Rupiah VS US Dollar: Kejayaan Amerika Belum Berakhir ?

Rupiah VS US Dollar: Kejayaan Amerika Belum Berakhir ?

Oleh: Dias Satria SE.,M.App.Ec.

(Dosen Jurusan Ekonomi Pembangunan, Fakultas Ekonomi Universitas Brawijaya)

Memahami apresiasi US Dollar ditengah-tengah resesi yang melanda Amerika tentu menimbulkan pertanyaan besar di kepala kita. How Come??!!@#$%%. Bagi negara biasa, penurunan fundamental ekonomi sudah pasti diikuti dengan penurunan nilai mata uang domestik. Namun bagi Amerika, yang memiliki kondisi “nilai tukar” yang istimewa atau “extra ordinary”, keadaan resesi belum tentu dapat mendepresiasikan nilai tukarnya.

Seperti halnya menganalisis harga barang, suatu harga “nilai tukar” (sebut saja US Dollar) tentu dipengaruhi oleh sisi permintaan dan penawaran. Jika permintaan masyarakat meningkat, dan sisi lain penawarannya relatif tetap, maka yang terjadi adalah kenaikkan harga. Dalam konteks ini, apresiasi dolar dalam beberapa mata uang dunia sudah pasti disebabkan oleh permintaan US Dollar yang meningkat.

Pertanyaan mendasar pertama mungkin adalah “Mengapa US Dollar terapresiasi di saat fundamental ekonomi US memburuk”. Sederhana saja, Pertama, 80% perdagangan internasional menggunakan US dollar sebagai standar pembayaran yang diterima dan diakui secara luas. Hal ini populer dengan istilah “US Dollar Standard”. Dengan kata lain, permintaan US dollar yang dilakukkan oleh Rest of the world (selain AS) selalu pada posisi yang tinggi.

Kedua, ditengah-tengah lesunya pasar-pasar keuangan di seluruh dunia, maka preferensi Investor untuk mengamankan investasinya dalam bentuk US Dollar semakin meningkat. Hal ini selain memang karena berkaitan dengan “US Dollar Standard” atau dunia yang dikuasi oleh penggunaan US dollar, juga dipicu karena semakin meningkatnya nilai US dollar. Dalam konteks ini, maka pemegangan investasi dalam bentuk US Dollar dipicu oleh 2 motif, yaitu: berjaga-jaga dan spekulasi.

Dalam konteks perdagangan internasional, digunakannya US dollar sebagai standar pembayaran dan harga produk tentu menimbulkan permasalahan tersendiri dalam perekonomian global.

Pertama, di era penurunan nilai mata uang domestik terhadap US dollar tentu akan menurunkan impor barang-barang luar negri di negara manapun, kecuali di Amerika Serikat. Hipotesis ini diperkuat dengan adanya “stickyness” atau kekakuan harga dalam jangka pendek, sehingga produsen atau eksportir dunia dalam jangka pendek akan kesulitan untuk melakukkan adjustment atau penyesuaian harga.

Hal ini tentu akan berefek pada semakin mandeknya transaksi perdagangan internasional di seluruh dunia. Dalam konteks ini sebenarnya apresiasi US Dollar akan sangat merugikan proses recovery ekonomi dunia atau memperlama resesi dunia.

Di sisi lain, bagi Amerika Serikat kenaikkan nilai US Dollar (Apresiasi) harus juga diananalisis secara hati-hati karena apresiasi US Dollar belum tentu akan menguntungkan bagi perekonomian AS secara umum.

Pertama, dari perspektif konsumen, apresiasi mata uang US Dollar tentu akan mengurangi harga barang-barang impor. Hal ini tentu saja akan meningkatkan daya beli masyarakat amerika, khususnya terhadap barang-barang impor.

Kedua, bagi perusahaan Amerika (MNC-Multi Natinal Corporation), kenaikkan US Dollar disatu sisi mungkin akan meningkatkan profit dalam jangka pendek, namun dalam jangka panjang tentu akan merugikan perusahaan-perusahaan tersebut karena semakin berkurangnya daya beli masyarakat dunia.

Ketiga, dalam perspektif makroekonomi, apresiasi US dollar akan semakin memperlebar defisit neraca perdagangan karena meningkatnya impor dibandingkan ekspor. Hal ini tentu saja akan merugikan AS dalam jangka panjang, karena resesi ekonomi AS akan semakin parah.

