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.

terça-feira, 15 de julho de 2014

Vargas Llosa: cai a mascara do corrupto regime autoritario-populista no Brasil

Grato, como sempre a meu amigo e colega blogueiro Orlando Tambosi
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Em artigo publicado no El País, o escritor e Prêmio Nobel de Literatura Mario Vargas Llosa se diz envergonhado com a acachapante derrota brasileira diante da Alemanha, mas não culpa apenas o técnico Scolari. Trata-se da manifestação, no plano esportivo, de algo que começou com Lula e representa todo o Brasil: "viver uma ficção que é brutalmente desmentida por uma realidade profunda." Reproduzo o texto "A máscara do gigante":


Fiquei muito envergonhado com a cataclísmica derrota do Brasil frente à Alemanha na semifinal da Copa do Mundo, mas confesso que não me surpreendeu tanto. De um tempo para cá, a famosa seleção Canarinho se parecia cada vez menos com o que havia sido a mítica esquadra brasileira que deslumbrou a minha juventude, e essa impressão se confirmou para mim em suas primeiras apresentações neste campeonato mundial, onde a equipe brasileira ofereceu uma pobre figura, com esforços desesperados para não ser o que foi no passado, mas para jogar um futebol de fria eficiência, à maneira europeia.

Nada funcionava bem; havia algo forçado, artificial e antinatural nesse esforço, que se traduzia em um rendimento sem graça de toda a equipe, incluído o de sua estrela máxima, Neymar. Todos os jogadores pareciam sob rédeas. O velho estilo – o de um Pelé, Sócrates, Garrincha, Tostão, Zico – seduzia porque estimulava o brilho e a criatividade de cada um, e disso resultava que a equipe brasileira, além de fazer gols, brindava um espetáculo soberbo, no qual o futebol transcendia a si mesmo e se transformava em arte: coreografia, dança, circo, balé.

Os críticos esportivos despejaram impropérios contra Luiz Felipe Scolari, o treinador brasileiro, a quem responsabilizaram pela humilhante derrota, por ter imposto à seleção brasileira uma metodologia de jogo de conjunto que traía sua rica tradição e a privava do brilhantismo e iniciativa que antes eram inseparáveis de sua eficácia, transformando seus jogadores em meras peças de uma estratégia, quase em autômatos.

Não houve nenhum milagre nos anos de Lula, e sim uma miragem que agora começa a se dissipar

Contudo, eu acredito que a culpa de Scolari não é somente sua, mas, talvez, uma manifestação no âmbito esportivo de um fenômeno que, já há algum tempo, representa todo o Brasil: viver uma ficção que é brutalmente desmentida por uma realidade profunda.

Tudo nasce com o governo de Luis Inácio 'Lula' da Silva (2003-2010), que, segundo o mito universalmente aceito, deu o impulso decisivo para o desenvolvimento econômico do Brasil, despertando assim esse gigante adormecido e posicionando-o na direção das grandes potências. As formidáveis estatísticas que o Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística difundia eram aceitas por toda a parte: de 49 milhões os pobres passaram a ser somente 16 milhões nesse período, e a classe média aumentou de 66 para 113 milhões. Não é de se estranhar que, com essas credenciais, Dilma Rousseff, companheira e discípula de Lula, ganhasse as eleições com tanta facilidade. Agora que quer se reeleger e a verdade sobre a condição da economia brasileira parece assumir o lugar do mito, muitos a responsabilizam pelo declínio veloz e pedem uma volta ao lulismo, o governo que semeou, com suas políticas mercantilistas e corruptas, as sementes da catástrofe.

A verdade é que não houve nenhum milagre naqueles anos, e sim uma miragem que só agora começa a se esvair, como ocorreu com o futebol brasileiro. Uma política populista como a que Lula praticou durante seus governos pôde produzir a ilusão de um progresso social e econômico que nada mais era do que um fugaz fogo de artifício. O endividamento que financiava os custosos programas sociais era, com frequência, uma cortina de fumaça para tráficos delituosos que levaram muitos ministros e altos funcionários daqueles anos (e dos atuais) à prisão e ao banco dos réus.

As alianças mercantilistas entre Governo e empresas privadas enriqueceram um bom número de funcionários públicos e empresários, mas criaram um sistema tão endiabradamente burocrático que incentivava a corrupção e foi desestimulando o investimento. Por outro lado, o Estado embarcou muitas vezes em operações faraônicas e irresponsáveis, das quais os gastos empreendidos tendo como propósito a Copa do Mundo de futebol são um formidável exemplo.

