Tape 133 - Supporting the dollar; monetarism; US on the bargain block
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Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
| Narrator | Welcome once again as MIT professor, | 0:02 |
| Paul Samuelson | 0:03 | |
| discusses the current economic scene. | 0:04 | |
| This series is produced | 0:06 | |
| by Instructional Dynamics Incorporated. | 0:07 | |
| This program was recorded July 30th. | 0:10 | |
| - | [Professor Samuelson] Before I analyze | 0:13 |
| where we now stand in the American economy | 0:14 | |
| and where we're likely to be going til the end | 0:17 | |
| of the year, | 0:20 | |
| I'd like to try to field two questions that have been | 0:21 | |
| sent in to me. | 0:23 | |
| The first is from a retired investment banker. | 0:25 | |
| The second is from a business school professor. | 0:28 | |
| Here's the first question. | 0:31 | |
| What are the arguments against the United States government | 0:33 | |
| actively intervening to support the dollar? | 0:38 | |
| Actually in recent times, I've veered over towards | 0:42 | |
| counseling the treasury and the council reserve | 0:45 | |
| to agree in principle to such support operations, | 0:48 | |
| and I've subsequently learned from reading the newspapers | 0:53 | |
| that we have in fact, changed over to that position. | 0:56 | |
| The Fed seems in fact already to have engaged | 1:02 | |
| in some support operations. | 1:05 | |
| The details are not clear on the actual magnitudes | 1:08 | |
| of such operations, | 1:12 | |
| nor is it clear, or at least it's not clear to me, | 1:14 | |
| whether this is in some kind of formerly agreed upon | 1:16 | |
| concert, along with support operations by various | 1:20 | |
| European countries, or whether we're going alone. | 1:24 | |
| What does seem clear is that we are not now facing | 1:28 | |
| absolutely clean floating. | 1:32 | |
| And hence, I suppose, in a sense we can't be sure | 1:36 | |
| in what directions the winds of unfederated competition | 1:40 | |
| are really tending to push for an exchange rate. | 1:45 | |
| For example, it might be the case that the underlying | 1:49 | |
| speculative forces are still against the dollar. | 1:51 | |
| But that these forces are being covered up by some amount | 1:55 | |
| of defensive support. | 2:00 | |
| Such a fundamental speculative trend, if indeed it does | 2:04 | |
| exist, must of course be distinguished sharply | 2:07 | |
| from the underlying basic trend in the balance of payments. | 2:11 | |
| The basic balance of the United States | 2:16 | |
| may well be improving, | 2:18 | |
| as so many experts profess to be the case. | 2:21 | |
| And yet at the same time, the speculative forces | 2:24 | |
| could still be pushing in the other direction. | 2:27 | |
| Well, why my own shift in position? | 2:31 | |
| It certainly wasn't to accommodate the French, | 2:36 | |
| or to gain favors with other nations abroad | 2:39 | |
| that have been urging us to support our dollar. | 2:43 | |
| This doesn't mean that I agree that giving such | 2:47 | |
| accommodation in order to gain popularity with ones allies | 2:51 | |
| is never to be recommended. | 2:55 | |
| Often we still have good reason to wish to keep | 2:58 | |
| the good will of Japan and western Europe. | 3:00 | |
| I myself have never believed in the doctrine | 3:03 | |
| that you can kick your allies around, | 3:07 | |
| that you can treat them with benign neglect, | 3:11 | |
| that you can just forget completely about their wishes, | 3:14 | |
| and let them unilaterally appreciate their currencies | 3:17 | |
| if they don't want to accumulate dollars. | 3:21 | |
| But nonetheless, for a dozen years, I had to warn | 3:25 | |
| against defending the indefensible. | 3:28 | |
| When your good friend wants you to support your | 3:31 | |
| overvalued currency, you must tell him politely | 3:34 | |
| that this makes no sense. | 3:38 | |
