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Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida.
terça-feira, 25 de agosto de 2015
Federal Reserve System - recursos para pesquisadores em historia monetaria e economica
V Congresso Latino-Americano de Historia Economica (SP, 19-21/07/2016)
Quinto Congresso Latino-Americano de História Econômica (CLADHE V)
Submissões
CHAMADA PARA APRESENTAÇÃO DE PROPOSTAS DE SIMPÓSIOS (PRORROGAÇÃO)
- Resumo com justificativa da proposta do simpósio;
- Curriculum vitae breve dos coordenadores: devem demostrar uma trajetória acadêmica reconhecida relacionada ao tema proposto;
- Lista dos potenciais participantes e possíveis comentaristas, especificando em cada caso a filiação institucional.
Informações
2015 |
01 de Julho 15 de setembro |
Período de inscrição de propostas de simpósios temáticos |
15 de Outubro |
Divulgação dos simpósios aprovados e abertura de inscrição de resumos |
|
2016 |
01 de Março |
Data limite para submissão de resumos para os coordenadores dos simpósios |
01 de Abril |
Divulgação dos resumos aprovados para os simpósios |
|
15 de Maio |
Data limite para envio de artigos completos para os coordenadores dos simpósios Divulgação da programação preliminar do CLADHE V e início das inscrições |
|
19 de Junho |
Limite para pagamento da inscrição com desconto |
|
19-21 Julho |
Realização do CLADHE V |
Exchange regimes in the US: book review (EH-Net Diplo)
Michael D. Bordo, Owen F. Humpage and Anna J. Schwartz:
Strained Relations: U.S. Foreign-Exchange Operations and Monetary Policy in the Twentieth Century
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015. x + 442 pp. $97.50 (cloth), ISBN: 978-0-226-05148-2.
Reviewed for EH.Net by Hali J. Edison, International Monetary Fund.
This book is clearly destined to become a classic, leaving a mark on future research on foreign-exchange operations. In 1990, Michael Bordo (Rutgers University and NBER) and Anna Schwartz (NBER) began their collaboration to document the evolution of U.S. intervention. Ten years later, Owen Humpage of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland joined the team. Regrettably, in 2012, before the book was finalized Anna Schwartz passed away.
The book explores the evolution of foreign-exchange intervention in the United States in the twentieth century. During this period, the United States transitioned from participating in the international gold standard regime to fixed exchange rates (“dollar standard”) and finally to a regime of floating exchange rates. Policymakers around the world during this period grappled with the choice of exchange rate regime, the role of monetary policy, and international capital mobility — often referred to as the trilemma. The book traces the changes in U.S. institutional arrangements and policymakers’ thinking to the economic and political events drawing extensively from Federal Reserve documents.
Chapter 1 lays out the plan of the book. It starts by describing how attitudes about foreign-exchange intervention and monetary policy evolved over the decades and how this was eventually reflected in theories of intervention and institutional arrangements.
Chapter 2 explains that the model for modern foreign-exchange-market operations can be linked to the operations under the gold standard. The authors argue that the historical evolution of exchange-market operations before 1934 yields important insights into understanding modern-day practices. For instance, the chapter illustrates early uses of secrecy, sterilization, and forward transactions, all of which became important methods of modern intervention.
The creation of the Exchange Stabilization Fund (ESF) in the United States is described in Chapter 3. This chapter was written by Anna Schwartz and maintains the same rich details as contained in her 1963 seminal book with Milton Friedman, A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960. It clarifies the role of the ESF and elaborates on the institutional arrangements. Two key features of the ESF are that it is under exclusive control of the U.S. Secretary of the Treasury and is self-financing, such that ESF funding is outside of the congressional appropriation process.
After outlining the background of the institutional arrangements, chapters 4 through 6 discuss the evolution of U.S. foreign-exchange operations since the end of World War II. Each of the chapters captures a distinct episode, describing the economic and political developments and the evolution of institutional arrangements. Chapters 5 and 6 also evaluate the effectiveness of U.S. intervention, drawing heavily from the methodology laid out in research conducted by the authors.
Chapter 4 focuses on the Bretton Woods era from 1944 to 1973. During this period countries attempted to maintain par values for their currencies, promote free cross-border financial flows, and achieve domestic macroeconomic objectives such as full employment. Intervention was one of the policy instruments used to achieve these objectives. According to the authors, intervention may have been successful in the sense that it delayed the disintegration of the Bretton Woods system but it did not fix the problem: Current account surplus countries did not want to undermine their domestic macroeconomic objectives to maintain fixed exchange rates.
Chapter 5 covers the foreign-exchange-market operations during the early float period (1973 to 1981). On March 12, 1973, the Bretton Woods era fixed-exchange-rate system ended. During much of the period, policymakers viewed that foreign-exchange markets were subject to bouts of disorder, requiring intervention to direct the exchange rate along a path they viewed consistent with their domestic policy objectives. The chapter describes the evolution of the institutional arrangement, including the Federal Reserve’s swap line with the U.S. Treasury, known as the warehousing facility.
