A China no WEF de Davos: do socialismo de Deng ao capitalismo de Estado (NYT)

The Story of China’s Economic Rise Unfolds in Switzerland

Ever since a politically connected Chinese economist survived prison beatings and went to the 1979 World Economic Forum, the Davos event has had outsize influence in China.

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The 1979 Chinese delegation to the World Economic Forum, including a small team of free-market economists.Credit...World Economic Forum

By Keith Bradsher

• The New York Times, Jan. 20, 2020

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SHANGHAI — Beijing’s alliance with the World Economic Forum started in 1979 with the arrival in Davos, Switzerland, of a small team of free-market economists led by a wizened Chinese intellectual, Qian Junrui, who had barely survived Mao’s Cultural Revolution. He had been imprisoned for eight years, tortured and repeatedly beaten unconscious.

China and Davos have since become one of the oddest power couples in international economics and politics. The relationship traces the story of China’s ascent after Mao. Chinese leaders have repeatedly chosen the forum for important policy speeches.

Nearly three years after overseeing the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989, then-Premier Li Peng traveled to Davos and urged global business leaders to resume investing in China. Starting in 2007, the country’s premiers began hosting an annual “summer Davos” sessionin China, with the World Economic Forum, to gather business leaders from across the developing world. And in early 2017, Xi Jinping, China’s current leader, selected Davos for his plea to the world not to embrace trade protectionism and populism.

At this year’s gathering, Chinese officials dealing with a slowing economy and faltering investment are prepared for an energetic promotional message. Their pitch: The signing of an initial trade agreement with the Trump administration last week means China remains a good place for multinationals to keep much of their manufacturing supply chains.

On the face of it, China is an awkward player at a forum that celebrates free trade and markets. China has long maintained some of the highest tariffs on imports of any of the world’s leading trading nations, although it has started to reduce them in the past 18 months. It has won global dominance in a succession of industries through lavish government subsidies and elaborate and often protectionist industrial policies.

Through the years, changes in China’s delegation to Davos have reflected its economy’s evolution. The initial teams were dominated by free-market economists like Mr. Qian.

From the 1990s through the early 2000s, wealthy Chinese entrepreneurs played a leading role. The founders of China’s biggest tech companies, like Jack Ma of Alibaba and Robin Li of Baidu, formed an informal club that meets annually at Davos as they stay at elegantly furnished chalets with magnificent views of the snowy slopes and forests above.

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Participants at the 2019 World Economic Forum in Davos attend a diner buffet organized by the Chinese city of Dalian.Credit...Thierry Falise/LightRocket, via Getty Images

China’s state-owned enterprises, like State Grid, the main electricity transmission company, have long sent delegates to Davos, but have expanded their phalanxes of top executives in the last few years as Mr. Xi has strengthened their commanding role in the Chinese economy. The Davos forum has become one of the few events for which state-owned enterprise bosses and other senior Communist Party cadres can obtain Beijing’s permission to exit China as domestic surveillance increases.

The executives say practically nothing at the forum itself but hold extensive private meetings at nearby cottages with government and business leaders from around the world. Advisers from global consulting firms help the Chinese leaders organize long schedules of hour-by-hour meetings, followed by stops at cocktail parties and dinners each evening.

As the World Economic Forum prepares to celebrate its 50th anniversary this week, the ability of China and the forum to balance the rhetoric of globalization and international openness with China’s increasingly state-led model has seldom been less clear.

Global risks: World Economic Forum - Davos

Top risks are environmental, but ignore economics and they'll be harder to fix

Davos, World Economic Forum

• Climate-related risks overshadow all other risks – in particular economic risks – undermining cohesive action and creating blind spots
• Society needs a new “growth paradigm” that addresses the interconnectedness of socio-economic factors with climate change
• Businesses need to adapt their metrics to assess the value of nature 

This year’s risks landscape is green. The urgency of climate change dominates everything: all five of the top risks by likelihood and three by impact are climate related. The backdrop of geopolitical and geo-economic tensions in 2019 sparked unease as the world grappled with “challenges” such as environmental degradation and technological disruption. Fast forward to 2020, and there is a climate emergency. 

