{"id":440476,"date":"2010-03-17T19:45:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-17T23:45:00","guid":{"rendered":"e2249889-c78b-43e3-9643-b1d7d4aa587b:409234"},"modified":"2010-03-17T19:45:00","modified_gmt":"2010-03-17T23:45:00","slug":"chermany-doesnt-always-know-best","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/440476","title":{"rendered":"Chermany doesn’t always know best"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something of a fad among intellectuals for inventing imaginary countries. Niall Ferguson, the Harvard historian, likes to talk of Chimerica — the combination of the U.S. and Chinese economies that he sees dominating the global economy. Jairam Ramesh, an Indian politician, counters with Chindia, a term he\u2019s invented to describe the combined might of Asia\u2019s two biggest countries.<\/p>\n

Now Martin Wolf of the Financial Times<\/a> strikes with Chermany, \u201ca composite of the world\u2019s biggest net exporters.\u201d China and Germany are forecast to have a combined current account surplus of nearly half a trillion dollars this year.  <\/p>\n

While the two countries are hugely different, they do share some features. Most notably, when they\u2019re not busily exporting manufactured goods, they like to lecture the rest of the world on how it needs to rein in government deficits and runaway private spending.<\/p>\n

As Wolf points out, this position is incoherent. The only thing that allows Chermany to maintain its massive trade surplus is the willingness of other countries to run trade deficits. Those deficits require either the governments or the private sectors of the deficit countries to go deeper into hock.<\/p>\n

Does Chermany even understand what it is suggesting? \u201cIf I understand China\u2019s declared position correctly,\u201d says Wolf, \u201cit wants the U.S. to deflate itself into competitiveness\u2026via fiscal and monetary contraction and, presumably, falling domestic prices. That would be dreadful for the U.S. But it would be dreadful for China and the rest of the world, too.\u201d<\/p>\n

Freelance business journalist Ian McGugan blogs for the Financial Post.
 <\/i><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s something of a fad among intellectuals for inventing imaginary countries. Niall Ferguson, the Harvard historian, likes to talk of Chimerica — the combination of the U.S. and Chinese economies that he sees dominating the global economy. Jairam Ramesh, an Indian politician, counters with Chindia, a term he\u2019s invented to describe the combined might of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4062,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-440476","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440476","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4062"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=440476"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/440476\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=440476"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=440476"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=440476"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}