Dollar hegemony and Australian debt

Dollar hegemony and Australian Debt.
The linkage between dollar hegemony, capital inflows and rising debt and leverage in the Australian economy is worthy of examination. As an observer, I noticed a subtle change in the zeitgeist in the early seventies, big inflows of dollars coincided with the dismantling of australian tariffs.

All this will be clear in retrospect one day when we see the past with the clarity of a new economic order.

"Probably the best period of economic performance in Australia’s history was the post war period from 1945 to 1965 even though it includes the credit crunch Bernie talked about a moment ago. Across that whole period, that 20 to 25 year period, the ratio of debt to GDP was stable at about 25% of GDP. Now, at that stage, debt was doing what debt should, and that’s providing working capital to corporations, investment funds for those who don’t have enough retained earnings to do it and a small amount of money for people to buy houses who wanted to own their own houses rather than renting. That’s the legitimate function of the financial system.

In Australia’s case, in mid-1964, the ratio of debt to GDP started to accelerate, and from that stage on, debt was grown 4.2% faster than GDP on average for the next 45 years. Now, that’s unsustainable. I know that, again having some conversations with Reserve Bank staff, their attitude was, and this in print from the current Governor in a hearing before the House of Representatives committee about 3 or 4 years ago, that there’s an inverse relationship between debt servicing and interest rates. So, when interest rates fall, debt will rise. And when interest rate rise, debt will fall.

That’s not at all what happened, unfortunately. A good look at the data shows simply an exponential take off of debt to GDP, independent of what interest rates were doing. If you simply look at the ratio of debt to GDP, and do a regression on that, using an exponential function, you’ll find a correlation between a simple exponential growth of that ratio and the actual data of .9912.

Now, I know most people don’t know what I’m talking about, but I’m saying 99% of the increase in the debt ratio can be explained by simply saying debt grows 4.2% faster than GDP. Now, that is an impossible situation to maintain indefinitely because ultimately your debt is going to be a hundred times your GDP and of course you can’t service that amount no matter what interest rates are. It’s going to have to change direction.

It’s changing direction now. In Australia’s case the level of debt to GDP, is almost 3 times what we had prior to the Great Depression. And there I come to a strong criticism of how our Reserve Banks have behaved. Because they have ignored the actual dynamics of the capitalist economy, because they haven’t understood them, they followed the wrong theories. I might actually add, without knowing that there are alternative theories. Because they’ve done that, they’ve ignored the actual problem as it’s run away from us."

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/2009/04/13/talk-to-the-fabian-forum-the-global-financial-crisis-how-bad-will-it-get/