Uma nova licao de economia: comercio e renda nacional...

Um economista anônimo, que prefere permanecer assim, me escreve para dar uma lição. Como foi feita em simples comentário em um post, resolvi promovê-la a tema de post, como segue ao comentário do anônimo comentarista: 

Anônimo deixou um novo comentário sobre a sua postagem "Uma licao de economia: primeiro, vincular fatos a ...": 

A correlação linear entre "coeficiente de abertura externa" e "riqueza" não pode ser interpretado como causa e efeito por uma ou por outra variável, mas uma simples observação.

É como se você observasse que "quem anda com chapéu na cabeça" tem uma robusta correlação linear com "riqueza" sendo que andar com chapéu na cabeça não vai fazer de você mais rico... 

Essa análise de relação entre a riqueza de um pais e abertura econômica seria melhor analisado e justificado por uma analise qualitativa e não meramente quantitativa...

Da mesma forma, o conceito do "coeficiente de abertura econômica" pode ser questionado, pois um país que apresenta taxas de exportações elevadas pode ter um coeficiente tao elevado quanto um pais que apresenta taxas de importações elevadas, sendo que na realidade empírica, a política de exportação/importação dos dois países podem ser completamente diferentes...

Bem, acrescento agora meus comentários (PRA): 

EU nunca disse que correlação linear queria dizer relação de causa e efeito, pois isto seria incompatível com a própria natureza da economia.

O que eu disse, exatamente, foi isto:

os países mais abertos são os mais ricos (com uma ou outra exceção, que tem a ver com outros fatores, o que não impede que os países, mesmo com baixo coeficiente, sejam abertos ao comércio internacional).

Pois bem, países que apresentam alto coeficiente de comércio internacional COSTUMAM ser ricos, e vice-versa, o que não é uma lei universal.

Os coeficientes variam muito, indo de 250% do PIB para um entreposto como Cingapura, para pouco menos de 30% para os EUA e o Japão, sendo todos eles muito ricos. Os EUA têm um grande mercado interno, e ainda assim exibem um DOS MAIORES COMÉRCIOS do mundo, sendo este pequeno dando seu PIB de 16 trilhões; o Japão é um país relativamente protecionista, mas um GRANDE COMERCIANTE mundial.

A China tem um grande coeficiente de abertura, mas um PIB per capita ainda inferior ao do Brasil.  Mas ela pode nos ultrapassar rapidamente, e isso será dado também pelo comércio exterior, inquestionavelmente mais dinâmico no caso da China.
Mas a renda e riqueza criadas pelo comércio exterior não podem ser tomadas em absoluto, sobretudo pela sua simples expressão monetária. Muito mais importante do que o comércio de bens, é o comércio de ideias, pois elas vem embutidas nos produtos, e fazem os países avançarem no plano tecnologico. O que quer dizer que países que se fecham ao comércio, estão se condenando ao emburrecimento empobrecedor. Não é mesmo Brasil?

Existem correlações lineares? Claro que existem, mas elas não são absolutas. Basta saber ler a história... qualitativamente.

Uma coisa é certa: grandes nações comerciantes se tornam muito ricas, imensamente ricas, desde os fenícios, passando pela Liga Hanseática, os genoveses e venezianos, os holandeses, os britânicos, Hong Kong, e coloque dezenas de outros povos mais.

Não precisa fazer o jogo das Xs e Ms que comércio é comércio, sempre com diferentes variáveis. 

Suíça e EUA exibem déficits estruturais nas suas balanças comerciais respectivas e nem por isso tal condição representa um problema absoluto. A Suíça mais que compensa o déficit comercial por saldos superavitários em serviços financeiros, e os EUA tem uma renda extra pelos vários serviços que exportam ao mundo, os royalties e os dividendos dos seus investimentos.

Aliás, o déficit americano é puramente geográfico, jurisdicional. Se forem somadas todas as Xs das FILIAIS de EMPRESAS AMERICANAS ao redor do mundo, teríamos um imenso superávit.

Volto portanto ao meu ponto: o Brasil, ao praticar protecionismo está se empobrecendo, burramente, aliás. O mais estupidamente possível, se ouso dizer. Está se podando da influencia das ideias embutidas no comércio de bens e serviços. 
Vai ver que o governo brasileiro pensa que somos geniais, e não precisamos do resto do mundo (ou importar problemas alheios, como escreveu o economista anônimo).

Apenas stalinistas industriais pretendem fazer o que fazem os "economistas" do governo. Combina com a mentalidade deles, parada no tempo...

