易のリーダーと認識
されているが、盧大統領は自分の国でも、グローバル化によって疎外された人々の支持者
に浮上している」と述べた。
朝鮮日報
朝鮮日報記事より引用
世界12大貿易国の大統領による「グローバル化」批判
盧武鉉（ノ・ムヒョン）大統領は今月8日、ソウル駐在外電の支局長らに釜山（プサン）で開かれるアジア太平洋経済協力会議（APEC）の主な議題を説明する席で、「貿易しやすい環境を整えれば整えるほど、社会的格差はより広げられ、貧しい人々は市場で排除される傾向がある」とし、「APEC諸国の各国内及び各国家間の社会的格差拡大の問題を緩和するため、共同で努力することを提案するつもり」と述べた。
米紙ワシントンポストは、こうした大統領の発言を報道し、「盧大統領が国際社会の不平等に言及したことで、米国のブッシュ大統領は今月に入って2度目のグローバル化に対する国際的な不満を聞いた」と報じた。
ワシントンポストが触れた1度目の不満とは、ベネズエラのチャベス大統領が先週、米州首脳会議で「米国などの金満国家らが、グローバル化を通じて不当な利得を手にした」と非難したことを指す。チャベス大統領は、大衆迎合的（populism）政治手法や政権に批判的メディアに対する弾圧、敵対政策で広く知られる南米の代表的反米リーダーだ。
韓国は世界12位の規模を持つ貿易国であり、第2次世界大戦後、貿易によって急成長した成功モデルとして取り上げられる。現政権が発足して以来、国内消費と投資の両方で低迷しているなか、成長率のようなマクロ経済指標が、かろうじて維持できる理由も、貿易という下支えがあるためだ。
このように自由貿易体制の恩恵をもっとも多く享受して成長を果たし、今もその恩恵を享受しており、今後ともその体制に頼るしかない大韓民国の大統領が、「貿易しやすい環境が貧富の格差を広げる」と異議を唱えたのだ。
ワシントンポスト紙が、「輸出を通じて大国になった韓国は以前、自由貿易を擁護してきたが、盧大統領は国内でグローバル化によって排除された人々の支持者に浮上している」とし、いぶかしがったのも無理ではない。
外交部は「大統領が強調したのは『自由貿易』であり、『社会的格差』は附随的問題」とし、ワシントンポストが本末転倒の報道をしたと説明した。金泳三（キム・ヨンサム）元大統領、金大中（キム・デジュン）前大統領も以前、「国家間格差」に言及しているが、問題視したメディアはなかったという。
なぜ、盧大統領の発言のみ問題になるのか。その答えは、盧大統領が今年9月、170か国の首脳が出席した国連総会演説で「帝国主義的考え方と残滓を完全に清算しなければならない」と大国に対する攻撃に乗り出したことをはじめ、これまで国際社会で行なった発言録を引いてみると、自ずと明らかになるだろう。