| No sense for you, the deficit country, | 3:40 | |
| or for him, the surplus country. | 3:43 | |
| The reason then for my changing over to the view | 3:46 | |
| that the US government might now judiciously intervene | 3:49 | |
| to support a dollar that is being depressed | 3:53 | |
| only because of Watergate jitters, | 3:56 | |
| and because of self fulfilling but wrong minded | 3:58 | |
| speculative hopes and fears, is this- | 4:02 | |
| there's now accumulating evidence that the dollar | 4:06 | |
| is no longer overvalued at a long term basis. | 4:09 | |
| Therefore, the smart long run position, both for the | 4:13 | |
| speculator and the so called investor, | 4:16 | |
| is against betting on further depreciation of the dollar. | 4:19 | |
| I see no reason why our government, | 4:24 | |
| if it has carefully analyzed the odds, | 4:27 | |
| should not invest on the right side, | 4:29 | |
| on the long run profitable side. | 4:32 | |
| In doing this successfully, it will inflict losses | 4:36 | |
| on the speculators and on the nervous hedgers. | 4:39 | |
| But I must say, that couldn't happen to a nicer bunch | 4:43 | |
| of guys. | 4:45 | |
| I do not believe that the government has no business | 4:48 | |
| in principle, in investing or speculating. | 4:52 | |
| On the contrary, I think it has a duty | 4:56 | |
| to counter speculate when reason and information | 5:00 | |
| convince rational and well informed authorities | 5:03 | |
| that the market is temporarily speculating | 5:07 | |
| against fundamental economic forces. | 5:10 | |
| Now of course I do recognize that there's always a danger | 5:14 | |
| that governments will not act in a well informed | 5:16 | |
| and reasonable way for clearly legitimate goals. | 5:19 | |
| Thus, because of political pressures, | 5:25 | |
| a government may support the price of wheat | 5:28 | |
| when fundamental economic forces say that its market | 5:30 | |
| price should be tending downward. | 5:33 | |
| Maybe doing that just to curry favor with farmers. | 5:35 | |
| It may be doing that in austriacus, irrational fashion. | 5:38 | |
| But 1973 support of the dollar does not in my view | 5:43 | |
| fall into such a category. | 5:47 | |
| And actually, those among us who favor flexible | 5:50 | |
| exchange rates, ought to realize that the apparent | 5:54 | |
| instability of the dollar in the face of what seems | 5:58 | |
| to be an improving basic balance, | 6:01 | |
| is itself definitely undermining their good cause | 6:04 | |
| of greater flexibility in the exchange rates. | 6:10 | |
| Judicious support that is likely to make the government | 6:13 | |
| win money in the long run, and is likely to speed up | 6:18 | |
| the approach to the true emerging nonequilibrium, | 6:22 | |
| is therefore a desirable thing. | 6:27 | |
| Now, those are the reasons upon which I would rest | 6:30 | |
| my case for such support. | 6:34 | |
| But let me try to be responsive to the question asked. | 6:37 | |
| What are the arguments against this position of mine? | 6:42 | |
| Well, first there is the argument that we should | 6:47 | |
| give clean floating a chance, so that the market | 6:48 | |
| can prove to doubters that it will rapidly adjust | 6:52 | |
| its speculative flurries to long run equilibrium trends. | 6:55 | |
| And in a measure, I suppose that's what we've been doing | 7:01 | |
| in delaying our support so long. | 7:04 | |
| But there's not very much interesting that I know | 7:08 | |
| of to say about that first argument. | 7:11 | |
| More weighty is the following second argument | 7:14 | |
| against support of the dollar by the US government. | 7:16 | |
| We have the recognize that there may be up to | 7:20 | |
| 80 billion dollars of unwanted reserves abroad | 7:23 | |
| in the hands of the central banks. | 7:26 | |
| Suppose that every time the dollar improves, | 7:30 | |
| those unwanted dollars try to come back here | 7:33 | |
| in exchange for francs, marks, and other currencies. | 7:36 | |
