By Kenneth Rogoff
As the global economic crisis hits its one year anniversary, it is time to re-examine not just the strategies for dealing with it, but also the diagnosis underlying those strategies. Is it not now clear that the main macroeconomic challenges facing the world today are an excess demand for commodities and an excess supply of financial services? If so, then it is time to stop pump-priming aggregate demand while blocking consolidation and restructuring of the financial system.
The huge spike in global commodity price inflation is prima facie evidence that the global economy is still growing too fast. There is nothing sinister in this. The world has just experienced perhaps the most remarkable growth boom in modern history. Given the huge cumulative rise in global growth during the 2000s it is little wonder that commodity suppliers have found it increasingly difficult to keep up, even with sharply rising prices.
For many commodities, particularly energy and metals, new supply requires long lead times of five to 10 years. In principle, the demand response is more nimble, but it has been greatly dulled by a wide variety of subsidies and distortions in fast-growing emerging markets.
The remainder of this column can be read here. Debate from our panel of economists appears below.
