Exchange Rate appreciation
The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) announced the monetary policy on tuesday 28th. In one of the innocuous statements RBI mentioned it will allow appreciation of Rupee if there is higher capital inflow than can be managed through intervention. Not many commentators weighed in on this at the time. But that represents the most important signal.
Felix Salmon explains the dilemma of the asian central bankers in more details. RBI has sensibly tackled the financial crisis as of now and this indicates RBI is one of the intelligent central banks around. China faces this dilemma more critically as it wants an undervalued Yuan. To top its list of worries the GDP is rising really fast. If there is one way to attract big money then this is it.
There is a good chance central bankers will soon resort to good old capital restriction. This will be the first blow in the test of globalisation. This threatens to raise the friction between countries. We are witnessing increase in friction over anti-dumpting duty imposed by EU on Chinese.
Such regulatory threats have the potential to create more cycles in markets. So this is definitely going to be painful - we will have to hold our nerves. Fortunately or otherwise, we cannot, will not be able to reverse the globalisation.