Dalam melihat fenomena Anomali “US Dollar” dibutuhkan keberanian negara-negara Asia dan sekitarnya untuk menghentikkan resesi, dan mengambil kebijakan yang strategis dalam konteks “nilai tukar”. Hal utama yang harus diupayakan adalah bagaimana mempromosikan penggunaan mata uang masing-masing, dalam kebutuhan perdagangan internasional. Sebagai contoh, jika Indonesia mengimpor produk dari China, seharusnya Indonesia membayarnya dalam bentuk Yuan. Hal ini secara langsung, pasti akan mengapresiasi Mata uang Yuan karena permintaan mata uang untuk kebutuhan pembayaran.

Jika hal ini terealisasi, maka penurunan mata uang dunia (selain US) tidak akan terjadi secara berlebihan. Sehingga proses “mekanisme pasar” dalam arti yang sesungguhnya dapat mengefisienkan tingkat harga di dua negara, dan seterusnya.

Jelas sekali, bahwa krisis semakin parah tatkala mata uang “rest of the world” (selain US) terdepresiasi terhadap US Dollar, di sisi lain kebijakan moneter Bank sentral negara-negara tersebut memperparah keadaan dengan menurunkan suku bunga domestik yang pada akhirnya membuat “interest rate differential” semakin negatif, dan mengurangi insentif masuknya modal asing yang pada akhirnya mengurangi minat asing untuk memegang mata uang atau aset domestik.

Bagi Indonesia, pengamanan nilai tukar dengan intervensi valas atau kenaikkan suku bunga domestik ternyata masih belum mampu memberikkan akselerasi yang kuat untuk membalikkan keadaan (membuat rupiah terapresiasi ke keadaan yang fundamental atau equilibrium). Sehingga diperlukan tindakan-tindakan yang lebih teknis untuk mengamankan rupiah dari spekulasi dan penurunan nilai yang berlebihan. Hal-hal yang harus dilakukkan, antara lain: Pertama, membatasi pembelian US Dollar yang berlebihan atau menindak pelaku pasar yang melakukkan pembelian US Dollar tanpa disertai underlying assets. dan Kedua, membatasi keluar masuknya modal asing khususnya modal asing jangka pendek “hot money”.

Dengan upaya-upaya diatas, tentu diharapkan rupiah akan semakin eksis dalam mendorong fundamental ekonomi yang lebih kuat. Sehingga ketakutan atas tingginya pinjaman berdenominasi dollar (liability dollarizarization), akibat depresiasi rupiah yang terlalu dalam tidak akan terjadi. Semoga saja!

Risk Drifts From Banks to Governments to You, Me

Risk Drifts From Banks to Governments to You, Me: Mark Gilbert

Commentary by Mark Gilbert

Oct. 16 (Bloomberg) -- Anyone who lost money in the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. should probably be reaching for their lawyers about now.

Our money -- yours and mine -- is now keeping the global financial system afloat. In a capitulation that beggars belief, governments all around the world have pledged our money -- yours and mine -- to fund a ``No Bank Left Behind'' program. And no matter what the politicians say, that means our money -- yours and mine -- is now at risk in the casino.

So the decision to let Lehman go to the wall last month looks increasingly like (a) an experiment in brinkmanship gone wrong (b) a worthless sacrifice to the angry gods of moral hazard (c) the biggest mistake that the authorities have made during the current crisis (d) all of the above.

The U.S. Treasury's theory that the demise of Bear Stearns Cos. was rapid and unforeseen, whereas traders and investors had sufficient time to brace themselves for the collapse of Lehman, is undone by the chaos and panic seen in recent weeks as trading desks rush to untangle the mess of unraveling deals. Listen to any of the recent comments from European Central Bank policy makers on the topic of Lehman, and you can hear the undercurrent of puzzled anger at the decision.

Hoarding Carrots

It's way, way too early to gauge the effectiveness of U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's plan to cure the financial crisis by spending $250 billion making Uncle Sam a shareholder in thousands of financial companies, guaranteeing bank debt and buying commercial paper.

What is clear, though, is that however many carrots the U.S. gives to Wall Street, the government doesn't have much of a stick to flagellate the banks into replanting those vegetables on Main Street, where the real economy is facing starvation.

``Leaving businesses and consumers without access to financing is totally unacceptable,'' Paulson said this week when he revealed his latest bailout for the banks. ``When you give them a stronger capital position and you also provide a certain amount of government backstop to their funding sources, it's incumbent upon them to go out and continue to lend,'' said assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary David Nason.

I disagree. If the alternative is lending money to businesses that are about to go bust and consumers who are about to lose their jobs, then restricting credit seems not just acceptable, it is downright prudent.