Economic risks are absent from the top five. This is worrying, given the continuing global economic malaise that will limit progress in all other areas, including climate action. As lead author, Emilio Granados Franco, Head of Global Risks and Geopolitical Agenda at the World Economic Forum, suggests, perhaps it is this year’s blind spot, “Because environmental and economic risks are inextricably linked, risk perceptions that account for only one over the other mean blind spots may be arising and integrated mitigation efforts may be lacking.”

The top five global risks in terms of likelihood and severity of impact are:

1. Extreme weather events with major damage to property, infrastructure and loss of human life.

2. Failure of climate-change mitigation and adaptation by government and business.

3. Major biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse (terrestrial or marine) with irreversible consequences for the environment, resulting in severely depleted resources for humankind as well as industries.

4. Major natural disasters such as earthquakes, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions and geomagnetic storms.

5. Human-made environmental damage and disasters, including environmental crime, such as oil spills and radioactive contamination. 

Traps and blind spots

To younger generations especially, the health of the planet is alarming. The report highlights how risks are perceived differently by those born after 1980. They ranked environmental risks higher than other respondents in the short and long terms. Almost 90% of these respondents believe “extreme heat waves”, “destruction of ecosystems” and “health impacted by pollution” will be aggravated in 2020, compared to around 70% for other generations. They also believe that the impact from environmental risks by 2030 will be more catastrophic and more likely. 

Cyberattacks on critical infrastructure come fifth. Digital fragmentation more broadly is probably one to watch in the coming years as society grapples with the forces of privacy, ethics, profit and security.

As the 15-year history of the Global Risks Report shows, risks are complex and interconnected. Lose sight of the bigger picture and the headlines can be misleading. 

Looking back to the beginning of the last decade, the 2010 report warned, “while sudden shocks can have a huge impact … the biggest risks facing the world today may be from slow failures or creeping risks. Because these failures and risks emerge over a long period of time, their potentially enormous impact and long-term implications can be vastly underestimated.”

Climate was cited as one of these slow burners. It was a prescient warning that went unheeded. 

Peter Giger, Group Chief Risk Officer, Zurich Insurance Group, now urges businesses to develop metrics that assess the value of nature to their work. He highlights how the staggering loss of biodiversity – 83% of wild mammals and one-half the world’s plants – makes it harder for ecosystems to adapt to change. The degradation of wetlands, mangroves and coral reefs translate into insurance costs for local businesses. “Investment in sensible, ecological forestry practices would reduce insurance costs for sectors like power and water utilities that might be exposed to wildfire risks.”

Sandrine Dixson-Declève, Co-President of the Club of Rome, stresses that our “patterns of economic growth, development, production and consumption” have not only tipped ecosystems, but “created severe socio-economic hotspots and greater inequality”. She says: “The emergency is not just about ecological breakdown. It is about societal breakdown and acknowledging that as we urgently address the climate and biodiversity risks, we must simultaneously build new economic, social and financial systems”. 

This year economic and political polarization is on the rise, at a time when there is more need than ever to unify the response and despite warnings in 2010 of gaps in global governance and inadequate investment in infrastructure. Of some 750 global experts and decision-makers, 78% think “economic confrontations” and “domestic political polarization” are likely to rise and will have severe impact in 2020.

John Drzik, Chairman of Marsh & McLennan, puts the onus on the private sector to take the lead. He highlights that with limited multilateral progress, businesses must act cohesively to mitigate risk and find opportunity. He sets out clear guidance on how to become more strategically resilient in the face of climate threats to business operations and explains how to find new and expanded market opportunities.

Risk is a risk in itself

Risk analysis should not be seen in an ahistorical context. The evaluation of risk first gained momentum in the 18th century with a flurry of intellectual activity on the mathematical theory of probability – which can in part be linked to the rise of capitalism – or the desire of the growing private sector for improved methods of business calculation and economic security. Modern-day risk analysis shapes decisions, sets forecasts and reveals opportunities. It’s why the World Economic Forum sets the agenda for the year with the launch of the Global Risks Report every January.

By definition, however, risks have uncertain outcomes. The human system of risk analysis emphasizes instinct over intellect and emotion over reason. Perception is necessarily subjective,which is a risk in itself. There is an imperative, therefore, to heed what is unsaid, avoid reductionism and watch out for the silent, but potentially deadly risks that are masked by the more obvious ones. Climate-related issues have been simmering for at least a decade and now the world is at a tipping point. This year’s hidden risks – like the economy – are unwisely ignored. 

