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.

quarta-feira, 12 de dezembro de 2012

Economia: a marcha do atraso - Marcus Pestana

Estado e economia: a marcha forçada para o atraso“A questão mais importante para a avaliação de um governo é a condução da economia. É o desenvolvimento econômico que gera renda e emprego, sendo o principal instrumento de promoção da cidadania. E aí, PT e PSDB têm visões bastante diferenciadas”

A formação da opinião pública numa eleição obedece a múltiplos fatores. Às vezes, aspectos acidentais ou secundários podem decidir uma eleição. Mas, em tese, a opção da sociedade é construída a partir da escolha da melhor proposta de governo. Sendo assim, PSDB e PT têm o dever de explicitar suas divergências e suas propostas.
A questão mais importante para a avaliação de um governo é a condução da economia. É o desenvolvimento econômico que gera renda e emprego, sendo o principal instrumento de promoção da cidadania. E aí, PT e PSDB têm visões bastante diferenciadas.
Ficamos sabendo agora que teremos um crescimento pífio do PIB em 2012, em torno de 1%. Menos que os Brics e que os principais países latino-americanos. A desindustrialização é cada vez mais clara. Os estímulos fiscais e creditícios pontuais não estão funcionando. A infraestrutura se coloca como um gigantesco obstáculo ao crescimento sustentado. O PT, há dez anos no governo, não teve clareza e coragem de empreender a nova rodada de reformas estruturais e, mesmo antes da crise mundial de 2008, perdeu oportunidades e construiu o cenário atual marcado por baixo crescimento, baixa produtividade e uma sombria perspectiva de médio e longo prazo.
Por trás disso está uma visão equivocada do PT sobre as relações entre Estado e economia, onde predomina uma anacrônica visão nacional-desenvolvimentista-estatista. Há no PT uma profunda desconfiança em relação à iniciativa privada, à sociedade e ao mercado. E aí, os nós para a construção das necessárias parcerias não são desatados. A visão do PT não enxerga a urgência de atrairmos investimentos privados a partir de um ambiente regulatório saudável. Mesmo quando as parcerias são construídas, é o “Leviatã moderno” que elege ganhadores e perdedores no balcão do BNDES ou nas desonerações fiscais seletivas. A timidez e a falta de convicção se revelam a cada momento no pré-sal, nas concessões e na retórica atrasada.
O PSDB oferece outra perspectiva. Um Estado dimensionado pelas reais necessidades da sociedade. Um Estado mais coordenador, indutor, regulador, do que “fazedor”. Um Estado que acredite com firme convicção nas parcerias público-privadas e nas entidades do espaço público não estatal. Um Estado profissionalizado e moderno que faça uma regulação transparente, democrática e republicana. Um Estado que mantenha ferramentas como a Petrobras, Banco do Brasil, BNDES, Caixa e Correios, mas que delegue funções para a iniciativa privada e o terceiro setor, e se concentre na melhoria das políticas públicas sociais e na regulação da economia social de mercado.
Às vezes, as campanhas se desviam para temas absolutamente secundários. Mas, no fundo, o que está em jogo é o bem-estar da população e a definição de se o governo vai ser uma alavanca ou um entrave ao desenvolvimento.
E aí, PSDB e PT propõem horizontes bastante diferentes.


Sobre o autor

Marcus Pestana
* Marcus Pestana é Presidente do PSDB de Minas Gerais e Deputado Federal eleito em 2010 com 161.892 votos. Na Câmara dos Deputados, é titular da Comissão Especial da Reforma Política, membro permanente da Comissão de Seguridade Social e Família (Saúde), suplente da Comissão de Finanças e Tributação e vice-presidente da Frente Parlamentar da Saúde. No Instituto Teotônio Vilela (ITV), é Diretor de Estudos e Pesquisas.
Outros textos de Marcus Pestana.