No Credit

``Will banks turn on the lending taps and will corporates fall over themselves for the liquidity? We don't think so,'' Suki Mann, a credit strategist at Societe Generale SA in London, wrote in a research note this week. ``Deleveraging won't stop overnight. The cost of credit will remain high.''

The global effort by central banks to shore up the precarious capital position of the financial industry using our money -- yours and mine -- is a direct consequence of the earlier decision to let Lehman hang.

The failure to prevent Lehman's collapse -- sandwiched between the shotgun marriage of Bear Stearns to JPMorgan Chase & Co. and the gazillion-dollar loan to keep American International Group Inc. from going pop -- sapped whatever remaining confidence banks had in each other. It removed any yardstick to judge which institutions would be deemed too important to fail.

Far from being a panacea, the accelerated effort to funnel our money -- mine and yours -- to plug the yawning holes in bank balance sheets, hasn't alleviated any of the dangers. Risk has just been reallocated.

Goldman Default

So the cost of buying credit-default swaps to insure against Goldman Sachs Group Inc. defaulting on its bonds plummeted to about 234 basis points this week from as high as 543 basis points last week. The benchmark default-swap on U.S. government debt, meantime, has jumped to about 37 basis points from 19 basis points two months ago.

In the U.K., Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc default swaps cost about 85 basis points, down from almost 300 basis points last week. U.K. government debt, though, is deemed twice as risky as it was two months ago in the credit-derivatives market.

``With country after country guaranteeing deposits and senior creditors, and also doing everything they can to protect the financial system as we know it, senior financial risks should migrate closer toward sovereign risk,'' Jim Reid, a credit strategist at Deutsche Bank AG in London, wrote in a report this week.

Pension Pain

It doesn't stop there. The crisis of confidence has destroyed about $27 trillion of value in the global stock market in the past year. That isn't a typographical error. The combined market capitalization of the world's publicly traded companies is down to about $36 trillion, from a high of $63 trillion reached a year ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

So anyone who has diligently socked money away into a pension plan has seen the value of those contributions destroyed. Put another way, risk has been transferred down the food chain. It started in the banks, filtered through the governments, and now it is infecting our pensions -- yours and mine.

You can guess what is coming next in this crisis. Regulators will call for centralized oversight of financial markets. Some bright spark will suggest that what the world needs is a global central bank, within the environs of the Bank for International Settlements.

And an ex-partner of Goldman will humbly agree to run the show. Rearrange the words ``stable door,'' ``shutting the,'' and ``after the horse has bolted'' to form a well-known phrase.

(Mark Gilbert is a Bloomberg News columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.)

To contact the writer of this column: Mark Gilbert in London at magilbert@bloomberg.net

Dot.com Crisis

Some very valuable lessons were gleaned from the dot-com crisis

Houston Business Journal - by Scott Clark

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A scant 18 months ago, many of my students at the University of Iowa were still eager to create dot-com companies, having read about the millions of dollars raised in venture capital overnight and the soaring value of dot-com stocks.

Even some business academics became hypnotized by the opportunity.

One of these, Lyle Bowlin, from the University of Northern Iowa, was profiled last year in a Wall Street Journal article.

According to the paper, Bowlin raised $90,000 for a book-selling dot-com business operated out of his home (http://www.Positively-You.com) which competed with Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com.

He received glowing write-ups in the New York Times and Time magazine, quickly followed by guest spots on the morning talk show circuit.

Predictably, orders shot up from $2,000 per month to $50,000 per month.

The company had not planned for such growth and was constantly behind the power curve, soliciting friends and their families to help pack and ship books rather than focus on profits and strategies.

Management apparently abandoned sound business principles and assumed its Web-based business was a bottomless well of increasing orders, even though it was still losing money.

It's not hard to imagine what happened next.

Because of a combination of several factors -- which may have included lack of a plan, lack of profits, lack of financial controls, lack of management oversight, inappropriately high salaries, high expenses without controls, inadequate software and or hardware to cope with growth and or competition -- the company ran out of both money and customers, subsequently fading into oblivion.

In all fairness, Bowlin was just one of many dot-com dreamers who started companies to ride the wave of prosperity rather than focusing on plans, profits, or fulfillment.

Large businesses succumbed to the lure of easy money as well.

Remember the disastrous Christmas of 1999 when Toys R' Us created toysrus.com without focusing on fulfillment, thus failing to deliver thousands of Web-ordered toys in time for Christmas?

The Internet bubble finally burst in the spring of 2000.

