Statement by Alan Greenspan, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, November 13, 1997 - Statements to the Congress - Transcript

Federal Reserve Bulletin, Jan, 1998

Statement by Alan Greenspan, Chairman, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, before the Committee on Banking and Financial Services, U.S. House of Representatives, November 13, 1997

Recent developments in world finance have highlighted growing interactions among national financial markets. The underlying technology-based structure of the international financial system has enabled us to improve materially the efficiency of the flows of capital and payment systems. That improvement, however, has also enhanced the ability of the financial system to transmit problems in one part of the globe to another quite rapidly. Doubtless, there is much to be learned from the recent experience in Asia that can be applied to better the workings of the international financial system and its support of international trade that has done so much to enhance living standards worldwide.

While each of the Asian economies differs in many important respects, the sources of their spectacular growth in recent years, in some cases decades, and the problems that have emerged are relevant to a greater or lesser extent to nearly all of them.

After the early post-World War II period, policies generally fostering low levels of inflation and openness of their economies coupled with high savings and investment rates contributed to a sustained period of rapid growth, in some cases starting in the 1960s and 1970s. By the 1980s most economies in the region were expanding vigorously. Foreign net capital inflows grew but until recent years were relatively modest. The World Bank estimates that net inflows of long-term debt, foreign direct investment, and equity purchases to the Asia Pacific region were only about $25 billion in 1990 but exploded to more than $110 billion by 1996.

A major impetus behind this rapid expansion was the global stock market boom of the 1990s. As that boom progressed, investors in many industrial countries found themselves more heavily concentrated in the recently higher valued securities of companies in the developed world, whose rates of return, in many instances, had fallen to levels perceived as uncompetitive with the earnings potential in emerging economies, especially in Asia. The resultant diversification induced a sharp increase in capital flows into those economies. To a large extent, they came from investors in the United States and Western Europe. A substantial amount came from Japan, as well, more because of a search for higher yields than because of rising stock prices and capital gains in that country. The rising yen through mid-1995 also encouraged a substantial increase in direct investment inflows from Japan. In retrospect, it is clear that more investment monies flowed into these economies than could be profitably employed at modest risk.

I suspect that it was inevitable in those conditions of low inflation, rapid growth, and ample liquidity that much investment moved into the real estate sector, with an emphasis by both the public and private sectors on conspicuous construction projects. This is an experience, of course, not unknown in the United States on occasion. These real estate assets, in turn, ended up as collateral for a significant proportion of the assets of domestic financial systems. In many instances, those financial systems were less than robust, beset with problems of lax lending standards, weak supervisory regimes, and inadequate capital.

Moreover, in most cases, the currencies of these economies were closely tied to the U.S. dollar, and the dollar's substantial recovery since mid-1995, especially relative to the yen, made their exports less competitive. In addition, in some cases, the glut of semiconductors in 1996 suppressed export growth, exerting further pressures on highly leveraged businesses.

However, overall GDP growth rates generally edged off only slightly, and imports, fostered by rising real exchange rates, continued to expand, contributing to what became unsustainable current account deficits in a number of these economies. Moreover, with exchange rates seeming to be solidly tied to the dollar, and with dollar and yen interest rates lower than domestic currency rates, a significant part of the enlarged capital inflows into these economies, in particular short-term flows, was denominated by the ultimate borrowers in foreign currencies. This put additional pressure on companies to earn foreign exchange through exports.

The pressures on fixed exchange rate regimes mounted as foreign investors slowed the pace of new capital inflows and domestic businesses sought increasingly to convert domestic currencies into foreign currencies, or, equivalently, slowed the conversion of export earnings into domestic currencies. The shifts in perceived future investment risks led to sharp declines in stock markets across Asia, often on top of earlier declines or lackluster performances.

To date, the direct impact of these developments on the American economy has been modest, but it can be expected not to be negligible. U.S. exports to Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia (the four countries initially affected) were about 4 percent of total U.S. exports in 1996. However, an additional 12 percent went to Hong Kong, Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan (economies that have been affected more recently). Thus, depending on the extent of the inevitable slowdown in growth in this area of the world, the growth of our exports will tend to be muted. Our direct foreign investment in, and foreign affiliate earnings reported from, the economies in this region as a whole have been a smaller share of the respective totals than their share of our exports. The share is, nonetheless, large enough to expect some drop-off in those earnings in the period ahead. In addition, there will be indirect effects on the U.S. real economy from countries such as Japan that compete even more extensively with the economies in the Asian region.