Chapter 6 considers the currency operations and the ongoing debates during the Volcker and Greenspan era (1981 to 1997). Early in the period, between 1981 and 1985, the U.S. adopted a minimalist approach that was spearheaded by the U.S. Treasury. As the dollar strengthened in 1985, the United States assumed an activist approach, intervening frequently. The chapter includes details of the 1983 Jurgensen Report, commissioned by G7 officials to study intervention. In addition, it provides a rich discussion of the 1989-1990 conversation within the Federal Reserve of its involvement in U.S. intervention operations, partly reflecting the report from a staff Task Force on System Foreign Exchange Operations. The United States essentially stopped intervening in the mid-1990s, but has never officially ruled out intervention.
Overall, this book describes the evolution of U.S. policy regarding currency-market interventions, the institutional arrangements, and the interaction of currency-market policy with monetary policy. It documents how U.S. intervention and exchange rate policy changed over time, reflecting a learning process. The work leaves open many interesting doors for more analysis that could and should engage future scholars.
Hali J. Edison (Hedison@imf.org), International Monetary Fund, is author of The Effectiveness of Central-Bank Intervention: A Survey of the Literature after 1982 (Special Papers in International Economics, Princeton University Press).
Copyright (c) 2015 by EH.Net. All rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational uses if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact the EH.Net Administrator (administrator@eh.net). Published by EH.Net (August 2015). All EH.Net reviews are archived at http://eh.net/book-reviews/
A Grande Estrategia dos EUA - book review
New items have been posted in H-Diplo.
Kelanic on Martel, 'Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy'[review]
Reviewed by Rosemary A. Kelanic (Williams College)
Published on H-Diplo (August, 2015)
Commissioned by Seth Offenbach
In Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy, William C. Martel examines the history of grand strategic thought—both internationally and in the United States—to draw lessons for contemporary US policymakers. Such a review is both timely and necessary, Martel argues, because the United States has failed to formulate a coherent grand strategy since the end of the Cold War, when the strategy of containment expired alongside its primary inspiration, the Soviet Union. In Martel’s view, countries unable to adapt their foreign policies in times of transition inevitably suffer. Thus, the grave stakes of getting grand strategy wrong warrant a comprehensive reevaluation on the level of first principles, a return to the drawing board—not just for US policy but in our overall conception of what grand strategy is, and what it should be.
Martel’s ambitious book fills the blank drawing board with all of the information a person might want to analyze if rebuilding American grand strategy from scratch. Remarkable in breadth and scope, it does this in three parts. First, the book defines the concept of grand strategy and traces its intellectual lineage from Sun Tzu and Thucydides to Henry Kissinger and Bernard Brodie. The goal of the exercise is to provide a general framework applicable to all great powers across time and space. Yet, because Martel rejects universal theories and embraces American exceptionalism, his review of grand strategy in general terms cannot suffice to get him where he wants to go—namely, to offer recommendations for present-day US policymakers. Consequently, the next section of the book takes a second sweep at history, focusing this time on the grand strategies of pivotal American presidents beginning with George Washington and concluding with Barack Obama. This is the heart of the book and perhaps its strongest part. Whereas the first section largely synthesizes from existing approaches, here Martel develops the three principles that, he argues, represent the essence of a specifically “American” grand strategy: a strong nurturance of the domestic foundations of national power, an interest in preserving the status quo international order, and multilateralism in confronting the “sources of disorder” challenging the system. These are the basics to which Martel urges a return in the third and concluding section, where he lays out his recommendations for future grand strategy.
Martel defines grand strategy as “a coherent statement of the state’s highest political ends to be pursued globally over the long term” (p. 32). The means of achieving political ends include not just military forces but all aspects of a state’s capabilities that can be brought to bear for the declared purpose, such as diplomatic, technological, and economic efforts. These nonmilitary means are left vague, unfortunately, and Martel offers no examples or guidelines on how to differentiate them from run-of-the-mill policies. In other words, whereas in the military realm, strategy can be distinguished from operations, tactics, and technology, no ready hierarchy exists to separate, say, a “grand strategic” economic policy from lower-order policies with mundane origins. Nor does Martel construct one. Resultantly, whereas Martel can chide historical figures like Napoleon for the mistake of confusing grand strategy with operations, nearly anything a leader does in the nonmilitary arena can be swept up into grand strategy. The author himself commits this error by arguing in the concluding chapter that infrastructure (“world-class roads, bridges, electric power grids, national broadband, and mass transit systems”) and the social safety net (“education, health care, and retirement systems”) among other things count as grand strategy because they form the domestic foundations of national power (p. 355). These claims resemble campaign-speak more than grand strategy.
