Otra visión de la reciente inflación mundial

Guillermo Calvo argumenta que la suba en los precios de los commodities no se debe a especulación, sino a los fundamentals de la economía. Contrario a la tesis de muchos economistas.

The thrust of this column is that we are not going through another self-fulfilling bubble. Today’s explosion of commodity prices is the result of a very real global financial storm associated with large excess liquidity in several non-G7 countries and nourished by low G7 central banks’ interest rates. This price explosion could be a leading indicator of future inflation driven by fundamentals.

[...] In short, my conjecture is that commodity prices are the result of portfolio shift against liquid assets by sovereign investors, sovereign wealth funds, partly triggered by lax monetary policy, especially in the US.6 Is this a harbinger of higher CPI inflation? If interest rates continue to be low, my answer would be a resounding yes. But there is probably room for an effective anti-inflationary battle. This will likely call for a sharp rise in interest rates and will enhance the risk of deepening recession, particularly if financial vulnerabilities have not been resolved. Thus, policymakers should seriously start worrying about inflation and stop chasing imaginary destabilising speculators.

UPDATE: Paul Krugman le contesta.

First, Calvo dismisses the argument that the absence of physical hoarding is evidence against a speculation/liquidity source of high commodity prices. “Suppose, for the sake of the argument, that the demand for commodities for current consumption or production is completely inelastic …” Well, that’s assuming your conclusion.

When I think about speculation, I always start from Paul Samuelson’s classic analysis in terms of intertemporal price equilibrium (a 1957 paper — and not available, as far as I can tell, online. Why isn’t Weltwirtschaftliches Archiv on JSTOR?). Speculation can affect spot prices because it takes physical stuff off the market. Argue, if you like, that the inventory data are unreliable, or that stuff is being held in the ground; but don’t tell me that physical quantities are irrelevant.

Second, Calvo argues that inflation risks stem mainly from excess liquidity. He’s in good company there, but I won’t join in that chorus. In general, I don’t trust hydraulic metaphors for monetary economics. And we are in a world where central banks target interest rates, not monetary aggregates; the risk of inflation, if there is one, would come from Bernanke and Trichet keeping rates too low too long, not on what’s happening to M2 or some broader M-something.

Es bueno ver que por lo menos entre economistas por lo menos existe el debate de ideas. Algunos quizás ni se puedan ver, pero el intercambio se realiza. Así termina:

On a happier note, it’s great to see top-flight economists weighing in on the crucial issues of the day. It’s kind of like the Asian financial crisis of 1997-1998, which was bad for the world but a sort of golden age for policy-relevant theory.