O fim da bonanca economica chinesa deixa o Brasil em situacao dificil -Afonso Celso Pastore

Os keynesianos de botequim da república dos companheiros, seguindo neste caso a bobagem do seu mestre, que pretendia ter invertido a chamada "Lei de Bastiat" (para quem a oferta criaria sua própria demanda), sempre insistiram em estimular a demanda brasileira, conseguindo, com isso, apenas estimular a inflação e diminuir o crescimento.

Os resultados estão aí, para ninguém botar defeito.

Paulo Roberto de Almeida

O fim da bonança externa

Affonso Celso Pastore  *

O Estado de S.Paulo, 14/07/2013

Há duas mudanças em marcha na economia internacional. Primeiro, os Estados Unidos vêm retomando o crescimento sustentado, com o Federal Reserve devendo iniciar em breve a redução das compras de ativos. Com isso, o dólar se valoriza, readquirindo o seu DNA de moeda forte. Segundo, o crescimento da China vem se desacelerando, o que leva à desaceleração da demanda mundial de commodities, reduzindo seus preços.
Há, assim, um redirecionamento de fluxos de capitais para os EUA em detrimento dos países emergentes, e há uma perda de relações de troca nos países produtores de commodities. Essas mudanças marcam o fim do período dominado pela bonança externa - a abundância de ingressos de capitais combinada com o aumento de preços de commodities que por alguns anos favoreceu o crescimento brasileiro.
Com uma breve interrupção na fase aguda da crise internacional, em 2008/2009, o crescimento econômico brasileiro se beneficiou dos fortes ingressos de capitais. Cresceram os investimentos estrangeiros diretos; os ingressos de capitais ajudaram a expansão do crédito; e empresas puderam se capitalizar lançando ações que atraíram capitais estrangeiros.
Foram esses ingressos que financiaram os déficits nas contas correntes provocados pelo excesso dos investimentos sobre as poupanças domésticas, e foram eles que permitiram o ciclo de IPOs de 2006 e 2007, no qual várias empresas saíram da informalidade, melhoraram a governança e se capitalizaram, criando um ambiente de negócios estimulador dos investimentos.
Porém, tão ou mais importante do que isso foi o ciclo de elevação dos preços internacionais de commodities. Os efeitos da elevação dos preços de commodities sobre o crescimento do PIB aparecem claramente no gráfico nesta página, que é repetidamente mostrado pelo economista José Carlos Faria,superpondo as taxas de variação dos preços de commodities às taxas de variação do PIB.
Testes de causalidade aplicados a essas duas séries mostram que são os movimentos nos preços de commodities que causam os movimentos nas taxas de variação do PIB, e não o contrário, e a correlação positiva elevada e estável entre as duas séries atesta que a aceleração no crescimento dos preços de commodities conduz à aceleração no crescimento do PIB. Tanto a aceleração do crescimento no período de 2006 a 2008 quanto a forte recuperação da economia em 2010 são em grande parte fruto de um acentuado crescimento dos preços de commodities.
O Brasil é reconhecidamente um país produtor de commodities, mas tem uma estrutura produtiva muito diferente da Austrália, país no qual uma correlação positiva elevada como a mostrada no gráfico não causaria qualquer estranheza. Contudo, apesar de o peso do setor de serviços no PIB brasileiro ser muito grande, e de o País ter um setor industrial grande e diversificado, há setores importantes, com reflexos nos demais, cujo desempenhe depende diretamente dos preços dí commodities. São os casos do agronegócio, da mineração e da siderurgia.
Mais importante ainda é o fato de que a elevação dos preços de commodities leva a ganhos de relações de troca, que permitem o crescimento dos investimentos acima das poupanças domésticas, que são reconhecidamente escassas, levando à absorção de poupanças externas na forma de importações líquidas, sem que o déficit na contas correntes seja excessivamente pressionado.
Por um caminho ou por outro, as elevações dos preços internacionais de commodities levam a uma expansão da formação bruta de capital fixo. Se no gráfico substituirmos as taxas anuais de variação do PIB pelas taxas anuais de variação da formação bruta de capital fixo, veremos reproduzido o mesmo padrão de elevada correlação positiva, com os testes de causalidade mostrando que neste caso também são os preços de commodities que causam variações nos investimentos, e não o contrário.
Diante desses dados, não poderia haver nenhuma surpresa quanto à desaceleração da economia em 2012 e 2013: ela se deve em parte aos desestímulos vindos da queda dos preços internacionais de commodities. Em um passado não muito distante, o Brasil tinha seu crescimento impulsionado pelo crescimento da China, que expandia a demanda de commodities elevando seus preços. Agora, a desaceleração do crescimento na China contribui significativamente para a desaceleração do crescimento no Brasil.
A queda dos investimentos reduz o crescimento do PIB potencial, e nesse sentido a desaceleração ocorrida nos últimos anos é um fenômeno ligado à oferta, e não à demanda. Porém, desde a resposta à recessão de 2008/2009, todas as ações do governo estão voltadas apenas ao estímulo da demanda. Foi no pressuposto de que "a demanda cria a sua própria oferta", que o governo forçou uma queda exagerada da taxa de juros a partir de 2011, e que provocou acentuada expansão fiscal em 2012 e 2013, elevando a demanda sem o correspondente estímulo à produção, aumentando a inflação e o déficit em contas correntes. A queda da taxa de juros não foi capaz de libertar o "espírito animal" dos empresários, porque este estava acorrentado pelo desestímulo vindo do final da bonança externa. A insistência em ampliar a demanda levou a uma situação de pleno emprego, que elevou os salários e o custo unitário do trabalho na indústria, impedindo-a de crescer, mas, em contrapartida/o crescimento dos salários acentuou a inflação.
Resta, apenas, comemorar uma consequência da valorização do dólar; da queda dos ingressos de capitais e das relações de troca, que é a depreciação cambial. Com ela, uma parte da competitividade perdida pela indústria poderá ser recuperada, elevando os seus lucros e favorecendo o aumento dos investimentos. Mas, para que a competitividade seja recomposta, é preciso que a depreciação do câmbio nominal influencie predominantemente o câmbio real, e não simplesmente o aumento da inflação.
Isto requer que a depreciação do câmbio nominal seja seguida da austeridade nas políticas fiscal e monetária, e na medida em que o governo continuar tímido no uso do instrumento fiscal, a carga terá de ser suportada pela taxa de juros. A recusa em seguir este caminho trará como conseqüência uma inflação persistentemente mais elevada e crescimento econômico medíocre.
 * ECONOMISTA E EX-PRESIDENTE DO BANCO CENTRAL

Fim da bonanca brasileira? Alemanha examina o Brasil (Der Spiegel)

The End of Brazil's Boom: Inflation and Corruption Fuel Revolt

By Jens Gluesing

Der Spiegel, June 24, 2013

AP/dpa

Brazil's middle class is outraged over corruption and the feeling that none of the country's new prosperity is trickling down to them. With the economy stagnating, the country urgently needs reforms.