Ou melhor, em recuo de pelo menos meio século, talvez mais.

Esse pessoal viveria na autarquia nazista, no protecionismo a la Manoilescu, enfim, todas essas coisas atrasadas...

De nada...

Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Livros sobre o nazismo: Five Best do Wall Street Journal

Toda semana, o Wall Street Journal publica uma seleção dos melhores livros sobre um determinado assunto. Nem todas me interessam, mas algumas são particularmente bem vindas.

By ANDREW NAGORSKI

Mr. Nagorski, a former Newsweek foreigncorrespondent, is the author of "Hitlerland: American Eyewitnesses to the Nazi Rise to Power" (Simon & Schuster).

The Wall Street Journal, June 8, 2012

Germany Puts the Clock Back

By Edgar Ansel Mowrer (1933)

Describing the new freedoms in Weimar Germany after World War I that triggered political chaos and an explosion of "sexual exuberance" of every variety, Edgar Ansel Mowrer noted: "It is hard to conceive a much more tolerant society." Because readers now know what came next, Mowrer's observation startles. But what is most striking about his book, written in late 1932 and rushed into print just as Hitler took power in January 1933, is that the Chicago Daily News correspondent foresaw the Nazi leader's success—and Germany's subsequent forced march to disaster—long before most of his colleagues and the world did. Mowrer, who reported from Berlin for a full decade, wasn't fooled by Hitler's bizarre appearance and mannerisms, which caused so many others to dismiss him. The Nazi leader was "the most effective orator in Germany, the hardest working politician in Europe," who had convinced his countrymen that his apocalyptic vision would be their salvation, he wrote. "A little man had taken the measure of still smaller men." As Mowrer was free to reveal in his memoirs only much later, he also spent this period warning Jews: "Get out, and fast"—even providing those who listened with a map of the border between Germany and Czechoslovakia. Little wonder that Mowrer, who received the Pulitzer Prize for his prescient reporting on Hitler's rise, was driven out of Germany in September 1933.

Hitler's Reich: The First Phase

By Hamilton Fish Armstrong (1933)

'A people has disappeared. Almost every German whose name the world knew as a master of government or business in the Republic of the past fourteen years is gone . . . one by one, these last specimens of another age, another folk, topple over into the Nazi sea." Those opening words convey the chilling message of this slim, powerful volume produced by the editor of Foreign Affairs after his visit to Germany and interview with Hitler in April 1933. Armstrong had maintained extensive contacts with a broad range of senior figures in Weimar Germany, but most were nowhere to be found. Hitler had been in power only since the end of January, but already the sole qualification for any serious position was whether the person was a Nazi. "If he was not, he was wiped out," Armstrong wrote. "Proud to be ignorant" young Nazis accepted the explanation that "the German super-man" only lost World War I because of "the Jew, the traitor within the gates."

Berlin Diary

By William Shirer (1941)

He is best known for his 1960 must-read epic, "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich." But William Shirer, who reported from Berlin for Hearst's Universal News Service and CBS from 1934 to 1940, displayed far more of his raw emotions in these brilliantly crafted diary entries, published soon after his return to the United States. At first, he was perplexed by the adulation of Hitler shown by his followers, "their faces transformed into something positively inhuman." But soon Shirer came to grudgingly admire—and fear—Hitler's ability to whip up their mystical fervor. The journalist pondered the lack of "balance" in the German people, who swung from one extreme to the other, and he deplored the weak response in Europe and elsewhere. While many Americans still believed they could keep out of the next global conflagration, Shirer had no such illusions. The contest between tyranny and democracy, he concluded in one of his last entries from Berlin, "is as inevitable as that of two planets hurtling inexorably through the heavens towards each other."

Berlin Embassy

By William Russell (1941)

William Russell was a clerk in the consular section of the U.S. Embassy in Berlin when Hitler's armies invaded Poland, launching World War II. The Mississippi native, still in his early 20s, had studied German at the University of Berlin. With the other remaining Americans, he lived "isolated in our island" in the German capital, as he put it in this near-elegiac account, penned mostly before his departure in the spring of 1940. A highly social young man, he broke through that isolation to maintain contacts with an array of German friends—yet he hoped that Allied bombers would hit their country hard. He despaired for the Jews who beseeched the embassy for visas that would allow them to escape. Washington's strict quota system meant that most were turned away. His account, early in the book, of prying loose one visa for a desperate Jew makes for a dramatic opener but only underscores the tragedy of so many others.

Germany Will Try It Again

By Sigrid Schultz (1944)

The longest-serving American correspondent in Berlin, who witnessed all of the 1920s and 1930s there, Sigrid Schultz of the Chicago Tribune was as knowledgeable as she was feisty—even in the presence of Nazi bigwigs. Written after she returned to the United States, her book is full of tantalizing stories. When she discovered that the Gestapo had planted incriminating documents to frame her, she burned the papers and then confronted Hermann Goering at a lavish lunch, declaring that he had orchestrated the incident. This kind of behavior prompted officials at Goering's Air Ministry to refer to her as "that dragon from Chicago." Her anger was also directed against the German people for following Hitler, and she scorned those of her countrymen who refused to believe the early warnings that she and other correspondents had issued about Hitler's intentions: "Many of those who branded us killjoys or cranks have since seen their sons go off to battle."

Uma licao de economia: primeiro, vincular fatos a causas

Um Anônimo -- essa mania de se esconder é indicativo de fraqueza, vergonha, incerteza, dúvidas pessoais, ou o quê?; pensam que eu vou triturar o crítico? -- me escreve a propósito deste post: 

Anônimo deixou um novo comentário sobre a sua postagem "As duas vias da América Latina: protecionismo e in...": 

Não entendo essa tendência de ver o Brasil como fechado, em quanto é obvio que nem os Estados-Unidos nem a União Européia são mercados abertos.

Entendo o posicionamento liberal do senhor, mas Washington despreza Milton Friedman e Hayek mais ainda do que Brasilia.

O Brasil tem varios problemas internos, não precisa de problemas externos.

É so ver a situação da Estonia hoje, ultraliberal : quase perdeu 20% do PIB na crise. 

Meu único comentário -- pois não tenho tempo para dar um lição de economia em que se mostra ignaro de certos fatos elementares, mas nem é minha função, ou a missão deste blog, fornecer aulas de qualquer coisa para curiosos de passagem -- seria curto, apenas uma síntese:


A primeira tarefa de quem pretende aprender qualquer coisa seria a de se desembaraçar de crenças e opiniões e se ater a fatos, objetivos, mensuráveis, dados da realidade, e, seguidamente, de vincular certos fatos a determinadas causas. Como disse um filósofo pedestre, as consequências sempre vêm depois, ou seja, determinados fatos, que podem ser causa de determinados processos produzem consequências.
Em economia, certos fatos são estabelecidos a partir de dados objetivos da realidade, não de opiniões, muito menos de teorias de autores, mesmo economistas famosos. Portanto, deixemos esses personagens de lado.
Vejamos: 
1) "tendência de ver o Brasil fechado"? Tendência???!!!
O Anônimo desconhece estatísticas comparadas de coeficientes de abertura externa. Mas ele pode aprender o que é isso, e ver como o Brasil se situa em relação a outros países.
Se ele quiser estabelecer uma correlação linear, verá que os países mais abertos são os mais ricos (com uma ou outra exceção, que tem a ver com outros fatores, o que não impede que os países, mesmo com baixo coeficiente, sejam abertos ao comércio internacional).
2) Segundo o Anônimo, o Brasil tem suficiente problemas internos, assim pode escolher ficar afastado de problemas externos. 
Bem, aqui não se trata de uma questão de economia, mas de lógica elementar. Existem livros para isso também. Não preciso indicar.
3) "A Estônia perdeu 20% do PIB porque era neoliberal". (sic)
My God, o simplismo se juntou à ignorância dos fatos para estabelecer uma das correlações mais estúpidas que já escutei.


Contra argumentos de certos Anônimos, não existem fatos que os recusem.
A fé dos Anônimos na sua própria ignorância só perde para a pachorra que têm de me escrever para desmentir meus fatos, substituindo-os pelas suas próprias crenças e pelas que acham que supostamente eu mantenho.
Como sempre faço, minha única recomendação seria esta: mais estudo, mais livros, menos bobagens tupiniquins, mais leituras de boa qualidade com o que nos vem de fora (não da mesma tribo, claro).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