O governo brasileiro disse que não havia dinheiro público nos 13 bilhões que investiria na Copa do Mundo. Era mentira. O BNDES (Banco Brasileiro de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social) financiou quase todas as empresas que receberam os contratos para obras de infraestrutura e, todas elas, subsidiavam o Partido dos Trabalhadores, atualmente no poder. (Calcula-se que para cada dólar doado tenham obtido entre 15 e 30 em contratos).

As obras da Copa foram um caso flagrante de delírio e irresponsabilidade

As obras em si constituíam um caso flagrante de delírio messiânico e fantástica irresponsabilidade. Dos 12 estádios preparados, só oito seriam necessários, segundo alertou a própria FIFA, e o planejamento foi tão tosco que a metade das reformas da infraestrutura urbana e de transportes teve de ser cancelada ou só será concluída depois do campeonato. Não é de se estranhar que o protesto popular diante de semelhante esbanjamento, motivado por razões publicitárias e eleitoreiras, levasse milhares e milhares de brasileiros às ruas e mexesse com todo o Brasil.

As cifras que os órgãos internacionais, como o Banco Mundial, dão na atualidade sobre o futuro imediato do país são bastante alarmantes. Para este ano, calcula-se que a economia crescerá apenas 1,5%, uma queda de meio ponto em relação aos dois últimos anos, nos quais somente roçou os 2%. As perspectivas de investimento privado são muito escassas, pela desconfiança que surgiu ante o que se acreditava ser um modelo original e resultou ser nada mais do que uma perigosa aliança de populismo com mercantilismo, e pela teia burocrática e intervencionista que asfixia a atividade empresarial e propaga as práticas mafiosas.

Apesar de um horizonte tão preocupante, o Estado continua crescendo de maneira imoderada – já gasta 40% do produto bruto – e multiplica os impostos ao mesmo tempo que as “correções” do mercado, o que fez com que se espalhasse a insegurança entre empresários e investidores. Apesar disso, segundo as pesquisas, Dilma Rousseff ganhará as próximas eleições de outubro, e continuará governando inspirada nas realizações e logros de Lula.

Se assim é, não só o povo brasileiro estará lavrando a própria ruína, e mais cedo do que tarde descobrirá que o mito sobre o qual está fundado o modelo brasileiro é uma ficção tão pouco séria como a da equipe de futebol que a Alemanha aniquilou. E descobrirá também que é muito mais difícil reconstruir um país do que destruí-lo. E que, em todos esses anos, primeiro com Lula e depois com Dilma, viveu uma mentira que seus filhos e seus netos irão pagar, quando tiverem de começar a reedificar a partir das raízes uma sociedade que aquelas políticas afundaram ainda mais no subdesenvolvimento. É verdade que o Brasil tinha sido um gigante que começava a despertar nos anos em que governou Fernando Henrique Cardoso, que pôs suas finanças em ordem, deu firmeza à sua moeda e estabeleceu as bases de uma verdadeira democracia e uma genuína economia de mercado. Mas seus sucessores, em lugar de perseverar e aprofundar aquelas reformas, as foram desnaturalizando e fazendo o país retornar às velhas práticas daninhas.

Não só os brasileiros foram vítimas da miragem fabricada por Lula da Silva, também o restante dos latino-americanos. Por que a política externa do Brasil em todos esses anos tem sido de cumplicidade e apoio descarado à política venezuelana do comandante Chávez e de Nicolás Maduro, e de uma vergonhosa “neutralidade” perante Cuba, negando toda forma de apoio nos organismos internacionais aos corajosos dissidentes que em ambos os países lutam por recuperar a democracia e a liberdade. Ao mesmo tempo, os governos populistas de Evo Morales na Bolívia, do comandante Ortega na Nicarágua e de Correa no Equador – as mais imperfeitas formas de governos representativos em toda a América Latina – tiveram no Brasil seu mais ativo protetor.

Por isso, quanto mais cedo cair a máscara desse suposto gigante no qual Lula transformou o Brasil, melhor para os brasileiros. O mito da seleção Canarinho nos fazia sonhar belos sonhos. Mas no futebol, como na política, é ruim viver sonhando, e sempre é preferível – embora seja doloroso – ater-se à verdade.

Internet: para quando um dominio .books ?

Talvez até já exista, mas eu desconheço. Em todo caso, com essa mania de ampliação e diversificação de domínios, eu moveria todos os meus sites e blogs (e eles são muitos) para lá. 
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Scotland set for new internet domain

Last updated 7 hours ago

Image of laptops and the Earth
The domain is intended for people who live and work in Scotland and for the Scottish diaspora worldwide

A new top-level internet domain for Scotland is set to be launched, allowing people to choose a .scot web or email address for the first time.

