– Dr. Gerard Lyons is chief economist and group head of global research at Standard Chartered Bank. The views expressed are his own. –

From three films to three natural events

Last year at the IMF, I spoke about the global outlook in the context of three films. The first was ‘No Country for Old Men’, as the catchphrase of that film – “You can’t stop what’s coming” – described the imminent global recession. The second was ‘Apollo 13’, in which the head of mission control, Gene Krantz, is told, “This is NASA’s worst moment”. He replies that if the three astronauts are brought back to earth safely, it will be NASA’s best moment – and is proven right. Likewise, if the problems facing the financial sector were addressed properly and it emerged from the crisis in good shape, this would be an Apollo 13 moment for the financial industry.

The third film was ‘Singing in the Rain’, which aptly described the optimistic outlook for emerging markets at the time. But as I pointed out, while Gene Kelly did sing in the rain, he was completely soaked. And so it proved for emerging economies in the wake of last year’s crisis. While the outlook for many emerging regions looks good, they are not immune to setbacks in the West.

This year – given the general consensus, the risk of further shocks, and the fact that many countries have already used their policy tools to the full – I used three analogies related to natural events, things beyond our control: a flash of lightning, a tidal wave, and a volcanic eruption.

The U.S. recovery may be a flash of lightning

We are past the worst, and a recovery is here, but it is vital to focus on absolute levels. The world economy is just under $61 trillion in size; the U.S. economy is $14.3 trillion. If the West is not booming, emerging economies cannot boom. They can grow, but this requires self-sustained, domestically-driven demand. Although the next six months could be strong for the world economy as policy easing and inventory rebuilding feed through, beyond that, there are challenges.

Deleveraging still needs to feed through. Will this be a U-, a V-, or a W-shaped recovery? For the U.S., the recovery will more likely be a brief flash of lightning before the economy slips again. After strong near-term growth, the recovery may fade just as quickly. Firms in the West are more likely to seek out investment opportunities in the East. Thus, the West may experience a jobless recovery, prolonging the adjustment phase. International firms are more likely to invest in fast-growing markets in the East, probably adding to protectionist pressures in the West – and improving the chances of a U-shaped recovery in the East.

A tidal wave of controls

Regulatory overkill threatens the structure of the economic and financial system. This crisis was triggered by a systemic failure in the financial system, a failure to heed early warning signs, and an imbalanced global economy. Correcting global imbalances is key. The solution is easy to say, but hard to achieve: the West must spend less, the East must spend more. It will take considerable time, and there are many obstacles in the way – particularly the risk of a tidal wave of controls and regulations as political agendas drive the process. Excessive regulation and the unintended consequences of such regulation are a key concern.

Emerging economies need deeper and broader capital markets, as well as social safety nets, to allow firms and people to reduce savings and spend more, aiding economic rebalancing. Yet in many countries, the desire to open the financial sector is not there. If this does not occur, inflows are likely to find homes in equities and real estate, fueling fears of asset bubbles and increasing pressure to erect capital controls to stem hot money inflows.

A volcanic eruption underneath the dollar

Fault lines beneath monetary policies have been there for some time, and this crisis has exposed them. In the West, the issue is pursuing appropriate exit strategies from loose monetary and fiscal policy and government involvement in the financial sector. Yet exit strategies are every bit as much a concern across emerging economies.

Can export-oriented economies afford to tighten policy before the U.S. does? If they do hike rates, they risk attracting hot money. If they don’t, they risk fueling domestic asset prices, keeping policy rates lower than they should be. The choice is tough. The likes of South Korea, Indonesia, and India may hike rates early in 2010, but in China – where policy stimulus has played a key role – leaders’ worries over exports and jobs may take precedence over central bank concerns about asset-price inflation.

