비통념적 시각에서 본금융안정체계의 구축

Since the global financial crisis the traditional financial safety net has been strengthened and rebuilt as a broader financial stability frame-work. The financial stability framework includes monetary, fiscal and macro-prudential polices as well as micro-prudential policy, crisis management facilities such as LLR, deposit insurance and foreign reserves, and even accounting rules and business compliances. The purpose of imposing hea-vier regulations is to mitigate the cost of the crises even though the crises themselves may not be prevented. In this new regime, instead of benign neglect policy makers are expected to intervene more aggressively. However, heavier regulations do not come without costs. Further-more, for policy makers the willingness to act is not enough. The ability to act also matters. The interactions between credit and business cycles and between credit cycles and monetary policy make it difficult to assess credit boom and appropriate policy response. For example, based on the historical data it may not be easy for the monetary authority to distinguish bad credit booms from good credit ones. Another example is that the in-terest rate oriented inflation targeting monetary policy framework, the most evolved monetary policy framework in modern days, makes it very hard to deal with credit boom because inflation targeting monetary policy by its own nature tends to accommodates credit boom. Since Asian Financial Crisis foreign reserves as a self-insurance have been massively accumulated among emerging market countries. However,foreign reserves turned out to be insufficient to cope with the capital inflows problem. As witnessed during the global financial crisis, in response to massive capital inflows followed by sudden stop and reversal cannot the foreign exchange authority help balancing the fear of floating and the fear of losing reserves. In a country where its currency is not convertible the foreign exchange authority should serve as the insurer of last resort. Follow-up study has confirmed that there exists two-way causality between foreign reserves and short-term debt, which implies that theprivate optimum level of short term borrowing may exceed the social optimum. In order to curb excessive capital inflows and, consequently, to mitigate the associated capital inflows problem macro-prudential policy such as Pigovian tax on short term debt is required. However, macro-prudential policy should not be a panacea. In the end, it would be much less effective unless the internationally systema-tically important financial institutions were identified. Furthermore, macro-prudential policy can only influence the size of foreign capital inflows. The inflows of foreign capital shown in the balance of payments are not the only factors contributing the external liabilities position. It also depends on the valuation change such as exchange rate and asset price movements. As a result, the long-term trend of net external assets defined as external assets minus external liabilities may not hold a stable relationship with current account when the valuation effect is important. In fact, Korea is one of those countries having an unstable relationship and it is not coincidental. Considering that foreign reserves are important part of external assets, the return on external assets tends to be low. Literally,foreign investors are venture capitalists to Korea. The return on liabilities has been much higher than assets, so that net external liabilities have increased when current account has been in surplus. Unlike advanced countries a significant part of Korea’s external liabilities is denominated in hard currency, which creates strong pro-cyclicality of the valuation effect associated with exchange rate movements. This pro-cyclicality will not disappear unless liabilities are either fully denominated or hedged in KRW. Considering all the available options the sustainable and efficient financial stability framework should be supported by financial development. Here, currency internationalization can be a useful yardstick.