When the smoke finally cleared, the NASDAQ plunge -- and its accompanying dot-com bloodbath -- had erased 62 percent of the NASDAQ's value, which plummeted from a high of 4260 to a low of 1620 just 12 months later.

BURSTING BUBBLE

In retrospect, the dot-com bubble was fueled by greed, rather than by sound business practices.

Aspiring Internet entrepreneurs thought they could bypass the long haul to success and achieve instant wealth just by hanging out a dot-com shingle.

No need to focus on profits or management or order fulfillment or customer satisfaction -- just launch the business and watch the money flow in.

They learned too late this simple truth: If more money flows out of the company than flows in, eventually the coffers will be empty and the business will die.

As a result of the dot-com rubble, today's crop of aspiring entrepreneurs has a much more realistic picture of what it takes to start a business.

The few who are interested in dot-com businesses are focused on sound business principles rather than on pipe dreams and bandwagons as they assemble their plans.

So the good news from the dot-com crash is that fledgling entrepreneurs -- and their investors -- once again realize there is no quick path to easy street.

As a result, most of today's new crop of entrepreneurs are launching businesses based on sound business principles.

Scott Clark is a Cedar Rapids, Iowa-based columnist. He can be reached by e-mail at mail@saclark.com.

HUJATAN PADA BANK INDONESIA

HUJATAN PADA BANK INDONESIA

Dias Satria

Penilaian sebagian besar ekonom Indonesia menyikapi kebijakan naiknya suku bunga SBI titik 9.50%, tentu menimbulkan pertanyaan sederhana apakah sebodoh itu Bank Indonesia melakukkan kebijakan yang salah. Atau dengan kata lain, Apakah gubernur Bank Indonesia baru “Pak Boediono” seorang ekonom senior Indonesia, sesederhana itu melihat permasalahan dan melawan arus pasar, yang sebagian besar melakukkan penurunan suku bunga.

Dibalik rasional kenaikkan suku bunga, ada beberapa pertimbangan dan perspektif dasar untuk melihatnya.

Kenaikkan suku bunga dari sisi neraca modal, tentu akan menciptakan perbedaan suku bunga domestik dan luar negri (interest rate differential). Dengan semakin positifnya perbedaan suku bunga domestik dengan internasional, tentu akan mendorong masuknya modal asing (capital inflow) atau mencegah capital outflow pada pasar keuangan domestik karena peluang return yang semakin tinggi. Jika ini yang terjadi, maka ketakutan akan semakin keringnya likuiditas domestik tentu tidak akan terjadi karena masuknya aliran modal tersebut. Selanjutnya dengan semakin meningkatnya aliran modal asing, tentu akan semakin memperbaiki nilai tukar domestik (apresiasi). Atau rupiah akan menguat.

Disisi lain, jika perekonomian sudah dalam batas lebih dari full employment (keseimbangan maksimal) maka penurunan suku bunga tidak akan memberikkan impact pada equilibrium, dan hanya menciptakan efek terhadap harga (atau inflasi). Hal ini tentu saja akan mengancam target inflasi Bank Sentral, ditengah-tengah tingginya harga-harga secara umum.

Kenaikkan suku bunga disisi lain juga akan semakin mendorong pihak bank untuk semakin berhati-hati dalam memberikkan pinjaman, karena kenaikkan suku bunga memberikkan constraint bagi mereka untuk melakukkan ekspansi kredit. Secara makro, pembatasan kredit ditengah-tengah kelesuan ekonomi tentu akan memperbaiki kualitas aset produktif, dan mengurangi kredit macet (NPL Non Performing Loans) bank. Amerika merupakan contoh sederhana, bahwa penurunan suku bunga membawa malapetaka yang besar bagi perekonomian domestiknya. Rasional/logika sederhananya adalah, disaat resesi ekonomi, masyarakat mana yang mampu membayar hutang-hutangnya. Sehingga jika respon penurunan suku bunga Amerika, direspon lembaga keuangan dengan melakukkan ekspansi kredit dengan membabi buta, maka dampaknya bisa kita lihat sekarang di US dengan krisis kredit macet yang terjadi dalam subprime mortgages dan kredit macet penggunaan kartu kredit.

Namun jika pandangan kontra berpendapat bahwa kebijakan kenaikkan suku bunga akan semakin merugikan perekonomian, karena terhambatnya ekspansi di sektor riil. Maka sesungguhnya kondisi ekonomi yang sedang tidak pasti ini diharapkan dapat menahan ekspansi ekonomi yang berlebihan dari para pengusaha. Karena pada akhirnya, sektor keuanganlah yang nantinya akan dirugikan jika terjadi default kredit karena ekonomi yang memburuk.