About 50 sites run by "launch pioneers" are expected to go live on Tuesday.

Among those who have signed up for a new domain are the Scottish government, referendum campaigners Yes Scotland and Better Together, WWF Scotland, NHS Scotland and Scouts Scotland.

International pioneers include the Louisiana Scots and the Clan Wallace.

The .scot domain is one of a number of new top-level domains that are becoming available this year, such as .wales, .london, .berlin and .NYC.

It is being launched after not-for-profit company Dot Scot Registry agreed terms with international regulators to operate the new domain.

Deputy First Minister Nicola Sturgeon welcomed the launch.

"It is entirely right that Scotland should have its own distinctive and recognisable internet domain - in particular, one that will resonate internationally, helping to promote Scottish business and culture throughout the world," she said.

"I am confident that the .scot domain name will prove to be a real asset to the people of Scotland and to the worldwide family of Scots.

"I am looking forward to the Scottish government being able to make use of this new domain and to having www.gov.scot up and running before the end of the year, as well as our pioneer domains including www.welcome.scot, which go live today."

Dot Scot Registry director Gavin McCutcheon described it as a "fantastic day for Scotland online".

"Owning a .scot domain will allow people and organisations a new unique way to express their identity online," he said.

Dot Scot Registry director Gavin McCutcheon
Dot Scot Registry director Gavin McCutcheon said it was a "fantastic day for Scotland online"

"It's a community domain intended for everybody who lives and works in Scotland - and for the 50 million people around the globe who are part of Scotland's diaspora.

"After such a long campaign to secure the new .scot domain, we're delighted that we can launch when the eyes of the world are on Scotland, with the Commonwealth Games coming to Glasgow next week."

For the next 60 days, only launch pioneers will be allowed to use the .scot domain, but others are being invited to register interest via http://nic.scot. After 23 September, the domain will be open to all.

Richard Stevenson, of domain name registrar 1&1 Internet Ltd, said there had been strong demand for .scot reservations.

"Across history, Scotland has been synonymous with ambitious, truly innovative and impactful technology," he added.

"For Scottish businesses and citizens alike, the .scot domain is the opportunity to strengthen their web and email identity, optimise the way in which their websites are found and, importantly, leverage the enormously valuable brand that Scotland holds worldwide."

BBC © 2014

Bretton Woods in book reviews, by Kurt Schuler

Da série de postagens, mas esta não tem a ver com o Brasil, e sim com livros que foram publicados e aqui resenhados por Kurt Schuler.
Estive em Bretton Woods recentemente, onde adquiri este livro:
Benn Steil: The Battle of Bretton Woods (Keynes vs White)
ainda vou ler...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida

About Kurt Schuler

Kurt Schuler, co-editor of The Bretton Woods Transcripts, is Senior Fellow of Financial History at the Center for Financial Stability and an economist in the Office of International Affairs at the United States Department of the Treasury.

