Race to the top: entrepreneurs and bureaucrats - book review

The Race For the World

David P. Goldman

The Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2012

Entrepreneurship and the Global Economy

By Henry Kressel and Thomas V. Lento

(Cambridge, 266 pages, $45)

To triumph in today's winner-take-all market, entrepreneurs need deep pockets—and deep insights into technology.

Overall returns to American venture capital have lagged behind public markets since the late 1990s, Henry Kressel and Thomas Lento note in "Entrepreneurship and the Global Economy," and a quarter of venture-capital firms have earned all the profits. Why have results been so lopsided? Globalization is a big part of the answer. To succeed, today's ambitious start-ups—whether they are high-tech enterprises or low-tech service companies—must be global from inception. Entrepreneurs need access to deeper pockets than ever. But they also need to know how to maneuver through government mazes in state-dominated economies like China's. It is a winner-take-all world. The authors of "Entrepreneurship in the Global Economy" try to identify what makes a winner.

Mr. Kressel, a senior partner at private-equity firm Warburg Pincus and a former scientist, has helped to incubate dozens of successful companies during the past 30 years. In this sometimes dry but always informative account, he and co-author Thomas V. Lento recount some of their stories. Mr. Kressel, a physicist, ran RCA Labs in the 1970s when it learned how to manufacture integrated circuits and commercially feasible lasers with Department of Defense funding. His team invented the now-standard CMOS chip-production method and launched fiber-optic cable transmission. RCA founder David Sarnoff is Mr. Kressel's exemplary entrepreneur.

Sarnoff, a Jewish boy from Russia who immigrated to America at age 9, made his name at RCA when he launched commercial radio, beginning with an unprecedented national broadcast of Jack Dempsey's title match against Georges Carpentier in 1921. He helped create the first radio network, NBC, and shepherded the development of television and, eventually, the creation of a color-television standard in 1953. The self-taught Sarnoff triumphed by getting right every part of the mix: deep insight into technology; a diplomat's knack for handling regulators; and the staying power to stick with a vision that sometimes took years to pay off. These are the same qualities entrepreneurs need to vault the high threshold for success in the new global economy.

One company funded by Warburg Pincus that was based on an insight into technology was Aicent, founded by Lynn Liu, a Taiwan-born entrepreneur in Silicon Valley. In 2000, Ms. Liu saw an opportunity in the plethora of wireless-data standards around the world: Wireless companies required interchange hubs to exchange data, and Ms. Liu, the authors write, "positioned Aicent as a neutral third-party enabler of data traffic interoperability for carriers around the globe, concentrating at first on Asia." Big Asian carriers, she reasoned, would rather deal with a trusted third party than negotiate dozens of bilateral deals. Working with so many different carriers was difficult but essential to success. "A business like this," Ms. Liu told the authors, "needs to have the greatest number of connected carriers—the whole value is in the network."

One myth that gets shredded by the authors holds that American exporters can't break into the dirigiste Chinese market. All you need, they suggest, is management with a Sarnoff-like ability to hit on all cylinders. Raza Microelectronics Inc., a Silicon Valley start-up, set out to sell its communications chips in China after the dot-com meltdown, when big American manufacturers shunned newcomers. "Overseas markets were more open to network chip innovations from a startup than the domestic US equipment manufacturers, who had well-established chip suppliers," the authors report. "So the company decided that its primary sales target should be China, the world's fastest-growing network equipment maker."

That counterintuitive call came from Pakistani-born chief executive Atiq Raza, who recruited "sixty of the best microprocessor design engineers in the world" and set out to make "the industry's best single-chip data network microprocessor." He also hired a Chinese-born Stanford Ph.D. to head a customer-support group in China before RMI got its first round of venture funding in 2002. Among other things, the "comfort with international dealings that marks the educated immigrant community," the authors say, "must be counted as an important element in the company's growth and success."