| Indeed, even in the absence of such improvement | 7:40 | |
| of the dollar, suppose such unwanted dollars keep | 7:44 | |
| trying to get converted back into foreign currencies. | 7:47 | |
| Then the dollar will always tend to sag. | 7:52 | |
| Indeed, if we include a big item of such returning dollars | 7:56 | |
| in the basic predictable balance of the next five years, | 8:00 | |
| then perhaps our basic balance, even though it's improving, | 8:06 | |
| is still in deficit. | 8:09 | |
| In other words, taking into account such a predictable | 8:12 | |
| return flow of several billions of dollars per year, | 8:16 | |
| the dollar may still be overvalued on a half decade basis. | 8:19 | |
| In that case, it would indeed be a mistake for us | 8:25 | |
| to be supporting an overvalued dollar. | 8:27 | |
| Of course, in that case it's even sillier for France | 8:31 | |
| and other countries to be objecting to the sagging | 8:33 | |
| of the dollar. | 8:35 | |
| The dollar rate should, under this assumption, sag. | 8:37 | |
| The other countries can't have their cake and eat it too. | 8:41 | |
| They can't want to redeem dollars, | 8:44 | |
| and also refuse the United States a whopping surplus | 8:46 | |
| in its merchandising current accounts | 8:49 | |
| to give it the where with all to redeem those dollars. | 8:51 | |
| So in effect, under those circumstances, | 8:55 | |
| when other countries encourage us to support the dollar | 8:58 | |
| under the assumption that the 80 billion of past | 9:01 | |
| overhang is not removed from the picture, | 9:03 | |
| they are in effect asking us to do surreptitiously | 9:07 | |
| what we have rightly refused to do on an outright basis. | 9:10 | |
| Namely, they are asking us to use our support operations | 9:15 | |
| as a leaver to fund our dollar debts abroad, | 9:19 | |
| in effect granting them some kind of an exchange rate | 9:25 | |
| guarantee on those dollar obligations. | 9:28 | |
| And in effect committing out government | 9:32 | |
| through the mechanism of swap loan agreements | 9:34 | |
| to stand behind those dollars in terms of some | 9:37 | |
| foreign currencies. | 9:41 | |
| Now, that kind of support I'm not in favor of, | 9:43 | |
| and if it appears that in the future, | 9:47 | |
| as we do support the dollar, that the response | 9:51 | |
| is a return of these past dollars of overhang, | 9:55 | |
| then I shall counsel cessation of such support. | 10:02 | |
| Well, after answering the second question, | 10:07 | |
| if time permits, I'd like to return to the question | 10:10 | |
| of whether this is not a good time for foreigners | 10:13 | |
| actually to be buying up our capital, | 10:15 | |
| to be buying up our stocks, to be buying up our plants, | 10:18 | |
| and also to be buying up our going concerns. | 10:20 | |
| Let me turn now to the second question. | 10:24 | |
| It reads as follows- | 10:28 | |
| I heard a rumor that you had taken monetarism apart | 10:30 | |
| at a forecasting conference somewhere this summer. | 10:34 | |
| How did that analysis go? | 10:37 | |
| On July 13th I took part in a seminar here in Cambridge | 10:40 | |
| that dealt with forecasting. | 10:44 | |
| And my morning's assignment was to conduct a dialog | 10:47 | |
| on monetaristic methods. | 10:50 | |
| I believe the members of the seminar had heard | 10:52 | |
| the case for monetarism on an earlier day. | 10:54 | |
| I don't think it's quite correct to say that I took | 10:59 | |
| monetarism apart. | 11:01 | |
| Actually, I had then the say that the monetarism stock, | 11:03 | |
| it's quotation in the market as a technique | 11:13 | |
| of policy analysis, has been depressed so low | 11:16 | |
| at the present time, that there's danger the people | 11:20 | |
| will overlook the element of value in the stress | 11:24 | |
| that among the many factors that forecasters | 11:27 | |
| and policy advisors must taken account of, | 11:30 | |
