Jiang criticizes Soros by name.

Henry C.K. Liu hliu at mindspring.com
Fri Mar 5 07:31:57 PST 1999


The economic "fundamentals" all over Asia are down in the pits and will stay there until after the inevitable, yet incredibly resilient, deflationary boom on Wall Street. The reason is that the "fundamentals" of the Asian economies had been predicated on a trade/finance globalization regime that hit a killer reef in 1997. Wall Street is living on borrowed time from two sources: 1) from the repatriated flight capital from Asia, and 2) from borrowing future investment in the high tech sector. The funds from item 1 has been accustomed to high returns of 25% or more and extremely risk willing. These funds will accelerate the Wall Street bubble beyond any sustainable rate. The funds from item 2 will drain investment from future years starting after 2000. In the short term, US interest rates have no place to go except up and the yen and euro are going to fall against the dollar until Wall Street collapses. Yet, the DJIA went up by 200 points yesterday and as I am typing its up another 217 points just because new unemployment numbers went up from 4.3 to 4.4% and 30 bonds falls to 5.5%, stilll high against EU's 3% and Japan's 0%. Whenever the bust come, it would be wishful thinking to expect the collapse to bring about the end of capitalism.

The Heng Seng Index's fall since 1997 was directly related to the HK dollar's peg to the US dollar through a currency board arrangement. This monetary regime dictates that when the US dollar rises in value in trade terms, as it had done since July 1997, HK interest rates will rise which pushes down equity prices. Since HK markets are heavily tilted towards property and banking, both of which are hyper-sensitive to interest rates, the HSI falls with exaggeration when interest rate rises. Also, the small size of the HK markets, with the fixed peg, allows hedge funds to manipulate the linkage between interest rates rates/futures/equity prices, as happened in late August, 1998 when the HK Monetary Authority had to intervene by spending US$18 billion in one day to thaw a massive attack on the HK dollar by hedge funds.

Essentially, the hedge funds, including Soros' Quantum Funds, Robertson's Tiger Funds and Merriweather's LTCM, pre-accummulated with bank credit, large amount of HK$ at the same time shorting HK equity. Then they dumped their HK$ holdings, forcing interest rates to rise and equity prices to fall and make money from the shorts like drawing cash from an ATM machine.

For every 1000 point the hedge funds were able to push the HSI down, the funds profited US$1 billion. The HSI fell from around 10000 to 6000 in a few days, filling the pockets of hedge funds with over US$4 billions, until the HKMA intervened. Without HKMA intervention, the HSI may reach 3000, netting the funds $7 billion in one week. All the neo-liberals cried foul against HKMA intervention and accused HK of abandoning free markets.

HK has since restructured its regulations to make this type of manipulation difficult. But as long as the peg exists, the HK dollar will be subjected to further attacks through other means, taking home a few billion every 48 hours.

China is in a different situation. The Chinese financial/currency markets are not open. So it is not possible for speculative hedge funds to attack its currency. Whether the RMB will devalue is a policy matter for China, to balance its export competitiveness. With a massive trade surplus of US$45 billion in 1998, (by US Dept. of Commerce data, Chinese data showed only US$20 billion), Washington is pressuring Beijing not to devalue the RMB under threats of trade sanctions.

The Chinese economy is heading for problems which will be intensify as the Chinese economy move further towards market forces. It is the nature of the beast. The Chinese leadership is convinced from direct experience of the inevitable trade off between market efficiency and poverty, and they have opted for the market with all its faults. As you know, whether a socialist market economy is an oxymoron is a controversial issue. In some ways, it would be good news whether the Chinese experiment success or fail. If it succeeds, poverty will be eliminated to permit China to begin socialist construction. If it fails, China will revert back to socialist construction by default. In China, one has to have a long perspective.

Henry

Chris Burford wrote:


> At 19:49 04/03/99 -0500, you wrote:
> >The Hong Kong press reports that President Jiang Zemin of China
> >criticized George Soros by name for the first time during a reception
> >today for delgates from HK to the National Politcal Consultative
> >Conference. Jiang was reported as calling Soros a financial raider and
> >saying Soros would never be allowed to operate inside China.
> >A Soros owned US company holds a 21% interest in a regional airline
> >operating out of Shanghai that has been very profitable.
> >Jiang also reinterated that the RMB will not be devalued not be free
> >floating. The RMB is pegged at 8.2 to US$1.
> >
> >Henry C.K. Liu
>
> How do you interpret the "strength of the fundamentals", which is as
> analytical as the language of the bourgeois commentators gets? My
> understanding is that the Hang Seng has gone down this year on the
> assumption that there may be a devaluation of the renminbi.
>
> Various bits of news, some reported on this list, show increased risk for
> investors in China, with the likely assumption that inward flows of capital
> will fall off.
>
> Does Jiang's statement indicate that China has the advantage of size and
> many other levers to withstand pressure for devaluation and come out the
> other side in two or three years time?
>
> Presumably the naming of Soros may be a specific tactic to make clear that
> raiders will be punished, and could have wider international implications
> if other countries resisting laissez faire world finances start to develop
> some sort of code.
>
> Chris Burford
>
> London



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