To stay ahead of competitors like Cisco, RMI actually helped its customers design their equipment, enlisting a hundred corporate partners to provide complementary chips and software. The costs of continuing innovation were so high that the company was still unprofitable in 2008, when the stock-market crash cut off access to public-market funding. But a 2009 merger with NetLogic yielded $600 million of market value for RMI's shareholders. That is patience rewarded.

In both these cases, the entrepreneurs' success depended on finessing the governments of China and other interventionist countries who apply mercantilist policies to some of the world's fastest-growing economies. The authors conclude: "There are no sure-fire recipes for entrepreneurial success in a world where increasing government interference is to be expected." Governments do a dreadful job of picking winners, they point out, as in the sorry track record of the United States government in alternative energy. The same is often true of big corporations—Sarnoff's 50 years at RCA being a notable exception—which is why economies need start-ups and entrepreneurs. Mr. Kressel, drawing on his own experience at RCA, believes that there can be an important role for government. Investment in research and development for defense and space exploration, he thinks, brings economic benefits apart from its contribution to national security. "Government is best at generating innovations through funding of research and development," the authors write. "After that it should let the inventors and innovators plot the course, instead of the bureaucrats."

Mr. Goldman, president of Macrostrategy LLC, previously headed global fixed-income research for Bank of America.

A version of this article appeared September 28, 2012, on page A15 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Race For the World.

Education: can U.S. universities remain at the top?

Can U.S. Universities Stay on Top?

Michael J. Siverstein and Abheek Singhi

The Wall Street Journal, September 28, 2012

At the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi—one of the best engineering academies in the country—we met Shriram, a 21-year-old man who ranked 19 out of 485,000 on the school's very demanding entrance exam. We call him Mr. Number 19.

Shriram can tell you the date and time when he found out his test results. The exam—and the preparation for it—dominated his teenage years. He was singled out as a "big talent" at an early age, with an aptitude for mathematics and science. To get ready for the IIT entrance exam, he enrolled at a private coaching institute that prepares students with aggressive drilling in the major testing areas—physics, chemistry and math. Over those two years, Shriram estimates that he studied 90 hours every week.

When Shriram arrived at the IIT, he found a class filled with academic superstars. The faculty has high expectations. On the first math exam, his freshman class received an average grade of 30%. Shriram did poorly too but soon bounced back, sacrificing sleep so that he could study. "All my life I wanted to be here," he says. "I knew that if I could go to IIT, major in engineering, work and study hard, my life would be perfect. I would marry a beautiful girl, start a company, help my country advance and deliver on my family's hopes and dreams."

Both India and China have intense national testing programs to find the brightest students for their elite universities. The competition, the preparation and the national anxiety about the outcomes make the SAT testing programs in the U.S. seem like the minor leagues. The stakes are higher in China and India. The "chosen ones"—those who rank in the top 1%—get their choice of university, putting them on a path to fast-track careers, higher incomes and all the benefits of an upper-middle-class life.

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The system doesn't work so well for the other 99%. There are nearly 40 million university students in China and India. Most attend institutions that churn out students at low cost. Students complain that their education is "factory style" and "uninspired." Employers complain that many graduates need remedial training before they are fully employable.

For now, the U.S. university system is still far ahead. But over the next decade, there will be a global competition to educate the next generation, and China and India have the potential to change the balance of power. With large pools of qualified students coming of age, the two countries have made reforming their universities a top priority.

How far do they have to go? At the Boston Consulting Group, we have developed a new ranking to determine the educational competitiveness of countries: the BCG E4 Index. It is based on four Es: Expenditure (the level of investment in education by government and private households); enrollment (the number of students in the educational system); engineers (the number of qualified engineers entering the workforce), and elite institutions (the number of top global higher-education institutions).

The U.S. and the U.K. are ranked first and second, driven by raw spending, their dominance in globally ranked universities and engineering graduation rates. China ranks third and India fifth, largely on enrollment (Germany is fourth). The reasons for U.S. supremacy are clear: For one, it spends the most money on education, disbursing $980 billion annually, or twice as much as China and five times as much as India. It is also the most engineer-intensive country, with 981 engineering degrees per million citizens, compared with 553 for China and 197 for India.

American universities currently do a better job overall at preparing students for the workforce. The World Economic Forum estimates that 81% of U.S. engineering graduates are immediately "employable," while only 25% of Indian graduates and 10% of Chinese graduates are equally well prepared. "Chinese students can swarm a problem," a dean at a major Chinese university told us. "But when it comes to original thought and invention, we stumble. We are trying hard to make that up. We are trying to make technical education the grounding from which we solve problems."

In China, Peking University, founded in 1898, is generally ranked as the country's top school. One student there told us in a very serious tone: "Good luck finding a place in the library. You can't find a seat even at three in the morning."

Peking University is now part of an effort launched in 2009 to create a Chinese counterpart to the Ivies—called the C9 League. The objective is to attract the best graduates and faculty with an array of super-funded institutions. The schools recently received $270 million each in government funding, and they are also drawing back "sea turtles"—Chinese Ph.D.s from abroad—to lead the renaissance, with relocation bonuses as high as $150,000.

Though the C9 schools have the greatest potential to break into the global elite, Chinese officials also identified 100 key universities at the next level, where they have invested a total of $2.8 billion.

The difference in student quality between these tiers is often insignificant. The Gaokao is China's national educational test, given to 10 million secondary students to determine their rank and placement at university. The top scorers become national celebrities. But critics say that the test's emphasis on memorization, fact recall and processing speed can determine college admissions too arbitrarily. "I did not feel well the day of the test," one recent graduate told us. "As a result I placed in the top 10%, not good enough to get into the C9. I felt like my life was over."

Compared with China, India has farther to go. A senior dean at IIT Delhi said that he deals daily with shortages of equipment, poor pay for teachers and quotas that sometimes put students who can't read or speak English in the classroom. (The quotas are meant as a remedy for the caste system.) "We are underfunded, we have too few Ph.D.s on faculty, and we have a fifth of our enrollment taken by quota with no remedial programs," he lamented in his hot, open office.

One of the reasons for the underfunding is the relative weakness of India's central government, which accounts for only 15% of total expenditure on education. The 28 states that account for the balance vary greatly by wealth and infrastructure. But unlike China, India has significant private education, with nearly 200,000 private schools and 17,000 private colleges. The World Bank and private investors are pouring billions of dollars into education there, and the government plans to expand its best-known universities, as well as community colleges. The current five-year plan proposes higher-education investments of more than $18 billion.

Even with the current push, the combined higher-education resources of India and China will just begin to match the $32 billion endowment of Harvard alone. But success in these countries is based as much on attitude as on funds. The IIT's Mr. Number 19 represents a generation of driven, talented students who are intent on improving their lives. In one student's room at Peking University, the commitment to advancement is summed up with a phrase on a poster board: "If you work hard enough, you can grind an iron rod into a needle."

—Mr. Silverstein is a senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group. Mr. Singhi is a partner and director of its India consumer practice. Adapted from "The $10 Trillion Prize: Captivating the Newly Affluent in China and India," co-written with Carol Liao and David Michael, to be published on Oct. 2 by Harvard Business Review Press.

Education Strength

Which countries have the most competitive educational systems world-wide? The Boston Consulting Group's new E4 index assigns points in four categories, each equally weighted in the final score. Of the 20 countries ranked, here are the top 10.

Country	Total points	Enrollment points	Expenditure points	Engineering grads points	Elite university points
U.S.	237	25	73	48	91
U.K.	125	4	26	46	48
China	115	86	17	4	8
Germany	104	5	25	37	38
India	104	90	4	3	6
France	87	4	24	41	18
Canada	85	2	25	39	18
Japan	72	7	31	19	16
Brazil	38	17	16	2	3
Russia	32	9	10	10	3

Source: Boston Consulting Group analysis

A version of this article appeared September 29, 2012, on page C3 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Can U.S. Universities Stay on Top?.

Cuba-Venezuela = Castro-Chavez:intercambiaveis?

O embaixador deve ter inteiramente razao.