The question is how to use the now highly sophisticated risk awareness to read between the lines, to understand the interconnectedness of risks and to use a systems-change approach to propel change. So the 50th Annual Meeting in Davos approaches, the relevance of cohesive action is ever-more compelling as all stakeholders gather to focus on shared, critical global tasks.

Everything we thought we knew about poverty [is] wrong - Martin Burt (World Economic Forum)

What if nearly everything we thought we knew about poverty was wrong?

Image: REUTERS/Baz Ratner - RC1257788200

World Economic Forum, September 27, 2019

Below is an extract from Martin Burt’s Who Owns Poverty?, a memoir about his work to eradicate multidimensional poverty through his Poverty Stoplight initiative. The book will be published by Red Press on September 3 2019.

What if nearly everything we thought we knew about poverty was wrong? What if the legions of policymakers, social scientists, economists, aid workers, charities and NGOs marching across the globe have been using the wrong strategy, and the wrong tactics, to wage the wrong war against poverty?

With the very best of intentions, we’ve been trying to help poor people ascend the ladder out of poverty in the name of social and economic justice. But what if we have been, as it were, leaning the wrong ladder on the wrong wall? And what if being wrong about the problem of poverty was the only thing standing in the way of finding the solution?

Of course, this would not be the first time that society laboured under assumptions later proved to be misguided. Recall a time when educators believed that corporal punishment would ‘cure’ left-handed students, long before we understood that handedness is determined in utero. Doctors in ages past believed tuberculosis to be transmitted by vampires (and that dry air in caves, deserts or mountains was a potent cure) before scientists determined it is caused by bacteria and therefore best treated with antibiotics. Before Copernicus and Galileo, scientists believed the sun revolved around the earth.

“Surely if we’re going to get serious about the business of reducing global poverty, then we’ve got to start by agreeing what we mean by the term, right?”

Nor have our views on poverty itself been immune to similar debate and revision. Seeking to justify the persistent gap between rich countries and poor countries, theorists over the ages have proffered explanations ranging from the cultural to the geographical — and most everything in between.

Marxists view poverty as the inevitable result of the uneven distribution of the means of producing wealth in a society. Capitalism was created to organize production in the belief that enlightened self-interest and the logic of the market create wealth for all; it depended on a certain measure of wealth inequality to promote the entrepreneurial spirit and risk-taking behavior needed to create more jobs and more wealth (and on the view that government programs to reduce inequality only got in the way). Indeed, it’s only in recent years that we’ve started to challenge the orthodoxy of inequality as a necessary precondition for growth.

Elsewhere, the Bible assures us that the poor will always be with us, and the Protestant work ethic reminds us the poor only have themselves to blame — as wealth (the outward sign of God’s blessing) is achieved by overcoming personal, moral, intellectual or spiritual deficits. And if our hard work means we deserve our wealth, the converse must also be true: we deserve our poverty when it happens.

While these world views proffer competing narratives on why there is poverty, they are strangely silent on the question of what poverty actually is — as if, perhaps, we are meant to infer the definition from context. But surely if we’re going to get serious about the business of reducing global poverty, then we’ve got to start by agreeing what we mean by the term, right? Here, too, we witness the evolution of human understanding over time.

“In short: the way we define poverty makes it too complex to solve.”

In our earliest attempts to define poverty, we alighted on the most straightforward of answers. Poverty must be a lack of money: a lack of money coming in (income) and a lack of money going out (consumption). Poverty is the opposite of profit, wealth and accumulation—all of the things society values as inherently good. Armed with this understanding, our solution was to throw money at the problem—in the form of alms, conditional cash transfers and (more circuitously) trickle-down economics.

When our progress in global poverty reduction hit a plateau, we went back to first principles. Some converted poverty from a problem into an opportunity; witness poor Bangladeshi and Mexican women rebranded as ‘microentrepreneurs’ and offered microloans to grow their cottage industries and thereby increase their income. For those tinkering with the engine of economic growth, this was a thrilling retrofit designed to harness the potential energy of poor individuals, to unleash the power of small business and to empower women as economic agents—by giving them the skills, incentives and motivation they lacked to make enough money to live well.

Still others looked beyond the question of cash to reimagine poverty as a many-faced beast. We started talking about ‘multidimensional poverty’, which encompassed a lack of voice, access, equality, security, health, sanitation, education, infrastructure, political representation and so much more. Yet while this new multidimensional framework accounted for a broad range of societal, structural and political factors that created and maintained poverty, income was still at the top of the list. Income was, quite simply, seen as a key that automatically unlocked well-being improvements across the board.

