ESTA NOCHE jueves 21 enero 2016

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ü  El presidente del Congreso, Luis Iberico, rechazó la propuesta del titular del JNE de convocar a legislatura extraordinaria para ver las modificaciones a la Ley de Partidos Políticos publicada por el Gobierno en pleno proceso electoral. Sin embargo, añadió que la decisión corresponde al presidente Humala

ü  La Oficina Desconcentrada de Control de la Magistratura abrió investigación preliminar al juez que admitió el recurso de hábeas corpus de Eva Fernenbug, suegra de Toledo

ü  Petro-Perú y Refinería La Pampilla de Repsol anunciaron que el precio de gasolinas y gasoholes se redujo en S/0,43 por galón

ü  En los últimos 18 meses, cerca de un billón de dólares en flujos de inversión se retiraron de las economías emergentes de todo el planeta

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jorgemorelli.blogspot.com

MEDIA COLUMNA

Alerta de virus

Jorge Morelli

@jorgemorelli1

jorgemorelli.blogspot.com

Al publicar la ley que modifica las reglas en pleno proceso electoral, el gobierno ha introducido un virus en el sistema.

El presidente del JNE ha dicho que no puede resolver las incógnitas creadas y que necesita que el Congreso las resuelva en legislatura extraordinaria.

El presidente del Congreso, acto seguido, anuncia con razón que le parece contraproducente debatir este tema a estas alturas, y señala que, en todo caso, convocar a una legislatura extraordinaria le corresponde al presidente de la República.

Y el premier Cateriano anuncia a continuación que el JNE tiene la obligación de cumplir la ley.

En suma, están jugando al gran bonetón. Y no está claro cómo se va a resolver ni a quién le toca resolverlo.

Se ha inoculado un virus que amenaza con colgar el sistema. Se ha introducido en el proceso electoral una anomalía que mañana puede causar que el proceso entero sea objeto de impugnación por cualquiera de los participantes.

No puede descartarse que este haya sido un acto deliberado de sabotaje electoral. Y tiene que ser cortado de raíz ahora mismo.  

  

REPORTE DE NOTICIAS en Internet

 Las siguientes notas periodísticas de política y economía han sido seleccionadas, editadas y ordenadas

temáticamente. No se las debe citar como tomadas directamente de sus fuentes originales, las mismas que se indican sólo como una forma de reconocer el crédito y agradecer la cortesía.

ELECCIONES, PARTIDOS, ENCUESTAS, MEDIOS, PSICOSOCIALES

RPP

El presidente del Congreso, Luis Iberico, rechazó la propuesta del titular del Jurado Nacional de Elecciones, Francisco Távara, de convocar a legislatura extraordinaria para ver las modificaciones introducidos a la Ley de Partidos Políticos publicada por el Gobierno en pleno proceso electoral.

“Me parece contraproducente convocar a una legislatura extraordinaria”, aseveró. Sin embargo, dejó en claro que él no puede decir que la sesión extraordinaria no se convocará porque ello corresponde al jefe de Estado.

El Comercio

El primer ministro Pedro Cateriano señaló hoy que el Jurado Nacional de Elecciones tiene la obligación de cumplir con lo que establece la nueva ley de partidos.

En la víspera este órgano electoral pidió al Congreso que convoque a una sesión extraordinaria para pronunciarse sobre las modificaciones. 

"La Constitución es clara en su artículo 109. La ley es obligatoria desde el día siguiente de su publicación en el diario oficial", aseveró Cateriano en Twitter.

 

ANTICORRUPCION, PERSECUCION, JUDICIALIZACION POLITICA

RPP

El juez Manuel Céspedes, quien admitió un recurso de hábeas corpus de Eva Fernenbug, suegra de Alejandro Toledo, fue parte de Perú Posible durante seis años, según el JNE.

Por este motivo, la Oficina Desconcentrada de Control de la Magistratura (Odecma) le abrió investigación preliminar.

LIBERTAD ECONOMICA, GLOBALIZACION, REFORMAS, INVERSION

El Comercio

Petro-Perú y Refinería La Pampilla de Repsol anunciaron que el precio de gasolinas y gasoholes se redujo en S/0,43 por galón, mientras el GLP vehicular bajó S/0,03 por litro. 

El Organismo Peruano de Consumidores y Usuarios (Opecu) instó a los grifos a reflejar estas bajas en sus precios al público.

La Asociación de Grifos y Estaciones de Servicio del Perú (Agesp) afirmó que esta reducción se hará efectiva cuando se acaben los stocks de combustible, lo cual puede ocurrir el mismo día o unos días después.

Gestión

El BCR reportó hoy que la recaudación tributaria cayó 7.7% el 2015.

Gestión

El MEF sostuvo hoy que la economía peruana crecerá entre un 3.5% y 4% este año.

Desde Davos, el ministro de economía, Alonso Segura, afirmó que el Perú, el tercer productor mundial de cobre, espera que la producción del metal crezca  66% en el 2016, después de que Las Bambas inicie operaciones.