Politica economica: um remendo aqui, outro acola' -Editorial OESP

A estratégia da mesmice

Editorial O Estado de S.Paulo, 10 de dezembro de 2012

Com resultado pior que o do ano passado, a economia brasileira completa dois anos de estagnação, mas nem isso basta para induzir o governo a uma ampla revisão de sua política. Há quem aprenda com o fracasso, mas a presidente Dilma Rousseff e seu ministro da Fazenda, Guido Mantega, preferem repetir as fórmulas já testadas com pouco ou nenhum sucesso. A insistência no Programa de Sustentação do Investimento (PSI), lançado em 2009 como ação anticrise, é mais uma prova dessa preferência. Uma das poucas novidades, nos últimos meses, foi o anúncio de um plano de investimentos em transportes, mas é cedo para apostar no êxito dessa iniciativa. Falta ver se o governo, ao fixar as regras do jogo, criará condições para uma cooperação produtiva com o setor privado, parceiro indispensável nos grandes planos de expansão e reforma da infraestrutura.
O governo lançou o PSI em 2009, num esforço para tirar o País da crise. O governo forneceria dinheiro ao Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES) para financiar compras de máquinas e outros investimentos empresariais. Era um programa de emergência, mas foi prorrogado várias vezes e deveria, finalmente, acabar no fim de 2012. Sua renovação por mais um ano, agora, comprova mais uma vez a pobreza de repertório da política econômica. Uma das poucas inovações, desta vez, é a tentativa de envolver os bancos privados.
Recursos congelados em depósitos compulsórios serão liberados, se os bancos quiserem destiná-los a empréstimos para investimentos. Essa fatia deverá corresponder a 15% dos R$ 100 bilhões previstos para o PSI em 2013. Sem obrigação de participar, os bancos ainda terão de avaliar se valerá a pena fornecer empréstimos de longo prazo com juros inferiores aos de mercado.
O Tesouro, segundo o ministro da Fazenda, "provavelmente" deverá fornecer recursos ao BNDES para a realização dos empréstimos. É cedo para mencionar valores, disse ele, mas a história do PSI é muito clara. Desde o início do programa, em 2009, até setembro deste ano, o banco liberou R$ 276,6 bilhões para financiamentos vinculados ao esquema. Desse total, R$ 250,2 bilhões foram emprestados pelo Tesouro, até julho deste ano. O resto, R$ 26,4 bilhões, corresponde ao retorno da carteira de contratos, segundo o relatório trimestral do BNDES.
Em resumo, o Tesouro tem sido a fonte de recursos do PSI, numa perigosa reedição, com algumas inovações, da conta movimento eliminada oficialmente no fim dos anos 90. Essa conta foi extinta depois de ter sido, por muitos anos, um grave fator de perturbação do regime fiscal e da ordem monetária. Também essa lição tem sido menosprezada pelo governo.
Os efeitos do PSI foram limitados também pela política de aplicações do BNDES. Quase dois terços do dinheiro - 63,5% - foram destinados a empresas grandes, perfeitamente capazes, em muitos casos, de obter financiamentos de outras fontes.
Uma distorção adicional aparece quando se examinam os empréstimos destinados ao Programa de Aceleração do Crescimento (PAC). A Petrobrás, sua Refinaria Abreu e Lima e a Transportadora Associada de Gás, vinculada à estatal, receberam R$ 26 bilhões, 68,4% desse conjunto de créditos. Desde o começo do PSI até setembro deste ano, portanto, o Tesouro repassou dinheiro ao BNDES para financiar principalmente grandes empresas - algumas muito grandes - e uma parcela desproporcional dos recursos foi para o setor estatal.
Dirigentes da Confederação Nacional da Indústria (CNI) pediram à presidente, na quarta-feira passada, a prorrogação de dois outros benefícios temporários: o desconto do Imposto sobre Produtos Industrializados (IPI), concedido a alguns setores, e o Reintegra, reembolso equivalente a 3% das exportações.
Se o governo concordar, será mais uma repetição. Uma estratégia de longo prazo daria mais segurança aos investidores e seria mais eficaz, mas sua formulação seria mais trabalhosa e poderia envolver negociações complicadas. O governo prefere a política dos remendos. Neste ano os incentivos fiscais devem custar R$ 45 bilhões. O resultado é um crescimento abaixo de pífio.