Review of Two New Books on Bretton Woods

(The following review, for the economic history site EH.net, is reprinted with their permission, and the copyright provisions specified there apply.)
Ed Conway, The Summit: The Biggest Battle of the Second World War, Fought Behind Closed Doors. London: Little, Brown, 2014. xxvi + 454 pp. £25 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-1-4055-2930-3.
and
Eric Helleiner, Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods: International Development and the Making of the Postwar Order. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2014. xii + 304 pp. $40 (hardcover), ISBN: 978-0-8014-5275-8.
Two books have appeared just in time for the seventieth anniversary of the Bretton Woods conference. Edmund Conway’s The Summit is a popular account of the conference by a financial journalist, while Eric Helleiner’s Forgotten Foundations of Bretton Woods is a political scientist’s examination of a little explored angle of the conference: the role of what we now call emerging market countries.
Conway, economics editor of the British cable television channel Sky News, set out to write an overview incorporating material that has come to light since Armand van Dormael’s 1978 book Bretton Woods: Birth of a Monetary System. (Benn Steil’s The Battle of Bretton Woods [2013] is an interpretation of the conference according to a master theme rather than an overall account, as I will explain later.)[1] We now have additional reminiscences by delegates; declassified archival material such as the Venona files detailing Soviet espionage in the ranks of U.S. Treasury officials; and full transcripts of many committee meetings at the conference.
Conway writes in a lively style. (Example: “As far as [Keynes] was concerned, the [International Monetary] Fund should be regarded as a kind of economic health spa. There should be no stigma associated with going to it for help: all countries should be entitled — nay, encouraged — to do so at some point. For White, however, the Fund was Accident and Emergency — countries should only be wheeled in if close to complete economic collapse” p. 171.) In addition, he has done some original research that will ensure a niche for his book in the scholarly literature. For example, in the Russian archives he found a number of documents that illustrate Soviet perceptions of Bretton Woods. The Soviet Union was active and often obstreperous at the Bretton Woods conference. It signed the Bretton Woods agreements but later decided not to join the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (World Bank), in part because it did not want to divulge the economic data required of IMF members.
Because the book is intended for readers who may know nothing of Bretton Woods, many of you reading this review can comfortably skip the early chapters, which provide background, and start with the British delegation’s ocean voyage to America. Conway vividly conveys the atmosphere both of the voyage and of the Atlantic City conference that preceded Bretton Woods and developed the drafts from which the Bretton Woods delegates worked.
At the heart of The Summit is of course the account of the Bretton Woods conference itself. (The title, by the way, is a triple reference to Bretton Woods as an important international gathering, a high point in economic diplomacy, and a location within sight of the highest peak in the northeastern United States.) Conway devotes a substantial chapter to each of the three weeks of the conference. He gives an overall idea of the course of negotiations and, again, of the atmosphere in which delegates worked, but omits minute details that are more appropriate to books aimed at narrower audiences.
The final chapters describe the later life of the Bretton Woods agreements, beginning with controversies on the way to their ratification in the United States and in Britain. In the United States some experts got worked up about the agreements, but as Conway relates, the public was apathetic; with World War II still raging, the subject was too abstruse to arouse passion. In Britain, the country’s largest newspaper fiercely criticized the agreements, but the enormous parliamentary majority of the new Labour Party government meant that it could pass into law anything it wanted.
Throughout the book Conway focuses on the personality traits of the players. Economists and political scientists often write as if impersonal interests dominate and personalities make little difference; journalists, diplomats, and historians know better. As a case in point, the turnover of lower-level officials after Harry Truman succeeded Franklin Roosevelt as president quickly led to changes in actual or prospective policies, including abandonment of the Morgenthau Plan to reduce Germany to an economic backwater after the war and the idea of locating the IMF and World Bank in New York rather than Washington. Conway’s book will not be, and is not intended to be, the authoritative academic account of Bretton Woods, but it is a useful addition to previous accounts.
Eric Helleiner, a professor of political science at the University of Waterloo (Canada), calls into question the prominent line of thinking about Bretton Woods that it was an American, and to a lesser extent a British, production, with other countries having little impact. Benn Steil is in this vein, interpreting Bretton Woods as a nearly unvarnished exercise in power politics. Steil focuses on the animosity of many American officials toward Britain and the ways in which they tried to use Bretton Woods and the Lend-Lease negotiations to diminish British postwar influence. Steil shares the view Keynes privately expressed, which likened the delegates from most other countries at Bretton Woods, particularly those from the poorer countries — what  we would now call emerging markets — as denizens of a “monkey house,” raucous and useless.
Helleiner’s library and archival research incorporate sources previously absent from English-language scholarship on Bretton Woods. His writing lacks Conway’s journalistic panache but conveys clearly ideas that other social scientists would have clotted with needless jargon. Helleiner finds antecedents to Bretton Woods, incidents at the conference, and events afterwards to indicate greater importance for the emerging markets than has hitherto been acknowledged.
The opening chapters focus on American attitudes toward emerging markets, documenting how Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal and his Good Neighbor policy towards Latin America changed the approach of the U.S. government toward international financial issues. U.S. officials became more sympathetic to the concerns of emerging market officials on matters of exchange rate choice, exchange controls, commodity price stabilization, industrial protectionism, and, to a lesser extent, debt default. The remaining chapters discuss Bretton Woods as viewed from the perspective of Latin American, Asian, and Eastern European governments, with a sidebar on how British official attitudes about economic development did or did not fit into the picture.