The Hotel Glória was once Brazil's finest establishment. Heads of state stayed in the magnificent building when Rio de Janeiro was still the capital. But the hotel lost its luster and its high-class clientele. Five years ago, a multibillionaire bought the hotel and vowed to bring back the old glory.
Eike Batista, who was Brazil's richest man at the time, had big plans: He wanted to build a luxury resort, complete with a helipad and marina. He hired star architects and the building was gutted down to its foundation walls. The idea was to reopen the hotel in time for next year's World Cup soccer championship. But now the cranes are standing still and most of the workers have been laid off. The wind blows through the windows and a homeless man is sleeping under an awning. The hotel is for sale. The multibillionaire has run out of money.The downfall of the Batista empire symbolizes the end of the economic boom -- and the multibillionaire embodies everything that hundreds of thousands of Brazilians, primarily from the middle class, are protesting against: nepotism, delusions of grandeur and the fabulous wealth of a select few. It started with demonstrations against raising the bus fare by 20 centavos (9 US cents), but rapidly became a more general uproar over the issue of who should benefit from Brazil's riches and what is more important -- new hospitals or glittering sports stadiums.
Batista enjoyed close ties with Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who extolled him as a model for the new Brazil. He received massive loans from the state, and when his son hit and killed a cyclist with his sports car, expensive lawyers managed to keep the young man from serving a prison sentence. A consortium that included Batista was awarded the contract to manage the rebuilt Maracanã Stadium in Rio. The renovation of the Hotel Glória is also financed with a loan from the state development bank. And Brazil's state-owned Petrobras has signed a deal to make Batista's port facilities more profitable.
The entrepreneur became the seventh richest man in the world in 2012, with a net worth of $30 billion ($23 billion). Then everything collapsed: Stock prices have plummeted in his empire of oil, mining and energy companies. His fortune has melted away to nearly one-third of its former size. He has slipped to 100th place in Forbes magazine's ranking of the world's richest people. Last week alone one of his companies lost 40 percent of its stock market value.
Batista also attracted investors with the prospect of huge oil reserves off Brazil's coast and promised them an increase in infrastructure contracts. But the wells have not supplied as much oil as hoped and many predictions have not materialized. Batista's "X" empire, as he likes to call his consortium, has turned out to be nothing but a pipe dream.
Cultural Impunity
Brazil has always been a permissive society. Those who are rich are rarely held accountable for their crimes. Politicians invoke their parliamentary immunity and there are plenty of kleptocrats in the country's town halls, governor's palaces and the National Congress, the legislative body of Brazil's federal government. According to a cynical Brazilian saying, "tudo acaba em samba" -- everything ends in a samba. For decades, Brazil's rich and powerful have relied on this culture of impunity.
It is also the fury over this mentality that is fueling the wave of protests rolling across the country. But the government has apparently failed to grasp this new development. It has reacted as usual: First, it tried to violently suppress the protests, then it tried to co-opt the protesters. Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff praised the demonstrators, and the mayors of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro rescinded the bus fare hike.
The protests are rocking the country at a critical moment. The Brazilian economy is starting to falter. Last year, it only grew by 0.9 percent, making Brazil the laggard among the emerging economies known as the BRICS -- Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
Will the boom of the Lula years now be followed by the Brazilian blues? "The optimism was exaggerated, as is the pessimism," says Ilan Goldfajn, chief economist at Brazil's largest bank, Itaú Unibanco. Rating agencies are predicting economic growth of 2.5 percent for this year. Rousseff is trying to fuel consumption in a bid to kickstart the economy again. She has lowered interest rates, but this approach hasn't been successful. Many Brazilians are deeply in debt. They have purchased homes and cars on credit, and now they have to save money.
A Jump in Inflation
Furthermore, lowering interest rates has led to a rise in inflation, with significant price increases primarily for food and services. For a while, tomatoes were so prohibitively expensive that smugglers brought them into the country over the Argentinean border. Although the government has now raised interest rates again, this move will hardly be enough to stop inflation. The decline of the Brazilian real is continuing to fuel price increases, and imports are becoming increasingly expensive.
The jumps in prices evoke memories of the decades in which the country suffered from high inflation. The construction of the capital Brasília and megaprojects launched by the military dictatorship saddled subsequent democratic governments with a huge mountain of debt. By the mid-1980s, prices had exploded. The Brazilian central bank has introduced five new currencies since then. It wasn't until 1994 that then-Finance Minister Fernando Henrique Cardoso managed to stabilize the economy with a combination of austerity measures and currency reform.
In 2002, when the former labor leader Lula was elected, many investors pulled out their money. They were afraid that Lula would abandon the stability policy of his predecessor. But the left-wing politician surprised the financial world, and there were no socialist experiments. At the same time, there was a rise in global prices for fuel and food, Brazil's main exports. Billions in investments flowed into the country and the real became a highly overvalued currency.
Reforms Mired in Bureaucracy
The government introduced generous social programs for the poor, allowing 20 million Brazilians to climb into the middle class. During his second term in office, though, Lula threw open state coffers to launch megaprojects and grant loans to the poor -- all of which helped the campaign of his successor Rousseff, who used this political capital to win the 2010 presidential election.
Economic experts hoped that Rousseff would return to an orthodox financial policy. Instead, she lowered interest rates and intervened in monetary policy. She has expanded state capitalism in the country and founded a number of new state-owned companies. Meanwhile, important structural reforms have become mired in government bureaucracy. The road network is dilapidated, the ports are run by corrupt trade unions and efforts to expand the airports have bogged down. Even the exploitation of deep-sea oil reserves has stagnated due to a lack of technology. In 2006, Lula proudly announced that Brazil would achieve self-sufficiency thanks to its crude oil production. Now, gasoline and ethanol have to be imported.
Not much happens without the government in Brazil and, not surprisingly, corruption continues to flourish. The renovation and new construction of sports facilities for the World Cup and the Olympic Games was negotiated with only a handful of large contracting companies, and the projects are billions over budget. This wheeling and dealing between the government and companies is yet another reason why the middle class is up in arms.
'Brazil Costs'
Along with the poor and students, a large number of business people are taking to the streets. Shop owners and cab drivers have spontaneously joined the demonstrations. "There's plenty of money -- we pay enormous amounts of taxes," says Raoni Nery, 27, who joined the protest marches in Rio, "but we don't receive anything in return."

The computer expert runs a small IT company and would like to hire someone to help: "But I can't afford it because social security contributions are too high. Our employment legislation is totally outdated," he says. It takes months to establish a company, and nobody seems to understand the maze of laws and regulations. Anyone who wants to open a business often has to pay bribes to inspectors from the city administration.Large companies write off special expenses for transport, bureaucracy and corruption as "custo Brasil," meaning "Brazil costs." Ultimately, it's the customers who pay for this.
In view of the upcoming presidential election next year, the government is again opening its coffers. Two weeks ago, President Rousseff announced a special election present: Anyone who has been granted a low-interest state loan for a house can acquire an additional low-cost loan of up to 5,000 reais -- to purchase appliances and furniture.

