Staring at the abiss with Paul Krugman | 235 comments (235 topical, editorial, 0 hidden)

Re: solidarity (4.00 / 2)

And trying to repair weak competitiveness with devaluations might work once, but it's hardly a long-term fix. See Sweden in the 70's and 80's.

I know that it is a common opinion that the 70's and 80's devaluations were bad, but the same time there is no opinion for abandoning the floating currency today. And the strong currency policy of the early 90ies was just a huge failure.

I suspect the 70's and 80's devaluations were really a sympthom of RoW catching up to Sweden. Skipping the carnage and destruction of ww2 is not an advantage that was going to last forever.

Sweden's finest (and perhaps only) collaborative, leftist e-newspaper Synapze.se

by A swedish kind of death on Sun Mar 18th, 2012 at 04:00:52 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Re: solidarity (none / 1)

There is a crucial difference between devaluing within a fixed-rate system and floating your currency.

If you devalue in a fixed rate system, you have to defend the new, lower exchange rate, a rate which is prima facie incredible (you just devalued - why should anybody trust you to not do it again). Which means that you have to jack up interest rates almost as high to defend the new exchange rate as you had to to defend the old.

If you float, on the other hand, you are not committing to defending any particular exchange rate. So if people dislike holding your new, lower valued, currency, you can go "too bad, so sad" and keep the interest rate low for the benefit of your domestic industry.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

by JakeS (JangoSierra 'at' gmail 'dot' com) on Mon Mar 19th, 2012 at 06:28:34 PM EST
[ Parent ]

Staring at the abiss with Paul Krugman | 235 comments (235 topical, 0 editorial, 0 hidden)

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