As duas vias da América Latina: protecionismo e integracao global - Stratfor

Existem hoje, na América Latina, três grupos de países, simplificando um pouco: os globalizados (tipo Chile e México); os reticentes (tipo Brasil e Argentina), e os bolivarianos (enfim, não encontrei termo melhor para designar os malucos que estão querendo voltar meio século atrás, como Venezuela, Equador, Bolívia, e alguns outros). Peru e Colômbia estão entre os globalizadores e os reticentes, dependendo de quem governa e de quais são as políticas econômicas: atualmente estão mais próximas da integração global, mas sempre pode mudar.
Enquanto alguns se inserem no mundo, outros preferem a política do avestruz. Pior: procuram encontrar bodes expiatórios para os problemas que enfrentam. Nunca é culpa deles, apenas dos outros, do capitalismo perverso, do tsunami financeiro, da guerra cambial, enfim, qualquer coisa, menos as bobagens internas.
Assim vai a América Latina: alguns realistas, outros surrealistas...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Pacific Alliance Faces Unique Challenges Stratfor, June 8, 2012 | 0554 GMT Leaders from Colombia, Chile, Peru and Mexico gathered in the Chilean Atacama Desert this week to sign an agreement pledging unity under the newly minted Pacific Alliance. First envisioned a year ago during a meeting in Lima, the alliance's first move will be to remove all bilateral visa restrictions, and the countries hope that the bloc will evolve into a multilateral free trade area. The Pacific Alliance unites four of Latin America's most trade- and business-friendly countries. According to Chilean President Sebastian Pinera, the bloc intends to focus explicitly on developing a trade agenda with Asia. The agreement is also sure to impact trade with the United States, a major export destination for all three countries. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the agreement is the way it contrasts with Latin America's other major trade grouping: Mercosur, or the Market of the South. Mercosur groups Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay, and its trade policies inevitably cater to the needs of the two biggest partners -- Brazil and Argentina. The group's reaction to global economic turmoil has been to withdraw behind trade barriers in an economic policy that closely mirrors the import substitution industrialization theory that heavily influenced Latin American policy during the middle of the 20th century. The contrasts between the Pacific Alliance and Mercosur reveal historical divisions and political orientations. They also highlight the extreme geographic barriers to integration within the region. Latin America can be loosely conceptualized as a string of habitable "islands" separated by the massive geographic barriers formed by the Caribbean Sea, the Andean mountain chain and the impenetrable Amazon rainforest. The most contiguous fertile territory with the potential for development exists in the Rio de la Plata river basin, which is divided among the Mercosur members. Mexico is a part of North America and is naturally more oriented toward the United States and Canada than it is toward Latin American states. The Andean nations should be considered in two separate groupings. The Caribbean Andes comprise Colombia and Venezuela and fit squarely into the geopolitical and economic backyard of the United States. The South American Andes, on the other hand, find themselves isolated not only from the Rio de la Plata countries, but also from the direct attention of the United States -- being as they are squarely located in South America. What all the Pacific Alliance members share is a shoreline on the Pacific Ocean and an abiding interest in trade with Asia and the United States. Certainly interbloc trade will create opportunities to generate wealth. The opportunities for multilateral trade are inherently limited, however, as the Andean members are primarily reliant on commodity exports, and Mexico is the only country in the grouping with a well-developed industrial base. These countries do not have the same kind of natural geographic linkages that characterize a grouping like Mercosur, and nothing like Mercosur's initial intentions for a customs union should be expected out of the Pacific. The Pacific Alliance is in many ways simply a maritime trading pact that will attempt to present a united regional front in trans-Pacific trade issues. This is a political and economic arena that is inherently dominated by the agendas of the United States and China, a fact exacerbated by growing U.S. attention to East Asia. But even four countries that display so many similar characteristics will find it difficult to forge a united bargaining position. Like many Latin American trading blocs before it, the Pacific Alliance will face the challenge of attempting to smooth over divergent and competing domestic interests while remaining geographically isolated from one another.

Liderar significa atender as expectativas dos vizinhos: integracao global e protecionismo

Se o Brasil quiser liderar a América do Sul não poderia estar adotando o comportamento do avestruz, fechando-se no protecionismo.
Certas coisas são atávicas...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Latin American Pacific Bloc Rejects Brazil-Led Protectionism

By Randall Woods

Bloomberg, 7/06/2012

Leaders from Latin America’s most open economies will sign a trade accord today to increase commerce along the Pacific rim of the region, distancing themselves from countries such as Argentina and Brazil that are raising import restrictions amid the global slowdown.

Chilean President Sebastian Pinera is hosting the meeting at Paranal, the site of a telescope in the northern desert, to ratify the Pacific Alliance trade bloc with his counterparts from Mexico, Peru and Colombia. Representatives from Costa Rica and Panama will attend as observers and eventually say they may join the bloc, which was created in April last year.

Those attending “are the most outwardly focused and open economies in the region,” Abraham Lowenthal, a Latin American expert at The Brookings Institution in Washington, said in a phone interview. “This is in keeping with where these countries are going in terms of diversifying their international economic relations.”

The alliance will remove barriers not covered under existing bilateral free trade agreements, such as the free movement of people, establishing a bloc that accounts for more than 35 percent of Latin America’s gross domestic product. The drive toward free trade contrasts with the slow pace of integration in the four-nation Mercosur trade bloc led by Brazil and Argentina, which hasn’t achieved its goal of a common market more than two decades after its creation.

Open Economies

Chile has the most open trade policies of any country in Latin America and ranks 14th in the world, followed in the region by Uruguay, Costa Rica, Peru, Panama and Mexico, which is in position 65, according to the World Economic Forum’s 2012 ranking of 132 countries for trade openness. Brazil, Latin America’s biggest economy, ranks 84 followed by Argentina at 96 and Venezuela at 130.

Pacific Alliance members are seeking ways to further link financial services after bourses from Lima, Bogota and Santiago last year formed the integrated exchange known as Mila. Mexico’s main stock exchange has expressed interest in joining the Andean exchange, said Rodrigo Contreras, acting director of Chile’s international economic relations office.

The bloc also will create ties with Asia as Latin America looks to that region for growth. Latin American exports to Asia Pacific grew three times faster than those to the entire world between 2006 and 2010, while China is on track to overtake the European Union as the second-biggest source of imports behind the U.S., according to United Nations data.

Opportunity for Trade

The alliance is an “opportunity to promote and consolidate new investments and greater trade between our countries, as well as a decisive step to consolidating our integration with the Asian Pacific,” Pinera said in a statement on the Foreign Ministry’s website.

The Pacific Alliance’s openness contrasts with the Mercosur, which also includes Uruguay and Paraguay.

After a surge in car imports from China, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff this year raised taxes for automakers that don’t assemble in the country. Along with Argentina, Brazil also raised Mercosur’s common external tariff on 100 products to protect manufacturers from foreign competition.

Separately, Brazil raised taxes on foreign investment in a bid to weaken the real, whose 10 percent rally in the first two months of the year was the world’s largest.

Defending Industry

The loose monetary policy of the developed world had caused a “monetary tsunami,” pushing up currencies in emerging markets and making Latin America “easy prey for de- industrialization,” Rousseff said during a trip to Colombia last month.

Argentina has stepped up its barriers to imports of everything from glassware to kitty litter to protect its industry this year, prompting a World Trade Organization challenge from the European Union. The government says it won’t backtrack.

“We are determined to continue with import substitution despite the criticism from some parts that only live from imports,” Argentine President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner said on June 4 in the northern province of Catamarca.

While Mercosur has signed only one free trade agreement since its creation in 1991, with Israel, Pacific Alliance members all have deals with the U.S. and all but Colombia has one with China. The four countries are rated investment grade by Standard & Poor’s.

Chile Trade

Chile, which has trade agreements with 58 countries, is considering legislation that would eliminate all import tariffs by 2015 in a bid to compete with Singapore and Hong Kong as one of the world’s most open economies.

Chile’s benchmark IPSA stock index is down 13 percent in the past year, while Mexico’s IPC index is up 7 percent. That compares with declines of 17 percent in Brazil’s Bovespa index and 30 percent for Argentina’s Merval.

“This alliance isn’t against Brazil or Argentina, but shows that we believe in a track of openness,” Mercedes Araoz, a former Peruvian finance and trade minister who helped pave the way to today’s accord, said in a phone interview from Mexico City. “If you want to be a member you have to believe in that openness, which we believe really helps us create more jobs.”

