Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.
sábado, 27 de fevereiro de 2016
O keynesianismo militar e cientifico do antikeynesiano Ronald Reagan - Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore, Thomas J. Sugrue
Though he famously stated the "government is the problem" in his first inaugural speech, President Ronald Reagan presided over one of the largest escalations of government spending in U.S. history and gave an enormous boost to technology research in the process. Government spending under Reagan gave an indispensable boost to the rise of high tech centers such as Route 128 corridor outside Boston, the Research Triangle in North Carolina, and the semiconductor center of Austin, Texas. In fact, by the end of the 1980s, 40 percent of all research and development in the computing industry was federally funded and university computer science programs received 83 percent of their funding from the U.S. government:
"Reagan began by significantly increasing defense spending, one of the priorities in his first budget. It rose from 5.3 to 6.4 percent of the gross domestic product between 1981 and 1989. The administration channeled funds into constructing expensive new bombers, including research for a high-tech 'stealth' bomber that would evade conventional radar. Reagan also authorized the deployment of 572 new intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Western Europe, within easy striking distance of the Soviet Union. ...
"In early 1983 the Reagan administration's relations with the Soviets were icier than ever, and the president escalated the war of words. He continued to assert that the USSR was on the brink of military supremacy, despite mounting evidence that the Soviet regime was weak and unpopular, its military technologies inferior, and its economy in crisis. In a speech before the National Association of Evangelicals in March, Reagan spoke of 'sin and evil in the world' and pointed to the Soviet Union as an 'evil empire.' He denounced the nuclear freeze as 'a very dangerous fraud.'
"That same month, Reagan announced the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), calling for the creation of a space 'shield' of X-rays and lasers to protect the United States from incoming nuclear missiles. ... Budget hawks argued chat SDI would be an expensive boondoggle, costing as much as a trillion dollars. But Reagan did not let it go. The program would survive until the early 1990s, when the Bush administration and Congress dramatically cut funding for the program to balance the federal budget.
"The Clinton administration would dismantle it in 1993. One of the unintended consequences of the arms buildup was that it stimulated a boom in research and development and military technology. Suburban Boston, Silicon Valley, and Los Angeles were flush with federal dollars, pulling them out of the economic slump sooner than most of the rest of the country. Federal spending also launched a high-tech economy. Universities introduced student-accessible computer centers in the early 1980s, the personal computer went from a novelty item to a mass-produced necessity in less than ten years, and microchips transformed everyday electronics. The number of jobs for electrical engineers and computer scientists skyrocketed. By the early 1990s, local area networks and the Internet began connecting computers into what would be later named the World Wide Web.
"The rise and success of American high-tech industries did not result from tax cuts and deregulation. In fact, no American industries relied more on government spending than did computing, electrical engineering, and communications equipment. ... Between 1982 and 1988, federal research and development spending nearly doubled. By the decade's end, 40 percent of all research and development in the computing industry was federally funded; nearly half of communications technology research -- including the systems that were the basis of the Internet -- came from the federal government. Government programs also bankrolled university laboratories, computer science, and electrical engineering. In 1985 alone, computer science programs received 83 percent of their funds from the federal government."
These United States: A Nation in the Making, 1890 to the Present
Author: Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Thomas J. Sugrue
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Copyright 2015 by Glenda Elizabeth Gilmore and Thomas J. Sugrue
Pages 556-558
Teoria Geral de Keynes faz 80 anos - Robert Skidelsky (e minha avaliacao: PRA)
Não concordo com ele, por uma razão muito simples: Keynes não fez uma "teoria geral", e sim uma teoria particular ao momento de crise vivido pelas economias de mercado devido à excessiva intervenção dos governos na economia, inclusive e principalmente no que se refere à criação de inflação e de desemprego, pela imposição do monopólio sobre as moedas e de muitas regras afetando os mercados laborais (políticos sempre querem fazer bondades com os recursos alheios).
Não partilho da ideia de que mercados produzem desequilíbrios e que eles não são capazes de corrigir a si próprios. Mercados SEMPRE se corrigem a si próprios, mesmo em detrimento dos agentes que interviram com pouca informação, com propósitos especulativos, ou "corretivos", como pretendem os governos. Os mercados simplesmente refletem o comportamento de pessoas, e as bolhas são SEMPRE corrigidas por uma destruição de riqueza artificial, ainda que alguns venham a perder ativos nesse processo.
