Too much of a good thing?

ROSALIND (as Ganymede): Why then, can one desire too much of a good thing?
Shakespeare - As you like it

The sun is shining brightly outside my humble abode today so I'll be hitting the links (actually, to be precise, I'll be hitting a little white ball while walking ON the links....ah the perils of thinking about the idioms we use) but before I head off, I'll share a thought.

While reading an article from Bloomberg, Asia to draw on $2.7Trillion of reserves to safeguard currencies, I started to laugh.

A decade ago, the Asian Tigers, as the fast growing Asian economies were called, were suffering through a bout of currency flu, due to, in their view, as one can surmise from their policy reaction, a lack of currency reserves. Is it possible to jam more clauses into a sentence?...... fear not I won't try.

How funny to think that the next bout of currency flu they suffer may well be worsened by the abundance of currency reserves.

A lack of reserves is a drag when the value of the reserves is rising, as occurred to the US$ during the Asian crisis. A surplus of reserves is a drag when the value of those reserves is falling, as looks likely to me this time round.

The reaction of Asian policy makers does remind me of one of the guiding faiths of modern culture, the belief in the curing pill, rather than a policy of health. Why not, I wonder, on a medium term view, run a balanced economy, instead of an imbalanced one that requires all sorts of magic pills and new theories.

If the USD$ falls much further I reckon I won't be the only one wonder such things.

Time to swing that club.