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The book includes selected papers of Morris Goldstein on the
following topics in international macroeconomics: international
trade, currency regimes, exchange rate policy, international policy
coordination, banking, financial crises, financial regulation, IMF
policies, and China's exchange rate policy. Some of the papers are
empirical in nature, while others address key policy issues in
international macroeconomics. Many of the papers are co-authored
with other well-known international economists, including Jacob
Frenkel, Mohsin Khan, Nicholas Lardy, Peter Montiel, Michael Mussa,
Carmen Reinhart, and Philip Turner, among others. Taken as a group,
the papers should give the reader a good picture of many of the
most important issues in international macroeconomics over the past
35 years.
Spurred by the success of the first stress test of US banks toward
the end of the global economic crisis in 2009, stress testing of
large financial institutions has become the cornerstone of banking
supervision worldwide. The aim of the tests is to determine which
banks are adequately capitalized under severe economic shocks and
to order corrective measures for those that are vulnerable. In
Banking's Final Exam, one of the world's leading experts on banking
regulation concludes that the tests administered on both sides of
the Atlantic suffer from fundamental weaknesses, leading to a false
sense of reassurance about the safety and soundness of the banking
system. Some weaknesses can be corrected within the existing
bank-capital regime, but others will require bold reforms-including
higher minimum capital requirements for the largest and most
systemically-important banks. The banking industry is likely to
resist these reforms, but this book explains why their objections
do not hold water.
This report contains the findings and recommendations of an
independent blue-ribbon commission on the future international
financial architecture. The commission was sponsored by the Council
on Foreign Relations, and co-chaired by Peter G. Peterson and Carla
A. Hills, with the Institute for International Economics' Morris
Goldstein serving as project director. The membership is listed
below. The report analyzes the main factors that give rise to
banking, currency, and debt crises, and it proposes a set of
interrelated recommendations for improving crisis prevention and
resolution. It also explains why the United States, despite its
impressive overall economic performance since the outbreak of the
Asian crisis, has a large stake in the future international
financial architecture. The commission's recommendations aim at
altering the behavior of emerging-market borrowers and their
private creditors in ways that would reduce vulnerabilities in the
exchange rate systems of emerging economies; inducing private
creditors to accept their fair share of the costs of crisis
resolution; reforming the IMF's lending policies; and refocusing
the mandates of the IMF and the World Bank on leaner agendas. Its
recommendations range well beyond the decisions taken to date by
the international financial community. A series of dissenting
opinions by individual members is included. Other members of the
commission were Paul Allaire, C. Fred Bergsten, Kenneth Dam, George
David, Jorge Dominguez, Kenneth Duberstein, Barry Eichengreen,
Martin Feldstein, Maurice Greenberg, Lee Hamilton, John Heimann,
Peter Kenen, Paul Krugman, Nicholas Lardy, David Lipton, Ray
Marshall, Norman Ornstein, William Rhodes, Stephen Roach, Henry
Schacht, James Schlesinger, George Soros, Laura Tyson, Ezra Vogel,
Paul Volcker, and Vin Weber.
The turmoil that rocked Asian foreign exchange and equity markets
after the middle of 1997 and that spread far afield is the third
major currency crisis of the 1990s. Thailand, Indonesia, and South
Korea suffered outright recessions in 1998 and forecast growth
rates in the rest of emerging Asia are either negative or well
below their pre-crisis level. In an effort to contain the crisis,
almost $120 billion has been pledged in IMF-led official rescue
packages. How could this happen to a group of countries that has
been so highly regarded in the 1990s by private international
capital markets? How could the crisis be overcome and what changes
are necessary to prevent it from happening again? Morris Goldstein
provides the answers to these questions by first explaining how the
Asian financial crisis arose and spread. He traces the crisis
through its three interrelated origins: financial-sector
weaknesses; external-sector problems; and the contagion that spread
from Thailand to other countries. Goldstein then outlines what
needs to be done in the ASEAN-4 economies, in Japan and China, and
in the design of IMF-led official rescue packages to end the
crisis. Goldstein's final remarks offer specific proposals for
improving the international financial architecture.
This study presents the case for an international banking standard
(IBS) to deal with the rash of banking crises in developing
countries. Over the past 15 years, almost three-fourths of the
IMF's member countries have experienced at least one serious bout
of banking problems; there have been at least a dozen developing
country episodes where the costs of these crises amounted to 10
percent or more of the country's GDP; and the total public sector
resolution costs of developing-country banking crises have been
estimated to be $250 billion. Not only are these banking crises
extremely costly to developing countries, they also pose increased
risk to industrial countries. Morris Goldstein demonstrates that
existing international agreements do not address the main sources
of these crises, and the adoption of a voluntary IBS offers a more
attractive route to banking reform than the relevant alternatives.