Economies in many regions, particularly Asia, face such policy challenges. Many, fearful of a future crisis, are keen to build currency reserves. That in itself is a concern. There is a potential volcanic eruption threatening to take place underneath the dollar. Even though reserves may rise, there is a desire to diversify away from the dollar. Yet, what are the alternatives? China is undermining the dollar through the back door, questioning it as a store of value or as a medium of exchange. It is engaging in currency swap arrangements and trying to boost trading of the CNY offshore. The general feeling in Istanbul is that there are no alternatives to the dollar. That may be right, but if there is one thing this crisis has taught us, it is not to ignore the fundamentals.

– Agnes T. Crane is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are her own –

It looks bad for the dollar, but looks can be deceiving.

Its sharp decline in the last week has pushed the euro to its highest level in a year and reignited fears that there’s only one place for the dollar to go, and that’s down.

Rhetoric from influential investors like Warren Buffett as well as big foreign buyers of U.S. debt like China and Russia has fed that sense of doom.

Then there’s the yen-like role of the dollar as the funding currency, which is casting a pall over the buck since the longer the Fed keeps a lid on interest rates, the longer the pressure stays on the currency.

Yet the dollar is still the No. 1 currency stashed in reserves around the world, by a long shot. International Monetary Fund data showed the dollar accounting for 65 percent of total allocated reserves in the first quarter.

That means there’s only so far you can push the currency before the self-interest of the world’s savers kicks in to support the buck.

First a little perspective. The dollar’s decline this year mirrors the rise in risky assets like U.S. junk-rated corporate debt that have returned to valuations seen before Lehman Brother’s implosion. Just as credit markets shut down and money poured into safe-haven U.S. Treasuries, the dollar soared as currency investors viewed it as a place to hunker down until the storm passes.

It may still be cloudy, but investors have been confident enough to venture back into riskier territory like emerging markets, which are booming.

That’s meant less money for U.S. assets. Recent data from the U.S. Treasury confirmed as much when it showed net foreign capital outflows of $97.5 billion in July, up from the exit of $56.8 billion in the previous month.

The Fed’s zero-bound interest rate policy has also turned the dollar into a funding currency, where investors borrow in the low yielding dollar and invest in nations that offer juicier returns.

“The dollar is selling off because we have low interest rates. That’s a macro fact,” said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.

Yet, unlike the Japanese yen, which also served as a funding currency earlier this decade, the dollar, or rather dollar-denominated assets, continues to be sought after by nations with big reserves like China and Japan.

Brown Bothers Harriman notes that China snapped up $21.5 billion of such assets in July while Japan added $19.25 billion. Russia and Brazil, which are also sitting on stockpiles of reserves, trimmed their holdings by a relatively small amount.

This is significant. Earlier this year, China and Russia spooked currency markets when they began talking about the need for an alternative to the dollar for the world’s currency reserves.

Such an alternative would help savers like China better protect the value of their assets should the dollar fall out of favor, as it is now. Yet it could take years if not decades to implement.

That means the dollar is still the only game in town, rightly or wrongly, which should provide some comfort to those fearing the worst — a dollar in freefall without a net.

- John Kemp is a Reuters columnist. The views expressed are his own. -

Reports that China has asked for a discussion about reserve currencies at next week's expanded Group of Eight summit in Italy has added to confusion about whether the country wants to dethrone the dollar from its status as the world's sole reserve currency. But the very fact the issue has been pushed onto the agenda suggests that a fundamental shift is underway.

Given the U.S. government's enormous borrowing requirements over the next decade to cover the bank bailout, fiscal stimulus and deficits in Social Security and Medicare, the dollar's reserve status depends on emerging markets' continued willingness to accumulate U.S. liabilities rather than switching to other stores of value, such as the euro or the IMF's Special Drawing Right (SDR).

As the largest buyer of U.S. Treasury securities, China can break the dollar's reserve currency status any time it wants. But it would risk large losses on the stock of U.S. debt that it has bought already. The resulting unstable stability is the foreign exchange version of the Cold War stalemate based on "mutually assured destruction".

Senior Chinese officials have given off mixed signals about their intentions.