Translated from the German by Paul Cohen

Oh nao! Um novo Chipre! Malta, desta vez, e quebrando igual...

Malte, prochain détonateur d'une crise européenne ?
Mathilde Damgé
Le Monde.fr 01.05.2013

Le plus petit Etat de l'Union européenne est exposé aux risques d'un secteur bancaire qui presque autant que celui de Chypre ou de l'Irlande avant qu'ils ne sombrent dans la crise.
Jusqu'à présent, le marché immobilier maltais a plutôt bien résisté à la crise.

Un nouveau départ de feu dans la crise (les crises) européenne(s) ? C'est un risque que relève une étude de Natixis, publiée mardi 30 avril. "Malte présente de troublantes similarités avec Chypre, affirme l'économiste de la banque française Alan Lemangnen : petite économie très ouverte, l'archipel s'est progressivement spécialisé dans les services d'intermédiation financière pour devenir l'une des principales places offshore de la zone euro."

Son système bancaire, le deuxième plus gros en Europe derrière le Luxembourg, pèse près de huit fois le produit intérieur brut de l'île (qui ressortait à 6,8 milliards d'euros en 2012, soit 0,08 % du PIB de la zone euro), un poids trop important pour pouvoir être englobé dans un plan de sauvetage.

"Le système fiscal maltais, très accommodant, a permis de capter de nombreux dépôts non résidents, lesquels ont massivement afflué dans la lignée de l'entrée du pays dans l'UE" (en 2004), explique Alan Lemangnen. Résultat : le système est rapidement devenu hypertrophié, et un sauvetage serait insoutenable pour un gouvernement qui reste aux prises avec une politique de consolidation budgétaire (Malte était en procédure pour déficit excessif auprès de la Commission européenne jusqu'en février dernier).

L'élargissement substantiel de la base des dépôts a permis au système bancaire d'étendre son portefeuille de crédits, particulièrement aux non résidents, le marché domestique étant vite saturé en raison de sa très petite taille. Natixis
"Restructurer la dette publique sur le modèle grec serait inadapté, puisqu'en décembre 2012, presque 48 % de la dette globale était détenue par les banques maltaises", détaille l'économiste - l'Etat ne pouvant annuler des dettes auprès des banques tout en empruntant davantage auprès de ces mêmes banques. Et "recapitaliser directement les banques via l'ESM serait également impossible car ces opérations ne seront effectives qu'en 2014 et ne concerneront très certainement que des montants limités".

SCÉNARIO À LA CHYPRIOTE
"Un scénario à la chypriote serait des plus probables, conclut Alan Lemangnen, si un sauvetage devait être envisagé". En d'autres termes, des contreparties draconiennes demandées aux épargnants (en grande partie étrangers), notamment une ponction possible sur les comptes bancaires.

Et des conditions moins avantageuses pour les entreprises. Car le premier charme du plus petit Etat de l'Union européenne est, aux yeux des investisseurs, sa fiscalité "douce" pour les entreprises. Selon un rapport annuel publié lundi par la Commission européenne, le taux moyen de cotisations appliquées au travail en 2011 était de 22,7 % à Malte (contre 38,6 % en France par exemple), soit le taux d'imposition le plus faible de l'UE.

La taxation du capital n'est pas communiquée dans ces chiffres, mais le pays est considéré comme une "juridiction à palmiers" : une fiscalité faible ou nulle, pas de transparence, pas d'échange de renseignements et pas d'activité économique réelle. Sauf les activités en ligne, comme les paris sportifs (l'entreprise française BetClic est basée à Malte), le poker ou le trading de devises (forex).

"TOO BIG TO SAVE"
Ces régimes de faveur pour les particuliers et les entreprises contribuent à attirer les capitaux et les banques. Les banques étrangères hors UE ont une place significative à Chypre, rappelle la Banque centrale européenne. Environ les deux tiers de l'ensemble des établissements, selon plusieurs observateurs extérieurs.

Or, grâce à une négociation serrée fin 2012, les autorités maltaises ont réussi à obtenir que seules les banques détenant plus de 5 milliards d'euros d'actifs soient contrôlées par l'Union européenne dans le cadre de la supervision décidée à la suite de la crise de l'été dernier (et qui entre en vigueur en 2014). Ce qui ne concerne que trois banques : Bank of Valletta, HSBC et CommBank Europe (filiale de l'Australienne Commonwealth Bank).

Bien peu par rapport à la totalité d'un secteur (plus de 50 milliards d'euros) que plusieurs qualifient de "too big to save" (trop lourd pour être sauvé), à l'instar du Fonds monétaire international. Ce dernier soulignait en 2012 la nécessité de prendre en compte les risques représentés par cette domination des banques étrangères si l'une d'elles venaient à faire défaut, par rapport à la capacité de réaction du gouvernement.

Une destabilisation touchant la Commonwealth Bank, par exemple, pourrait être absorbée par l'ensemble du secteur bancaire australien, et/ou être équilibrée par le gouvernement de Canberra. Pour La Valette, les effets seraient désastreux. "Il est crucial d'améliorer la gestion du risque systémique, en particulier le risque de propagation posé par les banques internationales", insiste le FMI.

SURCHAUFFE DE L'IMMOBILIER
Mais cette obésité du secteur financier n'importune pas les agences de notation, qui continuent de noter la dette du pays dans le haut du panier. Dans une note du 16 avril, Fitch affirme que "les secteurs bancaires chypriote et maltais ne présentent pas le même niveau de risque" dans la mesure où la majorité du secteur est lié à l'activité de banques n'ayant pas d'implication dans l'économie réelle de l'île.

"Les banques nationales qui ont des liens forts avec l'économie maltaise et sont considérées comme ayant une importance systémique pèsent l'équivalent de 128 % du PIB", calcule l'agence française, "soit bien moins qu'à Chypre où les banques nationales représentaient 466 % du PIB". Banques qui étaient très fortement exposées à la Grèce (laquelle a fait défaut sur une partie de sa dette).

Or, si l'exposition de Malte à la Grèce est la plus importante de la zone euro (4,3 % du PIB), cette exposition est l'oeuvre des banques internationales, revendique le gouverneur de la banque centrale de Malte, Josef Bonnici. Le FMI lui-même confirme que les banques maltaises sont peu exposées aux dettes des pays européens en difficulté.

Une analyse à laquelle souscrit Natixis qui précise toutefois surveiller le marché immobilier - et l'exposition des banques maltaises à celui-ci. "Bien que la valeur des biens ait augmenté de 80 % depuis 2000, les niveaux n'ont pas atteint un degré de survalorisation similaire à ceux observés dans les économies ayant récemment fait face à une crise immobilière", rassure Alan Lemangnen.