Batalha Naval (erros de politica economica) - Alexandre Schwartsman

Batalha Naval
Alexandre Schwartsman
Folha de S.Paulo, 12/12/20

Os 18 leitores já perceberam que tenho uma modesta diferença com a equipe econômica no que diz respeito à política adotada há algum tempo no Brasil: eles a consideram genial, um modelo de como gerir o país no contexto de um mundo instável; eu, por outro lado, a classifico como uma abominação, provavelmente a principal responsável pelo medíocre desempenho recente do país, que, na ausência de mudanças, deve ser também a marca registrada dos anos que virão.

Dentre todas suas características, porém, o que mais me incomoda é a percepção do improviso constante. O governo parece atirar em todas as direções, na esperança que alguma das suas medidas atinja o alvo e afunde o submarino adversário, mas a falta de um diagnóstico retira destes disparos um mínimo de orientação. Deste modo as chances destas ações gerarem um processo de crescimento sustentável são muito baixas, para não dizer nulas.

Tomemos, por exemplo, a recente desoneração da folha salarial do setor de construção civil. Trata-se, à primeira vista, de uma proposta meritória: o setor responde sozinho por cerca de 8% do emprego no país e é uma porta tradicional para o mercado de trabalho no caso da mão de obra com baixa qualificação. Ao mesmo tempo os salários no setor têm crescido aceleradamente (pouco mais de 9% na comparação com o ano passado, segundo dados da FGV), de modo que um alívio nos encargos tem a possibilidade de ajudar o segmento.

Falta, todavia, a visão do conjunto da economia. Com a taxa de desemprego na casa de 5% a 5,5%, parece claro que já operamos muito próximos ao pleno emprego, senão acima dele. Nestas circunstâncias, o estímulo à contratação de trabalhadores em um setor, no caso a construção civil, deve elevar também os salários em outros setores, notadamente o industrial, cujo salário de admissão é apenas um pouco inferior ao observado na construção.

Isto, contudo, agrava a perda de competitividade da indústria, uma vez que a elevação salarial já tem superado persistentemente o crescimento da produtividade mesmo antes da adoção da medida. Adicione-se a isto que a manufatura, ao contrário da construção, está sujeita à concorrência internacional, de modo que enfrenta limites à sua capacidade de repasse das elevações salariais aos preços. Como tenho argumentado, este é o principal fator limitante da expansão da produção industrial.

Trata-se de um clássico caso de cobertor curto: o incentivo à construção conflita com o objetivo de crescimento manufatureiro. Assim, muito provavelmente o governo terá que adotar novas medidas para compensar a indústria, incluindo novas rodadas de proteção e desvalorização cambial.

No entanto tais políticas também têm consequências negativas, seja do ponto de vista de elevação dos preços domésticos (a inflação parece que vai superar os 5,5% em 2012, o que me coloca na posição desconfortável de ter sido otimista demais nas minhas previsões no começo do ano), seja do ponto de vista de incentivos à expansão da produtividade e do investimento.

Poderia me estender, mas acredito que o argumento ficou claro. Por falta de um diagnóstico coerente o governo tem mais objetivos do que instrumentos, o que gera conflitos de políticas e reiterados remendos, daí a percepção inevitável (e correta) de improvisação persistente.

Desta forma, enquanto a equipe econômica não entender que o problema no Brasil não reside na fraqueza do consumo e da demanda, e sim no baixo crescimento da produtividade no contexto de uma economia próxima ao pleno emprego, não há porque imaginar que este padrão (se é que assim podemos chamá-lo) de política possa ser alterado.

Se há alguma certeza acerca dos rumos da economia no futuro próximo é que testemunharemos novos pacotes a intervalos crescentemente reduzidos e com a mesma efetividade para acelerar o crescimento até agora observada.

Água, água e água...


Como capturar um espiao toupeira - Book review (WSJ)

How to catch a mole
Christina Shelton
The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2012
 
Aldrich Ames, a Central Intelligence Agency officer for close to three decades, was arrested in February 1994 for espionage. Ames had used his position at the CIA's Directorate of Operations to pass information to Moscow, compromising Soviet sources working for the agency. For his treason, Ames was convicted and received a life sentence without parole.
 
Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille, longtime veterans of the CIA's clandestine service, were at the forefront of a small group assigned the mission, in early 1991, to expose the traitor in their midst. Ms. Grimes and Ms. Vertefeuille dedicate their revealing book about the Ames affair to GRU (Soviet Military Intelligence) Gen. Dmitriy Polyakov and others who risked their lives only to be sold out by Ames.
The authors present themselves as advocates for their heroes, whose stories they felt deserved to be told. This is especially the case with Gen. Polyakov, whom they considered the "Crown Jewel." He provided outstanding positive intelligence for over two decades (1962-85). In the early 1960s, he even helped expose four American servicemen who were spying for the GRU. Polyakov was first compromised by FBI Special Agent Robert Hanssen in 1979 and subsequently recalled from duty. But it was after Ames also identified him in 1985 as a spy for the U.S. that he was executed.
The first half of "Circle of Treason" focuses on the sources Ames exposed. He was responsible for the execution of at least 10 Soviet intelligence officials and the imprisonment of others. The authors provide intriguing insights into the background and tradecraft of a number of productive operations the CIA ran against the GRU and KGB from the 1960s through the 1980s. They also show how, when operations went wrong or were compromised by traitors, sources paid with their lives.
Take the case of Adolf Tolkachev, an engineer who, from 1978 to 1985, passed a great deal of information on Soviet missiles, radars and other military systems. "Tolkachev produced hundreds of rolls of film," the authors write. "It sometimes changed the direction of our own research and development and, by doing so, saved the U.S. government billions of dollars." Money was of course an important motivating factor for Tolkachev, but, the authors note, so was anti-communism: "If he had not had a security clearance, he would have been active as a dissident." Tolkachev's heroism was answered with execution in 1986 after another CIA traitor, Edward Lee Howard, gave him up to the KGB. "In the unlikely event that the KGB had any unanswered questions after Howard's reporting," the authors write, "Ames would have been in a position to fill the gaps."

Circle of Treason

By Sandra Grimes and Jeanne Vertefeuille
(Naval Institute Press, 228 pages, $29.95)
Then there was the problem of defectors deliberately sent by Moscow to provide false or misleading information to the West. Yuri Nosenko, for example, defected in 1964 on the heels of Anatoliy Golitsyn, who had warned that any defections after his would be false and designed by the KGB to mislead the West about Golitsyn's information. The authors use such cases to draw attention to a decades-long CIA bureaucratic controversy. On one side were those, like longtime counterintelligence chief James Angleton, who favored the so-called "Monster Plot" theory, holding that most defectors were in fact controlled by the KGB. On the other side were those, including the authors, who generally discounted the possibility of such penetrations. They believed that Moscow wouldn't trust Soviet intelligence officers with knowledge of state secrets to come under the control of a foreign service. It is a debate that will likely remain unsettled until the KGB archives are fully opened.
The second half of the book describes actions that the agency took when the agency's Soviet operations started hemorrhaging after June 1985. The CIA had to determine if there was a mole inside the organization, if a communications penetration existed, or if KGB operations were being designed to mislead the agency about its source losses. To catch the mole, the agency team drew up a shortlist of potential traitors based on access to information. The spy-hunters then "followed the money" and found that Ames and his second wife, Rosario, were living well beyond their known incomes. The team also compared the dates of Ames's official visits with Soviet embassy personnel against the dates of large deposits in his bank account. There was a direct correlation. (The financial forensic methods pioneered by the team that caught Ames are still in use today.)
The authors note that the hunt for this traitor, one of their former co-workers, took nine years—far longer than planned—due to bureaucratic roadblocks and shifting priorities. But they give little consideration to the CIA's internal resistance to the idea that one of the agency's own could be culpable.
The book also comes up short when analyzing the problem of defectors dispatched and controlled by the Soviets. The authors' insistence on the idea that false defections were almost nonexistent doesn't square with the Soviet proclivity for deception and disinformation. As the authors concede, for example, KGB officer Aleksandr Zhomov, who attempted to defect in 1988, was actually sent "to deceive us" on the subject of the 1985 losses. The author's theory also fails to account for the many unsolved anomalies, contradictions and coincidences surrounding specific defector cases.
Even so, "Circle of Treason" has the advantage of being written by two intelligence professionals, not by academics or journalists, and thus is an authoritative account of the Soviet sources that were providing the U.S. with invaluable information during the Cold War until Ames betrayed them. Because classified material on operational cases was going to be made public, the CIA took over three years to approve the book's publication. The authors note that 90% of the disputes were resolved in their favor.
Ms. Shelton served for three decades as a Soviet analyst in various intelligence agencies, including as a chief of the Soviet Branch, Counterintelligence Division at the Defense Intelligence Agency. She is the author of "Alger Hiss: Why He Chose Treason" (Threshold Editions, 2012).