Our current definition of multidimensional poverty, however, comes preloaded with two unsettling consequences. These consequences shape our understanding of what causes poverty and, as a result, what we can do about it.

To understand the first of these, let’s consider the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), elaborated by the United Nations (UN). The primary goal is ‘No Poverty’ (largely defined in terms of income and access to resources), and a further 16 goals consider hunger; health; education; gender inequality; water and sanitation; clean and affordable energy; work and economic growth; industry, innovation and infrastructure; sustainable cities; responsible consumption and production; climate change and environmental degradation; and peace and justice.

“There’s little room within the current paradigm for a poor person to have any agency over most of the factors that create their poverty.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with getting everyone in the development sector working from the same definition and toward the same goals. It’s the manner in which the SDGs are formulated that creates the problem. That’s because when one person’s poverty is partly, or even wholly, subject to forces beyond their control, we negate the efficacy of any individual effort in overcoming that poverty. I might, if I were living in poverty, be able to increase my income, but I have zero influence over structural factors that mitigate my ability to improve my life and livelihood, such as trade distortions in global agricultural markets, my country’s resilience to climatic events and respect for the rule of law, or whether the Ministry of Health provides adequate funding for my local hospital.

In short: the way we define poverty makes it too complex to solve. While we’ve long since abandoned the idea that a person’s poverty is their fault (because they are too uneducated, lazy or apathetic to provide for themselves), there’s little room within the current paradigm for a poor person to have any agency over most of the factors that create their poverty. It’s too big. Too difficult to influence. Out of their hands. Reliance on external solution-providers is baked in, by design.

The second unsettling consequence of the current definition of multidimensional poverty is that it renders development organizations’ current, unidimensional solutions obsolete. Development organizations, by nature, typically focus on one or two issues; despite recognizing that there are many interlocking pieces to the puzzle, we only work on one of them, leaving the rest to someone else. We dig wells and build bridges. We hand out shoes. We train journalists. We administer vaccines. We help farmers grow bigger harvests without worrying about whether they can get their crops to market. We empower the women without bringing the men along for the journey toward a more gender-equal society. We work on decreasing child mortality but leave building schools to someone else. We might win the battle, but we’ll never win the war.

“ Poverty isn’t just a problem ‘over there’ anymore — wealth gaps are on the rise in the united States of America, Canada, France, Sweden and Germany (among others), and we’ve been forced to coin new terms such as ‘working poor’.”

Image: REUTERS/ Max Whittaker

At the same time, no one can doubt that poverty — however we define, measure and tackle it — is a growing threat to existing institutions and the cause of much unnecessary suffering in the world. Poverty, abject and otherwise, also manifests as increasing levels of broad-scale voter discontent and civil unrest when the state can’t be relied upon to provide basic services and/or deliver broad economic growth. And poverty isn’t just a problem ‘over there’ anymore — wealth gaps are on the rise in the united States of America, Canada, France, Sweden and Germany (among others), and we’ve been forced to coin new terms (such as ‘working poor’) to cope with the stark reality that, for ever-growing numbers of people, having a job isn’t always enough to put food on the table. Likewise, people from poorer countries are increasingly packing up the few belongings they have and ‘voting with their feet’, journeying to richer countries to seek a better life (whether by choice or necessity).

Cheap internet access makes it easier than ever for poor migrants to peer into the lives of those more fortunate than they are and to glimpse the promise of a higher standard of living. What’s more, cheap global travel means that they don’t need to spend their whole lives on the outside, looking in. The end of the rainbow, with its promised pot of gold, has never been more within reach. Increasingly, too, poor migrants are tech-savvy travelers, armed with potent tools such as smartphones and Facebook. In fact, many organizations aiding refugees often report that the first question that migrants ask when crossing a border is: “What is the Wi-Fi password?”

Against this backdrop, I offer a deceptively simple question: who owns poverty? It’s certainly not an idea we’ve ever articulated before — although, if you re-examine development thinking and practice through the lens of this startling question, you might conclude we had quite strong feelings on the subject all along.

Global poverty discourse has, to date, concerned itself with the question: what is poverty? This seems reasonable, given that good poverty solutions depend on good poverty definitions. Yet there’s also something subtler at work here, when you consider that owning a thing starts with naming it.

