The Economist sobre safe assets

Aca

"The useful justification for fiscal deficits at a time of recession is the Keynesian one of supporting demand. But in the current crisis, one could argue that governments were simply providing a service - supplying a sufficient quantity of safe assets to meet the demands of investors."

"As the monetary system evolved, the currency guarantor function of the central banks changed with it. The Bank no longer had to worry about having enough gold but it did have to worry about having enough foreign exchange reserves to safeguard the currency against speculative attacks, something the Bank of England failed to do in 1992. The introduction of inflation targeting turned the Bank from the guarantor of the external value of the currency to the guarantor of its internal value. And, of course, some central banks (including the Fed) target economic growth as well as inflation."

"In practice, safe assets are defined in a more technical sense, as those assets that institutions are allowed to treat as safe for accounting or regulatory purposes. Governments can act like Captain Jean-Luc Picard shouting "Make it so" and decree that their own debt be treated as safe. This is, arguably, an even greater power than the ability to tax which is limited by the exigencies of electoral politics and the realities of mobile international capital and labour."

Y sobre la demanda por títulos de deuda pública

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