Dans ses perspectives, Fitch souligne un autre écueil : celui, à long terme, d'un positionnement comme centre financier offshore, dans un contexte de lutte accrue contre l'évasion fiscale et le blanchiment d'argent.

Ouro: a reliquia barbara em queda livre - NYTimes

Price of Gold Takes Flashy Fall; Other Markets Follow
The steep fall in gold led a broader sell-off across the markets. The S.& P. index declined the most in one day since early November.
By NATHANIEL POPPER
The New York Times, April 15, 2013

Gold prices tumbled 9 percent on Monday, the sharpest drop in 30 years, heightening fears that investors’ faith in the safe haven has been shattered.

The steep fall in gold, after a slump on Friday, led a broader sell-off in commodities and stock markets. The Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index declined 2.3 percent — its sharpest one-day decline since early November. Crude oil prices fell to under $90 a barrel, and copper dropped to a 17-month low.

The catalyst was disappointment over Chinese growth, which has been a bright spot in a global economy marred by uneven recoveries and Europe’s persistent debt problems.

A report on Monday showed that Chinese economic growth unexpectedly slowed to an annual pace of 7.7 percent in the first months of the year, from 7.9 percent at the end of 2012, suggesting that China’s demand for industrial materials would soften.

Weak regional manufacturing data in the United States also weighed on the United States stock market, as did the explosions in Boston later in the day.

Still it was gold that took the market spotlight on Monday.

The price of the metal has been undergoing an extraordinary reversal from a decade-long rally. Since reaching a high of $1,888 an ounce in August 2011, gold has been on a downward slope. The decline picked up pace on Friday, when gold fell 4 percent, officially taking it into a bear market, which is defined as a 20 percent drop from its recent high.

The damage worsened on Monday, when the price of an ounce of gold dropped 9.35 percent, or $140.40, to $1,360.60 for the April contract — the sharpest such one-day decline since February of 1983.

A number of banks, including Goldman Sachs, have recently lowered their forecasts for gold. But the recent drop has been greater than even the most pessimistic predictions.

“We’ve traded gold for nearly four decades and we’ve never … ever… EVER… seen anything like what we’ve witnessed in the past two trading sessions,” Dennis Gartman, a closely followed gold investor, wrote to clients on Monday.

The shift in gold’s fortunes presents a moment of reckoning for many so-called gold bugs, who had expected their financial lodestar to continue moving up in response to the Federal Reserve’s effort to stimulate the economy through bond-buying programs.

The assumption among gold bugs was that the flood of new money would cause inflation, making hard assets like gold more attractive. So far, though, there have been few signs of inflation taking root even as central banks in Japan and Europe have begun their own aggressive bond-buying programs.

“Gold has had all the reason in the world to be moving higher — but it hasn’t been able to do it,” said Matt Zeman, a metals trader at Kingsview Financial. “The situation has not deteriorated the way that a lot of people thought it could.”

The recent drop in gold prices has been partly attributed to signals from powerful members of the Fed that the central bank may begin to wind down its bond-buying programs. But the list of reasons to sell gold grows longer by the day. European politicians have indicated that Cyprus may need to sell off some of its gold holdings to pay for its bank bailout, which could lead other countries to do the same.

The market decline, like the decade-long run-up, has also been attributed to the new financial instruments that have made buying gold easier for a wide array of investors. The most prominent products are gold exchange-traded funds, which can be traded on stock exchanges, and which together hold as much gold as all but a few of the world’s largest central banks.

Hedge funds have used gold E.T.F.’s to gain exposure to the precious metal, but have been selling them off en masse in recent weeks. The largest such exchange-traded fund, with the ticker symbol GLD, had its most active day ever on Monday.

“The exits are only so wide and there are too many people trying to leave all of the sudden,” said Bart Melek, a commodity strategist at TD Securities.

Many gold analysts have said that the demand for physical gold is stronger than the demand for financial products linked to gold, like exchange-traded funds and futures contracts. But this has not been enough to prop up the market.

On Monday, the most obvious catalyst for the carnage was the disappointing Chinese economic data that led to talk that China will no longer need the same physical resources to expand.

In the commodities world, this did not hurt only gold. Silver dropped over 12 percent, platinum 5.6 percent and the benchmark oil contract was down 3.9 percent. Stock indexes fell 1.5 percent in Japan and 0.6 percent in England.

The S.& P. 500 dropped 2.3 percent, or 36.49 points, to 1,552.36 on Monday. The Dow Jones industrial average closed down 1.8 percent, or 265.86 points, at 14,599.20. The Nasdaq composite index fell 2.4 percent, or 78.46 points, to 3,216.49.

In the bond market, interest rates fell as investors shifted their money to less risky assets. The price of the Treasury’s 10-year note rose 9/32, to 10226/32, while its yield dropped to 1.69 percent, from 1.72 percent late Friday.

A proxima crise economica: Egito (Editorial do Le Monde)

L'Egypte au bord du drame économique
LE MONDE, 05.04.2013
Éditorial du "Monde"

L'Egypte va-t-elle à la faillite ? Le plus grand pays arabe est-il proche de l'effondrement économique et financier ?

Ajournée de mois en mois, une négociation importante avec le Fonds monétaire international (FMI) a repris cette semaine au Caire. Mais, au bord du Nil, l'humeur est pessimiste.
Il y a le front politique d'abord. Venu du parti des Frères musulmans – islamistes –, le président Mohamed Morsi, s'il n'a cessé d'étendre le champ de ses prérogatives, a aussi multiplié maladresses et atteintes aux libertés politiques. A la tête de l'Etat depuis le 30 juin 2012, l'ingénieur Morsi n'a jamais trouvé un style de gouvernement susceptible de rassurer et ramener la confiance dans le pays.

Tantôt il hésite, revenant sur des mesures annoncées à la hâte ; tantôt il procède avec brutalité. Méfiant à l'adresse de toutes les autres formations politiques, il a donné le sentiment de privilégier sa mouvance sur l'ouverture. Ce raïs a déçu : on l'attendait grand seigneur, le voilà redevenu militant.

Tout aussi grave, il confirme ce qu'on disait des Frères musulmans avant leur arrivée au pouvoir par les urnes : ils n'ont pas le moindre programme économique et social.

Or le pays va très mal. Sur fond de turbulences politiques aussi déstabilisantes qu'un vent de sable, le front économique est inquiétant. Tous les indicateurs sont au rouge. Le tourisme et les investissements directs étrangers sont en chute libre. Le diesel manque, entraînant coupures de courant et chômage technique en ville comme à la campagne.

Les finances publiques se dégradent. Les réserves de devises ont chuté en deux ans, passant de 36 à 13 milliards de dollars. Cela représenterait trois mois d'importation de blé et de carburant : comment fera-t-on cet été, sachant que l'Egypte est le premier importateur de blé au monde ? La livre égyptienne est en baisse, et les produits alimentaires en hausse.