When pressed, officials have indicated China will continue to stand by the dollar in the short term and denied the country has begun to diversify its official holdings. But that has not stopped People's Bank of China (PBOC) Governor Zhou Xiaochuan floating the idea of shifting to a super-sovereign currency based around the SDR.

Zhou's call for diversification was repeated last week in the central bank's annual stability report, which noted that "an international monetary system dominated by a single sovereign currency has intensified the concentration of risk and spread of the crisis". It went on to urge the IMF to exercise closer supervision of the economic and financial policies of major reserve-issuing countries.

Chinese officials have bluntly expressed concern about U.S. fiscal and monetary policies that appear to contemplate inflation and devaluation as a way out of the debt crisis, or at least accept it with weary resignation.

China has started backing a variety of small projects designed to encourage greater "internationalisation" of its currency (such as an active RMB market in Hong Kong and bilateral discussions with Latin American countries on the use of RMB to settle trade transactions).

The question is whether China is preparing to deliver the "coup de grace".

Pressing for a reserve currency discussion at the expanded G8 summit (which will also be attended by India, Brazil, Mexico, South Africa and Egypt) suggests China's leaders are serious. They must have known that just pushing the issue onto the agenda would rekindle market fears about the dollar's value.

But it could also be an attempt to create leverage and seize the initiative as part of wider efforts to shape the international financial agenda.

In the past, G8 summits have been structured as a monologue from the advanced industrial economies to the developing world. But following the debt crisis, the leading emerging markets are in no mood to be lectured.

By putting the dollar into play, China's government may hope to pre-empt pressure from western countries for a revaluation of the RMB, and take exchange rate discussions off the table entirely.
It is also a sign China is ready to begin flexing its financial muscle and will have to be treated as an equal alongside the United States, EU and Japan, shaping as much as responding to the policy debate.

The dollar's reserve status has become highly conditional, one of a number of items to be bargained over as part of the international financial agenda. Past experience suggests that when reserve currencies become highly contingent in this way, it marks the beginning of the end.

The dollar will not lose its reserve status completely. But it is set to become less "special". In future it will have to share its reserve status with the euro, the yen and perhaps even in time the yuan.

Jaspal Bindra is Chief Executive, Asia, for Standard Chartered Bank. The views expressed are his own.

Asia has come of age. When leaders from the Group of 20 nations converge in London, Asia’s rising powers - China, India,  Korea and Indonesia - will be sitting at the global high table to decide on ways to reshape the world’s financial and economic order.

There are expectations that the meeting will include concrete steps to revive economic growth, a boost in funding for the International Monetary Fund, and an understanding on the new financial architecture to restore trust in the financial system.

Asian policy makers are looking for two other critical assurances from the meeting: one, that the developed countries will keep their markets open; and two, that global capital flows needed to finance trade and investment will remain unchecked.

No one doubts the difficulty of reaching consensus. But the stakes have never been higher.

Amidst the frenetic attempts by individual governments to tackle the biggest economic crisis since the Great Depression, it is easy to forget that the progressive dismantling of barriers against international trade and investment contributed to the biggest economic boom the world has seen.

More than 200 million jobs were created worldwide between 2000 and 2007, according to the Institute of International Finance, and millions of people in the developing world were lifted out of poverty, as a result of free flow of capital, goods and services.

Yet, as the crisis continues, governments and businesses in Asia are increasingly worried that the world’s biggest and most developed economies will explicitly or implicitly legislate to encourage manufacturers to keep production onshore and, banks and insurance companies to keep money within their borders.

Any such protectionism comes at a dark time. Although Asia remains fundamentally robust, thanks to high private savings, conservative balance sheets of companies and financial institutions and mammoth foreign reserves, the ongoing financial turmoil has caused consumers and lenders in developed countries to tighten their purse strings.

Steps to ensure that trade and capital keep flowing ought to be at the top of the agenda for the G20 leaders.

A good start

Getting developing nations to the table with the Group of Seven developed countries is a good start. The G20 was born as a response to the Asian financial crisis of the late 1990s and, although a G20 group of finance ministers and central bank governors has been meeting since 1999, it is in this financial crisis that its role has taken center stage.