Cuba: Embajador venezolano en La Habana dice que votar por Chávez es votar por Fidel Castro

El Universal, SEPTEMBER 28, 2012 

El representante en La Habana detalló que en Cuba están registrados unos 400 residentes venezolanos que podrán ejercer su derecho al voto en la isla.

El embajador de Venezuela en Cuba, Edgardo Antonio Ramírez, defendió hoy en La Habana que votar el 7 de octubre por el presidente Hugo Chávez “es votar también por Fidel” Castro, “por la paz” y “por la unión de América Latina y el Caribe”.

“Estaremos votando el 7 de octubre también por la unión de dos grandes hombres del planeta tierra. Votar el 7 de octubre es votar también por Fidel, por ese gran hombre que ha luchado, seguirá luchando y está luchando por la perpetuidad de la especie humana y por el respeto a la madre tierra”, manifestó Ramírez.

En una conferencia de prensa en La Habana el embajador venezolano explicó las características del sistema electoral de su país e insistió en defender su transparencia, seguridad y limpieza, destacó Efe.

“Es imposible que haya trampa en este proceso”, aseveró Ramírez.

También sostuvo que la popularidad de Chávez sigue en ascenso a pesar de los “cuentos” y “mentiras” de la oposición, a cuyo principal candidato, Henrique Capriles, se refirió el embajador en varias ocasiones como “el candidato del Pentágono”, sin citar su nombre.

“La popularidad del presidente Chávez ha crecido a pesar de toda esta campaña nacional e internacional. Si existiera una emisora, una prensa, una radio en el planeta Marte, allá existiría propaganda contra el presidente Chávez por parte de la burguesía y el periodismo”, indicó el diplomático.

El embajador Ramírez detalló que en Cuba están registrados unos 400 residentes venezolanos que podrán ejercer su derecho al voto en la isla.

Fuente: El Universal (Venezuela)

Protecionismo brasileiro comeca a incomodar na OMC

Países ricos pressionam Brasil na OMC

Governos de EUA, Europa, Austrália e Japão vão cobrar respostas às regras do IPI para carros e às exigências para o mercado de 4G no País

Jamil Chade, correspondente

O Estado de S. Paulo28 de setembro de 2012

ZURIQUE - Países ricos vão levar a atitude protecionista do Brasil à Organização Mundial do Comércio (OMC), elevando a pressão sobre o governo e deixando claro que não abandonarão as críticas enquanto o Brasil mantiver uma postura defensiva.

VEJA TAMBÉM

• Bernardo descarta atraso na implantação de tecnologia
• Fiesp critica fiscalização do setor de telecomunicação

Na segunda-feira, governos de EUA, Europa, Austrália e Japão vão cobrar respostas às regras do IPI para carros, consideradas injustas, e sobre as exigências e barreiras na abertura do mercado de telefonia 4G no Brasil, consideradas discriminatórias.

Não se trata de queixa nos tribunais da OMC. Mas a atitude dos países ricos é um sinal claro de que não vão apenas fazer discursos contra o Brasil. A decisão foi levar o caso ao Comitê de Investimentos da OMC, para escancarar a preocupação desses países com o Brasil.

Em maio, um primeiro sinal dessa insatisfação já havia sido levada à reunião na OMC. Mas, dessa vez, serão duas frentes de queixas. A reunião da segunda-feira em Genebra tem nove pontos na agenda. Dois deles tratarão das queixas contra o Brasil.

A primeira é de EUA e Japão no setor de telecomunicações e a briga pelo acesso ao mercado de telefonia. Washington e Tóquio questionam as exigências do edital de licitação da faixa de 2,5 GHz - destinada ao serviço de quarta geração da telefonia móvel (4G).

A Agência Nacional de Telecomunicações (Anatel) exigiu conteúdo nacional mínimo de 60% para quem quisesse participar das licitações, incluindo equipamentos e sistemas. O leilão marcado para o dia 12 de junho arrecadou R$ 2,9 milhões.