Helleiner’s implicit claim is that by the time of Bretton Woods, the ideology of the Roosevelt administration, and the experience of the 1930s, made the U.S. government more comfortable with “developmentalist” ideas (my term, not Helleiner’s) than at any time before and possibly since. Helleiner discusses the abortive Inter-American Bank as a dry run for the IMF and especially the World Bank. It was to have been a government-owned multilateral financial institution, with weighted voting, lending both to ease short-term balance of payments problems and to promote long-term economic development. The United States was to have provided the largest share of funds for it, but the U.S. Congress failed to approve the charter, so the project died. An echo of it exists in the Inter-American Development Bank, established in 1959.
Two other important examples of changing U.S. official attitudes toward Latin America were the U.S. government advisory monetary missions to Cuba in 1941-42 and Paraguay in 1943-44. They were much friendlier to developmentalist ideas than the semiofficial U.S. monetary doctor Edwin Kemmerer had been when he had advised many Latin American and other countries in the 1920s. Latin American governments responded favorably to what they saw as greater recognition by the United States of their sovereign dignity. The motives of the United States were not purely disinterested: it wanted to keep Latin America out of the Nazi orbit. U.S. officials were solicitous about involving their Latin American counterparts in their international plans from an early stage, choosing the January 1942 Rio de Janeiro Conference to announce their interest in planning for the postwar financial order.
In return, Latin American governments were generally supportive of the U.S. plans, though they proposed and received some changes to support their interests. At Bretton Woods, they and the other emerging markets secured agreement that the World Bank would focus equally on reconstruction and development, as opposed to its original stronger focus on reconstruction. With regard to the International Monetary Fund agreement, Latin American countries got a provision expected to benefit commodity exporters, instructing the Fund to take into consideration exceptional requirements of borrowing countries. The IMF agreement also was tolerant of the multiple exchange rates that existed in a number of Latin American countries at the time.
(Here I must mention a misconception that pops up in discussions of Latin American countries at Bretton Woods. They were the largest regional bloc, but their influence was less than their numbers. The conference proceeded mostly by consensus, avoiding formal votes on contested issues where possible, because a contested agreement rammed through by majority vote would have jeopardized the support of the United States, the major source of funds. The United States, in turn, could not simply dictate terms because the IMF and World Bank would have lacked legitimacy had they been viewed as little more than fronts for U.S. policies.)
East Asia was represented at Bretton Woods only by China and by the Philippines, the latter still an American colony but scheduled to become independent soon. Helleiner calls attention to Sun Yat-Sen’s book International Development of China, a pioneering effort in what later came to be called development economics. It had a strong influence on subsequent Chinese thinking about economic development and some influence abroad. Before Bretton Woods, China submitted its own plan for the IMF, alongside the British, American, Canadian, and French plans. It has been neglected by most historical accounts, including the IMF’s official history.[2] At Bretton Woods, China got a clause inserted into the World Bank agreement allowing that in special circumstances, the Bank could make loans not tied to specific projects, hence promoting overall development goals.
India’s delegation at Bretton Woods, a mixture of Britons and Indians, effectively represented India’s particular interests even though India was still a British colony. The overall attitude of British officials toward developmentalist ideas was lukewarm, a result in part of Britain’s fragile war finances and the knowledge that resources Britain could command through its empire would be greatly reduced if the colonies were to have more local control of their economic policies. Keynes was more developmentalist than the British consensus. He had, for instance, suggested as early as 1913 that India should have a state-owned central bank with a development focus, and he was critical of the idea, eventually adopted, to establish a currency board in Burma after it separated monetarily from India following World War II.[3]
Delegates from Eastern Europe were, naturally, keenly interested in the IBRD’s reconstruction role, but the Polish delegation appreciated the case for development lending given that Eastern Europe other than Czechoslovakia could be seen as a backward region.
In the final chapter, Helleiner traces the subsequent fate of developmentalist ideas at the IMF and IBRD. The Cold War had the effect that what came to be called the Third World was, as its name implied, low in international status. Today, though, with the Cold War past and emerging markets accounting for roughly half of world output, “echoes of the Bretton Woods development discussions have begun to be heard once again” (p. 276).
Notes:
1. Van Dormael is a retired businessman turned amateur historian, Conway is a journalist, Steil is an economist, and Eric Helleiner is a political scientist. Professional historians are notable by their absence from deep study of Bretton Woods, although Eric Rauchway, a professor at the University of California-Davis, has a forthcoming account.
2. J. Keith Horsefield, The International Monetary Fund 1945-1965: Twenty Years of International Monetary Cooperation, 3 volumes (Washington, D.C.: International Monetary Fund, 1969).
3. The countries whose monetary reforms Helleiner discusses — Paraguay, Cuba, Burma, Ethiopia — have not been known for long-term monetary stability under the central banks that all eventually established. Might they in fact have been better off with more rigid monetary authorities?
Kurt Schuler, an economist, is Senior Fellow in Financial History at the Center for Financial Stability in New York. He is the editor, with Andrew Rosenberg, of The Bretton Woods Transcripts (2012).