Banqueiros centrais: a nova mafia (do MIT) que domina o mundo

Alguns diriam confraria, outros recorreriam ao termo mais conhecido de máfia. Não creio que seja bem isso, pois a verdadeira Máfia tem o dom da imovibilidade, ou seja, uma vez entrado na respeitável corporação, que tem as suas regras de honra, não tem mais saída. Os banqueiros centrais estão mais para mercenários, ou seja, podem trabalhar para exércitos estatais ou para milícias privadas, ou seja, bancos comerciais.
Se trata de uma corporação de ofício, mas mutável e cambiante, nem por isso menos secreta e adepta das teorias conspiratórias, para quem aprecia o gênero
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 
  

Inside the Risky Bets of the Central Banks
The Wall Street Journal, December 12, 2012


BASEL, Switzerland—Every two months, more than a dozen bankers meet here on Sunday evenings to talk and dine on the 18th floor of a cylindrical building looking out on the Rhine.
The dinner discussions on money and economics are more than academic. At the table are the chiefs of the world's biggest central banks, representing countries that annually produce more than $51 trillion of gross domestic product, three-quarters of the world's economic output.
[image]
Of late, these secret talks have focused on global economic troubles and the aggressive measures by central banks to manage their national economies. Since 2007, central banks have flooded the world financial system with more than $11 trillion. Faced with weak recoveries and Europe's churning economic problems, the effort has accelerated. The biggest central banks plan to pump billions more into government bonds, mortgages and business loans.
Their monetary strategy isn't found in standard textbooks. The central bankers are, in effect, conducting a high-stakes experiment, drawing in part on academic work by some of the men who studied and taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1970s and 1980s.
While many national governments, including the U.S., have failed to agree on fiscal policy—how best to balance tax revenues with spending during slow growth—the central bankers have forged their own path, independent of voters and politicians, bound by frequent conversations and relationships stretching back to university days.
If the central bankers are correct, they will help the world economy avoid prolonged stagnation and a repeat of central banking mistakes in the 1930s. If they are wrong, they could kindle inflation or sow the seeds of another financial crisis. Failure also could lead to new restrictions on the power and independence of central banks, tools deemed crucial in such emergencies as the 2008-2009 financial crisis.
"Will history decide they did too little or too much? We don't know because it is still a work in progress," said Kenneth Rogoff, an economics professor at Harvard and co-author of a book, "This Time Is Different," examining financial crises over eight centuries. "They are taking risks because it is an experimental strategy."
The U.S. Federal Reserve now buys $40 billion of mortgage-backed securities each month and appears set at a meeting Wednesday to spend billions more on Treasury securities. The Bank of England has agreed to funnel billions of pounds to businesses and households through banks. The European Central Bank pledged to hold down borrowing costs of governments that sought help. The Bank of Japan,8301.JA -4.03% under increased pressure to fight deflation, is purchasing ¥91 trillion yen ($1.14 trillion) in government bonds, corporate debt and stocks.
The goal is to lower borrowing costs and stimulate stock markets to encourage spending and investment by households and business. But the method is untested on such a global scale, and central bankers have labored in behind-the-scenes meetings this year to size up the risks.
A day after their June dinner here, the central bankers were warned by one of their hosts in a speech to the group.
"Central banks find themselves caught in the middle, forced to be the policy makers of last resort. They are providing monetary stimulus on a massive scale," said Jaime Caruana, general manager of the Bank for International Settlements, where the dinners are held. "These emergency measures could have undesirable effects if continued for too long."
Another worry: Boosting stock markets and easing credit costs allow national governments to postpone difficult political decisions to fix such problems as swelling budget deficits, according to this contrary view.
Vocal critics include economists at the BIS, an international body based here that is increasingly an important staging ground for talks about the postcrisis financial landscape. They say central banks, seeking faster growth, are stretched too thin.
"Central banks cannot solve structural problems in the economy," said Stephen Cecchetti, who runs the BIS monetary department. "We've been saying this for years, and it's getting tiresome."
Central banks control the spigot of the world's money supply. When opened, the flow of new cash heats up economies, driving down interest rates and unemployment but risking inflation. Closing the spigot, on the other hand, raises interest rates and cools economies but tamps down prices.