Derrière ces chiffres et le tableau macro-économique qu'ils dessinent, se cache une impitoyable réalité : la pauvreté endémique que connaît le pays, la vie de misère imposée depuis trop longtemps à des dizaines de millions d'Egyptiens.

L'aide du FMI est urgente.
Depuis près de deux ans, Le Caire négocie un prêt de 4,8 milliards de dollars. Il serait susceptible de rassurer les investisseurs étrangers et de débloquer toute une série d'aides : celles de l'Union européenne, de la Banque mondiale et de la Banque africaine de développement.

La négociation achoppe sur les conditions mises à l'octroi du prêt. Le FMI demande une baisse des subventions de l'Etat sur un certain nombre de produits de base et une hausse des impôts.

M. Morsi a peur des réactions de la rue face à une nouvelle hausse du prix des denrées de première nécessité. Il manque d'assise et de légitimité politiques pour "vendre" aux Egyptiens des mesures difficiles.

Le FMI déplore le peu de compétences techniques de l'équipe du président Morsi. Et son absence d'imagination aussi. Car on devrait bien trouver un moyen d'attaquer le mal : comment transformer le système de subventions actuel – gouffre financier notoirement inefficace – en un mécanisme de protection plus ciblé qui aide les pauvres à sortir de leur condition. Mais les Frères musulmans – c'est leur échec – n'en ont pas la moindre idée.

A crise americana, por um especialista do Fed - Book review (WSJ)

• BOOKSHELF
• The Wall Street Journal, January 18, 2013, 4:57 p.m. ET

When the Rain Came Down

A masterful account of how the housing crisis and credit crunch nearly brought down the economy

By DAVID R. HENDERSON

Alan S. Blinder is one of America's leading economists. One of the few economists who write really well, he is also a master storyteller. In "After the Music Stopped," Mr. Blinder, previously a vice chairman of the Federal Reserve Board and, before that, a member of President Clinton's Council of Economic Advisers, gives his interpretation of the events leading to the U.S. financial crisis, the financial crisis itself, and the Bush and Obama administrations' response. It is one of the best books yet about the financial crisis.

After the Music Stopped

By Alan S. Blinder
The Penguin Press, 476 pages, $29.95

Enlarge Image

EPA

pendant le delugeA display of stock market indexes, including the Dow Jones at top left, in Tokyo on Oct. 10, 2008—the end of a week in which the Dow fell 18%.

Mr. Blinder, a professor at Princeton and a regular contributor to the Journal's editorial page, tells the story in basically chronological order, gives citations for almost all the important facts he marshals and, refreshingly, tells the reader when he sees himself as making judgment calls in controversial cases. Unfortunately, he also makes judgments on controversial issues that he does not see as (or concede to be) controversial. He also minimizes the role of the government in creating the crisis, omitting important facts that contradict his argument. He describes the financial industry as an example of laissez-faire, though in reality it is highly regulated. The latter claim allows him to blame on the private sector what was really the joint responsibility of a regulated industry and its regulators. Finally, and most strikingly, Mr. Blinder has faith in government's power to make things better despite his own exposition of a series of government actions that he himself admits were mistakes.
Let's begin with the most important of the relatively uncontroversial points that Mr. Blinder makes about the financial crisis. It began with the housing price bubble between 1997 and 2006 and the subsequent collapse of housing prices over the next few years. A major cause of the bubble was that many mortgage lenders lent to people whom anyone with common sense would have seen to be really bad risks. In addition, mortgages had been sliced, diced and repackaged into securities, so that a given person's mortgage was not held by one individual or one firm, making it hard for borrower and lender to come to terms after the house's value fell. Finally, the credit-rating agencies failed spectacularly to do their job. Had the three major firms that rate bonds—Standard & Poor's, Moody's MCO +0.28% and Fitch—assessed various mortgage-backed securities accurately, many bond buyers would have been prepared for the risks they were taking and some would not have bought the bonds at all. These facts are all pretty much agreed on, and Mr. Blinder does an excellent job of laying them out in the first third of his book.
A somewhat more controversial claim Mr. Blinder makes (but one I agree with) is that the turning point in the financial crisis was the federal government's refusal, in September 2008, to bail out Lehman Brothers. "The Lehman decision," writes Mr. Blinder, "abruptly and surprisingly tore the perceived rulebook into pieces and tossed it out the window." Now market participants began to think that the federal government would let large financial firms fail. Mr. Blinder sees this as so important a turning point that he refers frequently to Sept. 15, the day Lehman filed for bankruptcy, as "Lehman Day." Had the feds bailed out Lehman, he argues, the panic that hit Wall Street would have been less extreme.
But Mr. Blinder omits a crucial fact about Lehman, one that, by itself, explains why the huge drop in value of Lehman's mortgage-backed securities led to its collapse: the effect of changes in federal bankruptcy law. Thanks to the 2005 Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act, when Lehman went bankrupt it could not simply, as in earlier days, pay holders of derivatives as much as possible with its assets. Instead, it had to give each derivative holder a new contract identical to the one it had signed with Lehman, but with a different counterparty. Lehman would also have to pay the transaction cost of the new contract. Such costs are typically about 0.15% of the contract's total value. That's small, right? No. When Lehman went bankrupt, the face value of Lehman's derivative contracts was $35 trillion—with a "t." The transaction costs alone were $52.5 billion. That is what sank Lehman.
Mr. Blinder also points out that Reserve Primary Fund, the "world's oldest money market mutual fund," had 1.2% of its assets invested in commercial paper—that is, short-term bonds—issued by Lehman. With the value of Lehman's bonds falling after it went bankrupt, Reserve Primary Fund had to "break the buck." Until then, most people thought that the value of each share in a money-market fund (MMF) would always be $1. Depositors thought that if they had, say, 1,000 shares in the fund, they could redeem them for $1,000. Yet the value could actually fall if the underlying assets lost enough value.
When depositors tried to withdraw their funds, Reserve started paying them 97 cents for shares that depositors expected to be worth $1—thus "breaking the buck." Investors in other money-market funds, fearing something similar, started redeeming their shares. In just one week in late September, depositors withdrew $350 billion from MMFs. As other MMFs sold commercial paper to generate the funds to redeem their customers' shares, the value of commercial paper fell further. One Federal Reserve economist quoted by Mr. Blinder recalled that "we were staring into the abyss" and "there wasn't a bottom to this." That led Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to get President Bush's permission to set up insurance for MMF depositors. It worked, and the outflow from MMFs stopped.
This bailout, according to Mr. Blinder, was "sorely needed" to stem the fire sale of commercial paper. But that's highly debatable. Had the Treasury made clear that it would not bail out MMFs, then many of them would have also had to "break the buck." Once depositors knew there was no gain from getting their funds out early, the run on MMFs would have ended, thus stopping, or dramatically slowing, the plunge in value of commercial paper.
Mr. Blinder is a strong believer in the ability of government regulation to solve problems and even prevent them in the first place. He sees the private sector as mainly to blame for the housing and financial crises and criticizes "laissez-faire" economic policies adopted by the Clinton and Bush administrations that supposedly contributed. But I do not think that term means what he thinks it means. Laissez-faire has traditionally meant that the government keeps its hands off the economy and allows for economic freedom. But at times, Mr. Blinder applies the term to cases in which the government, once its hands were already all over the economy, didn't take the additional steps he favored.
At other times he does use the term in its traditional sense but fails to establish that it applies. Consider, for example, three major forms of government intervention that helped cause the housing bubble: (1) the Federal National Mortgage Association FNMA -0.72% (Fannie Mae) and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. FMCC -0.69% (Freddie Mac); (2) the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act, which requires banks to lend mortgage money to people who are bad risks; and (3) federal deposit insurance. During the years when the housing bubble developed, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed by relaxing their mortgage lending standards so that they were buying subprime mortgage-backed securities (MBS). Mr. Blinder himself notes that, by 2004, Fannie and Freddie owned a third of all subprime MBS. This figure was down to 17% by the summer of 2007, but, as Mr. Blinder admits, 17% is still a large number.
Part of the reason for the size of these holdings, Mr. Blinder notes, is that Fannie and Freddie were pressured by the "affordable housing goals" of the Department of Housing and Urban Development. Interestingly, although the Community Reinvestment Act, whose enforcement Mr. Blinder's previous boss, President Clinton, beefed up in 1995, was part of the "affordable housing goals," Mr. Blinder never names that legislation. In any case, this does not sound like laissez-faire.
Finally, consider the role of deposit insurance. By insuring 100% of bank deposits up to $100,000 (and, later, $250,000), the federal government substantially weakened depositors' incentives to monitor their banks' lending practices. Even Franklin D. Roosevelt, whose administration introduced deposit insurance in 1933, spoke eloquently of this downside. And the $250,000 limit, moreover, is not really a firm cap. Wealthy people can legally avoid it with the help of firms such as Promontory Interfinancial Network, which divide deposits held in one bank into smaller deposits in many banks. Mr. Blinder well knows this; as he reveals in a footnote, he is a part owner of Promontory. Again, this is not laissez-faire. Banking is one of the most heavily regulated industries in the United States.
None of this is to say that the financial crisis would not have happened without these three interventions. The private sector had a large role, and unjustified optimism is not limited to the government sector. It is to say, though, that the financial crisis would not have been as bad had the government been truly laissez-faire.
So once the financial crisis happened, what was to be done? Mr. Blinder devotes the bulk of his book to the immediate response to the crisis as well as to ways for avoiding a repeat. He praises the Troubled Asset Relief Program and points out that the net cost of TARP to taxpayers is not the $700 billion that was budgeted for but, rather, a much more modest $32 billion. But there was another way to go, the way Alan Greenspan handled the 1987 stock market crash, the Y2K episode in 1999 and 2000, and the post-9/11 economy. That way was to have the Fed purchase Treasury bills through open-market operations to make sure the economy had ample liquidity. In all three cases, it worked.
Many people think that that's exactly what Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke did when the crisis hit, but he did not. Mr. Blinder, to his credit, recognizes this, pointing out that, although the Fed changed its composition of assets, it had little effect on the money supply. He makes this point briefly, but in a 2011 article San Jose State University economist Jeffrey R. Hummel provides chapter and verse, noting that Mr. Bernanke took on extensive discretionary power to favor some financial assets over others. As Mr. Hummel puts it, under Mr. Bernanke "central banking has become the new central planning." Mr. Blinder seems to sense this but, unfortunately, does not pursue the point.
Mr. Blinder is a Keynesian, that is, someone who believes that the federal government should use fiscal policy—changing taxes and government spending—to stabilize the aggregate demand for goods and services. He therefore favored the stimulus policy that President Obama adopted his second month in office. Mr. Obama had the government increase spending in order to create more demand for goods. But Mr. Blinder is relatively unconcerned about whether the money was spent on valuable items. He has what I call the "GDP fetish"—the belief that increases in GDP are good whether or not they represent increased production of things that people actually value. If the government spends $100 billion digging holes and then filling them back up, then GDP can rise by $100 billion or more even if the $100 billion is totally wasted. Some stimulus projects, in fact, are little better than hole-digging. One example I noted on a recent visit to Detroit is the tearing up of sidewalk corners to make them wheelchair-friendly, even though the sidewalks themselves have so many craters that people in wheelchairs use the roads instead. With his faith in government intervention, Mr. Blinder sees the corners but not the craters.
—Mr. Henderson is a research fellow with the Hoover Institution and
an economics professor at the
Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif.