The G20, whose member countries account for over 80 per cent of the world’s output and two-thirds of the world’s population, is a forum which truly represents the global economy. But will it produce real benefits for Asia?

At this summit, the emerging Asian powerhouses are expected to assert more leverage due to the relative strength of their position. Though weakened, the economies of China, India and Indonesia are still expected to show reasonable GDP growth this year of 6.8 per cent, 5 per cent and 4 per cent respectively, according to Standard Chartered economists’ forecasts.

The emerging powers have already notched up some gains. The G20 finance ministers, meeting in London in March, agreed to expand the Financial Stability Forum - a body which will set new standards for global financial institutions — to include developing country members. These countries will also join global forums that will set new international accounting and risk regulatory frameworks.

Greater participation of the rising powers in such key decision-making bodies should help resolve potential conflicts and go a long way in helping to rebalance the world economic order.

Ironically, it is the financial upheaval in the West which has brought the systemic importance of the emerging markets to the forefront. It is now clear that the imbalances between the high saving nations in the East and overspending economies of the West led to the asset bubbles in the United States and Europe.

To correct the imbalances, the big savers, particularly in Asia, will have to find ways to spend more to boost domestic economies. Higher local consumption will help the economies reduce their dependence on exports. Domestic spending will also help ameliorate the slowdown in investments from the West.

China has made a decisive move on this front, with its stimulus plan to spend almost $600 billion, largely in infrastructure projects. It has also pulled out all stops to make foreign direct investments easier for domestic companies.

New trade routes

Asian economies will also need to trade more between themselves and with the Middle East and Africa. That is already happening in some trade corridors. Trade between China and Africa has expanded 20-fold in just over a decade. For some countries in the region, China has replaced the U.S. and Europe as the biggest export market. This process is likely to accelerate as western consumers cut back on spending and increase savings.

Asian members of G20 are also looking to the international financial institutions such as the IMF and the World Bank to revive investments into the region’s developing economies. But the IMF is cash-strapped after bailing out several East European economies. It is hardly in any position to rescue another medium-sized economy in Asia, Africa or Latin America should the need arise.

The meeting of G20 finance ministers made some headway on this issue. The ministers agreed to substantially expand the IMF’s resources, possibly increasing the Fund’s emergency borrowing program by $500 billion, so that the institution can once again play its role as a lender of last resort in times of international crisis.

The Asian Development Bank also plans to triple its capital base to $165 billion, enabling it serve the poorest and most vulnerable sections of population in the region.

Emerging Asian powerhouses such as China and Korea, apart from the established members like Japan, are now expected to provide a significant part of the funding required to recapitalize these global financial institutions.

However, greater monetary contribution from the rising powers would have to be accompanied by giving them a greater say in the running of these institutions. For instance, today, Korea has more than twice the economic output of Belgium, but Belgium’s representation in the IMF is 50 per cent greater than Korea’s. This is where the developed countries will have to give up some more ground.

G20 leaders must accelerate the process of revising the quota allotted to IMF member countries so that the emerging markets can get voting rights in the Fund which reflect their financial weight.

Progress has been made since the G20 leaders first met in Washington in November with the aim to restore normalcy to the global economy and markets. But risks remain.

It was the progressively free movement of capital, goods, people and services across borders that fueled the economic rise of the emerging markets and raised affluence in the developed world. The risk is that this could unravel if the current financial turmoil leads to heightened protectionism, curbed capital flows and fragmentation of the global economy. The G20 has the duty to ensure this does not happen.

- Johannes Linn is a Senior Fellow and the Executive Director of the Wolfensohn Center for Development at the Brookings Institution. The views expressed are his own. —

One of the tasks for the G20 Summit in London is the reform of the IMF and the World Bank, key global institutions to help address the current crisis and to prevent the occurrence of future crises. Reform of the IMF is more urgent both in the short and medium term while reform of the World Bank, although equally important, is less pressing.

The G20 faces a few immediate priorities related to the IMF:  First, G20 leaders should agree to triple IMF resources from the current level of $250 billion to $750 billion to help meet the financing needs of developing countries. This is critical because the World Bank has estimated that these countries may face a shortfall of up to $700 billion in 2009 alone.  Second, G20 leaders should request that the IMF monitor and report transparently on the commitments and implementation of G20 national stimulus plans and efforts to repair their banking sectors. Third, G20 leaders should commit to a far-reaching reform of the IMF by 2010.

While this third step may seem like a lesser priority for leaders as they face a global recession, reform of the IMF must be accomplished in order to restore the legitimacy and effectiveness of the institution.  Reform would introduce the merit-based selection of the head of the IMF, irrespective of nationality, eliminate the veto of the U.S. in key decisions and would broaden the application of double-majority voting as a way to increase the role of smaller members. It would also substantially revise the rule of quota and vote distribution to reflect accurately and fairly the current and future economic weight of the members.

Reform would also transform the current IMF’s Board of Directors from a bureaucratic body to a high-level policy decision-making forum of ministers.  Many of these measures were proposed by a committee chaired by Trevor Manuel, Minister of Finance of South Africa, which comprised a distinguished cast of international experts. The G20 should endorse those recommendations in full.

Together, these three steps serve as a critical foundational action to ensure that the IMF can stand ready to fight the immediate crisis, as well as help prevent future crises from forming.

The impact of the financial crisis on developing countries underscores the need for the World Bank and the regional development banks to do even more—and immediately—to help prevent the worst effects of the crisis from seriously reversing long-term gains in economic and human development.

Shareholders of these development banks must replenish the capital base (especially urgent in the case of the Asian Development Bank) and make a commitment to replenish the resources for the banks’ soft-loan windows. And the World Bank and the regional development banks must make an even greater push to overcome traditional bureaucratic and policy barriers to ensure quick and efficient crisis response.

Longer term, the reform of the World Bank should tackle the merit-based selection of the World Bank president—without regard to nationality; a revamping of shareholdings and voting rights in the executive boards of the institution to give a greater voice to emerging market economies and to borrowers more generally; and an overhaul of the Bank’s operational modalities so it can react with less bureaucratic and time-consuming burdens to the legitimate needs of its borrowers.

These reforms of both the IMF and World Bank will require a readiness by the U.S. and Europeans to forgo long-standing prerogatives and strongly held positions, but action will help ensure early recovery from the current global financial crisis and the future capabilities of these institutions, which are needed to foster global financial stability and reduce global poverty.

– James Saft is a Reuters columnist. The opinions expressed are his own –

The dollar is, and will remain, the U.S.’s currency and its own and everyone else’s problem.

The idea of creating a global currency, as espoused by China earlier this week, is interesting, has a certain amount of merit and is simply not going to happen any time soon.

U.S. desire for free access to the cookie jar that being the world’s reserve currency represents will be too strong, especially given its need to finance huge amounts of debt reasonably cheaply. As well practicalities are fearsome, even if consensus was more or less there.

Chinese central bank head Zhou Xiaochuan on Monday called for the creation of a new “super-sovereign” global reserve currency, advocating building on an International Monetary Fund instrument called Special Drawing Rights.

Zhou echoed a call by Russia last week, when it indicated it would raise the issue at the upcoming Group of 20 meeting in London on April 2, saying the idea had support from emerging market economies including Brazil, India, South Korea and South Africa.

There is no doubt that the current system breeds instability, but it enjoys the great advantage of entrenchment and sticking with it allows the U.S., and others, to avoid making hard choices and paying true market prices for their economic decisions.

No surprise then that President Obama knocked the idea down in blunt terms. “I don’t believe that there’s a need for a global currency,” Obama said, terming the dollar “extraordinarily strong right now.”

Exactly. Too strong by some margin, especially when one considers the coming effects of both quantitative easing and a massive long-term need to fund the costs of the debt binge that exploded and the ever increasing bailout to clean up the aftermath.