Peru21

Este miércoles se inició el Foro Económico Mundial (WEF por sus siglas en inglés) en Davos, Suiza. El tema principal es la crisis de las economías emergentes.

En los últimos 18 meses, cerca de un billón de dólares en flujos de inversión se retiraron de las economías emergentes.

A esto se debe sumar que EE.UU. se encuentra revisando su política monetaria y el dólar se fortalece, la economía china se ha desacelerado y los precios del cobre y el petróleo se han desplomado.

Peru21

En el Foro Económico Mundial (WEF, por sus siglas en inglés) de Davos se realizó este jueves el conversatorio ¿Hacia dónde va la economía china?, el panel estuvo conformado por Jiang Jianqing (presidente del Banco Industrial y Comercial de China), Francine Lacqua (presentadora de Bloomberg), Ray Dalio (presidente de Brigdewater Asociados), Zhang Xin (fundadora y presidente de SOHOChina), Christine Lagarde (Fondo Monetario Internacional)J, Fang Xinghai (vicepresidente de la Comisión Reguladora de Valores de China) y Gary D. Cohn (Grupo Goldman Sachs).

Respecto a la moneda china, Lagarde indicó que a los mercados no les gusta la inseguridad, no saber en qué dirección va a cotizar el renminbi (yuan).

Por su parte el representante de la Comisión de Valores de China, Fang Xinghai, dijo que el gobierno chino se ha comprometido a un nuevo enfoque en el que se gestionaría el yuan de acuerdo a su desempeño respecto a todas las monedas de la cesta del FMI, en lugar de sólo compararse con al dólar estadounidense.

Brookings Institution

The dollar´s international role: an exorbitant privilege?

Ben Bernanke

This post is the third of three based on my Mundell-Fleming lecture, which discussed the international effects of Fed policy (see here for a video of the lecture and here for a paper that expands on the lecture’s themes). In the two previous posts (see hereand here), I addressed a pair of criticisms of recent U.S. monetary policy: (1) that the U.S. had engaged in “currency wars” by depreciating the dollar for competitive advantage in trade; and (2) that shifts in U.S. monetary policy have had spillover effects on financial stability in other countries, especially emerging markets.

These debates raise yet another question: Why is the Fed the principal subject of such critiques, even though other major central banks have also engaged in aggressive monetary policies? A common answer is that the dominant role of the U.S. dollar in international trade and finance—about 60 percent of international reserves are held in dollar-denominated assets, for example—makes Fed actions particularly consequential. That in turn, it is sometimes argued, confers a special responsibility on U.S. policymakers to take the international implications of their actions into account.

Why is the dollar the most often-used global currency? Does the dollar’s international role unfairly advantage the United States, to the detriment of other countries? Does the dollar’s role magnify the effects of Fed actions on other countries, and if so, how? I’ll touch on these questions in this post. I’ll argue that the benefits of the dollar’s status to the United States have been much reduced in recent decades, and that a principal channel of the Fed’s international influence works through dollarized credit markets.

The dollar’s international role has evolved since World War II. During the early postwar period, under a 1944 agreement negotiated by the U.S. and its allies at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, other currencies were pegged to the dollar while the dollar was (loosely) pegged to gold (see here for a discussion of how the Bretton Woods framework related to other international monetary systems). The goal was to replace the gold standard, which had collapsed during the Depression, with something more flexible. In practice, however, the system afforded the greatest flexibility to the United States, which enjoyed substantial freedom to pursue its domestic policy objectives as well as the ability to run sustained balance-of-payments deficits. The latter, according to French finance minister Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, gave the United States an “exorbitant privilege.” The Bretton Woods system ultimately broke down in part because the U.S., as the “anchor” country, didn’t live up to its obligation to maintain price stability. Since the early 1970’s the international monetary system has been effectively decentralized, with each country setting its own exchange-rate framework and with the values of the major currencies being determined by markets (“floating” rather than fixed exchanged rates).

Bretton Woods was enforced by central banks and other policymakers. In the current decentralized regime, decisions about which currencies to use in trade and finance (other than in official reserve holdings) are made largely by market participants. Why has the dollar retained pre-eminence despite this major shift? The most important reason is certainly inertia. People are accustomed to using the dollar in international transactions, and the willingness of others to take dollars increases their usefulness (economists call this a “network externality”). But in recent decades the dollar has also proved its worth as an international medium of exchange. Among the benefits it provides users are:

1.    Stability of value. Since the mid-1980s, the Fed has done a good job keeping inflation low and stable.

2.    Liquidity. U.S. financial markets, especially the U.S. Treasury market, are the deepest and most liquid in the world. In part this is the result of network externalities (people like to trade in the Treasury market because other people trade in it) but there are structural reasons as well. For example, the Treasury market is large and homogeneous, while the market for government bonds traded in euros (a leading potential competitor to the dollar) is fragmented by country of issuance.

3.    Safety. Despite Congressional shenanigans surrounding the debt limit, there is a large supply of dollar assets considered to be very safe, including Treasury securities. More generally, the dollar is a “safe haven” currency, which tends to appreciate during periods of stress—a fact that makes holding dollar assets attractive in normal times as well.