A version of this article appeared January 19, 2013, on page C5 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: When the Rain Came Down.

Argentina: pagando o preco da moratoria unilateral de 2002

Em 2002, lembro-me de ter "discutido" com alguns colegas, amigos ou correspondentes, a propósito da moratória unilateral da Argentina sobre sua imensa dívida externa. Os "progressistas", ou antineoliberais, invariavelmente apoiavam a "corajosa" medida argentina, achando que era isso mesmo que era necessário e imprescindível, para que a Argentina pudesse voltar a crescer em bases mais sãs, e desprovidas da ameaça, e da obrigação contratual concreta, de remessa de milhões de dólares anuais a título de serviço da dívida (juros) e da amortização do principal.
Eu, que nunca fui neoliberal, ou algo do gênero, sempre argumentei que a Argentina pagaria um alto preço pelo calote unilateral imposto aos milhares de credores, muitos dos quais tiveram de aceitar o desconto humilhante imposto pelo governo argentino (apenas 30 centavos de dólar, por cada dólar da dívida contraída).
Pois bem, a despeito do spread altíssimo que a Argentina teria de pagar se quisesse retornar aos mercados financeiros, fui "desmentido" durante anos pelas taxas realmente robustas do crescimento da economia argentina, em parte mera recuperação das perdas de 2001-2001, em outra proporção, os estímulos temporários criados por vários anabolizantes ministrados a partir de sua introversão econômica dos anos K.
Mas, a economia nunca falha e, como diria um filósofo, as consequências sempre vêm depois. A Argentina está agora pagando o preço de seu enfrentamento com os mercados, com os tribunais, com os credores, com a simples realidade.
Só posso ser, nestas circunstâncias, um profeta do apocalipse: não haverá meios de evitar um desastre, e uma nova crise é o que desponta no futuro próximo do país.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Argentina é condenada a pagar Credores

Justiça de NY determina que governo quite dívida de US$ 1,3 bilhão com fundos

Ariel Palacios, correspondente em Buenos Aires 

O Estado de S.Paulo, 22 de novembro de 2012

BUENOS AIRES - O juiz federal americano Thomas Griesa, da Justiça de Nova York, determinou que a Argentina pague até 15 de dezembro US$ 1,3 bilhão aos credores da dívida pública do país que optaram por ficar de fora das duas reestruturações dos bônus, realizadas em 2005 e 2010 pelos governos de Néstor e Cristina Kirchner. A decisão de Griesa deve piorar a abalada imagem financeira do país no exterior.