Americanos e europeus já haviam apresentado queixas individualmente ao Brasil, temendo ficar de fora da licitação ou ser obrigados a mudar de fornecedores de peças nos EUA ou Europa. Agora, o Japão se une às queixas, mesmo após o primeiro leilão.

Carros

No item seguinte do debate na OMC, Austrália e União Europeia vão questionar a decisão do Brasil de reduzir o IPI para montadoras que façam investimentos e produzam seus carros no País. Ainda em 2011, o governo anunciou alta de 30 pontos porcentuais nas alíquotas de IPI para veículos que tenham menos de 65% de conteúdo nacional. Antes, o tributo variava de 7% a 25% e, com a medida, passou para 37% a 55%. A diferenciação continuou nos meses seguintes e, segundo a diplomacia dos países queixosos, criaram preferências para certas montadoras.

O Itamaraty não vê problemas nas críticas e se dispõe a esclarecer. "Vemos com muita tranquilidade esses questionamentos. As decisões brasileiras foram tomadas no rigoroso cumprimento das regras da OMC", disse o porta-voz do Itamaraty, embaixador Tovar Nunes. "Não temos dificuldades em explicar."

Para o Itamaraty, nos dois casos que serão questionados, a decisão do governo é justificável pela necessidade de desenvolvimento da indústria nacional. / COLABOROU LISANDRA PARAGUASSU

Livros e cultura: o mundo complexo e seus descontentes - Brink Lindsey

DALIBOR ROHAC

A Complex World and Its Discontents

Who’s lagging behind in the modern economy, and what can we do about it?

The City Journal, 28 September 2012

Human Capitalism: How Economic Growth Has Made Us Smarter—and More Unequal, by Brink Lindsey (Princeton University Press, e-book, $3.82)

Every year in the United States, the amount of new information stored on paper, film, and electronic media reaches roughly 2 trillion megabytes—or 15,000 new book collections the size of the Library of Congress. Think about the mind-boggling number of e-mails, phone calls, and text messages that Americans send each other every day, and you’ll realize that our lives have become more complex and interconnected than ever before. However, some social groups have fallen behind in the increasingly complex modern economy. In his short and highly readable book, Brink Lindsey tries to explain why this happened and what can be done about it.

Formerly vice president for research at the Cato Institute, Lindsey is now a senior fellow at the Kauffman Foundation, a think tank focused on promoting entrepreneurship. He has devoted his career to talking economic sense to those on the political Left, with whom he shares some views on social issues.

Lindsey’s central argument focuses on the increasing complexity of modern societies. As we get richer, our world gets more complicated. In pre-industrial societies, the accident of birth broadly determined social roles, and technology remained stationary. People did things the way they or their ancestors had always done them. In today’s world, such a mindset obviously wouldn’t get you very far. In the United States, for example, as a larger part of the economy revolves around processing information, competition is fiercer than ever before.

The economy thus places increasing pressure on our cognitive abilities. Psychologists believe that if we gave American children in 1932 an IQ test normed in 1997, their average IQ would come out to about 80—borderline deficient by today’s standards. The secular trend in measured IQ, known as the Flynn effect, is, according to Lindsey, a result of the rising complexity of the environments in which humans operate.

Unfortunately, while the United States has become much wealthier, some social classes lag behind—and others have done disproportionately well. Lindsey’s focus here is not on the “top 1 percent,” but rather on the growing disconnect between the top 30 percent—mostly highly skilled college graduates—and the rest of the income-distribution curve. Why haven’t poor people been more successful? Lindsey suggests two main reasons. The first is skills-based technological change. In modern economies, routine, rules-based jobs are more easily replaceable with computers, whereas jobs that involve problem-solving in complex environments become ever more valuable and lucrative.

The second reason is the persistent divide between “elite” culture and that of the bottom 70 percent. Because of the persistence of cultural norms, social groups in danger of becoming obsolete in the modern economy are not adapting by investing more in their human capital. “Culture is trumping economics,” says Lindsey, hence a fostering a “strong tendency for children immersed in working-class culture to remain in that culture through their adult lives.”