Who Was at Bretton Woods?

In a new CFS paper released on July 1st, Mark Bernkopf and I offer a nearly complete list of the people who attended the 1944 Bretton Woods conference as delegates, secretarial staff, or journalists. There were roughly 700 people listed among several documents in the conference proceedings published in 1948 and the unpublished telephone directories issued during the conference.
In addition to the people directly concerned with the work of the conference, there were a number of Boy Scouts who helped distribute documents and move microphones, plus military messengers and police. None are listed in any document we have seen, though. Additionally, there were of course the staff not only of the Mount Washington Hotel, where the conference was held, but of three other hotels nearby that accommodated overflow boarders. The Bretton Arms Inn, within walking distance of the Mount Washington Hotel, is still in existence, while the more remote Crawford House and Maplewood Hotel no longer exist.
Mark Bernkopf, my coauthor, established in the 1990s what may have been the first Web site on central banking generally as opposed to the sites of particular central banks. It has since been superseded by other sites to which it served as an example and a spur, especially the “Central bank hub” section of the Bank for International Settlements site. After I found Mark’s site and contacted him by e-mail to ask him a question about it, we found that we lived within walking distance, and struck up a lasting friendship. A stint at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before he established the Web site contributed to Mark’s interest in both the practice and history of central banking.

Who Was at Bretton Woods?

In a new CFS paper, Mark Bernkopf and I offer a nearly complete list of the people who attended the 1944 Bretton Woods conference as delegates, secretarial staff, or journalists. There were roughly 700 people listed among several documents in the conference proceedings published in 1948 and the unpublished telephone directories issued during the conference.
In addition to the people directly concerned with the work of the conference, there were a number of Boy Scouts who helped distribute documents and move microphones, plus military messengers and police. None are listed in any document we have seen, though. Additionally, there were of course the staff not only of the Mount Washington Hotel, where the conference was held, but of three other hotels nearby that accommodated overflow boarders. The Bretton Arms Inn, within walking distance of the Mount Washington Hotel, is still in existence, while the more remote Crawford House and Maplewood Hotel no longer exist.
Mark Bernkopf, my coauthor, established in the 1990s what may have been the first Web site on central banking generally as opposed to the sites of particular central banks. It has since been superseded by other sites to which it served as an example and a spur, especially the “Central bank hub” section of the Bank for International Settlements site. After I found Mark’s site and contacted him by e-mail to ask him a question about it, we found that we lived within walking distance, and struck up a lasting friendship. A stint at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York before he established the Web site contributed to Mark’s interest in both the practice and history of central banking.

Bretton Woods e o Brasil (3): algumas descobertas recentes - Kurt Schuler, entrevista a Cyro Andrade, fim (Valor)

Continuo a postagem dos materiais interessando os pesquisadores das instituições de Bretton Woods, série começada nas postagens anteriores (aqui e aqui):

Bretton Woods and Brazil Interview, Part Two

This post concludes an e-mail interview I had with Cyro Franklin de Andrade, editor of the Brazilian magazine Valor econômico. The first part is in a previous post. Questions are in italics, answers are in Roman (regular) type.
8. You say that “talented delegates played important roles out of proportion of the small size of their countries”. Could you please elaborate on this?
The European countries at the conference except for the Soviet Union and the United Kingdom were all under German occupation. The delegates from those countries represented governments in exile, which had no domestic political power. In addition, many of them were from countries that, even after the war ended, could not be expected to have great importance to the world economy. Even so, because of their keen intellects, delegates from Greece (Kryiaks Varvaressos), Norway (Wilhelm Keilhau), and Czechoslovakia (Ervin Hexner) had important jobs as committee “reporters” (who summarized events in lower-level committees to the higher-level “commissions”). They also were active in debate as delegates of their countries, and they influenced the opinions of the other delegates. From Latin America, Luis Machado of Cuba was also such a delegate.
9. Another criticism is that the Americans and the British sought to avoid voting, preferring to seek decisions by consensus. It would be a way of avoiding the influence of Latin American countries, which represented more than half of the countries and could form majority with the support of only a few Europeans. Is this true? Can it be perceived in the transcripts?
The delegates understood that deciding important questions strictly by votes, rather than by first achieving consensus, would be counterproductive, and there is discussion of that point in the transcripts. Most of the capital for the IMF and World Bank would come from the largest economies, which could refuse to participate if outvoted at the conference by the smaller economies. On the other hand, the large economies understood that the small economies could equally refuse to participate if the large economies tried to dictate matters. So, it was clear that without a consensus across the large and small economies alike, the IMF and World Bank would not be the truly worldwide institutions that the countries participating wanted them to be. The conference was a first step in seeing whether consensus could be achieved. It was, and after the IMF and World Bank began operations, they operated, and to a large extent have continued to operate, on the basis of consensus.
10. The method of avoiding votes by pausing for objections has been attributed to Keynes, and sometimes very briefly indeed, avoiding the hazard of debate. Is this true? Is this apparent from the transcripts?
Keynes was eager to move quickly. The IMF was the top priority of the Bretton Woods conference. Until just before the conference, it was uncertain whether an agreement on the World Bank was even possible. The conference focused on the IMF in its first days, and did almost nothing concerning the World Bank until halfway through the conference. Ultimately, the important issues concerning the World Bank do seem to have been debated, but unfortunately no transcripts of those meetings exist.
11. Committee 3, on “Organization and Management of the Fund”, was chaired by Arthur de Souza Costa, Brazil’s Minister of Finance. Why was he chosen for this task? Is there any special detail you would like to mention on how Souza Costa has acted in this role?
The organizers of the conference wanted broad participation, not domination by a few countries. They were careful to ensure that important jobs, such as committee chairmanships, were distributed among many countries. Therefore Brazil, which was already a large economy among what we would today call the emerging markets, was almost certain to receive one of the important jobs. Arthur de Souza Costa was the leader of the Brazilian delegation, experienced in financial matters, and spoke good English, the official language of the conference.
As the chairman of Committee 3, my impression is that he had a “light touch” as chairman: he kept the committee on schedule but was content to let the more active delegates and the committee’s “reporter,” Ervin Hexner of Czechoslovakia, shape the debate.
As you may be aware, in late 1944, after returning to Brazil, de Souza Costa gave a speech that was published as a pamphlet, Bretton Woods e o Brasil. Unfortunately–from my perspective–it says very little about his personal experiences at the Bretton Woods conference; it is mainly about the rationale for the IMF and the World Bank. Perhaps there is material in Brazilian archives and personal papers from such people as him, Roberto Campos, Eugênio Gudin, or Francisco Alves dos Santo-Filho that a Brazilian researcher could use to deepen our knowledge about the conference.
This entry was posted in Bretton Woods by Kurt Schuler. Bookmark the permalink.