| ought to be given to the behavior of the money supply | 11:34 | |
| and of the credit markets. | 11:36 | |
| What I did first was to review the record. | 11:40 | |
| For a few years, the federal reserve bank of St. Louis | 11:42 | |
| had pretty good success in its quarter to quarter | 11:45 | |
| forecasting. | 11:47 | |
| And then its year to year forecasting. | 11:48 | |
| And indeed, at that time, it seemed to do better | 11:51 | |
| than most of the other monetarists. | 11:53 | |
| Better than the city bank, for example. | 11:55 | |
| Better than the three leading academic monetaristic | 11:57 | |
| forecasters, whose forecasts I've informally monitored | 12:00 | |
| over the years. | 12:03 | |
| But as I think I must have mentioned before in these tapes, | 12:06 | |
| in recent years, St. Louis has been running | 12:09 | |
| into worse luck in its forecast of nominal GNP. | 12:12 | |
| I'm not now referring to its abandoning of its forecast | 12:16 | |
| of real GNP, of the breakdown of nominal GNP | 12:21 | |
| into real end price factor. | 12:25 | |
| Their phases one, two, three, three and a half, four, | 12:28 | |
| perhaps have contaminated their record. | 12:34 | |
| But I'm not referring to that which monetarism | 12:37 | |
| is supposed to be able to deliver the goods on, | 12:40 | |
| nominal GNP forecast. | 12:42 | |
| Indeed, when Professor Fare of Princeton | 12:44 | |
| did a recent roundup, which I mentioned, | 12:48 | |
| of ten or so different forecasters, | 12:50 | |
| the only method that did worse in recent years | 12:53 | |
| than a straight mechanical computer forecast | 12:56 | |
| with no adjustment of the coefficients for judgment, | 12:59 | |
| was the St. Louis reduced form model. | 13:02 | |
| Not only did Fare's own mechanical computer | 13:05 | |
| do better than the reduced form of monetarism, | 13:08 | |
| but so did Epstein at resources they'd incorporated. | 13:11 | |
| The unkindest blow of all is that even the median | 13:18 | |
| business forecaster reporting to the national bureau | 13:21 | |
| did better in at least square sense, | 13:24 | |
| and the Wharton school and the Chase Evans model | 13:28 | |
| and the University of Michigan and a number of other | 13:30 | |
| models which Fare didn't keep track of, | 13:33 | |
| but which I informally monitor in my own records, | 13:35 | |
| did better. | 13:40 | |
| I also cited, and here I had to be very impressionistic, | 13:43 | |
| from my informal collection of forecasters, | 13:46 | |
| any monetarists other monetarist forecasts, | 13:52 | |
| which I've been able to collect over the recent years. | 13:56 | |
| And indeed I had to report that I couldn't find | 14:01 | |
| in my records a single monetarist who deviated | 14:03 | |
| systematically from the consensus for clearly | 14:07 | |
| monetarist factors, came out with a long run batting | 14:11 | |
| average as measured by squared error, | 14:16 | |
| which was very good in recent years. | 14:19 | |
| But I warned against making the fundamental error | 14:23 | |
| of some of the monetarists themselves, | 14:27 | |
| namely trying to judge the worth of a method | 14:30 | |
| by its crypto positivistic correlation coefficients. | 14:33 | |
| Although, those who claim to triumph by the sword | 14:38 | |
| must in a sense be prepared to die by the sword. | 14:42 | |
| I don't think we can take such rash warriors | 14:45 | |
| at their own word, at their own crude methodology. | 14:48 | |
| Then I described some of the methods used by monetarists | 14:56 | |
| to dig themselves out of the hole of their own making. | 14:59 | |
| As for example, to put in an odd hope trend | 15:02 | |
| into velocity, so as to enable you to lift | 15:04 | |
| the St. Louis kind of estimate to the neighborhood | 15:08 | |
| of the consensus crowd. | 15:10 | |
| Or, you can call yourself a monetarist by putting | 15:12 | |
| enough fudge factors so as to give you the typical | 15:16 | |