In fact you could say the dollar’s “extraordinary” strength can only be fully explained when you take into account the fact that foreign central banks keep piling up huge reserves of the thing and that it is the international medium of exchange for commodities and energy, well really for global trade and financial intermediation.

Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Wednesday the U.S. dollar is still the world’s reserve currency and will remain so for a long time, but expressed openness to greater use of IMF SDRs.

The dollar’s central role has two main implications, both rather ugly but also very seductive for those involved.

For the U.S. it’s a bit of a free ride as far as debt financing goes. People buy and hold treasuries more and the U.S. gets cheaper financing that would otherwise be the case. Of course that’s a bit like an alcoholic bartender getting a discount at work; a real benefit, but not a true one.

It also means that even if the U.S. has the will to take away the proverbial punchbowl or drive the dollar down, it doesn’t always have control, as what it does at the short end of the interest rate curve can be confounded by foreign purchases that keep the long end and financing costs down and the dollar up.

SOVEREIGN OVER US ALL?

The U.S. reserve status also opens up the opportunity for mercantilist countries, like, say China, to keep its own currency cheap, building up huge dollar stocks and force-feeding the American milch cow with cheap credit with which to buy imported goods.

That may not work any more anyway, as all of the cow’s stomachs are full and the milk’s gone thin.
There is a temptation also to build up reserves as protection against bad times and bitter IMF medicine.

Many Asian leaders seem to have vowed after 1997 that they would do what was needed, which often included building up dollar reserves, to avoid having to meet an IMF director’s plane at the airport and accept the accompanying prescription.

That rather indicates that the old system, with the U.S. as global reserve currency, is dying, but I doubt it will do so without a fight and with cooperation among nations willing to cede part of their sovereignty, even for a greater good.

It is amazing and encouraging that China speaks of ceding control of a portion of its foreign reserve assets to IMF management, but I have a hard time seeing it happening widely soon.

So, we will have to get through the next year or two without a super-sovereign currency and with global imbalances being worked out, or around, under the current system.

My best guess is that things actually go in the right direction, more or less. The dollar should weaken as a result of U.S. policy even without a deliberate push downhill from the Chinese. Asian exporting nations will see slowing reserve growth generally, which should translate into diminished flows into the dollar and Treasuries.

That’s going to be painful all around. The Chinese and others will see their investments dwindle, even as they have to resist the impulse to sell into the fall. For the U.S. the process of implementing monetary policy and paying for fiscal policy will be made that much more difficult.

So, goodbye and perhaps good riddance to dollar hegemony, but don’t expect a stable system of global cooperation to rise easily and quickly in its place.

– At the time of publication James Saft did not own any direct investments in securities mentioned in this article. He may be an owner indirectly as an investor in a fund –

– Stephany Griffith-Jones is executive director of the Initiative for Policy Dialogue at Columbia University. The views expressed are her own. –

There are many important challenges facing G20 leaders when they meet in London in early April.

The first is to coordinate sufficiently large fiscal and other measures to ensure that world aggregate demand recovers, and a major recession is avoided.

It is also crucial that concrete measures are taken that will allow developing countries, especially those that may become foreign-exchange constrained, to sustain growth. This will not only be key for avoiding a large slowdown in growth and increase in poverty in those countries, but also to guarantee important demand for developed country exports. It is estimated that around 200 million people could be pushed into poverty, mainly in developing countries, if rapid action is not taken to soften the impact of the crisis on those countries.

QUICKLY REFORM THE IMF’s COMPENSATORY FINANCING

The calls for significantly expanding the resources of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) by several G20 leaders are welcome. One effective way of doing this would be through a counter-cyclical expansion of official liquidity, by a one-off, large issue of IMF Special Drawing Rights (SDRs). This would compensate for the large contraction of private liquidity, which has resulted in a sharp fall in private capital flows to developing countries. Once the situation normalizes, the SDRs could be reabsorbed by the IMF. The major objection to SDR issues in the past has been the threat of inflation. It has no validity at present. The dominant threat is of deflation and recession.

