kawan saya poltak hotradero mengirimi tulisan ini....
menarik buat dibaca-baca.... terutama untuk yang pengen paham
ekonomi dan mau rendah hati belajar....
salam,
>Artikel agak lama - tapi masih menarik dibaca.
>
>Isinya tentang Gubernur Bank Sentral Thailand pada masa krisis Rerngchai
>Marakanond yang diperintahkan mengganti $ 4.58 Milyar yang digunakan oleh
>otoritas bank sentral thailand untuk mempertahankan nilai tukar baht yang
>sebenarnya memang tidak mungkin bisa dipertahankan.
>
>Kalau hal ini jadi preseden - maka mungkin tidak ada satupun orang waras
>di dunia ini yang mau jadi gubernur bank sentral... :)
>
>(Oh iya di artikel ini juga ada nama Sahril Sabirin disebut-sebut....)
>
>Satu hal yang menarik adalah bahwa artikel ini ikut mencerminkan betapa
>sulitnya mengkomunikasikan tentang cara kerja ekonomi dan finansial pada
>masyarakat - tanpa terlebih dahulu terdapat pemahaman mendasar tentang ekonomi.
>
>Tanpa pemahaman tentang cara kerja pasar dan dasar-dasar ekonomi -- maka
>kita cenderung menganggap masalah ekonomi adalah masalah
>gampang... cetek, dan menuduh ekonom-ekonom yang ada cuma pemamah biak
>buku teks...
>
>Maka tidak heran selalu muncul tuntutan atas "kreativitas-kreativitas"
>tertentu yang tidak didasarkan pada pemahaman dan rasionalitas.
>
>Tapi sejujurnya - apa iya ekonomi itu soal cetek...?
>
>======
>
>You Wanna Be a Central Banker? Think Again: William Pesek Jr.
>
>June 3 (Bloomberg) -- Central bankers around the globe probably aren't
>sleeping well this week, and events in Thailand are to blame.
>
>There, the former central bank governor, Rerngchai Marakanond, was ordered
>to repay 186 billion baht ($4.58 billion) of the money he spent defending
>the baht ahead of the 1997 Asian crisis. It sets a bizarre precedent for
>the world's monetary authorities, especially since one can argue Rerngchai
>was merely doing his job.
>
>If holding civil servants or government officials so gratuitously
>accountable for a mistake spreads, who in their right mind would take such
>jobs?
>
>Sure, hindsight shows the futility of Thailand's battle with speculators.
>The billions Rerngchai tossed at markets in May and June 1997 would've
>been better spent elsewhere. And Thailand's 65 million people have every
>right to know who, or what, was to blame for a crisis that forced them to
>go hat-in-hand to the International Monetary Fund for a $17 billion bailout.
>
>Yet naming a scapegoat won't get Thailand closer to understanding the
>events of the 1990s -- or how to avoid similar meltdowns.
>
>As culpable as Rerngchai may be, a currency peg -- which Thailand had
>until July 1997 -- is a political device. It's a policy of the finance
>ministry that's carried out by the central bank. The blame for Thailand's
>crisis goes to poor transparency, dodgy corporate governance, negligible
>public accountability and cushy ties between government, banks and businesses.
>
>Who's Next?
>
>Incompetent or not, Rerngchai was part of a system that came crashing down
>across Asia. All this week's court ruling is likely to do is have other
>central bankers biting their nails, worrying if they'll be next.
>
>It sure does make you wonder which current and former central bank bigwigs
>should hire lawyers. What if, for example, British officials turned on
>former Bank of England Governor Eddie George? After all, financier George
>Soros made more than $1 billion speculating on the pound in 1992, thanks
>largely to the central bank's efforts to stop its fall.
>
>Scandinavian officials, too. In the early 1990s, Sweden's central bank
>waged an aggressive battle against speculators attacking the currency.
>Then-Riksbank Governor Bengt Dennis raised marginal interest rates from 20
>percent to 500 percent. Should Dennis now be watching his back?
>
>Japan's Losses
>
>Perhaps Japanese central bankers should be worried, too. Take Bank of
>Japan Governor Toshihiko Fukui, who spent 32.8 trillion yen ($303 billion)
>in 2003 trying to weaken the yen. He tossed another 14.8 trillion yen at
>speculators in early 2004.
>
>Manipulating currencies can be a wash, fiscally; you're generally getting
>some asset in return. Yet Japan projects unrealized losses in its foreign
>reserve holdings came to about 11.4 trillion yen in the fiscal year ended
>March 31. On paper, Japan lost the equivalent of Singapore's economy with
>its reserve holdings. Even if Japan wanted to trim its dollar holdings,
>huge losses on them make that an unlikely option.
>
>Central bankers who run afoul of the law should indeed, be punished.
>Indonesia's central bank governor, Sjahril Sabirin, was sentenced to three
>years in prison in an alleged illegal payment of state funds to a bank in
>1999. In August 2002, the conviction was overturned by Indonesia's high court.
>
>More recently, in April 2004, Ernst Welteke, president of Germany's
>Bundesbank, resigned under pressure after accepting hospitality from a
>bank he supervised in 2001.
>
>Finger Pointing
>
>Yet in the case of Thailand's Rerngchai, it's laughable for politicians or
>the courts to point all fingers of blame his way. No one's saying
>Rerngchai didn't screw up in 1997. His most egregious error, of course,
>was blowing tens of billions of dollars of currency reserves defending an
>indefensible peg to the U.S. dollar.
>
>Rerngchai's use of swap transactions to stabilize the baht remains
>controversial. So does his failure to tell the IMF sooner that the Bank of
>Thailand was running out of reserves. Still, there's plenty of blame to go
>around in Bangkok. Focusing on Rerngchai effectively absolves myriad
>others with roles in the nation's economic plunge.
>
>Hmmmmm, what if this short-sighted, punish-the-central-banker mindset
>spread to other realms? That might be dreadful news for Yasushi Mieno, who
>ran the Bank of Japan in the late 1980s. It would be quite a sight to see
>the Japanese government go after him for pricking the nation's asset
>bubble with higher interest rates.
>
>To Err Is Human
>
>Come to think of it, maybe the homebuilders and farmers who sent former
>Fed Chairman Paul Volcker hate mail in the early 1980s for raising U.S.
>interest rates to 20 percent could just sue the man. Or maybe we'll see
>the flipside of that coin: Fed Chairman Al Greenspan demanding 5 percent
>of the upside in U.S. house prices because his easy-money policies fueled
>a housing bubble.
>
>Central bankers are human and err often. Yet Thai Prime Minister Thaksin
>Shinawatra was absolutely right this week when he said ``Rerngchai is not
>the sole person responsible'' for the crisis. Rather, Thaksin said, it was
>a ``matter of weakness that resulted from an accumulation of wrong
>policies over a long period of time.''
>
>Sober words, and ones that should be considered the next time Asia
>searches for convenient answers to complex questions.
>
>To contact the writer of this column:
>William Pesek Jr. in Tokyo at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or
>7570.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Berdikusi dg Santun & Elegan, dg Semangat Persahabatan. Menuju Indonesia yg
Lebih Baik, in Commonality & Shared Destiny. www.ppi-india.org
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