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Week 44
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November 8, 2007


THU
8
NOV
2007

Mr. Sarkozy goes to Washington

By Michael Pettis

Amid the adulation he received during his speech to the joint session of Congress, I noticed that Sarkozy remembered to bring up two subjects – the dollar and the RMB.  He criticized dollar weakness saying that the world’s leading exponent of free trade “should be the first to promote fair exchange rates”.  He also said “The yuan is already a problem for everybody. The dollar should not remain simply a problem for others. If we are not careful, monetary disorder risks descending into economic war, of which we would all be victims.” 

 

Clearly the value of the euro against Europe’s (or at least France’s) main trading partners is weighing on his mind.  He is supposed to visit Beijing, Shanghai and Xian (the home of the terracotta warriors) from November 25 to 27 and amidst agreeing on a Chinese order for two nuclear reactors (worth around ($9 billion) I expect he will discuss currency issues.

 



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Biography

 

Michael Pettis is a professor at Peking University's Guanghua School of Management, where he specializes in Chinese financial markets.  He has also taught, from 2002 to 2004, at Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management and, from 1992 to 2001, at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Business.   He is a member of the board of directors of ABC-CA Fund Management Co., a Sino-French joint venture based in Shanghai.

 

Pettis has worked on Wall Street in trading, capital markets, and corporate finance since 1987, when he joined the Sovereign Debt trading team at Manufacturers Hanover (now JP Morgan). Most recently, from 1996 to 2001, Pettis worked at Bear Stearns, where he was Managing Director-Principal heading the Latin American Capital Markets and the Liability Management groups. He has also worked as a partner in a merchant banking boutique that specialized in securitizing Latin American assets and at Credit Suisse First Boston, where he headed the emerging markets trading team. Besides trading and capital markets, Pettis has been involved in sovereign advisory work, including for the Mexican government on the privatization of its banking system, the Republic of Macedonia on the restructuring of its international bank debt, and the South Korean Ministry of Finance on the restructuring of the country’s commercial bank debt.

 

Pettis is a member of the Institute of Latin American Studies Advisory Board at Columbia University as well as the Dean’s Advisory Board at the School of Public and International Affairs.  He is the author of several books, including The Volatility Machine: Emerging Economies and the Threat of Financial Collapse (Oxford University Press, 2001).  He received an MBA in Finance in 1984 and an MIA in Development Economics in 1981, both from Columbia University.

 

He can be contacted at michael@pettis.comOpen in a new window.