Tentu kebijakan kenaikkan suku bunga, bukan syarat utama suatu kebijakan untuk menanggulangi pelik dan rumitnya dampak krisis keuangan global yang terjadi di Indonesia. Masih banyak kebijakan lain yang menunjang yang intinya diharapkan dapat meningkatkan konfiden para pelaku usaha. Namun, minimal kebijakan suku bunga ini mampu meredam pengaruh negatif jangka panjang (resiko kredit, nilai tukar dan inflasi) yang ditimbulkan dari kebijakan yang salah (penurunan suku bunga-red). Meski kedepan, Bank Indonesia juga harus mempersiapkan kebijakan-kebijakan pendukung untuk membuat pasar semakin konfiden dengan pasar, atau minimal konfiden dengan apa yang dilakukkan oleh Pemerintah dan Bank Sentral sehingga respon yang dilakukkan pasar benar-benar merefleksikan kondisi atau performa ekonomi sesungguhnya, dan bukan tindakan irasional yang asimetris, yang menjatuhkan performa pasar keuangan domestik.

Dan, semakin membaiknya Bursa Ekonomi Indonesia dan meredamnya kepanikkan pasar di Indonesia beberapa hari ini tentu membuktikkan bahwa pasar telah konfiden dengan apa yang dilakukkan pemerintah. Dan kedepan, stabilitas keuangan Indonesia akan semakin baik dengan pengelolaan kebijakan yang brilian oleh seorang “Boediono”, “Sri Mulyani” dan “Miranda Gultom”.

Professor and Columnist Wins Economics Nobel

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

Paul Krugman was recognized by the prize committee for his “analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.”

Back Story With Paul Krugman (mp3)

Jessica Kourkounis for The New York Times

Paul Krugman, after he knew.

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The prize committee cited Mr. Krugman for his “analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity.”

Mr. Krugman, 55, is probably more widely known for his Op-Ed columns in which he has been a perpetual thorn in President Bush’s (and now John McCain’s) side. His columns have won him both strong supporters and ardent critics.

The prize, however, was awarded for the academic — and less political — research that he conducted primarily before he began writing regularly for The Times.

“To be absolutely, totally honest, I thought this day might come some day, but I was absolutely convinced it wasn’t going to be this day,” Mr. Krugman said in an interview on Monday. “I know people who live their lives waiting for this call, and it’s not good for the soul. So I put it out of my mind and stopped thinking about it.”

Mr. Krugman won the prize for his research, beginning in 1979, that explained patterns of trade among countries, as well as what goods are produced where and why.

Traditional trade theory assumes that countries are different and will exchange only the kinds of goods that they are comparatively better at producing — wine from France, for example, and rice from China.

This model, however, dating from David Ricardo’s writings of the early 19th century, was not reflected in the flow of goods and services that Mr. Krugman saw in the world around him. He set out to explain why worldwide trade was dominated by a few countries that were similar to one another, and why a country might import the same kinds of goods it exported.

In his model, many companies sell similar goods with slight variations. These companies become more efficient at producing their goods as they sell more, and so they grow. Consumers like variety, and pick and choose goods from among these producers in different countries, enabling countries to continue exchanging similar products. So some Americans buy Volkswagens and some Germans buy Fords.

He developed this work further to explain the effect of transportation costs on why people live where they live. His model explained under what conditions trade would lead people or companies to move to a particular region or to move away.

Mr. Krugman’s work has been praised for its simplicity and practicality — features economists are often criticized for ignoring.

“Some people think that something deep only comes out of great complexity,” said Maurice Obstfeld, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who wrote a textbook on international economics with Mr. Krugman. “Paul’s great strength is to take something very simple and make something new and very profound.”

Mr. Krugman applied his skill at translating complex ideas into clear, entertaining prose to his Times columns, which he began writing in 2000. In recent years, in his column and a related blog on nytimes.com, nearly everything about the Bush administration — from health care policy to Iraq to “general incompetence” — has been the object of his scorn.

Along the way, Mr. Krugman has come in for criticism himself from both economists and lay readers.

“Much of his popular work is disgraceful,” said Daniel Klein, a professor of economics at George Mason University, who this year wrote a comprehensive review of Mr. Krugman’s body of Times columns. “He totally omits all these major issues where the economics conclusion goes against the feel-good Democratic Party ethos, which I think he’s really tended to pander to especially since writing for The New York Times.”

But he has equally fervent fans of his popular work.