The study recommends minimum standards in eight key areas of
banking supervision and addresses the operational issues associated
with the design and implementation of an IBS.
In this analysis Morris Goldstein examines currency regime choices
for emerging economies that are heavily involved with private
capital markets. The author argues that the best regime choice for
such economies would be managed floating plus, where "plus" is
shorthand for a framework that includes inflation targeting and
aggressive measures to discourage currency mismatching. Goldstein
argues that if managed floating were enhanced in this way, it would
retain the desirable features of a flexible rate regime while
addressing the nominal anchor and balance-sheet problems that have
historically underpinned a "fear of floating" and handicapped the
performance of managed floating in emerging economies. The author
also shows why managed floating plus is superior to four
alternative currency-regime options-an adjustable peg system, a
"BBC (basket, band, crawl) regime," a currency board, and
dollarization.
Ever since the European currency crises of 1992-93, the Mexican
crisis of 1994-95, and especially the Asian/global crisis of
1997-98, there has been heightened interest in early warning
signals of financial crises. This pathbreaking study presents a
comprehensive battery of empirical tests on the performance of
alternative early warning indicators for emerging-market economies
that should prove useful in the construction of a more effective
global warning system.
Not only are the authors able to draw conclusions about which
specific indicators have sent the most reliable early warning
signals of currency and banking crises in emerging economies, they
also test the out-of-sample performance of the model during the
Asian crisis and find that it does a good job of identifying the
most vulnerable economies. In addition, they show how the early
warning system can be used to construct a "composite" crisis
indicator to weigh the importance of alternative channels of
cross-country "contagion" of crises and to generate information on
the recovery path from crises.
This timely study comes on the eve of impending changes at the
International Monetary Fund as that institution reexamines how it
reacts to financial crises. Moreover, the study provides" ...a
wealth of valuable elements for anyone investigating and
forecasting adverse developments in emerging markets as well as
industrial countries, " according to Ewoud Schuitemaker, Vice
President of the Economics Department at ABN AMRO Bank, which is
developing a Macroeconomic Risk System of its own to identify risks
of macroeconomic downturn on a country basis for some 75
countries.
Over the past five years China has emerged as the world's largest
global surplus economy; indeed by 2007-08 the size of its surplus
relative to its GDP was of a magnitude unprecedented for a large
trading economy. This development is especially surprising since in
the first twenty-five years of economic reform China's trade and
current account surpluses were quite small by East Asian standards,
averaging less than 2 percent of GDP.This study provides a
comprehensive analysis of the key economic challenges facing the
Chinese authorities in light of the still undervalued exchange
rate, the large build-up of foreign exchange reserves, and more
recently the sharp decline in economic growth. It analyzes the
implications of China's exchange-rate policy for the effectiveness
of monetary policy, the transition to a commercially oriented
banking system, the evolving structure of output and demand, and
the risk of protectionism abroad. The policy-options portion of the
study takes account of the significant real effective appreciation
of the renminbi over the past fifteen months and will contrast the
pros and cons of a "stay-the-course" policy with that of a bolder,
"three-stage" approach that would seek to maintain recent progress
and to reduce even further the undervaluation of the renminbi.
More than two and a half years have passed since China announced a
number of changes to its foreign exchange regime in July 2005.
During this period, the debate on the pros and cons of China's
exchange rate policy, which had begun in earnest several years
earlier, intensified. This important new book, based on an
Institute conference in October 2007, takes stock of exchange rate
policy in China and identifies the major policy options going
forward.Specific proposals presented in the volume address how best
to eliminate any misalignment of the renminbi; how best to reduce
pressures emanating from the sterilization of large reserve
accumulation; how best to make capital flows the ally-not the
enemy-of exchange rate policy; and what institutional arrangements
and policy guidelines to put in place to reap the greatest benefits
from management of China's large foreign exchange reserves. Leading
experts-including three from China-have contributed to the volume.
The keynote address by Wu Xiaoling, deputy governor to the People's
Bank of China at the time of the conference, is also presented in
the book.