| ecclesiastic forecast. | 15:18 | |
| In short, I suggested that recent skepticism | 15:21 | |
| of coincidental empirical irregularities | 15:25 | |
| that lack prior probability ought to be entertained. | 15:29 | |
| Thus, anyone who knows neoclassical economics, | 15:35 | |
| why should he think that one M1 measure, or M2, or M7, | 15:39 | |
| or M39 measure, ought to be in the future, a simple | 15:45 | |
| causal, reversible relationship with nominal GNP | 15:51 | |
| So that it can do better for policy purposes, | 15:55 | |
| for forecasting purposes, then a more complicated model | 16:00 | |
| that takes into account investment intentions, | 16:04 | |
| technical changes, crop phases, and a host of other | 16:08 | |
| dull things? | 16:10 | |
| So, I guess some of my message is that monetarism | 16:14 | |
| is now somewhat subject to overvaluation, | 16:19 | |
| but if you believe in contrary opinion, | 16:24 | |
| if you believe in sticking to value as against price, | 16:27 | |
| maybe a canny investor might in this time | 16:32 | |
| pick up a little of the monetarism stock for his portfolio. | 16:35 | |
| Let me turn to the current situation of business | 16:42 | |
| before I go back to the subject of whether this is or | 16:49 | |
| isn't a good time for foreigners to be buying up | 16:53 | |
| American capital. | 16:57 | |
| We still are in a period of some confusion. | 17:00 | |
| The second quarter, first estimates of GNP | 17:03 | |
| have now come in. | 17:08 | |
| They're even lower than the forecast I gave you | 17:11 | |
| which was to take the eight percent first quarter | 17:16 | |
| rate of growth and bring it down to three and a half | 17:21 | |
| percent. | 17:25 | |
| The first estimate actually is, there's only two point six | 17:27 | |
| percent a real growth in the second quarter. | 17:30 | |
| But I want to warn you against attaching too much | 17:36 | |
| importance to that weak number | 17:39 | |
| because there's quite a debate going on among | 17:43 | |
| the experts as to whether it's really credible. | 17:45 | |
| We may be running into a problem here | 17:50 | |
| involved in seasonal correction. | 17:53 | |
| It's proper I think to seasonally adjust economic data | 17:56 | |
| so we can get out of them the mirror vicissitudes | 18:01 | |
| of the changing weather. | 18:06 | |
| We expect retail sales to be up at Christmas, | 18:09 | |
| and if retail sales are up that doesn't mean we're | 18:12 | |
| in a boom, it just means that the snow is beginning | 18:14 | |
| to fall and Santa Claus will soon be here, | 18:16 | |
| so we properly deflate as best we can for seasonal trends. | 18:19 | |
| But I want to emphasize that as best we can. | 18:25 | |
| We're not dealing here with something here like | 18:28 | |
| Plutonian tide tables. | 18:31 | |
| You can predict the position of a comet | 18:33 | |
| several centuries ahead. | 18:37 | |
| You can predict tides with great accuracy. | 18:40 | |
| You can predict the way a pendulum will osculate | 18:44 | |
| to a microsecond of precision, | 18:47 | |
| but you cannot by fore analysis or spectral analysis | 18:51 | |
| or by any method known to mankind | 18:56 | |
| get accurately the seasonal element out. | 19:02 | |
| Now, what I've been saying of course should be | 19:07 | |
| remembered at all times, | 19:09 | |
| but it's especially appropriate now | 19:10 | |
| because here's how the argument goes. | 19:12 | |
| Your argument goes that the weakening in the second | 19:14 | |
| quarter, part of which is certainly genuine, | 19:17 | |
| may be due to reasons of supply and not to a weakening | 19:21 | |
| of demand. | 19:26 | |
| I've already commented on that view, | 19:27 | |
| in my last tape I mentioned the view of | 19:30 | |
| Al Summers of the conference board, | 19:33 | |
| and I think of Greenspan and some others, | 19:37 | |
| as against the view of data resources | 19:42 | |