“I praise today’s prize as being deserving and even overdue, but more than that I reproach the Pulitzer committee, which owed him at least a couple of prizes in the past,” said Paul A. Samuelson, a previous winner of the Nobel in economic science. “Paul Krugman is the only columnist in the United States who has had it right on almost every count from the beginning.”

Mr. Krugman said he did not expect his award to have much effect on how colleagues and his popular readership — whether they be friends or foes — regard him.

“For economists, this is a validation but not news,” he said. “We know what each other has been up to.”

“For readers of the column,” he added, “maybe they will read a little more carefully when I’m being economistic, or maybe have a little more tolerance when I’m being boring.”

He said he did not expect the prize to silence his critics, given the treatment of another outspoken laureate, the 2001 winner Joseph E. Stiglitz. Mr. Stiglitz has been both praised and criticized for his writings on whether globalization in its current form has been beneficial.

“I haven’t noticed him getting an easy time,” Mr. Krugman said. “People just say, ‘Sure, he’s a great Nobel laureate and he’s very smart, but he still doesn’t know what he’s talking about in this situation.’ I’m sure I’ll get the same thing.”

Mr. Krugman first gained a popular following while writing about economics for Slate magazine and Fortune in the 1990s. He frequently weighed in on contemporary free trade debates related to his research.

“He was appalled by the monster he created,” said Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate, who hired Mr. Krugman. “He’d come up with this theory about why sometimes free trade wasn’t the best policy, and suddenly everyone was citing it as an argument against free trade, while he thinks it applies once in a blue moon.”

While Mr. Krugman’s popular writing is now more focused on politics and his research more concentrated on international finance, he has occasionally returned to his interest in trade. In the last year he has written several times about the negative results of free trade, both in his column and in a paper he wrote for the Brookings Institution about whether trade with poor countries increases inequality in developed nations like the United States.

In 1991 Mr. Krugman received the John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to an economist under 40 who has made a significant contribution to economic knowledge. He follows a long list of Clark medal recipients who have gone on to win Nobels in economic science, including Mr. Stiglitz and Mr. Samuelson.

Mr. Krugman, who grew up on Long Island and has a bachelor’s degree from Yale and a doctorate from M.I.T., has been teaching at Princeton since 2000. This semester, he is teaching a graduate-level course in international monetary theory and policy. He often teaches all-freshman seminars on issues related to economics.

Mr. Krugman joins another Princeton economist, albeit one of different ideological leanings, who has been in the news recently: Ben S. Bernanke, the chairman of the Federal Reserve who, coincidentally, offered Mr. Krugman his Princeton post. Mr. Bernanke and Mr. Krugman were fellow graduate students at M.I.T. in the 1970s.

Their era at M.I.T. produced several other economists who went on to prestigious careers in public policy, including Olivier Blanchard and Kenneth Rogoff, the current and former chief economist at the International Monetary Fund.

Monday’s award, the last of the six prizes, is not one of the original Nobels. It was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in Alfred Nobel’s memory. Mr. Krugman was the sole winner of the award this year, which includes a prize of about $1.4 million.

Still, his collaborators and mentors in his international trade research — some of whom were considered competing candidates for the prize — extended their praise.

“Lots of people are saying to me, ‘Why didn’t you get it?’” said Jagdish Bhagwati, an economics professor at Columbia who helped Mr. Krugman publish one of his seminal papers when other academics thought it was too simple to be true. “Given the fact that I didn’t get it, this is the next best thing.”

Correction

An earlier version of this article published online referred incorrectly to a publication in which the economist Paul Krugman gained a popular following in the 1990s. It was Fortune, not Forbes.

Paul Krugman wins Nobel

October 13, 2008, 7:50 am

Paul Krugman Wins Economics Nobel

By Catherine Rampell

Paul Krugman, a professor at Princeton University and an Op-Ed page columnist for The New York Times, was awarded the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences on Monday.

“It’s been an extremely weird day, but weird in a positive way,” Mr. Krugman said in an interview on his way to a Washington meeting for the Group of 30, an international body from the public and private sectors that discusses international economics. He said he was mostly “preoccupied with the hassles” of trying to make all his scheduled meetings today and answer a constantly ringing cell phone.

Mr. Krugman received the award for his work on international trade and economic geography. In particular, the prize committee lauded his work for “having shown the effects of economies of scale on trade patterns and on the location of economic activity.” He has developed models that explain observed patterns of trade between countries, as well as what goods are produced where and why. Traditional trade theory assumes that countries are different and will exchange different kinds of goods with each other; Mr. Krugman’s theories have explained why worldwide trade is dominated by a few countries that are similar to each other, and why some countries might import the same kinds of goods that it exports.

