Today, Saturday February 19, 2011, I participated the seminar of "Current Currency Situation" organized by the Royal Thai Embassy's Office of Educational Affairs, Tokyo, Japan.
The speaker was Mr.Kittipong Apibalsri, Minister-Counsellor (Economic and Financial), the Royal Thai Embassy, Tokyo.
The following is my summarize from the seminar.
What is money?
It is the medium to exchange the thing. The ratio is around 70% In Thailand, BOT backs up at 100%. The is only one country that can produce money without any backup is USA ( in god we trust) How can we calculate the value of cross currency? 1.1. Country's status, government's budget (balance:income=outcome) 1.2. Country's status in term of consumer and seller (demand & demand) (We can predict both of the previous factors.) 2. Value of money not in the status of the medium. Someone makes benefit from money exchanging. Benefit comes from margin.
There are 2 case studies about this issue, 1992 England, and 1997 Asian countries.
England joined the EU commitment to fix with Deutsche Mark ( On that day, the economy reduced, investors sold short (borrow currency, and return with interest when currency is cheaper) At that time, government tried to increase the interest rate, until England announced to defense their currency. Black Wednesday (the day the Bank of England was broken), two times of increasing their currency value. And England escaped from Euro. George Soros, the man who broke the bank of England, said it's not good to defense since the investor pays the currency by loan from, we cannot do leverage since it's not the exact money amount. In Asia, the bubble property made people want to invest in Asian. It's from the fixed rate policy. All of this type of investment is easy to escape from the race, so it's not good to do like that. it's the investment that connotation produce the income.
And 10 years later, There was a repeating situation, 2007, it's a domino, Subprime Crisis. USA was criticized a lot about it. At that time, the value of US house was too flexible. American people likes to make Mortgage Loan on the real-estate properties. They sold the loan stock from other bank, and also sold the loan stock of the group of loan stocks. It means the amount of properties increases without any real property. This is the subprime crisis since everyone realized that there is nothing, so everyone tried to sell as fast as possible. Then US made a subprime market, Credit Insurance Guarantee. Loan stock is B grade, but if they let the credit commercial bank guarantee your loan stock, so the credit will depends on the credit level of the commercial bank. So someone think about making the group of the guaranteed property and be a new property, so there was a case of branesterm. Case of Lehman Brothers, at the time Lehman Brothers was filling for bankruptcy, each bank had to announce how much the portion of Lehman they had. It did not effect much to Thailand. Next crisis, Greece debt crisis. The government hired the company to modify the country's account. Greece entered Greece at 110 million EURO. EU is going to be the guarantee of country-level customer. For the current situation, all countries have not much different situation of economy. Even China, people is still concern in case that it's possible that government will establish a new monetary policy. QE2 (Quantitative Easing) policy of US Federal made dollar became weak. Investors moved from USA to Asia. NOTE: Because the size of US market is very large, so for example, if they moved 100% to Asia, it means a lot to invest only 2%.
Each country has different method to prevent the flow of that investment.- Singapore controls the rate of interest. - Philippines controls the derivative of banks. - Brazil controls by collect the VAT of incoming currency, consider the money as product. First country to use this economy's theory.Situation of Japanese Yen Japan have 240 appreciation of Yen. Budget of government, 52% from loan, 48% from tax. And a lot is to ODA loan for developing countries, and pension payment. Last year Japan intervened the currency to warn the investor who wants to earn the margin of currency trading. Nowadays, Japan has a lot of public debt. so in the future when USA can recover, it's possible that Japan's Yen rate will going back to around 100 Yen/1 USD. The problem for the investor is even though you trade until you get the benefit, but when you return back to the original currency, the exchange rate may be decreases. For Asia now the problem may occur if we cannot manage it,the investor will escape out of Asia and at that time the currency will be swing. Government said that we can make a currency stable by increasing the saving inside the country. Like in Japan 95% is domestic debt. Japanese saves money at bank, and the banks buy gov bond.. That's why Yen is not swinging. It's the pro from the saving habit of Japanese people. The currency problem can be protected. But the problem occurred because of the way government control the money. For Japan, IMF recommended that Japan should increase Consumption tax to be 20%, but it's impossible since the politician cannot show the advertisement to increase consumption tax. It seems high but comparing to the developed countries, Japan Tax system is si liar to the developing countries. Prof. Eisuke Sakakibara, Waseda university, named Mr.Yen, said that the situation of Japan's economy is not good, but better than other countries.
