En las últimas semanas hemos visto recuperar fuerte al dólar. Más allá que las medidas de salvataje tomadas por el Tesoro americano debería jugar en contra de dicha moneda, encontre una explicación razonable de porque no sucedió así, en el newsletter diario The Daily Pfennig, y extraje la parte relevante de la explicación:
"The story is the same as we have seen over the past few months. Institutional investors and hedge funds are having to pay down some of the loans which they have taken out over the past few years. These investors had been rolling over loans in the lower yielding currencies of the yen, franc, and dollar in order to pick up the 'carry' between these low interest loans and their higher yielding investments. Now, due to the credit crunch, the banks are not renewing these loans, and the institutional investors have to sell investments and buy back the yen, franc, and dollar in order to pay off the banks. In addition to the flow of funds to pay off these bank loans, investors are also having to purchase dollars to make up for the losses which they are incurring on US$ based mortgage investments and credit default swaps."
"A question we hear a lot these days is when will this stop? That question is very difficult to answer, as hedge funds are mostly unregulated so there is no good data on just how much leverage there is. Making it even more difficult, the credit default swaps do not trade on an 'exchange' so it is almost impossible to try and gauge just how much of these swaps are outstanding. For those of you who are new to the Pfennig, credit default swaps are agreements which were entered into by institutions which guaranteed holders of certain mortgage backed investments against the risk of default. They are basically insurance policies on mortgage backed investments. These swaps are contracts between two parties, and are not cleared on a common exchange. As mortgage backed securities have plummeted, holders of the credit default swaps have started collecting. The vast majority of these derivative contracts are issued in US$, so when holders collect, the issuers have to pay off in US$, and sometimes have to sell investments in other currencies to raise the US$."
"But I digress, back to just how long this will last. No one knows. As long as the losses keep mounting on Wall Street, and volatility continues, investors will continue to have to buy dollars. I know this isn't helpful to readers who want someone to tell them right when the bottom is, but anyone who tells you they can predict these markets is delusional. I can only tell you that at some point the deleveraging will be complete, and the markets will start trading back on fundamentals. The fundamentals are not good for the US$, as we continue to increase debt and widen our deficits."
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