Ten billion dollars per day. A staggering figure, but what could it possibly be? The amount of money spent between the TARP, TALF and other alphabet soup of bailout programs? No. The amount needed to spend the proposed stimulus package? No. The amount of asset value lost everyday in the stock market in 2008? No. The amount of money being printed daily at the U.S. Treasury?
Still cold, so I’ll tell you. In 2009, the U.S. will post a current account deficit of more the $1 trillion, and in order to finance this deficit, more than ten billion dollars every working day must flow into this country.
Like every castle in the sand, like any house built of straw – or, in terms of Elliott wave analysis, like any third-wave advance – such a capital structure is not sustainable. "Stimulus package" or not, the U.S. cannot attract enough foreign capital to sustain a $1 trillion trade deficit, a $1 trillion current account deficit, net foreign debt of $15 trillion and unfunded federal mandates of $54 trillion.
According to the CIA's World Factbook, the U.S. right now is at the very bottom of the Current Account Balance list, below Haiti and Cuba. And it's no coincidence that the three countries at the top of the list – China, Germany and Japan – have made significant structural reforms to their economies to an export-based model.
In contrast, the consumption-based model of the United States has placed us at the bottom. To put it simply, we consume more than we produce, and we literally ship billions out in national wealth every year for non-durable goods.
Germany faced a similar situation a decade ago, but it undertook difficult and politically painful economic and labor reforms and transformed theirs into an export-based model. On the other hand, France, Italy, Spain and Iceland took the path more traveled and borrowed their way to prosperity while money was cheap and easy. Well, the money is no longer easy, they are buried in debt and asset deflation – and Germany alone stands as the major European representative on the plus side.
The global economy is in recession (depression?), and the net exporters have found that their addiction to U.S. consumption has left a hole that needs to be filled by domestic demand. Make no mistake, China, Indonesia, Germany and others will undertake additional reforms to boost domestic demand to lessen their dependence on U.S. consumers. They are embarking on targeted stimulus packages and economic reforms to bolster both industrial and financial infrastructures – while we…what? What are we doing?
Some would blame these trade and account imbalances on "undervalued" and "unfairly pegged" currency exchange rates – as if the U.S. got into this hole by some misapplication of the Bretton Woods II process. If we can just get the International Monetary Fund, or World Trade Organization, to impose unilateral sanctions against China to revalue the Yuan! Good luck. While we hand-wring over "Buy American" clauses in our stimulus package, will we see any U.S.-made cement poured in China’s new roads, or U.S. steel in Europe’s new railways? Of course not.
We are not even proposing the needed shifts in U.S. trade policies, technological R&D, or any meaningful changes to our indebtedness. Short of this, at some point the U.S. dollar will decline as demand for dollar-denominated debt wanes. If we do not undertake meaningful shifts in our economic policies, then – eventually – your dollar might be worth pennies.
Bill Fox is EWI's Senior Bonds Analyst. He has been involved in the markets since graduating in 1988 from Vanderbilt University. He joined EWI in 1994; most of his subscribers are professional bond traders spread around the globe.