オーストラリアの経済状況 ー 危険な兆候

オーストラリアの経済状況　ー　危険な兆候

この記事ではオーストラリアのクリケット・チームのことが最初に書かれている。かつてきわめて強かったのだが、いつしか気のつかないうちに弱体化しているというなげきである。そして同じ問題がオーストラリア経済にも起きようとしているという話につながっている。
　80年代にオーストラリアは労働市場の改革およびインフレ抑制政策（インフレ・ターゲット）により、かなり経済は堅調に推移していたが、90年に入って中国の世界市場におけるプレゼンスが高まるとともに、オーストラリアはもっぱら一次資源を中国に輸出することで経済はブームになった。
　リーマン・ショックにもオーストラリアはほとんど無傷の珍しい国であった。しかしいまでは中国もかつてのようには鉱物資源を必要としない（というか経済成長の鈍化）のでオーストラリアの輸出もままならなくなっている。またオーストラリア・ドルは為替高になっており、製造業が撤退をするという、いわゆる「産業の空洞化現象」が生じている。
　オーストラリア人は現在、所得以上の消費を行っており、財務内容は非常に悪くなってきている。そしていま、生じているのが住宅バブルである。これがバブルの崩壊の方向に行く可能性が懸念されている。
　この記事では、オーストラリアはかつてのアイルランドと対をなしている、と表現している。面白い描写である。

（インドのルピーは反対に為替安になっているが、このことがただでさえ頭を悩ませているインフレを悪化させている。）

・・・
It may prove to be a similar story with the economy. Australia was one of the few developed economies to emerge from the global recession largely unscathed. Growth has been good for a quarter of a century, public debt is low, the banking system proved resilient during the financial crisis and it is one of only a handful of countries that still retains a AAA credit rating.
Success initially was based on some important structural reforms to labour markets and to welfare policy, coupled with macro-economic policies that used inflation targeting to keep increases in the cost of living in check. Australia's banks were better capitalised than those in Europe or the US when the crisis broke.
These reforms in the late 1980s and early 1990s coincided with China's emergence as a global economic superpower. China needed raw materials – coal, iron ore, aluminium – for its rapid industrial expansion and Australia had them in abundance. China now takes 40% of Australian exports.
As a result, Australia was the Ireland of the antipodes. Both countries put in place supply-side reforms designed to boost growth and both had access to a huge market. Ireland's 20 years of expansion can be neatly divided into two phases: the first decade in which growth was the result of getting the fundamentals right at a time when multinationals were looking for a European base; and a bubble decade of wild property speculation and irresponsible lending.
Before looking at why Australia could go the same way, it is worth looking at the way in which the global economy has evolved over the past five years. In the days before the financial crisis, there were three groups of countries. In the first category were the workshop nations, the ones that produced the cars, the clothes, the machine tools, the TV sets and the toys. Low-cost countries such as China fell into this category, but so did high-cost countries such as Germany.
In the second category were the debtor nations. These countries bought all the goods churned out by the workshop nations, running up big current account deficits in the process. The United States and the United Kingdom were prime examples of debtor nations: levels of private debt exploded to allow consumers to live beyond their means.
Finally, there were the resource-rich countries. Some of these were the oil-rich nations of the Middle East; others included Russia and two important developed countries – Canada and Australia. All these countries did nicely out of a global economy in which China was growing at 10% a year and the US was acting as the spender of last resort. In the four years before the sky fell in, global growth averaged around 5% a year – its strongest since the latter years of the post-war boom.
But this model has now collapsed and 5% global growth now looks like an aberration. In the US, growth is struggling to rise above 2% despite the extraordinary stimulus provided by the Federal Reserve.
Wall Street fully expects the Fed to start "tapering" its bond-buying under the quantitative easing programme next month, and that has already had an impact on some emerging countries – such as India. The notion that the US is easing back on electronic money creation has strengthened the dollar and sent the rupee down to a record low. That is unhelpful to policymakers in New Delhi battling against already strong inflationary pressures, since it makes imports dearer.
・・・