Picture Credit: Dennis S. Hurd

I get letters from all over the world.  Here is a recent one:

Respected Sir,

Greetings of the day!

I read your blog religiously and have gained quite a lot of practical insights in financial field. Your book reviews are very helpful and impartial.

I request you to write blog post on dollar pegs in Middle East and under what conditions those dollar pegs would fall.

If in case you cannot write about it, kindly point me to some material which can be helpful to me.

Thanks for your valuable time.

Now occasionally, some people write me and tell me that I am outside my circle of competence.  In this case I will admit I am at the edge of that circle.  But maybe I can say a few useful things.

Many countries like pegging their currency to the US dollar because it provides stability for business relationships as businesses in their country trade with the US, or, with other countries that peg their US dollar, or, run a dirty peg of a controlled devaluation.  Let me call that informal group of countries the US dollar bloc. [USDB]

The problem comes when the country trading in the USDB begins to import a lot more than they export, and in the process, they either liquidate US dollar-denominated assets or create US dollar-denominated liabilities in order to fund the difference.

Now, that’s not a problem for the US — we get a pseudo-free pass in exporting claims on the US dollar.  The only potential cost is possible future inflation. But, it is a problem for other countries that try to do so, because they can’t manufacture those claims out of thin air as the US Treasury does.

Now in the Middle East it used to be easy for many countries there because of all the crude oil they produced.  Crude oil goes out, goods and US dollar claims come in.  Now it is reversed, as the price of crude is so low.  Might this have an effect on the currencies of the Middle East.  Well, first let’s look at some currencies that float that are heavily influenced by crude oil and other commodities: Australia, Canada, and Norway: