Krzysztof Rybiński: Global imbalances and implications for emerging markets Address by Mr Krzysztof Rybiński, Deputy President of the National Bank of Poland, at the Panel Discussion on Scenarios for Emerging Markets at the OKB Roundtable, Vienna, 14-15 December 2006. Views presented here are my own and they do not represent the official position of the National Bank of Poland. Here I only sketch the key arguments, extensive discussion of issues related to global imbalances is presented on my blog www.rybinski.eu. *  *  *  ‘Hard’ and ‘soft’ landing are aeronautical terms. Many decades ago plane crashes were so alarmingly frequent, that some believed that every flying plane was an accident waiting to happen. Today, the advance of technology makes the past concerns look ridiculous; plane crashes are rare and require exceptionally adverse weather conditions, human failure or a terrorist attack. Likewise, large current account deficit in the United States and large current account surpluses in China and oil-exporting countries, jointly labeled as global imbalances are considered as unstable just as planes used to be several decades ago. Similar aeronautical vocabulary – hard landing, soft landing, crash etc. – is also used to describe the range of possible outcomes for the global economy, which embarked on a global imbalances journey about ten years ago 1 .
3  Dooley M., Folkerts-Landau D., Garber P. (2003) “An Essay on the Revived Bretton Woods System“, NBER Working Paper 9971; Dooley M., Folkerts-Landau D., Garber P. (2004) “The Revived Bretton Woods System: The Effects of Periphery Intervention and Reserve Management on Interest Rates and Exchange Rates in Center Countries”, NBER Working Paper 10332; Dooley M., Folkerts-Landau D., Garber P. (2004) “Direct Investment, Rising Real Wages and the Absorption of Excess Labor in the Periphery“, NBER Working Paper 10626; Dooley M., Folkerts-Landau D., Garber P. (2004) “The US Current Account Deficit and Economic Development: Collateral for a Total Return Equity Swap“, NBER Working Paper 10727; Dooley M., Folkerts-Landau D., Garber P. (2005) “Savings Glut and Interest Rates: the Missing Link to Europe“, NBER Working Paper 11520. 4  Bernanke B. (2005) “The Global Saving Glut and the U.S. Current Account Deficit”, Remarks by Governor Ben S. Bernanke At the Homer Jones Lecture, St. Louis, Missouri Updates speech given on March 10, 2005, at the Sandridge Lecture, Virginia Association of Economists, Richmond, Virginia.