About Kurt Schuler

Kurt Schuler, co-editor of The Bretton Woods Transcripts, is Senior Fellow of Financial History at the Center for Financial Stability and an economist in the Office of International Affairs at the United States Department of the Treasury.

Bretton Woods e o Brasil (2): algumas descobertas recentes - Kurt Schuler, entrevista a Cyro Andrade (Valor)

Continuo a postagem dos materiais interessando os pesquisadores das instituições de Bretton Woods, série começada no post anterior (aqui):


Bretton Woods and Brazil Interview, Part One


Here is the text of an e-mail interview I had with Cyro Franklin de Andrade, editor of the Brazilian magazine Valor econômico, which formed the basis of two articles in Portuguese mentioned in myprevious post. Questions are in italics, answers are in Roman (regular) type.
1. How could it be explained that the transcripts you have found remained forgotten for so long? What were your immediate next steps after finding them? Where are the originals now?
Much of the answer, I think, is that the Bretton Woods conference received more attention from economists than from historians. Economists are trained to analyze statistical or verbal material prepared by others. They are not as often trained to go find new or neglected material.
After I found the transcripts in the U.S. Treasury Library I showed them to the librarians, who were unaware that the transcripts existed. The Treasury Library’s set of the transcripts is now stored in a cabinet. As for the other sets, see my reply to question 3.
2.   Which remarks by John Maynard Keynes were unfamiliar to you and caught your attention? What other details and / or passages of the transcripts would you highlight as being especially telling about what was only partly known so far?
I saw Keynes’s remarks in a meeting of the “commission” (committee) on the World Bank. Keynes was the chairman of the commission, so of course he did much of the talking. (Unfortunately, because of a shortage of stenographers, there is only one meeting of that commission in the transcripts.) Because Keynes has been a person of such great interest to so many researchers, I thought that if the transcript had already been known, it would already have been published somewhere. I found that it had not been published.
On the question of what is especially telling, the transcripts make clear a number of points. One is that the allocation of “quotas” (capital subscriptions), which were linked to voting power, was extremely contentious and many countries were dissatisfied—as has often happened in later years, when quotas have been reallocated. A second point is that there is a place in the transcripts where the delegates are talking about whether the IMF should conduct its business in gold or whether it should accept currencies convertible into gold. A U.S. delegate remarks that the U.S. dollar was at the time the only major currency convertible into gold. That was the origin of the Bretton Woods monetary system as being based on both the dollar and gold, rather than being purely based on gold. Yet another point that is very clear in the transcripts is that the Soviet Union did not want to reveal information about its economy to the rest of the world. The Soviet Union signed the Bretton Woods agreements but later decided not to become a member of the IMF and World Bank, and part of the reason was that they did not want to comply with the obligation of IMF members to reveal detailed economic information.
3. You found that there was another copy of the transcripts in the IMF archives and what appears to be the original in the National Archives. Are these copies of the same originals? Or are there differences that distinguishes one copy from another, including the one you’ve found in the Treasury’s Library?
The copies in the IMF Archives and the Treasury Library appear identical. They are both Photostats, an early kind of photocopy, bound in 4 volumes. The only difference is that the Treasury Library copies have the name of Harry Dexter White written in them, while the IMF copies have the name of Edward Bernstein written in them. (White was the chief U.S. negotiator at Bretton Woods and Bernstein was his deputy. Both men worked at the U.S. Treasury Department during Bretton Woods and later went to work at the IMF.) The National Archives has what appears to be the original set. The National Archives papers are loose, rather than being bound in volumes; the paper not shiny like a Photostat copy; and it has clear type and original pencil or pen marks.  As far as I know, these three sets of the transcripts are the only ones in existence. In its early years, the IMF used its copy of the transcript to make a retyped version of the portions of the transcripts dealing with the IMF. It distributed a limited number of copies for internal use. The IMF Archives has a few of them. The IMF Archives posted a copy online earlier this year, when Andrew Rosenberg and I were finishing work on our book. It is here:
4. You’ve found that the transcripts had been known to and cited by earlier scholars, but that present-day scholars were unaware of the earlier references. Which of the different copies had been known of and cited by earlier scholars? Which scholars?
J. Keith Horsefield, who wrote the official history of the IMF’s early years (published in 1969), cited the copy in the IMF Archives. Henry Bittermann, an American who was part of the conference secretariat, cited one of the transcripts in a 1971 article in a law journal, but did not specify where the transcript was located. Dag Halvorsen, a Norwegian journalist, cited the National Archives holdings in a 1982 history dissertation published in Norwegian. (I found what may be the only copy of the dissertation outside of Norway, in the Library of Congress in Washington.)
 5.  In your opinion, which books came closer to the essential points of the transcripts you found? What information failures have been diffused throughout the years that can now be noticed with the publication of the transcripts?
Previously, the only detailed book exclusively devoted to the conference was Armand van Dormael’s 1978 book Bretton Woods: The Birth of a Monetary System. Van Dormael is a Belgian businessman who, during a long retirement (he is now in his 90s) has developed a productive second career as a historian of modern times and technology. There are also some letters, memos, and reminiscences by participants at the conference, such as those in The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes and in Stanley Black’s book of interviews with Edward Bernstein, A Levite Among the Priests.
I don’t think there were any great information failures about the Bretton Woods conference. We already knew the main result of the conference, of course: the agreements on the IMF and World Bank. We also had some details from previously published material. What the conference transcripts do is add much more detail, and, in particular, they help us understand how the conference accomplished so much: the conference did not start from zero (the Atlantic City conference, just before Bretton Woods, arrived at preliminary draft agreements for the IMF and World Bank—see the answer to question 7); the delegates were smart; they focused on essential matters; they generally avoided giving long speeches; and they worked very hard, from 9 a.m. sometimes to 3 a.m. the next morning.
6. You’ve said that the official history of the IMF’s early years, written by Keith Horsefield and published in 1969, referred to them [the transcripts] only to dismiss them as “unofficial verbatim reports, but the incomplete and provisional nature of these reports makes them of uncertain value”.  How should we interpret the expression “uncertain value”?
Because the transcripts were not intended for publication, they contain sections where the stenographers could not hear clearly what was being said, or did not understand well the topic being discussed. Unlike the case with a transcript of a legislative hearing or a courtroom trial, the stenographers at Bretton Woods did not consult the speakers or other witnesses and try to clarify all the unclear sections. In my opinion, though, it is possible from the context to give a likely account of what the delegates said in most of the unclear sections.
7. Some say that what happened in Bretton Woods was just a sort of “theater”: what was to be discussed and decided was discussed and decided before and after the conference. How do you evaluate this opinion?
Immediately before Bretton Woods, there was a two-week conference in Atlantic City, New Jersey for a smaller group of delegates (mainly those from the larger economies, although I do not know if Brazil participated). At that conference some basic ideas about the IMF and World Bank received concrete form. It was still the job of the Bretton Woods conference to accept or reject those proposals, however, and to add many more details in areas where the Atlantic City conference had offered few or no specific proposals.
(Part 2 will come in a later post.)


This entry was posted in Bretton Woods by Kurt Schuler. Bookmark the permalink.

About Kurt Schuler

Kurt Schuler, co-editor of The Bretton Woods Transcripts, is Senior Fellow of Financial History at the Center for Financial Stability and an economist in the Office of International Affairs at the United States Department of the Treasury.