Another element absent from the book, aside from a clear rubric to sift grand strategy from the soil of mundane policy, is a discussion of how policymakers should think about uncertainty, chance, and tradeoffs. Leaders operate with incomplete information in an unpredictable world. Martel would not deny that, yet he provides no real discussion of risk or how policymakers might evaluate strategies under uncertainty. Martel also glosses over the problem of making tradeoffs in achieving political objectives. Instead of acknowledging that tradeoffs are an inescapable part of policymaking, he seems to assume that technocratic solutions can allow leaders to have their cake and eat it too. Put together, grand strategic success is achievable—and countries can attain their full range of goals—simply if competing objectives are properly balanced and means finely calibrated. When strategy fails, in the sense that political objectives are not achieved, it is because leaders failed to find the correct balance of policies, not because of unlucky breaks, incomplete information, or a high propensity for risk. As a result, it is impossible to distinguish poorly designed grand strategies from well-designed ones that simply came up unlucky at the craps table.
The best part of Martel’s book is his discussion of American grand strategy since the country’s founding. Here, Martel succinctly lays out the core challenges facing presidents from Washington onward and explains the grand strategies chosen by each. Though he largely synthesizes from secondary sources rather than primary accounts, Martel presents the long and complex history with admirable clarity. Anyone looking for a primer on historical US grand strategy would learn a great deal from this book. Yet the section does more than simply sum up the American experience. It distills from the history what Martel argues are the three common principles underlying US grand strategy across changing times: a strong emphasis on the domestic sources of power, a status quo disposition, and multilateralism in defending the status quo. These three principles are Martel’s most original contribution and they merit consideration and debate by scholars with competing views.
An obvious point for criticism of Martel’s three principles, for which he surprisingly offers no “pre-buttal,” is his characterization of the United States as a status quo power from its founding. Such scholars as John J. Mearsheimer point out that the United States acted quite aggressively to push European great powers out of the Western Hemisphere up through the end of the nineteenth century.[1] Only after the United States achieved regional hegemony by ejecting Spain from the Americas in the 1898 Spanish-American War did it transform into a status quo power. Curiously, Martel writes extensively about Manifest Destiny, or the belief that the United States should annex territory all the way to the Pacific Coast, and the 1846-48 Mexican-American War, which accomplished this vision by wresting New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Colorado, Nevada, and California from Mexico. He even admits these are cases of expansionism. Yet he classifies them as efforts to “build the domestic foundations of the nation’s power”—sweeping them into the same category as social spending and infrastructure projects (p. 195). These territories were not “domestic” until they were conquered, which means forcibly overturning the status quo. In light of this, it is odd, to say the least, that Martel proceeds to argue that the United States is, at its essence, a status quo power.
In all, while not perfect, Martel’s book provides a magisterial history of grand strategy since ancient times with a particular focus on the nature and origins of American grand strategy today. Commendable in breadth and ambition, it offers students of American statecraft a handy, readable account from which they will learn much.
Note
[1]. John J. Mearsheimer, The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, updated ed. (New York: Norton, 2014), 238.
Printable Version: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=43417
Citation: Rosemary A. Kelanic. Review of Martel, William C., Grand Strategy in Theory and Practice: The Need for an Effective American Foreign Policy. H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. August, 2015.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=43417
segunda-feira, 24 de agosto de 2015
Regimes economicos na historia do Brasil: artigo de Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Enquanto isso, no reino da diplomacia: "Meia volta, volver..." - Concurso do Rio Branco imita o governo...
FLÁVIA FOREQUE
Folha de S. Paulo, 24/08/2015
Alvo de crítica de candidatos, a questão sobre os "altos níveis de corrupção" no Brasil, segundo a visão do governo do Reino Unido, foi anulada em concurso para a carreira de diplomata.
Nesta segunda-feira (24), foi divulgada no "Diário Oficial da União" a lista de candidatos aprovados para a segunda etapa da prova do Instituto Rio Branco. O Cespe, responsável pelo exame, divulgou ainda o gabarito definitivo, após análise de recursos dos concorrentes.
O item sobre a política externa britânica foi motivo de polêmica no início do mês, quando a prova objetiva foi realizada.
A afirmação, retirada do site oficial do Reino Unido para potenciais exportadores, afirmava que o governo daquele país considerava como desafios para realizar negócios os "altos níveis de corrupção" e a "importância das relações pessoais" no Brasil. Para muitos candidatos, o tom fugia do discurso diplomático e do histórico do relacionamento entre os países.
O Brasil na OCDE: a hora da plenitude - Alberto Pfeifer, Paulo Roberto de Almeida (OESP)
domingo, 23 de agosto de 2015
A Grande Corrupcao em graficos dinamicos no Estadao - visualize, e divulgue...
O jornal O Estado de São Paulo preparou gráficos dinâmicos sobre a Operação Lava Jato.
Quando clicar nos tópicos à esquerda, aguarde alguns segundo para a informação surgir.
No item políticos, coloque o cursor sobre a foto para saber o nome dele.
Die brasilianische Diplomatie: meu livro sobre a diplomacia brasileira em alemao (Akademiker Verlag)
Die brasilianische Diplomatie aus historischer Sicht: Essays über die Auslandsbeziehungen und Außenpolitik Brasiliens
(Saarbrücken: Akademiker Verlag, 2015, 196 p.; Übersetzung aus dem Portugiesischen ins Deutsche: Ulrich Dressel; ISBN: 978-3-639-86648-3).
O Sumário, tal qual: