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Strategies & Market Trends : Currencies and the Global Capital Markets -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Mike McFarland who wrote (449)	8/21/1998 11:55:00 AM
From: Frodo Baxter	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 3536

>I believe US debt is something like $20,000 US dollars per US taxpayer...maybe the greenback is overvalued? What is the government debt per citizen in Korea, Japan...Russia? Expressed as a % of GDP, the US debt is the lowest of the first world. Also, personally, I prefer to look at total debt rather than just government debt. For the US, that's currently around $15.6 trillion. >Recent discussion here and on the Asia thread make it seem like all of these currency devaluations are a sophisticated battle between currency boards, goverments and their currency reserves, global debt investors etc etc. It would be nice to be able to simplify the issues at hand and be able to track down the root of the problem--is the debt the problem? Overcapacity? Traders? You want a simplification? Here it is: Buyers and sellers make markets. Markets determine prices. Inasmuch as government becomes an active buyer or seller, it distorts prices short-term but loses money long-term, because governments are stupid. If it looks like the root of the problem is government, well, that's because it is.