Adam named the beasts in the field and the fowl in the air. Conquistadors (re)named the lands they ‘discovered’ on behalf of their sovereigns. We name stars, diseases and social trends in order to bring them into our sphere of influence. We name, we claim.

When it comes to who has naming power over global poverty, it is almost too obvious (to the point of embarrassment) to point out that poor people have traditionally been relegated to a non-speaking part in someone else’s narrative about their lives. They are passive recipients of someone else’s poverty definition, someone else’s poverty measurement. As a consequence of this, poor people are also locked out of the room where decisions get made about what our poverty solutions look like, unable to articulate their perspectives and priorities.

“Rarely, if ever, do poverty experts consider poor people as equally important decision-makers, despite the fact that every day they solve problems related to their family’s well-being.”

The question ‘who owns poverty?’ isn’t one I pulled out of thin air. There was no ‘eureka moment’. Rather, it emerged slowly, over the course of years, as a reaction to a number of things about the global poverty agenda that I found very puzzling indeed.

The initial seed of doubt was sewn with the realization that the definition of ‘poor person’ used by poverty experts rarely seemed to line up with what we were seeing in our work as a Foundation supporting microentrepreneurs in Paraguay (Fundación Paraguaya). Or rather, it didn’t describe everything about them. The joy, generosity, creativity, problem-solving and entrepreneurial spirit we saw led us to conclude that the people we worked with were so much more than simply a binary classification of poor versus non-poor. Their lives were bigger than whether they lived on $1 per day or $2 per day. Those labels seemed all the more inapt and reductionist when applied to two people whose individual experiences of poverty differed completely from each other.

The next seed was one of discontent with the absurdity of there being so much poverty data in the world — but none that served the needs of poor people themselves. We take it for granted that the government departments and development organizations working to reduce poverty need poverty data to make good strategic and operational decisions. But rarely, if ever, do poverty experts consider poor people as equally important decision-makers, despite the fact that every day they solve problems related to their family’s well-being.

“What would happen if we gave poverty back to poor people?”

As a result (in addition to having no input on what’s being measured, how and when) poor people have no access to information collected about their lives and no control over what gets done with it, or by whom.

There are exceptions; I can point to a few promising initiatives that are ‘listening to the voices of the poor’ through participatory data collection and qualitative research. I wonder, however, whether we’re only listening to what we want to hear (feedback on our own indicators, using our own process). I also wonder what happens to the insights generated through this listening. Are they used as a foundation to co-create and co-implement community-led development projects? Or are they simply used to tweak around the edges of our own standardized package of programs and services?

More typically, however, the anti-poverty program-design cycle starts with poverty experts descending on a village with clipboards, extracting pre-defined data points about the lives and livelihoods of poor people and returning to head office to aggregate the data into a spreadsheet. In the worst cases, it starts with consulting governments and civil servants rather than communities — as absurd a scenario as a doctor who takes the temperature of a hospital administrator, instead of the patient, before prescribing the medicine (in the words of my colleague, Andy Carrizosa).

The questions that the Foundation began asking were: What would happen if we gave poverty back to poor people? What would happen if we could find a way for poor people to ask their own questions and create their own poverty indicators? What if we could collect poverty information in a way that put relevant data into the hands of families, so they could be the ones planning and implementing their own family poverty-elimination program? And what if we allowed poor people to define what success looks like?

Over the past decade, the Foundation has been on a journey to do just that. While this journey is still underway, it is already signposted with a number of interesting landmarks and discoveries.

“When people have the power to name their own poverty, to call out their problems for themselves, they also have the power to do something about those problems.”

The first of these is that the richness of poverty can be found in its nuance. Thanks to the work of social scientists and economists in the Global North, we have a huge range of poverty indicators at our disposal. However, we have found that no single constellation of deprivations can be used to describe everyone’s poverty. No single index can adequately capture the diverse ways in which a single family experiences poverty and non-poverty. If you believed Tolstoy when he said happy families are all alike, believe me when I say poor families are all poor in their own ways.

The second discovery relates to efficacy. When people have the power to name their own poverty, to call out their problems for themselves, they also have the power to do something about those problems. To define the solution; to own the solution. Time and again, we have seen poor families devising solutions to problems we previously considered intractable. And I’m not talking about solutions to reduce their poverty, or to alleviate its effects so as to make it a little more bearable, but solutions to eliminate their poverty once and for all.

What’s more, we have seen poor families connecting to each other to share poverty solutions and ideas, rather than sourcing them from external aid workers. After all, not every individual in a community suffers from malnutrition. Not every individual in a community suffers from domestic violence. Where a poor person can identify someone else beating the odds in one particular aspect of poverty, they can create horizontal learning networks that tap into locally held knowledge and solutions. The poor can help not only themselves but also each other to overcome their deprivations.

We might have started with a small question, but what we’ve ended up with is nothing short of a revolution. My book Who Owns Poverty? is a first attempt to tell the story of that revolution.

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Meus caros capitalistas de Davos: sugestões para um discurso...

Mil desculpas aos que, atraídos pelo título, se deram ao trabalho de abrir esta postagem para ler o que eu teria a dizer, em nome do presidente, aos capitalistas de Davos.
Mas, estando na abertura do WEF de 2019, eu fui verificar o que eu já tinha escrito a este respeito. Escrevi muito, pois conheço o WEF desde 1981, numa de suas primeiras edições, acompanhando aqui o então ministro da Fazenda Ernane Galveas e o assessor de assuntos internacionais da pasta, um então jovem economista chamado Mailson da Nóbrega.
Mas, o texto que vai abaixo não é para este ano de 2019, e sim foi escrito em 2014, para a presidente de plantão, pois ela ia, como foi, a Davos. Não tenho a menor ideia do que disse lá, mas isso não tem a menor importância, pois todos os presidentes falam a mesma coisa: venham, capitalistas, venham investir no Brasil, pois o ambiente de negócios é ótimo, estamos fazendo mais reformas para torná-lo excepcionalmente bom, excelente, e vocês vão encontrar amplas oportunidades de investimento direto, com lucro garantido, e o governo será um sócio dessa prosperidade.
É isso mais ou menos o que todos dizem.
No caso da Dona Dilma, ela tinha aquele passado guerrilheiro, anti-capitalista, e vivia cercada dos economistas da UniCamp (os mais perigosos), e ainda tinha os chatos dos companheiros com suas receitas alopradas de economia.
Pois bem, eu apresentei uma sugestão de discurso diferente, como vocês podem perceber, se tiverem a paciência de ler o texto abaixo.
Desculpando-me mais uma vez pelo título enganoso, vamos ao que interessa.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Brasília, 21 de janeiro de 2019

Meus caros capitalistas de Davos...

Rascunho de um (possível) discurso no

Fórum Econômico Mundial de 2014

Permitam-me que eu os chame desse modo: capitalistas de Davos. Afinal de contas, vocês viajam para cá todos os anos para melhor administrar os seus negócios, não é mesmo? Pelo que me disseram, aqui é o lugar onde a concentração de capitalistas por centímetros quadrados é a maior do mundo. Dizem até que, se houver uma catástrofe, um ataque terrorista – eu, obviamente, rezo para Nossa Senhora para que nada disso aconteça – desaparecerá com vocês mais ou menos 20 por cento do PIB do planeta. Será verdade? Não sei. Vocês, que dispõem de excelentes economistas, que calculem isso; os meus economistas estão muito ocupados neste momento, fazendo cálculos para eu começar uma nova política econômica.

Pois bem, é sobre isto que eu vim lhes falar neste dia. Desculpem se eu não apareci antes, mas é que o pessoal do Fórum Social Mundial vivia me torrando a paciência para ir falar para eles as coisas que eles gostam. Cansei! Os antiglobalizadores não têm nada de útil a propor, nem para o mundo, muito menos para o meu governo. Então, eu disse para mim: vamos lá, debater com aqueles capitalistas, ouvir o que eles têm a dizer e dizer-lhes umas coisas novas.

As minhas são estas: durante certo tempo – eu colocaria aí uns 20 ou 30 anos – acreditei num conjunto de receitas de crescimento propostas pelos keynesianos de botequim de lá onde eu fiz o meu curso de economia. Saí de lá convencida que tudo estava resolvido, e que o ponto essencial era sustentar a demanda agregada, estimular o consumo das massas, enfim, inverter a tal de lei de Say, como receitava o nosso guru maior, não o Marx, mas o Keynes. A gente sabe que o Marx não serve muito para administrar uma economia complexa, não é mesmo? Assistimos os países marxistas dando dois suspiros e depois, pluf!, sumiram. Eu também tive essas ilusões, mas já passou. Depois, passei a apostar nas receitas daquele inglês. E assim foi feito, nos últimos três anos. Só que na hora de comer a omelete, só tinha ovos quebrados; não tivemos nem mesmo um modesto crescimento de 3%. Dá para continuar assim? Não dá!

