INT’L RATE SPREADS &THE DOLLAR

Here are some charts to demonstrate what I was talking about. the recent drop in US bond yields has not been accompanied by a similar drop in European rates.
Consequently the spread between US and foreign bonds has narrowed and it no longer compensates foreigners for the currency risk they take when investing in the US.
The consequences are a weak dollar. Note the opposite happened when Reagan first
created structural deficits and the dollar had to weaken enough to create a large enough
trade deficit to facilitate the capital inflow. At that point we had crowding out but it worked through the dollar to crowd out the manufacturing sector rather then the interest sensitive sectors.

It is also working against the Euro as you see the it strengthen when rates spreads widen.

When the US made itself dependent on foreign capital inflows the world got a lot more complex and it was no longer possible to analysis monetary or fiscal policy as if the US were a closed economy. I worry that we are now starting to see the bear case that I have worried about for years when international capital flows prevent the Fed from easing when domestic considerations call for it. I’m not making a forecast, I’m just laying out factors that make the analysis much more complex and that need to be brought into the analysis.

Maybe it is what we need to revive the manufacturing sector, and will be what drives the economy over the next decade. Save-the-rustbelt would love this. But, it creates inflation and real income complications for the rest of us.

I probably is what will happen since Don Boudreaux at the Cafe Hayek blog just got one of his letters to the FT published where he praised the trade deficit. I just base my analysis on the thesis that he is usually wrong.

I realize these charts are simple and the real world is more complex involving covered interest rate difference, etc, but they are adequate to make the point.