The central bankers have promised that once the global economy gets back on its feet, they will shut off the spigots quickly enough to forestall inflation. But pulling back so much money, at exactly the right time, could become a political and logistical challenge.
"We're all very conscious that we're in an environment that's unusual and we're using a policy weapon that we don't have a lot of experience with," Charles Bean, deputy governor of the Bank of England said in an interview.
Central bankers themselves are among the most isolated people in government. If they confer too closely with private bankers, they risk unsettling markets or giving traders an unfair advantage. And to maintain their independence, they try to keep politicians at a distance.
Since the financial crisis erupted in late 2007, they have relied on each other for counsel. Together, they helped arrest the downward spiral of the world economy, pushing down interest rates to historic lows while pumping trillions of dollars, euros, pounds and yen into ailing banks and markets.
Three of the world's most powerful central bankers launched their careers in a building known as "E52," home to the MIT economics department. Fed ChairmanBen Bernanke and ECB President Mario Draghi earned their Ph.D.s there in the late 1970s. Bank of England Governor Mervyn King taught briefly there in the 1980s, sharing an office with Mr. Bernanke.
Many economists emerged from MIT with a belief that government could help to smooth out economic downturns. Central banks play a particularly important role in this view, not only by setting interest rates but also by influencing public expectations through carefully worded statements.
While at MIT, the central bankers dreamed up mathematical models and discussed their ideas in seminar rooms and at cheap food joints in a rundown Boston-area neighborhood on the Charles River.
Over Sunday dinners in Basel, which often stretch to three hours, they now talk of pressing, real-world problems with authority. The meals are part of two-day meetings held six times a year at the BIS. Dinner guests include leaders of the Fed, ECB, Bank of England and Bank of Japan, as well as central bankers from India, China, Mexico, Brazil and a few other countries.
"That is where it really gets down and dirty," said Nathan Sheets, a CitigroupC -0.51% economist and former head of the Federal Reserve's international affairs division. He didn't attend the dinners during his tenure at the Fed but is familiar with them. "Every one of the dinners was important through the crisis."
The Bank of England's Mr. King leads the dinner discussions in a room decorated by the Swiss architectural firm Herzog & de Meuron, which designed the "Bird's Nest" stadium for the Beijing Olympics. The men have designated seats at a round table in a dining area scented by white orchids and framed by white walls, a black ceiling and panoramic views.
"It is a way in which people can talk completely privately," Mr. King said in an interview. "It is a big advantage if you have some feel for how central banks think about questions, what they're likely to do in the future if certain events were to occur."
Serious matters follow appetizers, wine and small talk, according to people familiar with the dinners. Mr. King typically asks his colleagues to talk about the outlook in their respective countries. Others ask follow-up questions. The gatherings yield no transcripts or minutes. No staff is allowed.
The 18-member group, formally known as the Economic Consultative Committee, has only once issued a public statement: a two-line missive in September, promising to look for solutions in interbank lending markets, responding to allegations that some private banks had conspired to manipulate the Libor interest rate.
On Mondays after the dinner, the bankers join a larger group of central bankers at a large round table on a lower floor of the BIS building, which is shaped like a rook chess piece. Staff members sit nearby at desks decorated in white leather.
"These meetings are a very important forum to understand the global situation," said Duvvuri Subbarao, governor of the Reserve Bank of India and a Sunday dinner participant. "People speak freely."
The central bankers often act with the common goal of bringing the world closer to full employment. Other times, though, they are starkly at odds.
In November 2010, for example, the Fed launched a $600 billion bond-buying program known as quantitative easing. A few days later, New York Fed PresidentWilliam Dudley and Fed vice chairwoman Janet Yellen attended a weekend meeting here and were surprised by the furor the Fed's stimulus program had stirred among developing countries, according to people familiar with the talks. Mr. Dudley and Ms. Yellen spent much of the meeting explaining the Fed's actions, as other central bankers raised worries the program would cause inflation or spark an unwanted flood of capital into their markets.