This is not a novel argument. Charles Murray, for one, has advanced it for decades, including in his recent book. Lindsey criticizes Murray, though, for offering little more than “plaintive moralizing.” But if the problem is cultural, then a change in culture and rhetoric has to be part of the solution. And, arguably, Murray is right-on when he advises people to “recognize that the guy who works on your lawn every week is morally superior in this regard to your neighbor’s college-educated son who won’t take a ‘demeaning’ job.”

Unlike Murray, Lindsey doesn’t offer a coherent theory for the growing cultural divide between the lower classes and the successful denizens of the global economy. Why have poor people retained detrimental cultural habits? Lindsey offers no justification for why cultural norms may have gotten more persistent in recent decades. He doesn’t ponder at least one plausible explanation: that material incentives favoring certain behaviors shape values in a way that locks people into poverty and dependence. This is a thesis that Murray has explored in great detail, as have others, including economist Walter Williams.

Even if some of Lindsey’s arguments leave a reader unconvinced, it’s difficult to object to his policy ideas. He proposes a reform of K-12 and college education, including limiting college-tuition subsidies, and he’s optimistic about early-childhood intervention among underprivileged children. Similarly, it’s tough to argue against a reform of entitlements that would motivate individuals to seek employment instead of encouraging dependency on the welfare system; or against removing barriers to entrepreneurship. But the hard truth is that, unless accompanied by a sustained change in culture and rhetoric among the poor, even the wisest policies are unlikely to make much of a difference.

Dalibor Rohac is an economist at the Legatum Institute in London. Follow him on Twitter at @daliborrohac.

Triplice Alianca na AGNU, pelo Paraguai

Intervenção do presidente paraguaio na 67ª sessão plenária da Assembleia geral da ONU (2012):

"Ahora bien, el Paraguay se encuentra en una dificil situaci6n internacional creada por sus vecinos, integrantes del MERCOSUR y de la UNASUR. En ambas entidades se han adoptado sanciones contra la República del Paraguay sin permitirsele ejercer el derecho a la defensa, expresamente previsto en los instrumentos internacionales invocados para aplicar las sanciones.
En violación de los tratados internacionales, estos paises han pretendido erigirse en tutores de la democracia paraguaya, dejando de lado el principio de la no intervención consagrado en nuestra Carta de las Naciones Unidas. El Paraguay a través de su historia ha sufrido reiteradas oportunidades la actitud soberbia de la injerencia en sus asuntos internos. De la memoria de mi pueblo aún no se borra el holocausto de la Guerra de la Triple Alianza, resultado de una injustificable coalición, que diezmó su población y destruyó su economia.
En el corto tiempo de mi gobierno, nuestros detractores no han podido encontrar una sola violación a los pactos que hemos mencionado.
Con razón, el gran Justo Pastor Benitez, un ilustre politico paraguayo, sostenia: "en tiempos en que no hay justicia, es peligroso tener razón".

http://webtv.un.org/watch/paraguay-general-debate-67th-session/1865061153001/

Piadas economicas e as metas de inflacao - Editorial do Estado

Antes de transcrever o editorial do Estadão, permito-me repetir um post de 2011, no qual o presidente do BC prometia que em 2012 a inflação iria convergir para o centro da meta:

QUARTA-FEIRA, 28 DE SETEMBRO DE 2011

A frase da semana, do mês, do ano (e de 2012, tambem...)

A inflação está sob controle e irá convergir para o centro da meta em 2012.

Presidente do Banco Central, Alexandre Tombini, em depoimento na Comissão Econômica do Senado Federal (28/09/2011)

Rendez-vous em 2012, para conferir...