| that there was a substantial weakening in demand, | 19:45 | |
| these authorities have argued that the economy | 19:47 | |
| is still running flat out, but we are pressing up | 19:51 | |
| against capacity limitations. | 19:55 | |
| Good man power is no longer available. | 19:57 | |
| The federal reserve index of surplus capacity | 20:01 | |
| isn't to be trusted, according to this group of observers, | 20:04 | |
| and you better look at the Wharton measures of capacity, | 20:09 | |
| which show very little surplus. | 20:13 | |
| Now if the economy is running flat out, | 20:17 | |
| that means that the normal ups and downs | 20:21 | |
| of production, which can be associated | 20:25 | |
| with the first quarter and the second quarter, | 20:29 | |
| with the third quarter, and with the fourth quarter, | 20:33 | |
| can't work themselves out, | 20:36 | |
| because you're right up against the ceiling. | 20:37 | |
| And so, the second quarter generally shows a whopping | 20:40 | |
| increase for purely seasonal reasons. | 20:43 | |
| And generally, we sensibly correct for that, | 20:46 | |
| and take out the seasonal influence. | 20:49 | |
| But if, at the end of the first quarter, | 20:52 | |
| we already were up against the ceiling, | 20:54 | |
| how can that normal seasonal factor show itself? | 20:57 | |
| And so, it's argued by these experts, it couldn't. | 21:02 | |
| If you use unseasonably corrected data, | 21:07 | |
| we had one of the biggest output increases | 21:11 | |
| in the second quarter on record. | 21:13 | |
| And it's only this artificial tinkering with the data, | 21:15 | |
| normally appropriate but not appropriate | 21:19 | |
| in this 1973 phase of the business cycle | 21:22 | |
| that made this look like slow growth, | 21:27 | |
| so goes the argument. | 21:30 | |
| Now if that's the case, | 21:33 | |
| we should see in the third quarter the opposite happening. | 21:34 | |
| Because what's the normal pattern in the third quarter? | 21:38 | |
| Normal pattern in the third quarter is you're in summer, | 21:41 | |
| people are taking vacations, | 21:44 | |
| there's an easing up, there isn't any occasion | 21:46 | |
| for overtime. | 21:49 | |
| But according to this hypothesis, | 21:51 | |
| the economy is still very strong, is still running | 21:53 | |
| flat out, it's still bumping right up there against | 21:55 | |
| the ceiling. | 22:00 | |
| Then, according to this hypothesis, | 22:01 | |
| we should not see that normal relaxation, | 22:04 | |
| and therefore, they're saying, don't be surprised | 22:06 | |
| if real output bounces back from allegedly only being | 22:10 | |
| two point six percent rate of real growth | 22:14 | |
| in the second quarter to something like say | 22:17 | |
| five and a half or six percent in the third quarter. | 22:21 | |
| In any case, without my trying to adjudicate the matter, | 22:27 | |
| I would say that it's best to not go by any one quarter, | 22:33 | |
| smooth out your data by using two or three quarters, | 22:37 | |
| an then see where we stand. | 22:40 | |
| And from that viewpoint, I must say, | 22:47 | |
| the situation is still a bit clouded. | 22:49 | |
| For example, it looks as if retail sales were very good | 22:52 | |
| in the first part of July. | 22:56 | |
| Extremely strong. | 22:59 | |
| Any beginning weakness or letup earlier. | 23:00 | |
| Now, this may be due to the fact, one of those factors | 23:04 | |
| which an ecclecticist would take into account | 23:09 | |
| in making his forecast and interpreting the passing scene. | 23:11 | |
| It may be due to the fact that the freeze of | 23:14 | |
| of phase three and a half presented itself | 23:17 | |
| to consumers as a very good time to buy | 23:21 | |
| because they could figure that after the freeze | 23:24 | |
| was suspended, after we moved into phase four, | 23:27 | |
| you wouldn't be able to buy at such favorable prices, | 23:30 | |
| and that could explain some of the strength in demand, | 23:32 | |