Então, resolvi aposentar essas ideias e vim dizer a vocês que, daqui para a frente, tudo vai ser diferente. Chega de receitas do Chávez, da Cristina, dos meus amigos da UniCamp; a palavra de ordem agora é produtividade, competitividade, essas coisas que vocês estão sempre falando. Vou fazer uma nova política econômica, a nossa NEP, com a diferença que não vai ser preciso nenhum Stalin para implantar o novo modelo. Parte do pessoal vai reclamar um pouco, mas eu sei tratar com eles, com jeito e persuasão.

Vou começar dizendo a eles uma coisa muito simples: se o governo não precisar de mais dinheiro do que já arrecada, o Banco Central não vai precisar aumentar os juros, certo? Mais ainda: se com esse dinheiro ainda der para pagar todos os juros da dívida, melhor ainda. Vou determinar que superávit primário não seja mais primário, mas sim final. O governo agora só gasta o que tem, inclusive com os juros da dívida.

Outra coisa: eu também acho um absurdo o preço dos carros no Brasil. As nossas montadoras têm de fazer como as de vocês, espalhadas pelo mundo: comprar peças e acessórios onde for mais barato, o que vale dizer que as nossas, que aliás são todas de vocês, vão ter de se integrar às suas fábricas espalhadas pelo mundo. Acho que vai ser o começo do fim dessa indústria infante que já tem mais de cinquenta anos e que nunca quis deixar a mamadeira do governo. Pois para mim, chega!

Mais ainda: acho um absurdo o preço das passagens aéreas, o pessoal da Copa está reclamando, e aí descobri que nós vivemos em duopólio. A partir de agora vou declarar a política de céus abertos no Brasil: aceitaremos todas as companhias, e já estou mandando privatizar todos os nossos aeroportos. A Infraero nunca funcionou direito: ainda há pouco uma menina se machucou no Rio, por falta de inspeção dessa geringonça que só sabe cobrar e não investe quase nada.

Vocês estão cansados de saber que nossas estradas são ruins, que as tarifas telefônicas são absurdamente caras e que as comunicações são lentas. Vou determinar abertura total, quanto mais concorrência melhor. Preparem-se, pois os mercados do Brasil vão estar totalmente abertos em menos de um ano. Cansei de ouvir reclamações, e isso não tem nada a ver com os 40% que cobramos de impostos, pois o pessoal nem sabe disso, mas sim com o fato de que as companhias estão mal acostumadas. Vou abrir outros setores cartelizados, vocês vão ver.

Sim, o Mercosul: parece que até os capitalistas de São Paulo, que já ganharam muito com o Mercosul, cansaram de vez, e acho que eles têm razão: vamos falar olho no olho com os nossos hermanos e dizer o seguinte: ou a gente abre, e se integra ao mundo, ou não tem mais sentido ficar fazendo todas essas reuniões, só para ouvir mais reclamações a cada vez. Os colegas uruguaios têm razão, mas não é por causa da maconha, e sim quando eles querem fazer acordos com quem tem mercado para oferecer. Não dá mais para se esconder como o avestruz. O Mercosul tem de voltar a ser o que ele já foi.

Vou mais longe: estou saindo daqui para Havana e Caracas. Vou dizer ao Raul e ao Maduro que as coisas que eles estão fazendo simplesmente não se sustentam: não tem lógica econômica no que eles querem; eles precisam mudar, pois quem vai pagar a conta, mais uma vez, é o povo.

Pois é isso, meus capitalistas de Davos: eu quero dizer a vocês que o Brasil está aberto aos negócios; eu sei que às vezes é difícil, para quem vem de fora. Vou mudar isso: vou criar um ministério da desburocratização. Capitalistas do mundo: vocês não têm nada a perder, venham ao Brasil, agora!

Pela digitação:

Paulo Roberto de Almeida (http://diplomatizzando.blogspot.com)

[Hartford, 18 Janeiro 2014]