Pois é, e agora, como é que fica?
Previsões não realizadas merecem multa pecuniária a quem as fez?
Metas são metas, e quem não alcança tem de ser cobrado.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

O humor negro do BC

Editorial O Estado de S.Paulo, 28 de setembro de 2012

A economia vai mal, a recuperação será lenta e os juros poderão continuar sem aumento até o fim do próximo ano, segundo as novas previsões e indicações do Banco Central (BC) em seu relatório trimestral de inflação. O crescimento econômico estimado para este ano caiu de 2,5% para 1,6%. O ministro da Fazenda, Guido Mantega, classificou como piada a previsão de 1,5% divulgada em julho pelo banco Crédit Suisse. Se ele estiver certo, os economistas do BC parecem ter ingressado com grande entusiasmo na carreira de humoristas. Em junho do próximo ano a expansão acumulada em 12 meses ainda estará em 3,3%, segundo as projeções divulgadas nesta quinta-feira. Se forem confirmados cenários tão ruins para o Brasil e também para o exterior, dificilmente haverá novo aumento de juros até o fim de 2o13. Embora implícita, essa promessa parece bastante clara no documento e essa foi, também, a interpretação de economistas consultados pela imprensa. Se não surgir nenhuma surpresa, o Comitê de Política Monetária (Copom) do BC, responsável pela política de juros, atenderá ao desejo manifestado pela presidente Dilma Rousseff e pelo ministro Mantega.

Mas o tom do relatório tende para o humor negro, talvez involuntariamente. A inflação, segundo o pessoal do BC, continuará convergindo para o centro da meta - 4,5% -, mas com desvios. A taxa anual, no cenário de referência, estará em 4,6% no terceiro trimestre de 2013 e voltará a 5,1% no segundo trimestre do ano seguinte. De toda forma, continuará dentro da margem de tolerância (o teto é 6,5%).

Essa previsão está condicionada ao recuo dos preços internacionais das commodities e a um crescimento econômico moderado no Brasil. Se o Brasil e alguns outros países colherem o suficiente para compensar a quebra da safra americana, as cotações agrícolas poderão recuar, mas isso também dependerá, provavelmente, do esfriamento da economia chinesa. Preços agrícolas menores podem ser bons para conter a inflação, mas são sempre ruins para as contas externas. Quanto ao crescimento brasileiro, a ideia é óbvia: um resultado muito melhor que o esperado pressionará a inflação, admitiu o diretor de Política Econômica do BC, Carlos Hamilton Araújo.

A previsão de inflação abaixo do teto é o único detalhe mais ou menos róseo. A projeção de crescimento industrial é menor que a divulgada na quinta-feira pela Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI). Segundo a Confederação, a produção geral da indústria deve ficar estagnada em 2012. A indústria de transformação deve produzir 1,9% menos que em 2011. Nas contas do BC, o produto da indústria geral encolherá 0,1% e o do setor de transformação diminuirá 2,2%.

Pelas projeções do BC, o consumo continuará crescendo, neste ano e no próximo, mais rapidamente que a produção das fábricas. O investimento industrial tem sido insuficiente, segundo o relatório. A diferença entre o consumo, turbinado pela renda e pelo crédito, e a capacidade de resposta do setor produtivo resultará, naturalmente, em erosão da conta de comércio. Essa tendência tem sido clara há mais de um ano e deve continuar, segundo as projeções do BC. As novas estimativas indicam para 2012 uma receita de exportações 3,1% menor que a do ano passado e uma despesa com importações 1,7% maior. O complemento perfeito para esses números está no Informe Conjuntural da CNI: há limites para o modelo de crescimento pela expansão do consumo e por medidas anticíclicas. É preciso reforçar o investimento e aumentar a produtividade. Medidas na direção certa apenas começaram e seus primeiros resultados só deverão aparecer a partir do próximo ano.

Pelas estimativas do BC, o investimento em máquinas, equipamentos e construções continuará baixo em 2013. Para este ano, a estimativa é de uma redução de 2,2%. Para os 12 meses até o segundo trimestre do próximo ano, a expectativa é de um aumento de apenas 1,4%, insuficiente para compensar a queda.

Quanto às finanças públicas, são expansionistas, segundo o relatório, mas o BC ainda aposta no cumprimento da meta fiscal, embora sem mencionar o valor do superávit primário. Se os gastos desandarem, como ficará a política de redução de juros?