| and it may be borrowing against the future. | 23:35 | |
| On the other hand, we have to take the straws as they are, | 23:37 | |
| and the straws were that in July, automobile sales | 23:40 | |
| were very good and retail sales generally seemed | 23:44 | |
| to have been quite strong, | 23:49 | |
| so it maybe be that we have not yet really turned | 23:50 | |
| the corner towards that growth recession, | 23:53 | |
| which all the camps, generally speaking, | 23:56 | |
| tend to agree is waiting for us around the end of the year. | 24:01 | |
| The main differences of opinion have to do | 24:06 | |
| with whether that growth recession | 24:09 | |
| is going to move into a genuine recession, | 24:10 | |
| measured let's say by the Krudos national bureau | 24:13 | |
| criterion of two fold quarters of negative growth | 24:18 | |
| in the real GNP. | 24:23 | |
| I don't want to spend more time in detailed analysis | 24:27 | |
| of the second quarter data and what they may be telling us, | 24:32 | |
| but I should point out to you what the towns in Greenspan | 24:39 | |
| has pointed out, | 24:42 | |
| namely that there was a whopping price increase | 24:44 | |
| as measured by the GNP deflator, | 24:47 | |
| that tends to reduce the real component, | 24:50 | |
| and the question is whether all of that is genuine. | 24:53 | |
| Now, part of it is undoubtedly due to a weight shift | 24:57 | |
| towards goods which there isn't a lot in prices. | 25:02 | |
| I'm not sure that is asperious effect, | 25:07 | |
| but in case you think it is asperious effect | 25:09 | |
| and want to rule it out, | 25:11 | |
| you can make a computation using a chain index | 25:14 | |
| with the same weights of the GNP prices. | 25:19 | |
| And if you do that, that will raise the two point six | 25:23 | |
| percent to eight percent. | 25:27 | |
| Now, I've heard even stronger reasons for withholding | 25:30 | |
| judgment that the first quarter data may | 25:35 | |
| a year from this July, | 25:38 | |
| well a year from, July in '74, be revised downward, | 25:40 | |
| and the second quarter revised upward. | 25:45 | |
| I guess then all that we really can conclude | 25:50 | |
| is that there does seem to be a beginning of a weakening | 25:56 | |
| of real growth, but it's premature to know | 26:02 | |
| whether it is primarily due to supply reasons | 26:07 | |
| or demand reasons, | 26:10 | |
| and until you can resolve that last question, | 26:11 | |
| you of course aren't in a position to make | 26:16 | |
| policy recommendations. | 26:19 | |
| When I am asked, for example, whether it is still | 26:21 | |
| time to have a tax increase, | 26:24 | |
| you know there's quite an authoritative rumor | 26:28 | |
| that the President's advisors | 26:30 | |
| both inside the administration and in some of the other | 26:33 | |
| non executive agencies, | 26:39 | |
| I won't be more specific, | 26:42 | |
| did advise him to ask for a tax increase | 26:44 | |
| but because of Watergate and other problems | 26:46 | |
| which he has, he overruled them, and put in the phase | 26:49 | |
| three and a half, and the phase four. | 26:54 | |
| Well, I think I have just a few minutes | 26:59 | |
| to begin to comment on the question as to whether | 27:02 | |
| the United States is a happy hunting ground now | 27:07 | |
| for foreign capital. | 27:12 | |
| I spoke of the 80 billion dollars that are abroad. | 27:13 | |
| Well of course those are in the central banks, | 27:17 | |
| but there's a counter part of those in the hands | 27:19 | |
| of individuals abroad, | 27:23 | |
| and it seems to me that it might well be rational | 27:25 | |
| for a typical corporation or a typical investment trust | 27:28 | |
| or a typical person of means in Japan, in Germany, | 27:33 | |
| in Holland, in western Europe, generally, | 27:39 | |
| to want to have a bigger stake in the American economy | 27:42 | |
| than he now has. | 27:47 | |
