Deflation? (E)

verfasst von Popeye, 14.09.2002, 15:44

-->Der nachstehende Artikel wägt die Argumente für die weitere Entwicklung der Weltwirtschaft:"Double Dip" oder Deflation.
Es wird argumentiert, dass das Wachstum, insbesondere der drei großen Volkswirtschaften (USA, Japan, BRD), nicht stark genug sein könnte, um die Unterauslastung der Kapazitäten schnell zu schließen.


The world economy

Dial D for deflation
Sep 12th 2002
From The Economist print edition



1%. A similar decline
to that experienced in
1990-91 would take it
into deflationary territory. Indeed, according to
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, corporate America is
already living with deflation. The implicit price
deflator of the non-financial business sector (services
as well as manufacturing) fell by 0.6% in the year to
the second quarter-the first fall since the second
world war (see chart).

The risk of deflation in the euro area as a whole
remains much slimmer; inflation is still over 2%. But
Germany's inflation rate is only 1% and it could well
drop over the next year, as weaker growth causes its
output gap to widen by more than elsewhere. Even if
the European Central Bank's (ECB's) monetary policy
is appropriate for the euro area as a whole, it is too
tight for Germany alone.

As a result, there is a risk that, before the end of
2003, the rich world's three biggest
economies-America's, Japan's and Germany's-could
all have negative inflation rates. A sharp jump in oil
prices as a result of America invading Iraq could, of
course, push up headline inflation. But the
longer-term impact of higher oil prices would be
deflationary, not inflationary. Higher oil prices
operate like a tax that depresses growth, so their
medium-term impact would be to heighten the
deflation risk.

DeAnne Julius, a former member of the Bank of
England's monetary policy committee, argued in a
recent speech that there is a one-in-three risk of a
significant deflationary period in the main economies
between now and 2005. But many of today's central
bankers, brought up to believe that their job is to
fight inflation, seem to be underplaying the risk.

Deflation is much more harmful than inflation. Falling
prices encourage consumers to postpone spending in
the expectation of cheaper goods tomorrow; they
also make it impossible to deliver negative real
interest rates if these are needed to drag an
economy out of recession. Most dangerous of all is a
cocktail of deflation and debt. Deflation pushes up
the real burden of debt, while the value of assets
linked to that debt, such as house prices, may have
to fall even more sharply in nominal terms to return
to a fair level. This has already caused severe
balance-sheet problems in Japan, and now America
and Germany may be at risk: in both countries debts
have surged to record levels.

Central bankers in America and Europe-but not in
Japan-still have room to cut interest rates. However,
the ECB held interest rates unchanged at 3.25% on
September 12th. So long as inflation remains above
the ECB's target of"less than 2%", the bank will be
in no rush to ease policy. The Fed is also widely
expected to keep rates steady at its policy meeting
on September 24th. Why wait, when the risks are so
lop-sided? Once deflation sets in, monetary policy
can do little to revive an economy. If economies perk
up and a rate cut turns out to have been
unnecessary, it can be reversed: with ample excess
capacity, the risk of inflation taking off is low.

Many central bankers do not seem to grasp that this
economic cycle is different from its predecessors. The
recession was caused not, as before, by inflation
taking off, but by the bursting of an asset-price
bubble. American economists blame Japan's deflation
on the incompetence of its policymakers. There is
some truth in this, but the awkward fact is that
post-bubble economies tend to be deflation-prone.

Even with interest rates at zero, Japan might have
escaped deflation two years ago, when the American
economy was strong, by devaluing the yen. But the
world economy cannot pull off that trick. That is why
central banks in America and Europe need to heed
the danger now."Deflation is like quicksand," says
Dylan Grice of Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein;"easy
to get stuck in, more difficult to escape."

Quelle: Economist 12.09.02

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