Protecionismo comercial: os EUA na vanguarda (depois do Brasil) - Kwasi Kwarteng

 

Já li esse livro, retirado da biblioteca pública de West Hartford, e recomendo. De fato, os democratas eram os liberais econômicos, no passado (e os mais racistas), e os republicanos de Abraham Lincoln os supostos inimigos da escravidão, mas protecionistas tradicionais. Depois de Roosevelt, nos anos 1930, a situação se inverteu, com os democratas fazendo aliança com os sindicatos, e os republicanos se aliando aos racistas no sul.
Mas os EUA não eram os mais protecionistas no século 19, nem no 20: eles perdiam amplamente para o Brasil e vários outros países latino-americanos.

O livro não é porém sobre comércio, e sim sobre moeda, ou mais especialmente ouro, e as guerras, desde a era moderna até a atualidade. Ao final, ele tem uma tabela com os valores atualizados do ouro nos diversos países desde o século 19, e os principais estoques nos países detentores do metal como reserva de valor.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Today's selection -- from War and Gold by Kwasi Kwarteng. America today is largely an advocate of free trade, and the Republican party is usually the standard-bearer of that policy. However, the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln was highly protectionist, and the U.S. grew to be the world's economic colossus with a consistently high level of protectionism. It was only in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, after its manufacturing supremacy was well established, that the U.S. began to selectively adopt a free trade policy as a means of expanding its markets on a country-by-country basis:

"Contrary to what is commonly believed today about the efficacy of free markets and trade as an instrument of development, the United States continued throughout the second half of the nineteenth century to be a strongly protectionist country. 'The extreme protective system, which had been at the first a temporary expedient for aiding in the struggle for the Union ... gradually became accepted as a permanent institution.' High protection became a 'dogma'. Indeed, 'The restraint of trade with foreign countries, by means of import duties of forty, fifty, sixty, even a hundred percent, came to be advocated as a good thing in itself ...' Ideas of this kind 'were no longer the exploded errors of a small school of economists; they became the foundation of the policy of a great people'.


"The Republican Party, the victorious party of the Civil War, the party of the great quasi-martyr Abraham Lincoln, won election after general election in the forty-eight-year period from 1864 to 1912. In thirteen elections, the Democrats managed only three victories, the last of which occurred in 1912. The only other years in which the Democrats won were 1884 and 1892, both of which were (uniquely in US history) won by the same candidate, Grover Cleveland, who is known as both the twenty-second and the twenty-fourth President of the United States. The Republicans established themselves as a party of national economic might. Their programme 'threw the entire weight of the federal government behind the expansion of northern industry'. Republican policy naturally supported a 'protective tariff for industry', and it was in these years that the tariff became 'exclusively and distinctively a protective measure', shorn of any idea that it was needed for revenue-raising purposes on the part of the federal government."


War and Gold: A Five-Hundred-Year History of Empires, Adventures, and Debt
Author: Kwasi Kwarteng
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Copyright 2014 Kwasi Kwarteng
Pages 73-74

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.

Ouro, essa reliquia barbara, e o apreco dos alemaes por ela...

A história não está toda contada e não está bem contada. O autor não diz, ou ignora o fato de, que imensos saldos superavitários obtidos pela RFA no comércio com os EUA não foram convertidos de dólares em ouro, em meados dos anos 1960 porque os EUA já não dispunham de recursos suficientes em ouro para honrar os compromissos assumidos em Bretton Woods. Assim, centenas de milhões de dólares detidos notadamente pelo Japão e pela Alemanha não puderam ser convertidos em ouro, já que os americanos "recomendavam" a esses países -- não por acaso os que tinham tropas de ocupação americanas -- guardassem seus dólares, para eles "as good as gold", ou seja, tão bons quanto o ouro. A consequência foi a que ambos tomaram um calote monumental, no momento da desvinculação unilateral dos EUA do padrão ouro-dólar em 1971 e da queda significativa do valor da moeda americana (e da subida consequente do valor do ouro) logo em seguida. Tudo bem, os dois países eram ricos o suficiente para acomodar esse calote, mas ele foi realmente enorme.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Economia

Alemanha vai buscar 674 toneladas de ouro depositadas nos EUA e na França

Deutsche Welle, 17/01/2013

Até 2020, metade dos estoques alemães do metal deverá estar armazenada em Frankfurt. Alemanha possui a segunda maior reserva de ouro do mundo, atrás apenas dos EUA.