| First, the American economy is about 25 percent | 27:50 | |
| of the world GNP, a bit more than that still perhaps. | 27:53 | |
| And if you believe in risk aversion and diversification, | 27:56 | |
| then I don't think that most investors abroad | 28:02 | |
| are as fully invested in the American economy | 28:04 | |
| as they ought to be. | 28:09 | |
| I could have made this remark at any time | 28:10 | |
| in recorded history, | 28:13 | |
| certainly any time in the last 15 years, | 28:15 | |
| and it's always in season. | 28:17 | |
| That's point number one. | 28:20 | |
| Particularly you see a foreign investor who has all | 28:21 | |
| his eggs, let's say, in the French market, | 28:24 | |
| should want to get something which will have independent | 28:27 | |
| movements, because in independent probability movements | 28:30 | |
| you get diversification and a reduction of variants. | 28:35 | |
| Well that's a long run factor. | 28:39 | |
| Second, our price earning ratios are cheap. | 28:43 | |
| And if you believe that there has not been a long term | 28:47 | |
| erosion of profitability in American corporations, | 28:53 | |
| then they are indeed bargains. | 28:56 | |
| If you're a foreign investor and you have equity | 28:58 | |
| investment, you can apply even a less stringent task, | 29:01 | |
| namely, if there's an erosion of profitability here | 29:05 | |
| in America, then there probably is one also abroad | 29:10 | |
| because capital competes with capital by international trade | 29:14 | |
| across boundaries of nations. | 29:18 | |
| And so, it could be that the American earnings, | 29:22 | |
| price ratios, are more depressed from a long run viewpoint | 29:27 | |
| than foreign markets, | 29:30 | |
| particularly those foreign markets which have done better | 29:34 | |
| in the last boom, than the American market. | 29:36 | |
| Thirdly, you may find yourself with a reversal | 29:42 | |
| of the adverse experience which foreigners have been having | 29:46 | |
| in recent months. | 29:49 | |
| Let's take a typical foreigner who had a good eye | 29:51 | |
| for picking American stocks, | 29:54 | |
| he's a rare bird by the way. | 29:55 | |
| I don't want to go into details on how a foreigner | 29:57 | |
| ought to invest, I don't have time in this tape. | 29:59 | |
| But suppose he had a good eye and he picked good stocks | 30:03 | |
| which held up better than the American market | 30:06 | |
| in which in fact held up and are equal now | 30:07 | |
| to their early January levels. | 30:11 | |
| To this foreigner, given the depreciation of the dollar, | 30:15 | |
| if he reckons, as undoubtedly he does, | 30:19 | |
| his net worth in terms of his own currency, | 30:21 | |
| because that's where he's gonna spend the rest of his life, | 30:24 | |
| that's where his expenses come, | 30:26 | |
| then he finds himself with the rather considerable loss | 30:29 | |
| due just to the depreciation of the dollar. | 30:32 | |
| But my time is just about up, | 30:35 | |
| but you see, once you form a judgment and you must form | 30:36 | |
| that judgment as to whether the dollar has hit rock bottom, | 30:41 | |
| then after you've formed the judgment that Wall Street | 30:45 | |
| has hit rock bottom, | 30:49 | |
| and that rock bottom has not recognized the inflation | 30:51 | |
| which has been going on in the American economy | 30:55 | |
| for the last few years, | 30:57 | |
| and has discounted all the adverse news that could | 30:58 | |
| possibly happen, | 31:01 | |
| then that would be a great time for foreigners | 31:02 | |
| to invest in good American stocks if they know | 31:05 | |
| how to pick good American stocks. | 31:09 | |
| Narrator | If you have any comments or questions | 31:11 |
| for Professor Samuelson, address them to | 31:13 | |
| Instructional Dynamics Incorporated | 31:14 | |
| 166 East Superior Street, Chicago, Illinois, 60611. | 31:16 |
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