The Ants and the Grasshoppers

28.5.10

An interesting analogy caught our eye this morning. We all have been brought up on a healthy dose of the 'ant and the grasshopper' story as kids in school. The story ends quite vividly. Winter comes, and the ants thrive on the resources they have worked hard to collect all summer. The grasshopper, for all his frolicking during that time, dies a sad death as winter intensifies and he has no food to bank on. Something uncannily similar is happening in the world today. But with one big difference. The ending may not be so similar after all. The ants are the Germans, Chinese and Japanese. The grasshoppers on the other hand are American, British, Greek, Irish and Spanish.

The ants have been producing enticing goods that grasshoppers want to buy. What the ants have been getting in return for selling their wares has been mostly been grasshopper debt. Promises that the grasshoppers will pay back in future their debts to the ants. But as the ants have realised, a consumption binge based on leverage can go on for a while. But not forever. The day of reckoning has now arrived. And the grasshoppers have nothing to pay the ants. So some of them print more money (Americans), and some try to convert to ants by slashing their fiscal deficits (Greeks). The former then end up paying back the ants with a currency of lower value. The latter leads to huge write offs as some grasshoppers die in the process. Either ways, the ants have turned out to be the losers. The new moral of the story? Do not lend to grasshoppers!

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