A Case Study of a Currency Crisis: The Russian Default of 1998
Abbigail J. Chiodo and Michael T. Owyang currency crisis can be defined as a speculative attack on a country’s currency that can result in a forced devaluation and possible debt default. One example of a currency crisis occurred in Russia in 1998 and led to the devaluation of the ruble and the default on public and private debt.1 Currency crises such as Russia’s are often thought to emerge from a variety of economic conditions, such as large deficits and low foreign reserves. They sometimes appear to be triggered by similar crises nearby, although the spillover from these contagious crises does not infect all neighboring economies—only those vulnerable to a crisis themselves.
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These models can be grouped into three generations, each of which is intended to explain specific aspects that lead to a currency crisis.
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Kharas, Pinto, and Ulatov (2001) provide a history from a fundamentalsbased perspective, focusing on taxes and public debt issues. We endeavor to incorporate a role for monetary policy. The speculative attack need not be successful to be dubbed a currency crisis. Burnside, Eichenbaum, and Rebelo (2001) show that the government has at its disposal a number of mechanisms to finance the fiscal costs of the devaluation. Which policy is chosen determines the inflationary effect of the currency crisis.
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© 2002, The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.
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First-Generation Models
The first-generation models of a currency crisis developed by Krugman (1979) and Flood and Garber (1984) rely on government debt and the perceived inability of the government to control the budget as the key causes of the currency crisis. These models argue that a speculative attack on the domestic currency can result from an increasing current account deficit (indicating an increase in the trade deficit) or an expected monetization of the fiscal deficit. The speculative attack can result in a sudden devaluation when the central bank’s store of foreign reserves is depleted and it can no
All three options directly address problem of the current accounts and financial and capital accounts. While deflation and capital control can remedy both current account and financial and capital accounts, devaluation only has immediate impacts on the current account. (Figure 1 bellow illustrates direct impacts of each option to these accounts.) However, as exchange rates, interest rates, economic growth and balance of payments are interacted, when one components of the balance of payment improves, the other accounts will also recover. For example, when import demand increases, demand for the dollar also increases, and therefore can prevent the outflow of gold from official reserve. That being said, all three options can solve U.S balance of payment problem; however, there must be cost incurred that Kennedy government have to consider.
Along with the stocks and bonds, there was also a high demand from foreigners wanting American goods. This occurred because the deflation from the United Sates made it so appealing to foreigners (Romer). On the other hand, because there was such a low income from Americans it reduced their demand for foreign products (Romer). Unfortunately other countries were trying to maintain an international gold standard in order to continue to meet the monetary contraction that was occurring in the United States (Romer). Sadly, this resulted in the deterioration of output and prices throughout countries all over the world. This downturn of other countries started looking like the one occurring in the United States (Romer). Banking panics along with financial crisis started occurring in other countries around the world, not just in the United Sates (Richardson, September 2007). By forcing countries to deflate, the gold standard reduced the value of bank’s collateral and made them more vulnerable to bank runs (Romer). Due to the overwhelming panics in banks and other financial market disruptions, countries globally experienced a tremendous depression in output and prices (Paul Evans).
All day and all night, they battled the emergency with each instrument available to them to keep the United States and world economies above water. Working with two U.S. presidents, and under flame from a crabby Congress and an open angered by conduct on Wall Street, the Fed—nearby associates in the Treasury Department—effectively settled a wavering monetary framework. With inventiveness and definitiveness, they kept a financial fall of incomprehensible scale and went ahead to create the strange projects that would resuscitate the U.S. economy and turn into the model for different nations. Rich with detail of the basic leadership prepare in Washington and permanent representations of the real players, The Courage to Act relates and clarifies the most exceedingly bad budgetary emergency and monetary droop in America since the Great Depression, giving an insider 's record of the approach reaction (http://www.forbes.com/sites/richardsalsman/2012/03/06/five-financial-reforms-that-would-prevent-crises-and-promote-prosperity/#).
The financial crisis of 2008 has been described as the worst financial crisis the world has seen since the great depression, but there are now murmurings of the potential for an even greater financial crisis, a currency crisis, caused by the demise of the US Dollar. The Dollar has been the reserve currency of the world since it took over from the Pound at the end of world war two, but we examine if it is about to crash spectacularly?
The financial crisis that happened during 2007-09 was considered the worst financial crisis in the world since the great depression in the 1930s. It leads to a series of banking failures and also prolonged recession, which have affected millions of Americans and paralyzed the whole financial system. Although it was happened a long time ago, the side effects are still having implications for the economy now. This has become an enormously common topic among economists, hence it plays an extremely important role in the economy. There are many questions that were asked about the financial crisis, one of the most common question that dragged attention was ’’How did the government (Federal Reserve) contributed to the financial crisis?’’
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Deutsche Bank (Karczmar, 2004) suggests that the euro could eventually challenge the dollar as a reserve currency, but the euro is still far behind the U.S. dollar as a reserve currency, representing just 24.2 percent of the world banking reserves in the 2013 third quarter (International Monetary Fund, 2013). Numerous economists endorse the United States’ ability to safely continue its external deficits. Cooper (2001) poses the argument in its simplest form:
Russian crisis of 1998 were caused due to a number of factors, the investor risk aversion by foreign players, fall in oil prices put the ruble under a drastic downward trend. Russia at that point in time was heavily dependent on capital inflows which was eroded due to the external shocks e.g Asian financial crisis etc country
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