A complementary or alternative measure is for the IMF to modify its facilities so it can lend rapidly, at sufficient scale, and without overburdening borrowers with the heavy conditionalities of the past, especially when the sources of crises are exogenous.

Thus, there should be a major and quick reform of IMF compensatory financing .This has become urgent, given recent very sharp falls in commodity prices, with highly negative effects, especially on low income countries. Existing facilities for those countries are clearly insufficient, especially as regards the scale of their lending. It is therefore urgent to scale up these facilities.

The recent creation of a new IMF Short-Term Lending Facility (SLF) for countries with good policies facing short-term liquidity constraints is welcome. As yet, no country has used it. It may need modifying to extend its very short maturity and to make it accessible to a larger group of countries.

It is also important that aid to low-income countries is increased. Furthermore, multilateral and regional development banks need to rapidly and greatly expand their lending.

CORRECT THE REGULATORY DEFICIT OF GLOBAL FINANCE

The magnitude of the current crisis is clearly associated with inadequate regulation of banks and financial markets.

The new regulatory governance should be based on a well-functioning network of national authorities and include truly international regulation of global financial institutions . A global financial regulator needs to be created, building on institutions like the Bank for International Settlements.

This new institutional structure should have real power to influence decisions of national regulators, especially in the largest countries, including industrial countries. Secondly, it should take macro-prudential concerns clearly into account. Finally, it should consider the potential costs of financial instability on the real economy.

The current deep crisis and numerous previous ones that hit developing countries seem to demonstrate that crises are inevitable in deregulated financial systems. There is, therefore, ever-growing consensus that more complete and more effective financial regulation is required.

There are two broad principles on which future financial regulation needs to be built. The first is counter-cyclicality, in order to correct the main market failure of banking and financial markets — their boom-bust nature. The key idea is that provisions and/or capital required should increase as risks are incurred, that is, when loans are disbursed. In this way, provisions and capital requirements should increase during periods of rapid credit growth and decrease when lending expands at slower rates. This would strengthen banks in boom times and discourage them then from excessive lending. It would also make it easier for them to continue lending in difficult times. It is encouraging that the Basle banking Committee has recognized this principle in broad terms.

The second key principle for modern, effective regulation should be comprehensiveness. Economic theory tells us that for regulation to be effective, the domain of the regulator has to be the same as the domain of the market to be regulated. There is need for comprehensive and equivalent transparency, as well as regulation of all financial activities, instruments, and actors. Both minimum liquidity and solvency requirements need to be regulated.

Ensuring enough demand globally and in developing countries is crucial to avoid a large recession in the near future. Appropriate regulation of the financial sector is key to avoid future costly crises. Both tasks are difficult, but essential.

–Paul Taylor is a Reuters columnist, the views expressed are his own–

Anyone who expected the major emerging economies to write fat checks in exchange for being invited to the first G20 leaders’ summit on rescuing the world economy will have been disappointed.

But that should only have surprised the naive.

Despite intensive lobbying by British Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Saudi Arabia and China, the rising powers were never likely to make a cash down-payment to the International Monetary Fund before getting more seats and votes at the top table.

IMF Managing Director Dominique Strauss-Kahn said after Saturday’s Washington summit that his organization will need at least another $100 billion in the next six months to bail out countries stricken by the credit crisis.

Among the world’s major reserve holders, only Japan, an established member of the Group of Seven most industrialized nations, offered the IMF a $100 billion unilateral loan.

The Saudis, Chinese, Russians and Indians want to be sure of winning a permanent say as equal partners in the management of the global economy, and of locking incoming U.S. President Barack Obama into a new world financial order, before they open their wallets.

Even then, they face serious constraints due to domestic development priorities, nationalist public opinion and uncertain energy prices that will limit any contribution.

Here is some of their thinking:

SAUDI ARABIA - Saudi Finance Minister Ibrahim al-Assaf was most outspoken in explaining, in a Reuters interview, why the oil-rich kingdom was not about to pick up the bill for the financial crisis.

