FINANCIAL TIMES: Kapitalverkehrskontrollen nicht ausschließbar
In der Welt vermehren sich seit Corona Spannungen und bewaffnete Konflikte drohen. Kapital dürfte sich nicht mehr so frei bewegen können. Die FINANCIAL TIMES (FT) geht dem nach.
- „(…) Wall Street, the City of London and their counterparts appear to believe that once vaccines are distributed to most of the developed world’s population, the problem ends. The 1990s assumptions of peace and free financial flows will work once again. They are wrong, unfortunately.“ – bto: also keine Rückkehr zur glücklichen Zeit davor? Vermutlich wirklich nicht.
- „The pandemic encouraged governments to believe the wartime-model production of testing kits and vaccines created a great precedent for state-directed investment and state-restricted trade. But state-directed economies become war economies, and war economies tend to move on to use their products.“ – bto: Und wie das gerade vonstattengeht, können wir am Konflikt der EU mit UK beobachten. Früher wären schon die Truppen mobilisiert worden. Nun glaube ich nicht an Kriege, aber ich denke auch, dass die Politik sehr großen Gefallen daran findet, als Akteur in alles Denkbare einzugreifen.
- „Before the wars, typically, capital controls are imposed, and most global investors are not taking that probability into account. They think that currencies will always be hedge-able, tradeable, and portable as they more or less have been since the 1980s. No. I believe the coming generation of policymakers want to demote the financial class, and one of their methods will be the imposition of controls on capital flows.“ – bto: vor allem, nachdem der IWF schon vor Jahren Studien veröffentlichte, in denen Kapitalverkehrskontrollen als legitime Maßnahmen diskutiert werden. In der EU beginnt es mit Exportverboten für Impfstoffe, eine umfassende Wegzugssteuer folgt und dann natürlich Kapitalverkehrskontrollen … Gerade der Euro wird so „verteidigt“ werden.
- „(…) Biden (…) held up the Roosevelt administration’s ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ recapitalisation programme as a model. The new US president imposed the requirements of the postwar Defense Production Act on vaccine and medical supplies makers.“ – bto: Klar, die EU ist nicht allein, fällt aber durch besondere Inkompetenz auf!
- „Periods of big wars are preceded by domestic instability and smaller international wars. People with money have paid little notice to the interconnected wars across northern Africa, from Western Sahara to the growing conflict between Egypt and Ethiopia. Not to mention the Azerbaijan-Armenia war. The latter conflict in particular has been closely watched by international militaries as a testing ground for the use of drones in conventional war, much as the Spanish civil war proved the utility of ground and air attacks co-ordinated by radio.“ – bto: Und vor allem zeigen die Konflikte eine besondere religiöse Konfliktlinie, die wir nicht unterschätzen sollten.
- „The most immediate financial and economic shock would probably come from an Israeli-UAE attack on Iran. This has been floated for so long that people are numb to the idea, but I think it is more likely than not. The Iranian leadership is more desperate, and Israel is far more independent of any restraining US opinion.“ – bto: Das kann ich nicht beurteilen. Was aber stimmt, ist, dass die Konflikte meist mit einem Schulterzucken hingenommen werden.
- „On a slightly longer timescale than the Iran conflict threat is the Chinese national commitment to incorporating Taiwan. Business and financial people (including those in China itself) apply rational commercial calculation to conclude that a hostile Chinese blockade of the island, never mind an outright attempt at a military takeover, would be economically wasteful and unnecessary. But in the classical analysis of the causes for war, fear and honour come before interest.“ – bto: vor allem, wenn man von internen Problemen ablenken will.
- „The market volatility caused by sudden conflict in an over leveraged world would lead to the mother of all un-meet-able margin calls by the financial clearing houses (CCPs) that were supposed to solve the problems of the last global financial crisis. The US, UK and other governments would bail out the CCPs — once — and then, I believe, impose international capital controls.” – bto: In der EU genügt schon die nächste Euro-Krise.
- „So it makes geopolitical sense, if not necessarily financial-model sense, for large asset managers to more closely match assets and liabilities by country or currency area. Free international capital flows, and associated financial hedges, have become politically fragile. War comes faster than you expect and costs more freedom than you thought possible.“ – bto: Konkret, es lohnt sich, Vermögen außerhalb der Eurozone aufzubauen. Eine Idee, die ich schon früher formuliert habe: → „Anleger, raus aus Europa!“
→ ft.com (Anmeldung erforderlich): “The battle ahead: war is coming for your money”, 29. Januar 2021