"Every time there is quantitative easing by the Fed, that gets discussed," said Mr. Subbarao. "We all have to reckon with the spillover impact of our policies on other countries." Basel, he said, is the place to air such concerns.
The role of the Bank for International Settlements has broadened since it was formed in 1930 to handle reparation payments imposed on Germany after World War I. In the 1970s, it became the center of discussions on bank capital rules. In the 1990s, it became the meeting place for central bankers to talk about the global economy.
The central bankers typically stop short of formally coordinating their moves. Mr. Bernanke, Mr. Draghi and Bank of Japan head Masaaki Shirakawa are more focused on domestic challenges. Mr. Shirakawa has often warned others in Basel about the effectiveness of easy money policies, according to people familiar with his statements. That hesitance has made the BOJ an issue in Sunday's Japan elections. Shinzo Abe, the front-runner to become prime minister, has promised to rein in the BOJ's independence and demand more aggressive efforts to end consumer price deflation.
But as central bankers grapple with doubts and disagreements over reviving the global economy, they form a tightknit fraternity, tied by efforts to manage growth and gird against financial instability. Their relationships play out during conversations by phone and in person.
"A big secret of central bank cooperation," Mr. King said, "is that you can just pick up a phone and have an agreement on something very quickly" in a crisis.
This summer, the central banking clique kept in close touch as they readied for a new round of monetary activism. On June 8, Mr. Bernanke and Mr. King spoke by phone for a half-hour before policy meetings at their central banks, according to Mr. Bernanke's phone records, obtained in a public records request. A few days later, Mr. Bernanke spoke by phone with Mark Carney, head of the Bank of Canada—and last month named as Mr. King's successor. Shortly after, Mr. Bernanke called Stanley Fischer, head of the Bank of Israel, and a former MIT professor who was Mr. Bernanke's dissertation adviser.
On June 18, Mr. Bernanke had an early morning call from his home on Capitol Hill with Mr. Draghi and Mr. King, according to his phone records, as the men assessed the impact of the Greek election on Europe's financial system.
Two conflicting views tug at the world's central bankers. One view is that central banks haven't done enough to attack economic malaise. The other is that easy-money policies lack sufficient power to help economies and risk triggering runaway inflation or another financial bubble.
In August, tension over the two positions spilled into the open during the Fed's annual retreat in Jackson Hole, Wyo. Adam Posen, who recently finished a four-year term as a member of the Bank of England's monetary policy committee, chastised central bankers for their unwillingness to do more to stimulate their economies because of "self-imposed taboos."
Mr. Posen said central banks should give more help to such weakened markets as U.S. mortgages and European government bonds.
Athanasios Orphanides, another MIT professor who recently finished a term as the head of the central bank of Cyprus, took the opposing view. In the 1970s, he said, central banks sought to return unemployment to low levels of the 1960s. They made the mistake of keeping interest rates too low for too long, he said, yielding inflation instead of full employment. If banks repeat the mistake of overestimating their ability to push unemployment lower, he said, "disaster will follow on the price front."
Mr. Bean, meanwhile, said he worried that current low-interest-rate policies were losing their efficacy, an idea recently echoed by Mr. King. Low rates, he said, might induce less-than-expected business and consumer spending when governments and the private sector are burdened by too much debt.
"There is a lot we don't understand," said Donald Kohn, the Fed's former vice chairman.
Mr. Bernanke sat quietly during the discussion. But he and the other major central bankers were already primed to launch a new monetary onslaught.
A few days later, the ECB announced an agreement to buy bonds of struggling European governments in exchange for a country's adherence to fiscal austerity.
Then the Fed announced plans to buy bonds every month until U.S. job market improves "substantially." The BOJ, despite Mr. Shirakawa's hesitance, soon followed with news it also was expanding its bond-buying program.
Economists at the BIS, meanwhile, have grown more skeptical about the central bank tilt. They say their warnings of a credit bubble were ignored before the financial crisis. "Nobody took it seriously," said William White, formerly the top BIS economist.
Now, he said, the central banks may again be steering toward long-term troubles in their elusive quest for short-term growth.
Write to Jon Hilsenrath at jon.hilsenrath@wsj.com and Brian Blackstone atbrian.blackstone@dowjones.com
A version of this article appeared December 12, 2012, on page A1 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: Inside the Risky Bets of Central Banks.