Paul Krugman

“There was something very beautiful about the old existing trade theory, and its ability to capture the world in a surprisingly simple conceptual framework,” Mr. Krugman said. “And then I realized that some of the new insights coming through in industrial organization could be applied to international trade.”

Mr. Krugman wrote his dissertation, however, on international finance, and credits the late MIT professor Rudiger Dornbusch for pushing him to study international trade.

“I went to visit him one snowy day in early 1978 and described to him what I’d been thinking about,” Mr. Krugman said. “He turned to me and said, ‘You’ve got to write about that.’”

Mr. Krugman has been an Op-Ed page columnist at the New York Times since 1999. A collection of his recent columns can be found here.

“For economists, this is a validation but not news. We know what each other have been up to,” Mr. Krugman said. “For readers of the column, maybe they will read a little more carefully when I’m being economistic, or maybe have a little more tolerance when I’m being boring.”

He said that he did not expect his critics to let him off any easier because of his new accolade, though.

“I think we’ve learned this when we see Joe Stiglitz writing,” Mr. Krugman said, referring to the winner of the economics Nobel in 2001. “I haven’t noticed him getting an easy time. People just say, ‘Sure, he’s a great Nobel laureate and he’s very smart, but he still doesn’t know what he’s talking about in this situation.’ I’m sure I’ll get the same thing.”

In 1991 Mr. Krugman received the John Bates Clark medal, a prize given every two years to “that economist under 40 who is adjudged to have made a significant contribution to economic knowledge.”

Mr. Krugman follows a number of Clark medal recipients who have gone on to win a Nobel, including Mr. Stiglitz.

“To be absolutely, totally honest I thought this day might come someday, but I was absolutely convinced it wasn’t going to be this day,” Mr. Krugman said. “I know people who live their lives waiting for this call, and it’s not good for the soul. So I put it out of my mind and stopped thinking about it.”

He said he didn’t know which day the winner’s name would be released until a colleague told him last week.

Mr. Krugman continues to teach at Princeton. This semester Mr. Krugman is teaching a small graduate-level course on international monetary policy and theory, covering such timely subjects as international liquidity crises. In recent years he has also taught courses on the welfare state and international trade, as well as all-freshman seminars on various economic topics.

Monday’s award, the last of the six prizes to be announced, is not one of the original Nobels. It was created in 1968 by the Swedish central bank in Alfred Nobel’s memory. Mr. Krugman was the sole winner of the award this year, which includes a prize of about $1.4 million.

video KRUGMAN

link

http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=KRUGMAN+NOBEL&emb=0#

The good KRUGMAN

The good Krugman

Posted: October 14, 2008, 7:17 PM by NP Editor

William Watson, international trade, Paul Krugman

Despite his political views, free-market economists find it hard to quarrel with a Nobel for Paul Krugman

By William Watson
You don’t get the Nobel Prize in Economics for writing newspaper columns (as I’ve been trying to explain to my mother the last couple of days). So the prize awarded Monday to Paul Krugman, professor of economics at Princeton and well-known Bush-baiting op-ed columnist for The New York Times, should not be read as an endorsement of Krugman’s uber-Democratic newspapering (which the Nobel backgrounder coyly referred to as “spirited”).
This is not to say the Nobel Committee is immune to political trends. Milton Friedman got the prize in 1976, the bicentenary of Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, which was perfectly fitting. And the committee tilted distinctly rightward over the next 20 years, with prizes to no fewer than five of Friedman’s University of Chicago colleagues (Schultz, Stigler, Becker, Coase and Lucas).
In recent years, however, Prizes to Joseph Stiglitz and now Krugman indicate the pendulum has been swinging the other way.

good link

http://www.seoconsultants.com/search-engines/

MENGURAI KUSUTNYA KRISIS FINANSIAL AMERIKA

MENGURAI KUSUTNYA KRISIS FINANSIAL AMERIKA
Oleh : Dias Satria SE.,M.App.Ec
Dosen Jurusan Ekonomi Pembangunan Universitas Brawijaya
Peneliti INSEF

