Krugman y ls Subvaluación de la Moneda China

En un post de hace un par de semanas, Krugman argumenta sobre el por qué considera que la moneda china esta subvaluada e insiste en que debería obligarse a los chinos a tomar medidas al respecto.. En ese post ofrece tres formas de ver este tema, pero el primero es un enfoque macro, que me parece interesante y el cual reproduzco aquí ya que (independientemente de si tiene o no razón) este es un tema que estoy discutiendo actualmente con mis alumnos del CIDE y del TEC y deberían estar en condiciones de leerlo y entenderlo sin problema....
.
1. Macroeconomics of intervention

Let me start with a proposition: the right way to think about China’s exchange rate is, initially, not to think about the exchange rate. Instead, you should focus on China’s currency intervention, in which the government buys foreign assets and sells domestic assets, on a massive scale.

Although people don’t always think of it this way, what the Chinese government is doing here is engaging in massive capital export – artificially creating a huge deficit in China’s capital account. It’s able to do this in part because capital controls inhibit offsetting private capital inflows; but the key point is that China has a de facto policy of forcing capital flows out of the country.

Now, bear in mind the two basic balance of payments accounting identities:

Capital account + Current account = 0

Current account = Domestic savings – Domestic investment

By creating an artificial capital account deficit, China is, as a matter of arithmetic necessity, creating an artificial current account surplus. And by doing that, it is exporting savings to the rest of the world.

In normal times, you could argue that this policy provides benefits to the rest of the world, by reducing borrowing costs (although given what we did with those capital inflows, maybe not). But these aren’t normal times. We’re currently living in a world in which both central banks and governments are unable or unwilling to pursue sufficiently expansionary policies to eliminate mass unemployment; so it’s a paradox of thrift world, in which anyone who tries to save more reduces demand, reduces employment, and – because investment responds to excess capacity – ends up actually reducing investment. By exporting savings to the rest of the world, via an artificial current account surplus, China is making all of us poorer.

Notice that I didn’t mention the value of the renminbi at all in this account. It’s there implicitly: a weak renminbi is the mechanism through which China’s capital-export policy gets translated into physical exports of goods. But you want to keep your eye on the ball: it’s the artificial capital exports that are the driving force here.

What this means, in particular, is that you can disregard people who offer calculations suggesting that by some criterion – say, Balassa-Samuelson adjusted purchasing power parity – the renminbi isn’t undervalued. We know that the renminbi is grossly undervalued, not through questionable estimates that can be endlessly debated, but on a PPE (proof of the pudding is in the eating) basis: the current value of the renminbi is consistent with massive artificial capital export, and that’s that.
.
Por cierto, en este otro post más reciente, Krugman entra en un debate con Stiglitz sobre este mismo punto, ya que este último no comparte el punto de vista de Krguman y sugiere, en cambio, no presionar a los chinos. Vale la pena también ver este post. Este es un amplio debate en la actualidad ya que se considera casi urgente que economías como los Estados Unidos puedan aumentar sus exportaciones para corregir sus desequilibrios y permitir una mayor recuperación, pero si China mantiene el valor de su moneda manipulado (subvaluado), esto se convierte en un obstáculo.