“We (Saudis) have been playing our role responsibly and we will continue to play our role responsibly but we are not going to finance the institutions just because we have large reserves. These reserves are for the development of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia,” he said.

Economists say Riyadh has taken a bigger hit from the crisis than it has publicly acknowledged. Its ambitious industrialization plans, as well as its largesse to domestic interest groups, may require a higher oil price than today’s.

Oil has tumbled from a record $147 a barrel in July to just $55 today, which is likely to prompt deeper production cuts. So producer nations face a double revenue hit on price and volume.

At this price, Saudi Arabia and all other Gulf Cooperation Council states except Kuwait can expect to post a fiscal deficit next year, according to economist Mushtaq Khan of Citigroup Global Markets.

Politically, it would be hard to justify helping bail out the widely hated West at a time when Saudi investors have seen their stock market plunge and their foreign investments tank.

The Saudi government may also wait to see whether Obama takes up a King Abdullah’s Arab League peace initiative with Israel and gives priority to Israeli-Palestinian and Israeli- Syrian peace, in contrast to outgoing President George W. Bush.

CHINA - Chinese President Hu Jintao made clear Beijing’s main contribution to stabilizing the world economy was a massive domestic investment program that should help cushion growth at a time when exports may shrink due to recession in the West.

The $586 billion two-year economic stimulus, much of it to be spent on modernizing the creaking infrastructure of the world’s most populous nation, was a bold move by the cautious standards of China’s collective leadership.

The Chinese, sitting on almost $2 trillion in foreign currency reserves, are waiting to see if Obama will share real power with emerging nations. They also want guarantees against protectionism by a Democratic administration and Congress.

“The question is whether developed countries are ready to accept China as a major player. If you want China to take out money when the crisis happens, but give China little power when voting, nobody is going to play with you,” a senior official in the country’s $200 billion wealth fund said.
Jin Liqun, supervisory board chairman of China Investment Corp. and a former vice finance minister, said industrialized powers “should address developing countries with humility”.

Although China is not a Western-style democracy, public opinion still matters.

Most media commentary has resolutely opposed any “bailout” of the West by succumbing to pressure to buy more U.S. Treasury bonds, Standard Chartered China analyst Stephen Green notes. But he said China could transfer some of its dollar reserves from U.S. Treasuries to IMF Special Drawing Rights, especially if it is given more voting rights in the IMF.

RUSSIA - Russian leaders have been dismissive of the IMF as a tool of U.S. dominance of the global economy. Although it still has $500 billion in reserves, Moscow is fast burning through its foreign currency pile as it tries to stabilize its own markets and bail out oligarchs in financial trouble.

A lower oil price also threatens future Russian state revenues and investment plans.
President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin think in terms of power rather than economics.

Any Russian cash for the IMF would probably have to be part of a wider bargain with Obama covering missile defense, NATO enlargement, nuclear and conventional arms control, non-proliferation and perhaps Georgia and Kosovo as well.

The Russians don’t rule out such a deal but intend to talk with Obama from a position of strength. That is why they have blown hot and cold in the last two weeks, threatening to deploy missiles in Kaliningrad, on Poland’s border, but also voicing hopes of better ties with the new U.S. president.

INDIA - India, which still sees itself as a developing nation and has less IMF voting power than Belgium, is waiting to see whether Obama accepts a new distribution of world economic and political power before making commitments.

Finance Minister Palaniappan Chidambaram told a World Economic Forum event that the G20 had come to stay as the single most important forum to address global financial and economic issues, and much better than the G7.

But he said: “It is not clear to us whether the new (Obama) administration is fully on board with what the outgoing administration has put on the table.”

India too will be looking for guarantees against U.S. protectionism while demanding the right to protect its own millions of subsistence farmers.

All these countries say they are willing to become “responsible stakeholders” in a new world financial system. Just don’t expect them to pay up before they see the reality of power.