In most of the currency crises of the 1990s, the largest output
falls have occurred in those emerging economies with large currency
mismatches, a phenomenon that occurs when assets and liabilities
are denominated in different currencies such that net worth is
sensitive to changes in the exchange rate. Currency mismatching
makes crisis management much more difficult since it constrains the
willingness of the monetary authority to reduce interest rates in a
recession (for fear of initiating a large fall in the currency that
would bring with it large-scale insolvencies). The mismatching also
produces a "fear of floating" on the part of emerging economies,
sometimes inducing them to make currency-regime choices that are
not in their own long-term interest. Morris Goldstein and Philip
Turner summarize what is known about the origins of currency
mismatching in emerging economies, discuss how best to define and
measure currency mismatching, and review policy options for
reducing the size of the problem.
Global currency markets have remained unsettled. The dollar hit
record lows against both the yen and the mark in 1995. The Mexican
crisis led to a free fall of the peso. Renewed tensions in the
European Monetary System required devaluations in Spain and
Portugal. It is thus fortuitous that the world's major countries,
starting with the G-7 summit in Italy in June 1994, have agreed to
reexamine the world monetary system and the role of its chief
institutional custodian the International Monetary Fund. Yet there
is little agreement on what should be done. Sweeping change in the
form of explicit, binding exchange rate targets for the United
States, Japan, and Europe does not seem to be in the cards. More
limited reforms might gain more acceptance. But what should be the
nature of those reforms? Would they be worth the effort? This study
sets out a modest agenda for managing the exchange rate system,
improving the system's early warning capabilities, and
strengthening the IMF s oversight responsibilities. It could help
improve functioning of the world economy and global financial
stability.
THUS RELIGION GROWS To ISRAEL BROTHER AND COLLEAGUE How does
religion come to be what it is Let us follow the story of one
particular religion, Judaism, whose span of activity reaches from
remote antiquity to the present day and we shall see. PREFACE A
PATTERN in gold is boldly woven into the history of the Jew. It
gives quality and character to the record of the Jew it is his
distinctiveness, his glory, his raison detre. This pat tern in gold
is the religion of the Jew. Is it not amazing, then, to discover
that there has not yet appeared in English a continuous account, in
a single volume, of the growth of the Jewish religion from its very
origin to the present day There are, to be sure, histories of
Jewish literature, of Jewish music, of Jewish philanthropy, of the
Jewish people and in all these histories religion necessarily
occupies the most important position but there is still lack ing a
history of the religion itself, of the process of religious growth,
such as is reflected in the literature and demonstrated in the life
of the people. Perhaps the closest approach to this objective is to
be found in George Foot Moores History of Religions, but there,
unfortunately, the necessity of describing several religions
confines the treatment of Judaism to but an outline. Abra ham
Geigers scholarly Judaism and Its History, written in 1864
originally in German, is a series of individual lectures which
conclude with the close of the Middle Ages. True, particular
periods or phases of Judaism the Religion of An cient Israel, for
example, or Hellenistic Judaism or Rabbinic Judaism or Reform
Judaism have been admirably dealt with in separate studies. The
need is urgent, however, historically tosurvey the entire course of
Judaism and thus to present a unified picture of the gradual
unfolding and shaping of the Jewish religion. It is unfair to judge
Judaism by any one phase of its develop ment. Religion is dynamic.
It grows, along with mans growth. One historic religion differs
from a second historic religion because of its different history,
and although both vii viii THUS RELIGION GROWS may seek similar
values and both may arrive at similar truths yet each bears the
stamp, the momentum and the inspiring appeal, of its own history,
and the subtle shades of meaning resultant therefrom. In What We
Jews Believe p. 32, Samuel S. Cohon has suggested an apt analogy.
Suppose we were asked to dis tinguish the Hudson from the
Mississippi. Would it be enough to point to the water which both of
them contain Or would it suffice to subject a quantity of water
from each river to a chemical analysis for the discovery of their
con stituent properties The chemist would find hydrogen and oxygen
in both, and he would probably find some other elements besides.
The water of one river may appear mud dier than the water of
another river, and consequently less pleasant to taste. Whatever
the results of the test this pro cedure will hardly convey to us
any idea whatsoever of either the Hudson or the Mississippi. To
gain a proper picture of either river, we have to learn something
about its sources, about the length, width, and depth of its
current, about the countries which it traverses and about the
various uses to which it is put. It is the experience of several
years pioneer work in Eng landin organizing into a Jewish
congregation many who, because they could find no adequate modern
expression oftheir religion, had become estranged from their
heritage, and many who challenged entirely the validity of religion
which has impressed me with the urgent need for a clear and unin
volved narration of how religion grows, of how the religion of the
Jew has evolved. To unfold the story of Judaism, in the light of
cause and effect, is a colossal venture. Yet, a start must be made,
rather sooner than later...
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