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A Look At Crisis Currency Instability And Its Causes

By Lela Perkins


There have been many reported cases of currencies investors being caught unawares since the early 1990s, leading to runs on currencies and capital flight. A person may want to know what makes currencies investors and international financiers respond in manner like this. They may be influenced by an evaluation of an economy's minutia or by their gut feeling. Below is an overview of crisis currency instability and what leads to it.

The main cause of currencies crisis is a decline in the value of a certain country's currency. Such a decline in value negatively affects an economy by causing instability within exchange rates meaning that units of those currencies do not buy as much as it used to in others. Simply put, such a crisis occurs as an interaction between investor expectations and what such expectations lead to.

In case a potential crisis is rooming, central banks operating in an economy having a fixed exchange rate can attempt to maintain the ongoing rate through dipping into the nations foreign reserves, or they can allow the exchange rates to fluctuate. Some may ask how dipping into the reserves may be a solution. In case devaluation is expected by the markets, the only sure way of relieving the pressure is by a raise in the interest rates.

To increase these rate, the money supply has to be shrunk by the central bank, which will in turn increase demand for currencies. It can be done through selling foreign reserves to form a capital outflow. When the central bank sells a part of its foreign reserves, payments received are in form of the domestic currencies that it will hold out of circulation as assets.

The propping up of the exchange rate cannot go on forever, both on a basis of declines in foreign reserves and political and economic factors such as high level of unemployment. Currencies devaluations due to fixed exchange rates increases leads to domestic goods being cheaper when compared to foreign goods.

The result of this is that output is raised, hence boosting workers demand. Devaluation is also capable of raising rates of interest within the long run, something that central banks must counterbalance through an increase in foreign reserves and supply of money.

Investors are well aware that a strategy for devaluation can be used hence taking advantage of this to their expectations, which is unfortunate for banks but fortunate for ordinary people. If the markets expect currencies devaluation by central banks that would in turn raise the exchange rate, the probability of a boost in foreign reserves by a raise in aggregate demand might not be realized. Instead, central banks should shrink the supply of money through utilizing its reserves, eventually increasing the domestic interest rates.

Should the confidence the investors have in the economy stability be eroded, they will try capital flight. This involves taking their money out of the country. When investors sell their domestic-currency denominated investments, they are converted into foreign currencies. This worsens the exchange rates. However, to predict when a country will experience crisis currency instability involves quite a complex set of variables.




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