Economist Intelligence Unit analisa a economia brasileira

Números medíocres, para dizer o mínimo. Em face disso, discursos e tentativa de estimular novamente o crédito.
Mas, não é pecado perguntar: de onde sai o crédito, mesmo?
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Brazil economy: First-quarter GDP disappoints

June 5th 2012

Printer version

FROM THE ECONOMIST INTELLIGENCE UNIT The first-quarter GDP figures released on June 1st left observers and the Brazilian government with a sense of foreboding—output grew by only 0.2% quarter on quarter (a mere 0.8%, year on year). The authorities have announced a series of further measures to stimulate private consumption, including an easing of credit conditions, and also are likely to buoy public investment. Even assuming a pick-up in the second half of 2012 in response to stimulus measures (past, present and future), given year-to-date activity in Brazil and a weakening external environment Brazil's GDP is likely to grow closer to last year's tepid outturn (2.7%) than the 3% the Economist Intelligence Unit forecast before the first quarter results were published. The first-quarter results were lower than the EIU's estimate (0.4%) and the same as the outturn in the fourth quarter of 2011 (see table). There was reason for disappointment practically all round. On the supply side, there was a sharp fall in agricultural production–the steepest since 2005–mainly due to bad weather conditions, affecting one of Brazil's most important export commodities, soybeans. The services sector continued to register relatively weak growth, of some 0.6%. The major surprise was the rise of 1.7% in the industrial sector (manufacturing, extractive industries, construction and utilities) in the first quarter, incorporating 1.9% growth in the manufacturing segment, which contradicted the grim outlook suggested by the monthly figures published by the national statistics office, the IBGE. Over the last few months, industrial output fell consistently, according to the IBGE's monthly survey. However, the monthly data are based on a smaller sample of sectors than that used to compile the national accounts. The problems facing Brazilian manufacturing were largely reflected in the drop in investment and the significant deceleration in export growth, which stagnated in the first three months of 2012. And in any case, the sequential gain in the first quarter came after a sharp fall in the fourth quarter of 2011 and weakness since the second quarter. In year-on-year terms, industrial output fell 2.6% in the first quarter. Gross domestic product growth by sector (% real change, quarter on quarter; seasonally adjusted) 2010 2011 2012 2 Qtr 3 Qtr 4 Qtr 1 Qtr 2 Qtr 3 Qtr 4 Qtr 1 Qtr Agriculture & livestock 2.2 -5.1 0.1 6.8 -1.8 1.2 -0.1 -7.3 Industry 1.3 0.1 1.0 1.4 -0.4 -0.8 -0.5 1.7 of which: Manufacturing 0.8 0.2 0.2 1.3 -0.3 -1.8 -2.2 1.9 Services 1.1 1.4 1.0 0.5 0.8 -0.3 0.4 0.6 GDP at market prices 1.2 0.9 1.0 0.9 0.5 -0.1 0.2 0.2 Source: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. On the demand side, continued growth in consumption and government expenditures were not enough to completely compensate for the disappointing performance in investment spending and exports, both hit by the global slowdown in the first quarter. Although there was also a decrease in import growth, the overall contribution of the external sector to GDP continued to be negative. Looking ahead, investment is unlikely to rebound that strongly, given both the internal domestic problems facing the Brazilian industrial sector–rickety infrastructure and an onerous tax structure–as well as the deteriorating global environment. Recent measures undertaken by the government to boost industrial production and private investment have, to date, had little or no effect, partly due to the high level of external uncertainty. As a result, the authorities have announced a series of further measures to increase consumption and ease credit conditions. Gross domestic product growth by component (% change, quarter on quarter; seasonally adjusted) 2010 2011 2012 2 Qtr 3 Qtr 4Qtr 1 Qtr 2 Qtr 3 Qtr 4 Qtr 1 Qtr Household consumption 0.9 2.4 1.9 0.5 0.6 -0.1 1.0 1.0 Government consumption 1.2 0.8 0.2 -0.2 2.1 -0.8 0.5 1.5 Gross fixed investment 3.6 3.2 -0.2 2.1 1.1 -0.6 -0.6 -1.8 Exports of goods & services -0.3 3.9 2.6 -2.2 2.1 1.8 1.8 0.2 Imports of goods & services 3.9 6.2 1.7 1.1 4.9 -1.8 2.1 1.1 GDP at market prices 1.2 0.9 1.0 0.9 0.5 -0.1 0.2 0.2 Source: Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística. Many observers have been highly critical of these steps given the recent rise in household delinquency rates, particularly in credit for automobile purchases—the sector where the government has chosen to focus the new stimulus package. Measures include the reduction of reserve requirements for the extension of credit for vehicles purchases, as well as aggressive interest-rate decreases in consumer credit lines provided by the two large public commercial banks, Caixa Econômica Federal (CEF) and Banco do Brasil (BB). Although critics are correct in pointing out the risks of stimulating further indebtedness and consumption in light of the high level of household debt service obligations as a share of disposable income, which currently stands at some 22%, there is a degree of exaggeration in the views expressed by some that the recent measures will be completely ineffective. Although household debt has increased substantially over the last few years, it still accounts for only about 20% of GDP. Furthermore, the deleveraging cycle in Brazil is fairly rapid, given that about 45% of household debt matures in less than 12 months; housing credit (at much longer maturities) accounts for only 5% of GDP. With new measures aimed at facilitating refinancing and the continuation of the monetary easing cycle by the Central Bank—with the Selic likely to be cut by 50 basis points to 8% at the mid-July meeting—it is likely that consumption will pick up in the second half of 2012. That said, the disappointing result for activity in the first quarter and the small statistical carry over effect (as GDP growth petered out over the course of 2011) imply that even with the introduction of policies to stimulate consumption, GDP growth will almost certainly fall well short of the government's target of between 3.5% and 4%. Therefore, the authorities are already considering a number of additional measures to boost growth. These include further credit extensions to the private sector from the national development bank, BNDES; measures to increase private investment, such as tax breaks for specific sectors; and a possible reduction in the primary fiscal surplus target (either formally, or more likely, by excluding some investment spending from the calculations). Currently, that target is 3.1% of GDP. However, since gross and net public-sector debt as a share of GDP have been decreasing on a consistent basis, and also as cuts of 400 basis points since August 2011 have reduced debt-interest payments on Selic-linked debt (debt interest payments last year amounted to 5.7% of GDP), the government has some fiscal space to increase expenditures and/or to lower taxes. And given the authorities' concern over the economy's investment rate, which fell to 18.7% of GDP in the first quarter of 2012 from 19.5% a year earlier, it is also highly probable that they will boost public investment. Barring a full-blown euro zone crisis, the government is unlikely to provide a strong fiscal stimulus (of the sort applied in 2009 in the wake of the collapse of the Lehman Brothers investment bank), given that general elections are some way off and the president's personal popularity is high (70%), thanks to still low unemployment levels and her anti-corruption stance. Although policymakers' ability to lift GDP growth significantly is limited by domestic and external factors, the Economist Intelligence Unit still envisages a tangible rebound in economic activity in the second half of the year, driven by both the stimulus measures already implemented (including an aggressive monetary easing cycle under way since August 2011) and the additional fiscal and credit steps the government is likely to take. That said, given the disappointing first-quarter results, in 2012 Brazil's GDP is likely to grow close to last year's below-potential outturn of 2.7%. But the pick-up in the second half of this year will provide strong carry-over effects into 2013, lifting GDP growth to 4.5%.