O Banco Central da Alemanha (Bundesbank) vai transportar para o país boa parte das reservas de ouro depositadas no exterior. A meta é que, até 2020, metade do ouro alemão esteja armazenada no Bundesbank, anunciou Carl-Ludwig Thiele, membro do conselho da instituição nesta quarta-feira (16/01), em Frankfurt.
A Alemanha possui a segunda maior reserva de ouro do mundo, atrás somente dos Estados Unidos. Nos últimos meses houve um debate interno sobre a segurança das reservas de ouro alemãs depositadas no exterior.
Ao todo, o país tem 3.391 toneladas de ouro, no valor de 137,51 bilhões de euros. A maior parte, 1.536 toneladas, está depositada no Fed, o Banco Central dos EUA. Outras 445 toneladas estão armazenadas no Bank of England, em Londres. Em Paris repousam mais 374 toneladas de ouro. Somente 31% das reservas alemãs de ouro, ou 1.036 toneladas, estão em Frankfurt.
Nos próximos anos, a Alemanha pretende buscar 300 toneladas de ouro dos EUA e tudo o que possui na França, ou seja, 374 toneladas. O valor total é de 27 bilhões de euros, segundo Thiele.
O motivo para o Banco Central Alemão manter parte das reservas no exterior é ter a possibilidade de, no caso de uma crise monetária, converter rapidamente o ouro em dólares, a moeda mais importante do mundo.
A recuperação total do metal armazenado na França explica-se, portanto, pelo fato de o país usar hoje a mesma moeda que a Alemanha. Ou seja, caso necessário, não seria possível trocar o ouro retido em Paris por uma moeda internacional. Thiele justificou a recuperação de parte do ouro dos EUA dizendo que há espaço sobrando nos cofres alemães.
Questão de confiança
No segundo semestre de 2012, um debate aberto sobre a segurança do ouro alemão no exterior ganhou força no país. Há alguns meses, o Tribunal de Contas da Alemanha (Bundesrechnungshof) criticou em um relatório o fato de as reservas de ouro armazenadas no exterior nunca terem sido inspecionadas em sua "composição física" e autenticidade.
Alguns políticos afirmaram que o Bundesbank havia aberto mão do controle sobre o metal precioso. Thiele ressaltou, porém, que a decisão de recuperar parte do ouro do país foi tomada de maneira independente.
Razões históricas
O patrimônio alemão em ouro foi adquirido principalmente nas décadas de 1950 e 1960. Na época do sistema monetário de Bretton Woods, que valeu de 1944 a 1971, os EUA trocavam cada onça de ouro pelo valor fixo de 35 dólares.
Nos anos do seu milagre econômico, alguns anos após a Segunda Guerra Mundial, a Alemanha conseguiu elevados superavits comerciais, e o Bundesbank trocava marcos alemães por dólares continuamente. Os estoques acumulados da moeda norte-americana eram, então, trocados por ouro nos EUA.
Após a troca, o ouro ficava depositado no Fed em Nova York, ou seja, nunca esteve na Alemanha. Algo parecido ocorreu durante a União Europeia de Pagamentos, que existiu de 1950 a 1958. O ouro alemão ficou, assim, nos cofres de Londres e Paris.
Na época da Guerra Fria, 98% das reservas de ouro da então Alemanha Ocidental estavam no exterior por motivos de segurança. Com a queda do Muro de Berlim e a reunificação do país, os temores de um ataque externo deixaram de existir. A partir de 2000, a Alemanha começou a transportar para o país parte de suas reservas.
LPF/dpa/afp
Revisão: Alexandre Schossler