4.    Lender of last resort. The Fed served as a backstop provider of dollars during the financial crisis by instituting currency swaps with fourteen central banks, including four in emerging markets. Under the currency swaps, foreign central banks could obtain dollars which in turn they lent to banks in their jurisdictions which needed to transact in dollars.

On the other side of the ledger, what benefits does the United States derive from issuing the currency that is most used internationally? Some of the benefits are symbolic, a sort of “good housekeeping seal of approval” for U.S. markets, institutions, and policies. (Actually, the benefits of having an international currency are arguably mostly symbolic; for example, China’s efforts to internationalize the renminbi seem driven in large part by a quest for international recognition.) The tangible benefits to the U.S. of issuing the world’s principal reserve currency—the “exorbitant privilege”—have, I think, been significantly eroded by the greater actual or potential competition from other currencies, such as the euro and the yen, and by America’s shrinking share of the global economy. In particular, the interest rates that the U.S. pays on safe assets, such as government debt, are generally no lower (and are currently higher) than those paid by other creditworthy industrial countries. The point is illustrated by Figure 1, which shows real interest rates paid on the government debt of five countries, as calculated from inflation-indexed bonds.

What else? A great deal of U.S. currency is held abroad, which amounts to an interest-free loan to the United States. However, the interest savings are probably on the order of $20 billion a year, a small fraction of a percent of U.S. GDP, and that “seigniorage,” as it is called, would probably still exist even if the dollar lost ground to other currencies in more-formal less informal international transactions. U.S. firms may face slightly less exchange-rate risk in international transactions, but that benefit should not be overstated since the dollar floats against the currencies of most of our largest trading partners. The safe haven aspect of the dollar is actually a negative for U.S. firms, since it implies that they become less competitive (the dollar is stronger) at precisely the times that global economic conditions are most difficult.

Overall, the fact that English is the common language of international business and politics is of considerably more benefit to the United States than is the global role of the dollar. The exorbitant privilege is not so exorbitant any more.

What about the question of how the dollar’s special role affects the transmission of Fed policy abroad? Put another way, what international effects does a monetary policy action by the Fed have that wouldn’t also follow from a similar action by, say, the European Central Bank or the Bank of Japan? Probably the most important differential channel of effect for Fed actions arises from the fact that many borrowers in the emerging world, both banks and corporations, borrow heavily in dollar-denominated terms, even when dealing with non-US lenders. Borrowing in dollars allows emerging-market banks and firms access to larger and more liquid global credit markets while protecting lenders from unexpected fluctuations in local-currency exchange rates. That so much debt is dollarized certainly makes Fed policy more powerful internationally than it would otherwise be.

We need to be careful here though. Despite the fact that much international borrowing is denominated in dollars, it doesn’t follow that the Fed is the “world’s central bank.” Consider an emerging-market firm whose revenues and costs are mostly in the local currency. Even if that firm routinely borrows in a dollarized credit market, the interest rate relevant to the firm’s investment and hiring decisions is the cost of borrowing as measured in terms of the local currency, not the dollar interest rate. So, if the Fed lowers the dollar interest rate, the firm’s relevant cost of borrowing may not fall, or may not fall by as much, as the dollar rate—it depends on what the firm expects about the exchange rate between the dollar and the local currency. If the dollar is expected to appreciate, for example, then “cheaper” dollar borrowing is not necessarily cheaper from the perspective of to the emerging-market firm, because paying back the loan will be more expensive in local-currency terms. In short, Fed easing (that is, lowering the dollar interest rate) does not mean necessarily that borrowers around the world also face easier conditions. Their effective cost of borrowing depends instead on multiple factors, including borrowers’ expectations and the policy responses of foreign central banks.

I suspect that, in practice, Fed policy affects emerging-market borrowers less through theexpected cost of borrowing and more through the realized cost, that is, the cost of repaying existing loans. Many (probably most) dollar loans to foreign borrowers are not hedged against risk of changes in currency values. If the Fed tightens, say, and the dollar appreciates sharply and unexpectedly, then what initially appeared to be cheap dollar loans can become very costly after the fact, because they must be repaid in expensive dollars (see here for more). Higher real debt burdens stress the balance sheets of emerging-market borrowers, which may lead them to reduce lending, investing, and hiring. For this reason, the Fed’s tightening may be felt as a tightening in foreign economies as well. Obviously, this effect would not be as strong if less foreign borrowing was denominated in dollars, or if dollar borrowing were better hedged against exchange-rate risks.

With the Fed now beginning to raise interest rates, the risks implied by a stronger dollar for emerging-market borrowers should be carefully monitored. The good news is that the dollar has appreciated considerably in the last eighteen months or so and no major financial problems have apparently resulted. That’s no reason to be complacent, however. If emerging-market banks and corporations come under financial pressure, that could slow emerging-market economies and hurt investments in those countries. More generally, the risks to financial stability of unhedged borrowing provide a basis for emerging-market governments to monitor and possibly constrain access to dollarized credit markets in the future. The most natural place to do this is in the banking system, where regulators should check to make sure that lenders are not over-exposed to the risk of dollar appreciation.