The Wile E. Coyote Moment?

The stock market took off today (DJI climbed 331 points, to 13,289). The volatility continues and people are happy (for the instant).

Nevertheless, a shadow crossed the economists' doorsteps today, with Brad Setser's graph showing capital flows in and out of the U.S. They've stopped. That means trouble....

Since we've shipped so much of our manufacturing base overseas, and ship so much our currency overseas as well, in order to purchase manufactured goods, we must, in turn, attract investment from overseas in order to retain our standard of living. Anything that interferes with that process will cause people everywhere to suffer.

As Econospeak sayeth:

The blue stuff is private sector financing of the US current account deficit; the red stuff is life support from foreign central banks and SIV’s (sovereign investment funds). Brad Setser points out, as he has from the beginning of his blog, that official flows (red) are greatly underestimated; by arithmetic logic they have to make up the difference between private flows and the current account.

But the point is clear: if the US were any other country (i.e. too big to fail), we would be in the grips of an economic crisis at this very moment. Foreign exchange would freeze up, essential goods would be unavailable, mass layoffs would ripple across the land, while the dollar would sink like a stone. This would be Mexico 1994, Argentina 2001.

But it’s not, at least not right now. By the grace of central bankers and oil fund managers we in the US get to sip our latte (or in my case Darjeeling) and muse on this question in tranquility. But the dollar keeps going down, and the governments that prop us up are taking really big losses.

The dollar is poised for a collapse. As Paul Krugman mentioned in September:

I could say that I saw this coming; the problem is that I’ve been seeing it coming for several years, and it keeps not arriving (and I don’t know if this is really it, even now.) The argument I and others have made is that the U.S. trade deficit is, fundamentally, not sustainable in the long run, which means that sooner or later the dollar has to decline a lot. But international investors have been buying U.S. bonds at real interest rates barely higher than those offered in euros or yen — in effect, they’ve been betting that the dollar won’t ever decline.

So, according to the story, one of these days there will be a Wile E. Coyote moment for the dollar: the moment when the cartoon character, who has run off a cliff, looks down and realizes that he’s standing on thin air – and plunges. In this case, investors suddenly realize that Stein’s Law applies — “If something cannot go on forever, it will stop” – and they realize they need to get out of dollars, causing the currency to plunge. Maybe the dollar’s Wile E. Coyote moment has arrived – although, again, I’ve been wrong about this so far.

The dollar keeps sliding against the Euro. A breaking point is near.

And then what? A recession? Another Great Depression? Egads.....