A pretensão de pretender corrigir "desequilíbrios", ou "falhas de mercado" é justamente o fator que impede os mercados de se autocorrigirem.
O keynesianismo é uma pretensão fatal, no sentido hayekiano da palavra, embora combine com a arrogância dos "engenheiros sociais", que estão sempre querendo construir um "mundo melhor", como aprendizes de feiticeiro. Costuma dar errado.
Em qualquer hipótese, cabe ler Skidelsky.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Keynes’s General Theory At 80
Bancos Centrais afundando a economia mundial - Mises Daily
Como vocês sabem, o político é aquele sujeito que adora gastar o seu dinheiro sem lhe consultar.
A coisa fica perigosa quando emissores monopolistas de papel pintado, de circulação e uso compulsório pelo poder político, passam a satisfazer o desejo desses manipuladores dos recursos alheiros e passam a emitir quantidades insustentáveis de dinheiro, em total contradição com a dinâmica econômica, e com a real criação de riqueza pelos empreendedores e pelos trabalhadores.
O Mises Daily trata dessa questão.
Não acredito que vamos chegar numa catástrofe similar à de cem anos atrás, mas a destruição de riqueza vem sendo feita de forma insidiosa e constante.
Para ler todas as matérias linkadas na mensagem original, clique aqui:
https://mises.org/library/week-review-february-27-2016
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
The Week in Review: February 27, 2016
FEBRUARY 27, 2016 — Mises Institute
Dissatisfaction with the Federal Reserve appears to have gone mainstream with presidential candidates Trump, Sanders, Cruz, and Rubio all expressing a need for reform of the central bank.
An understanding of how central banks work has become more important than ever as central banks across the world, have been putting their faith in increasingly radical forms of monetary policy, which now includes negative interest rates and paying interest on reserves.
As always, a solid understanding of sound economics remains at the center of the fight against statism.
Earlier this week we celebrated the birthday of Carl Menger, founder of the Austrian school. Ludwig von Mises, who credited Menger’s Principles of Economics for making him an economist, recalled that not only was Menger a revolutionary thinker, but a prophet for the devastating wars that engulfed Europe in the first half of the twentieth century.
Unfortunately it is easy to look at the world today and see the same troubling trends that Menger saw in the early 1910s. Be it governments weaponizing the financial sector at the expense of innocent people, or the dangerous consolidation of industries due to legislation named after obnoxious politicians — far too many people with influence continue to fail to learn the lessons of history. It is no surprise that populism seems to be sweeping the globe.
This time on Mises Weekends, Jeff Deist recaps his recent talk in Houston entitled "Socialist Left vs. alt-Right: What it Means for Liberty" — a talk which generated plenty of comments from libertarians, progressives, and the alt-Right. Jeff discusses why we should celebrate the death of supposed "democratic consensus," why the progressive left doesn't care about winning votes, how the alt-Right turns identity politics against social justice warriors, and what libertarians should learn from populism and even demagoguery.
In case you missed any of them, here are articles from this past week’s Mises Daily and Mises Wire:
Bernie Sanders Criticizes the Fed for the Wrong Reasons by C. Jay Engel
Where Negative Interest Rates Will Lead Us by Patrick Barron
Democracy Has Been Weaponized by Ralph Raico
Central Banks Should Stop Paying Interest on Reserves by Brendan Brown
The Economics of "Free Stuff" by Jonathan Newman
Negative Interest Rates (and Fear) Mean We'll Save More, not Less by Charles Hugh Smith
Rothbard and the Importance of Freedom in Education by Ryan McMaken
Carl Menger: Founder of the Austrian School by Jörg Guido Hülsmann
Europe Continues to Splinter: A British Exit Looms Large as Schengen Dies by Ryan McMaken
The Dodd-Frank Oligopoly by Mark Thornton
Legal Marijuana Businesses Must Pay 70% Tax by Ryan McMaken
Will Donald Trump Reform the Fed? by Ryan McMaken
The Us Banking System as an Arm of US Foreign Policy by Paul-Martin Foss