Efe

Cristina Kirchner diz que não pretende pagar credores

Cristina considera esses credores, chamados de holdouts, "fundos abutres". Segundo ela, tratam-se de fundos de investimentos, assessorados por experientes times de advogados, que compram títulos a preços baixos para especular com esses bônus nos mercados e nos tribunais para obter melhores preços. A presidente argentina diz que não pretende pagá-los.
Era previsto que a Argentina pagasse US$ 3,14 bilhões aos credores dos títulos reestruturados em dezembro. Mas esse pagamento só pode ser feito, segundo a Justiça americana, depois que o governo deposite os US$ 1,3 bilhão em uma conta para os "abutres". Assim, embora conte com fundos para pagar os credores reconhecidos, a Argentina ficaria à beira de um calote técnico.
"A Argentina deve isso e o deve agora", declarou o juiz. Na terça-feira, o ministro da Economia da Argentina, Hernán Lorenzino, disse que, caso seja necessário, o governo Kirchner apelará à Corte Suprema dos EUA.
Fragata
Além dos problemas com o juiz Griesa, a Argentina vive um impasse jurídico com Gana, país da Costa da Guiné onde está retida a fragata Liberdade, o navio-escola argentino.
A embarcação foi detida há dois meses e meio - em plena viagem com seus cadetes - no porto de Tema, Gana, a pedido do fundo americano NLM-Elliot, que pediu o embargo desse ativo do Estado argentino como forma de pressionar pelo pagamento dos títulos em estado de calote.
Segundo o tribunal ganense, a fragata somente será liberada com o pagamento de um depósito de US$ 20 milhões. No entanto, a presidente Cristina declarou que não pagaria um centavo aos credores envolvidos. Além disso, Cristina exige que Gana indenize a Argentina e o pequeno país do Golfo da Guiné peça desculpas publicamente. 
Veja também:
Após greve geral, governo argentino ataca rivais
Peronismo pode ser o problema ou asolução para Cristina 

Franca perde o AAA: Moody's rebaixa o pais

Mais uma tragédia francesa, o que talvez ajude o governo no processo de reforma:

Moody's dégrade la note de la France de Aaa à Aa1

Le Monde.fr avec AFP et Reuters | 19.11.2012 à 23h47 • Mis à jour le 20.11.2012 à 12h19

L'agence de notation Moody's a abaissé lundi 19 novembre la note de crédit de la France de Aaa à Aa1, estimant que les perspectives de croissance économique à long terme du pays étaient notamment affectées par une perte de compétitivité graduelle et continue, et par des rigidités à long terme de ses marchés du travail, des biens et des services.

L'agence a ajouté que cette nouvelle note était assortie d'une perspective négative. Moody's a toutefois souligné que l'ampleur limitée du déclassement de la France reflétait le programme de réformes suivi par le gouvernement ainsi que les perspectives de croissance à long terme.

SANCTION POUR LA GESTION PRÉCÉDENTE, SELON MOSCOVICI

Dans un entretien à Reuters, le ministre des finances, Pierre Moscovici, a dit prendre acte de la décision de Moody's, tout en déclarant que la dette française demeurait parmi les plus liquides et les plus sûres de la zone euro.
"L'agence nous crédite d'une forte maîtrise des finances publiques et de la décision de notre pacte de compétitivité mais s'inquiète de la croissance de la zone euro et de l'insuffisance de réformes structurelles, a estimé Pierre Moscovici. C'est une sanction pour l'absence de réformes passée et pour la gestion de ceux qui nous ont précédés, c'est aussi un encouragement à mettre en œuvre rapidement et fortement les réformes que nous avons décidées et qui vont dans la bonne direction : sérieux budgétaire, stabilisation de la zone euro, pacte de compétitivité."
Le 13 janvier, en pleine campagne présidentielle, l'agence Standard & Poor's avait, la première, abaissé d'un cran la note de la France en réaction à l'aggravation des problèmes politiques, financiers et monétaires de la zone euro. Fitch Ratings, troisième des grandes agences de notation internationales, prévoit de se prononcer courant 2013.
"Moody's nous donne maintenant la même note que Standard & Poor's qui nous a permis de vivre avec des taux d'intérêt bas depuis déjà de très longs mois et la note reste la plus élevée après 'le triple A'", a remarqué M. Moscovici. Prié de dire si le gouvernement maintenait l'objectif de réduire le déficit public à 3 % du PIB fin 2013 après 4,5 % attendu fin 2012, il a répondu : "Absolument, le sérieux budgétaire est un gage de crédibilité auquel nous nous sommes engagés et le pacte de compétitivité devra être mis en œuvre rapidement et fortement."
UN "PETIT AVERTISSEMENT"
Même son de cloche outre-Rhin, où le ministre des finances allemand Wolfgang Schaüble, plutôt connu pour la sévérité de ses jugements, a estimé mardi que "la note de la France est encore très stable", et a appelé à éviter toute dramatisation.

"Notre principal partenaire a reçu un petit avertissement d'une agence de notation (...). On doit aussi éviter toute dramatisation", a-t-il affirmé au Bundestag, lors d'une allocution sur le budget allemand pour 2013. "Nous avons tous intérêt à ce que nous soyons, chacun en Europe, à la hauteur de nos devoirs et nos responsabilités", a ajouté le ministre.
===========

France shrugs off loss of top triple-A credit rating

Pierre Moscovici said the downgrade was motivation to pursue structural reforms

Continue reading the main story

The French government has downplayed the importance of rating agency Moody's decision to deprive the country of its top triple-A credit rating.

Moody's downgraded France's debt from Aaa to Aa1, and kept its negative outlook, meaning it could be cut again.
Moody's blamed stalled economic growth, the risk of a Greek euro exit and the risk that France has to contribute to bailing out other eurozone countries.
"Judge us on our results," French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici said.
Rival ratings agency Standard & Poor's downgraded France from AAA in January. Of the big three agencies, only Fitch still gives France its top rating.
'Second place' "The rating in no way places a question over the fundamentals of our country's economy - neither the reforms undertaken by the government, nor the quality of the signature on our debt," said Mr Moscovici.
He pointed to the fact that Moody's had only downgraded its rating of the country's long-term debts by one notch, and still gave France's short-term debts its top rating.

Continue reading the main story

Credit ratings in context

	Moody's	S&P	Fitch
Germany	Aaa	AAA	AAA
UK	Aaa	AAA	AAA
US	Aaa	AA+	AAA
France	Aa1	AA-	AAA
Japan	Aa3	AA-	A+
China	Aa3	AA-	A+
Russia	Baa1	BBB	BBB
Italy	Baa2	BBB+	A-
Brazil	Baa2	BBB	BBB
Spain	Baa3	BBB-	BBB
India	Baa3	BBB-	BBB-
Ireland	Ba1	BBB+	BBB+
Portugal	Ba3	BB	BB+
Greece	C	CCC	CCC

Ordered by Moody's rating; eurozone in bold

The finance minister said Moody's decision reinforced the need for the government to pass a package of economic reforms that is proving unpopular with voters.