Economist Intelligence Unit

Source: Economist Intelligence Unit

Diplomacia partidaria e politica externa do Brasil - Marcio Bittar

Independente do partido do autor do artigo, caberia fixar-se nos argumentos, não em quem os expede.
http://www.contilnet.com.br/Conteudo.aspx?ConteudoID=18194

06/06/2012 14:41 - Atualizado em 06/06/2012 15:26

Os Equívocos da Diplomacia Petista

Marcio Bittar

É eloquente o mutismo da diplomacia brasileira diante dos constantes ataques do governo cubano aos dissidentes políticos em greve de fome, desqualificados pelo presidente brasileiro, à época, como meros criminosos comuns.

O mundo assiste, com indignação, a crescente onda de violência perpetrada pelo governo sírio contra sua população civil, que culminou, na última semana de maio, com o massacre ocorrido em Houla, que resultou em 108 mortos, dentre eles, 49 crianças com menos de 10 anos, marcando a exacerbação das pressões por uma intervenção por parte da ONU naquele país.

No momento em que os principais países recorrem às mais duras medidas para repudiar o massacre sistemático do povo sírio por seu próprio governo, o Brasil mais uma vez decide contemporizar e defende a manutenção do diálogo com o ditador sírio Bashar AL-Assad, isolando o Brasil perante a comunidade internacional.

Este é mais um episódio que mancha a diplomacia brasileira, somando-se aos diversos sinais de apoio a ditaduras que desrespeitam os direitos humanos, promovidos pelo governo do PT, resultando em fatos grotescos, como a recepção em Brasília do presidente iraniano, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, e a viagem do presidente Lula a Teerã para tentar evitar, inutilmente, uma ação da comunidade internacional contra o programa nuclear iraniano. 

Ou manifestações de simpatia pelo ditador do Zimbábue, Mugabe, com quem se reuniu por iniciativa de Hugo Chávez. Ou a impotência diante da transformação da Embaixada do Brasil em Tegucigalpa num palanque do aliado Manuel Zelaya, presidente deposto de Honduras.

É eloquente o mutismo da diplomacia brasileira diante dos constantes ataques do governo cubano aos dissidentes políticos em greve de fome, desqualificados pelo presidente brasileiro, à época, como meros criminosos comuns.

Também é inegável a ligação umbilical do PT com as FARC, uma notória força terrorista que tem se dedicado muito mais aos sequestros, atentados, assassinatos e tráfico de drogas do que propriamente à luta política contra o governo constitucionalmente eleito da Colômbia. E essa história ligação passou a afetar, de forma negativa, a nossa política externa com aquele país vizinho.

Da mesma forma, o Itamaraty assiste com uma omissão surpreendente, aos arroubos ditatoriais do governo de Hugo Chavez, que cala, com violência, a imprensa e a oposição venezuelana.

Ora, a questão da política externa, em qualquer país democrático, é uma política de Estado, e não de governo ou de partido. Mas, ao longo dos governos petistas tem ocorrido uma clara inversão de valores, com uma grande influência da ideologia partidária nas ações do Itamaraty.

Essa partidarização da política externa respondeu, primordialmente, ao objetivo de dar uma satisfação ideológica aos segmentos mais radicais do PT, como uma espécie de compensação pela continuidade no modelo econômico herdado do governo do PSDB. Ocorre que essa prática tornou-se hábito e hoje a diplomacia “companheira”, promovida nos governos petistas, demonstra uma opção por um modelo terceiro-mundista arcaico e um antiamericanismo infantil e estéril.

São vários os equívocos cometidos pelo governo, no seu afã de pintar com cores ideológicas as relações externas. O Governo brasileiro apoiou para a direção da Unesco o cidadão egípcio antissemita Farouk Hosni, e foi derrotado fragorosamente. E, o mais grave, para apoiar uma indicação de flagrante caráter partidário, o Brasil desprezou o diplomata brasileiro Márcio Barbosa, que teria o apoio dos países europeus e dos próprios Estados Unidos.

Na viagem da presidente Dilma à China em 2011, os direitos humanos estiveram ausentes da pauta, mesmo diante das notícias de que, desde as Olimpíadas e dos protestos em Xinjiang e no Tibete, ocorreu uma onda repressiva que é a pior desde os massacres da Praça da Paz Celestial. A prisão do Nobel da Paz Liu Xiaobobo e do artista plástico Ai Weiwei são somente a ponta do iceberg da violência política chinesa. E o governo brasileiro mantém-se silencioso, em nome de discutíveis interesses comerciais.

É inaceitável que aqueles que ocupam o governo brasileiro e a bem pouco tempo lutavam contra a ditadura militar, empunhando bandeiras em favor das liberdades, hoje relativizem os direitos humanos.

O viés ideológico da nossa política externa significa o abandono de posições constitucionais de defesa dos direitos fundamentais e tem custado caro ao país. Lembro que o governo boliviano expropriou as instalações da Petrobras naquele país, e o Brasil respondeu a esse gesto criminoso contra os interesses nacionais com absoluta omissão.

Atualmente cidadãos brasileiros são vítimas de ataques da polícia do “companheiro” Evo Morales. Agricultores e comerciantes instalados há muitos anos nas franjas da fronteira entre a Bolívia e o Brasil, são expulsos de forma sumária e violenta, e a diplomacia brasileira assiste a todos os arroubos populistas do Presidente Boliviano com absoluta leniência.

É urgente que o governo devolva a diplomacia brasileira ao trilho dos ditames constitucionais, que determina o respeito à prevalência dos direitos

humanos, abandonando a posição dúbia de silencio obsequioso diante de violações cometidas por países como a Síria, o Irã, China, Venezuela ou Bolívia.

Se o Brasil cresce com importância potencial no cenário mundial, não tem como continuar tratando política externa com posições anacrônicas e eivadas por preconceitos. Quando o governo se omite diante de barbáries, a omissão se dá em nome de todos os cidadãos brasileiros.

A diplomacia imposta pelo PT, em razão dos equívocos acima apontados, vem descapitalizando de maneira crescente a credibilidade internacional do Brasil, comprometendo, desse modo, o próprio prestígio do País. Esta situação vem sendo agravada pelo empenho do governo em construir parcerias com regimes pautados pelo arbítrio. A continuidade desta diplomacia é indesejável e inconstitucional.

*Marcio Bittar é Deputado Federal pelo PSDB/AC e Presidente do Diretório Estadual do PSDB/AC