Towards the End of Sovereign Wealth Funds ?

[eng] Before the crisis, the emerging countries (especially those in Asia) and the oil-exporting countries had enormous foreign trade surpluses they were accumulating in their foreign exchange reserves and which they used to give their sovereign wealth funds (SWFs) capital endowments. It was thus in these countries and SWFs that financing and capital investment capacities were to be found, which is what we saw at the beginning of the crisis. But the crisis then led to two developments : first of all, a significant trend towards repatriating capital from the emerging and oil-exporting countries . to the main countries of the OECD, particularly to the United Stares ; secondly, the decline in commodity prices. We then saw a very different situation : the emerging and oil countries suffered declines in their foreign exchange reserves. World savings was no longer concentrated in these countries, but in financing the public debts of the main OECD countries : in the United States and in Europe, governments replaced SWFs as « investors of last resort ». . JEL Classification : F30, G01, O16