The ratings agency's move had not affected sentiment on the financial markets, which still held French debts in high regard, the government claimed.
"France still represents sound value. It is in second place just after Germany," said government spokesperson Najat Vallaud-Belkacem, speaking on French radio.
"Even today, investors lend to France in very favourable conditions. For example, we make short-term borrowings at negative rates, and that is going to continue."
Moody's said the primary reason for the downgrade had been France's "persistent structural economic challenges" and the threats they pose to economic growth and the government's coffers.
"These include the rigidities in labour and services markets, and low levels of innovation, which continue to drive France's gradual but sustained loss of competitiveness and the gradual erosion of its export-oriented industrial base," Moody's said.
Mr Moscovici said the downgrade was motivation to pursue structural reforms.
He also blamed the downgrade on the economic management of previous governments and added that France was still committed to cutting its public deficit to 3% of output next year.
Data released last week showed that France had narrowly avoided falling into recession during the third quarter of 2012, registering 0.2% economic growth from the same period a year earlier.
Over the course of the 12 months, however, the French economy has more or less stagnated.

Eurozone crisis Eurozone: A very overcast outlook Crisis in graphics What really caused the euro crisis? Eurozone and you

Crise dos Anos 1930 e as licoes para o presente - Barry Eichengreen

Um excelente paper do conhecido economista de Berkeley, aqui apenas resumido, mas remetendo ao texto completo:

Crisis and Growth in the Advanced Economies - Barry Eichengreen

http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v53/n3/full/ces20115a.html

Comparative Economic Studies (2011) 53, 383–406. doi:10.1057/ces.2011.5; published online 24 March 2011

Crisis and Growth in the Advanced Economies: What We Know, What We Do not, and What We Can Learn from the 1930s

Barry Eichengreen¹

¹University of California, Evans Hall 508, CA 94708 Berkeley, USA. E-mail: eichengr@econ.berkeley.edu

Top of page

Abstract

This paper addresses the question of whether the medium- and long-term growth potential of the advanced economies has been impaired by the global financial crisis. It evidence from the Great Despression of the 1930s to illuminate the prospects, concluding the following. First, the impact of weak bank balance sheets and heightened risk aversion made it harder for small firms. in particular, to fund investment projects. Second, there is little evidence that increased public debt or policy uncertainity had major effects in depressing investment. Third, structural unemployment dissolved quickly in the face of increased demand. Fourth and finally, the crisis was also an opportunity as firms used the downtime created by the Depression to reorganize and modernize their operations.

 

Neste link: http://www.palgrave-journals.com/ces/journal/v53/n3/full/ces20115a.html

ou neste:  http://textospra.blogspot.com.br/2012/10/crisis-and-growth-in-advanced-economies.html

Ops: a coisa na China pode ficar preta...

...e se isso acontecer, as coisas no Brasil vão ficar russas, ou ruças, whatever...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

In Reversal, Cash Leaks Out of China

BY ALEX FRANGOS, TOM ORLIK AND LINGLING WEI

The Wall Street Journal, October 16, 2012

China, once a catch basin for the world's money, is now watching cash stream out.

Wealthy Chinese citizens are buying beachfront condos in Cyprus, paying big U.S. tuition bills for their children and stocking up on luxury goods in Singapore, frequently moving cash secretly through a flourishing network of money-transfer agents. Chinese companies, for their part, are making big-ticket foreign acquisitions, buying up natural resources and letting foreign profits accumulate overseas.

(...)

Crise economica internacional: uma explicacao espanhola

Enviado por um leitor amigo, habitual deste blog: 

Fraude - por que houve esta grande recessão

"O Instituto Mises Brasil, em parceria com a empresa espanhola Amagifilms — fundada pelos libertários espanhóis Juan José Mercado, Daniel García e Bárbara Sokol — tem o orgulho e a honra de apresentar aquele que, até o momento, é o documentário mais completo sobre a crise financeira mundial. 

Embora vários documentários já houvessem sido produzidos sobre a crise econômica que hoje assola o mundo, nenhum deles de fato se propunha a expor uma teoria econômica que de fato explicasse as minúcias econômicas que provocaram o descalabro." Equipe IMB

http://www.mises.org.br/Article.aspx?id=1427 

Fraude - por que houve esta grande recessão

por Equipe IMB, sexta-feira, 5 de outubro de 2012

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O Instituto Mises Brasil, em parceria com a empresa espanhola Amagifilms — fundada pelos libertários espanhóis Juan José Mercado, Daniel García e Bárbara Sokol — tem o orgulho e a honra de apresentar aquele que, até o momento, é o documentário mais completo sobre a crise financeira mundial. 

Embora vários documentários já houvessem sido produzidos sobre a crise econômica que hoje assola o mundo, nenhum deles de fato se propunha a expor uma teoria econômica que de fato explicasse as minúcias econômicas que provocaram o descalabro.  Para preencher este vazio, empreendedores espanhóis buscaram a ajuda dos professores Jesús Huerta de Soto e Juan Ramón Rallo para elaborar uma explicação completa que, utilizando a teoria econômica que mais uma vez demonstrou ser a única correta (a teoria austríaca dos ciclos econômicos), fizesse uma cronologia histórica da grande recessão vista à luz desta teoria e denunciasse todos os desastres econômicos que a humanidade vem sofrendo há séculos em decorrência de políticas monetárias estatais, as quais foram rotuladas de "fraude legal".  Por último e não menos importante, foi pedido aos professores que apontassem soluções concretas e factíveis para se colocar um fim a este recorrente ciclo de descalabros.

O resultado deste trabalho pode ser conferido abaixo.  Todos os detalhes sobre as causas da crise e sobre as medidas governamentais tomadas para tentar combater a crise, bem como todas as reais consequências destas medidas, são minuciosamente explicitados neste esplêndido documentário.

A grande recessão não foi causada pelo livre mercado, mas poderia ter sido solucionada por ele se ao menos os governos permitissem.  As intervenções do estado na economia, principalmente por meio de seus bancos centrais e seus mecanismos fraudulentos de criar dinheiro e expandir artificialmente o crédito, tornando-o farto e barato, não apenas foram as causas desta grande recessão, como também estão nas raízes de todos os recorrentes ciclos de expansão econômica seguida de recessão que assolam a humanidade.  Políticas monetárias expansionistas e as contínuas manipulações de juros feitas pelos bancos centrais criam fases de exuberância irracional e bolhas que inevitavelmente terminam em dolorosas recessões econômicas que impõem penosos sofrimentos a todos os cidadãos, principalmente aos mais financeiramente desprotegidos.

Denunciar as fraudes que provocam estas opressivas recessões, bem como fazer advertências sobre os prováveis erros futuros que os governos voltarão a cometer, é a principal intenção deste trabalho.

Aproveitem.

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