Amerika saat ini benar-benar terpukul akibat episode-episode krisis keuangan yang melanda negrinya, mulai dari dot.com crisis, subprime mortgage crisis, wall street crisis hingga bankrutnya Lehman Brothers. Krisis yang menghabiskan dana talangan hingga ratusan miliar dolar, dan masih belum banyak memberikkan titik cerah bagi perkembangan Ekonomi AS, bahkan telah menjangkit ke beberapa kawasan dari Atlantik hingga Eropa dengan cepat.
Sumber asap: Ulah siapa?
Episode-episode krisis AS bukanlah merupakan rekayasa atau bentuk konspirasi negara lain terhadap AS, namun lebih disebabkan karena kerapuhan ekonomi domestik AS itu sendiri. Permasalahan ekonomi AS sebenarnya telah dimulai sejak 1990an, dimana ekonomi AS mulai menunjukkan defisit dalam current account (defisit perdagangan dan defisit fiskal). Bahkan penyakit defisit ini mulai meningkat drastis hingga US $ 664 Milyar di tahun 2004. Di tahun 2006, defisit AS telah mencapai 6.2% dari GDP AS.
Strategi defisit merupakan sumber permasalahan krisis yang menimpa AS selama ini. Dengan semakin rendahnya kinerja sektor riil AS tentu telah banyak mempengaruhi kinerja sektor keuangan yang makin babak belur. Meski inovasi dan kemajuan telah terjadi di pasar keuangan AS, namun tetap saja performa pasar keuangan merupakan representasi dari sektor riil. Sehingga resesi di sektor riil sudah pasti akan menciptakan krisis di sektor keuangan.
Pertanyaannya adalah, mengapa AS sekian lama mampu mempertahankan strategi defisit?dan siapa yang membiayainya?dan mengapa mereka mau membiayai defisit AS?Jawabannya terletak pada kekuatan status US Dollar yang diminati dunia, sebagai standar yang diterima umum dalam perdagangan internasional. Hal inilah yang secara umum mendorong bank-bank sentral dunia untuk memegang aset berdenominasi Dollar, sebagai cadangan (reserves). Strategi ini bertujuan untuk menstabilkan nilai tukarnya terhadap US Dollar. (Reinhart (2000) menjelaskan keadaan ini sebagai kondisi fear of floating, atau takut nilai tukarnya berfluktuasi).
Penyakit Menular
Krisis Finansial Amerika bak penyakit menular yang secara cepar menjangkit perekonomian negara-negara lain. Bank Sentral Jerman bahkan tengah mempersiapkan pinjaman 35 miliar Euro (US $ 51 Miliar) untuk menyelematkan Hypo Real Estate (Peminjam terbesar kedua di sektor real estate). Hypo Real estate disebutkan sebagai salah satu dari 5 perusahaan yang mendapatkan penyelamatan pemerintah eropa dalam 3 hari terakhir. Beberapa perusahaan seperti: Fortis (Belgia, Belanda dan Luxemborg), Bradfod & Bingley (Inggris), Dexia (Belgia, Prancis dan Luxemburg) dan Glitnir (Iceland), juga ikut serta dalam daftar penyelematan .
Mengapa penyakit krisis finansial ini cepat menular?Jawabannya hampir sama seperti yang terjadi di Asia 1997, bahwa respon pelaku pasar yang asimetri, telah menyebabkan kepanikkan yang luar biasa sehingga menyebabkan perilaku-perilaku di pasar keuanan yang Irasionil. Hal ini tentu disebabkan oleh permasalahan yang kompleks, termasuk bagaimana respon pengambil kebijakan mempengaruhi ekspektasi masyarakat dan sebaliknya. Di sisi lain kemajuan teknologi informasi di pasar keuangan, telah banyak mempengaruhi aliran informasi dengan cepat. Dan mendorong perilaku yang cepat pula. Hal inilah yang secara umum menyebabkan krisis menyebar.
Biaya yang mahal
Tentu krisis finansial harus dibayar mahal bagi dunia. Pertama krisis finansial membutuhkan dana talangan (Bail out) yang tinggi, dan menguras keuangan negara. Kedua krisis finansial sebagai jantung perekonomian telah menyebabkan mandeknya sektor riil karena aliran darah (uang) ke seluruh tubuh (sektor ekonomi) terhambat. Ketiga krisis finansial cenderung meningkatkan efek domino yang tinggi (its like a spagheti bowl effect, anda mungkin sulit mencari ujung-ujuangnya mie spageti). Keempat bagi bank-bank, kesulitan likuiditas akibat tingginya biaya dana. Bahwa dengan adanya krisis, bank harus mencari dana tambahan dengan meningkatkan pinjaman overnight dengan biaya bunga yang tinggi. Kelima krisis finansial mudah sekali berubah wujud menjadi kehancuran ekonomi yang menyebabkan hilangnya perkerjaan dan mendorong terjadinya kemiskinan. (dias.satria@yahoo.com)