Franca: Se vc acredita que vai piorar, entao vai piorar...


Allemands et Britanniques alarmistes sur l'économie française

Le Monde.fr avec AFP |  • Mis à jour le 
Abonnez-vous
à partir de 1 €
 Réagir Classer Imprimer Envoyer
Partager   google + linkedin

La couverture de "The Economist" du 17 novembre.

Les titres alarmistes sur l'avenir économique de la France récemment parus dans la presse britannique, allemande et française sont considérés comme correspondant à la réalité par une large majorité d'Allemands et d'Anglais ainsi que de Français, selon un sondage paru mercredi 12 décembre.
"Une large majorité de Français (65 %), d'Allemands (61 %) et d'Anglais (57 %) considère que les différents titres des médias dans ces trois pays correspondent à la réalité des difficultés économiques de la France", indiquent les auteurs de cette enquête de l'Institut Think réalisée pour la société Fiducial. 55 % des Anglais, 51 % des Français et 46 % des Allemands estiment que la France est un problème pour la bonne santé de l'Europe, selon ce sondage réalisé auprès de 1 000 Français, autant d'Allemands et de Britanniques âgés de 18 ans et plus, interrogés en ligne du 3 au 5 décembre.
"BOMBE À RETARDEMENT AU CŒUR DE L'EUROPE"

Seuls 34 % de Français se déclarent choqués par ces "unes" de journaux. Au sujet de la couverture de l'hebdomadaire britannique The Economist qui qualifiait mi-novembre la France de "bombe à retardement au cœur de l'Europe", ils sont uniquement 26 % à la considérer comme caricaturale contre 37 % conforme à la réalité (28 % pour les Anglais et 42 % pour les Allemands). Après avoir dénoncé un supposé "déni" français avant la présidentielle, The Economist, influent et libéral hebdomadaire britannique du monde des affaires, publiait ce titre en couverture de son numéro du 17 novembre. L'image qui illustrait ce dossier spécial de 14 pages était celle de sept baguettes de pain entourées d'un ruban bleu-blanc-rouge, tels des bâtons de dynamite, reliées à une mèche allumée.

Quant à la presse allemande, les sondeurs font allusion au quotidien populaireBild Zeitung qui demandait le 31 octobre : "La France sera-t-elle la nouvelleGrèce ?" Pour la presse française, l'exemple donné est celui du quotidienLibération, qui le 12 novembre a publié au sujet de l'économie française une photographie de la chancelière allemande Angela Merkel avec le titre "Achtung"("attention" en allemand). Par ailleurs, pour les Européens interrogés, la crise vaperdurer dans leur pays. Plus d'un Français, Anglais ou Allemand sur trois estime que la reprise économique se fera après 2015. "Là encore, les Français sont les plus pessimistes puisqu'ils sont 42 % à le penser", notent les auteurs du sondage.
La perte du "triple A" de la France est "l'un des signaux révélateurs de cette crainte". Les habitants des trois pays s'accordent à dire que cette dégradation est "un signal d'alarme sur la fragilité de la France (69 % pour les Français, 65 % pour les Anglais et 64 % pour les Allemands)""Autre facteur d'incertitude, le pacte de compétitivité annoncé suite au rapport Gallois est accueilli avec vigilance. Ses mesures sont évaluées comme allant dans le bons sens mais jugées insuffisantes pour 41 % des Français et des Anglais et 46 % des Allemands", selon l'enquête.