Greenspan e la bolla...5 anni (e una grande contrazione) dopo. Speculare sulle valute?

Il New York Times dedica una riflessione a un lungo articolo di Alan Greenspan sulle origini della crisi. Greenspan sembra essere d'accordo sul fatto che per prevenire le crisi future occorre aumentare i requisiti di capitale e liquidità per le banche. Scrive il TImes:

Mr. Greenspan, once celebrated as the “maestro” of economic policy, has seen his reputation dim after failing to avert the credit bubble that nearly brought down the financial system. Now (...) he is calling for a degree of greater banking regulation in several areas.(...)

He argues that regulators should enforce collateral and capital requirements, limit or ban certain kinds of concentrated bank lending, and even compel financial companies to develop “living wills” that specify how they are to be liquidated in an orderly way.

“For years the Federal Reserve had been concerned about the ever-larger size of our financial institutions,” Mr. Greenspan wrote. Fed research has not been able to find economies of scale as banks grow beyond a modest size, he said, and in a 1999 speech, Mr. Greenspan warned that “megabanks” formed through mergers created the potential for “unusually large systemic risks” should they fail.
Mr. Greenspan added: “Regrettably, we did little to address the problem.”
The former Fed chairman also acknowledged that the central bank failed to grasp the magnitude of the housing bubble but argued, as he has before, that its policy of low interest rates was not to blame. He stood by his conviction that little could be done to identify a bubble before it burst, much less to pop it.(...)

In addition to endorsing higher capital and liquidity requirements, Mr. Greenspan said banks and possibly all financial intermediaries should be required to hold bonds that automatically convert to equity when capital falls below a certain threshold. That could help reduce the “moral hazard” that exists because the banks that failed did not suffer the full costs of their actions.
The Senate is contemplating a mechanism by which the government can seize and dismantle a huge, interconnected financial company before panic spreads.
For a big, interconnected company, regulators should initiate a special bankruptcy process, he wrote. A bankruptcy judge would require creditors to take a haircut before the company is reorganized. The company should then be split up into separate units, “none of which should be of a size that is too big to fail,” Mr. Greenspan wrote.


Nell'ultimo numero dell'Economist viene aggiornato il Big Mac index, che misura il potere d'acquisto relativo delle diverse valute mendiante il prezzo del Big Mac: l'euro risulta ancora sopravvalutato del 25% rispetto al dollaro, ma gli estremi spettano alla corona norvegese (sopravvalutata del 90%)
e allo yuan (sottovalutato del 50%)...Scommettere contro la corona norvegese è facile (ad esempio lo permette la mia banca, Fineco). Mi pare invece più complicato scommettere sulla rivalutazione dello yuan: qualcuno conosce un modo?