O FMI aos 80 anos: mais efetivo, exitoso, ou desafiado em seu desempenho? - Gita Bhatt (IMF Bulettin)

 

As IMF Turns 80, Mounting Global Challenges Mean World Must Work Together

(Credit: Original illustration by Daniel Liévano)

By Gita Bhatt

“Prosperity, like peace, is indivisible,” US Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. said as he opened the Bretton Woods conference in 1944. It was, as he put it, an “elementary economic axiom” to help guide the founders of the IMF.

Today, these words are more important than ever. Our biggest challenges—from global warming to demographic and technological transformations—cannot be resolved by countries acting alone.

Yet just when we need greater international cooperation, we get the opposite: more fragmentation, conflict, and global disengagement; more zero-sum thinking that risks leaving our world poorer and less secure.

As we mark the IMF’s 80th anniversary, we ask: How can the Fund continue to adapt to the new realities and the changing needs of our 190 members? This F&D issue seeks to provide answers that are inspiring and thought-provoking.

IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva strikes an optimistic note and calls for “21st century multilateralism”—a framework for international cooperation that’s more open and representative, with a better balance between advanced economies and the voices of emerging market and developing economies.

These voices are represented in this issue by top policymakers such as Barbados’ Prime Minister Mia Mottley, Kenyan President William Ruto, and Pablo García-Silva, a former vice-governor of Chile’s central bank. The economic fortunes of their regions depend, in many ways, on a better multilateral system, and they suggest ways in which the IMF can deliver that for its members.

On that point, proposals abound. Adam Posen reckons that narrowing the IMF’s mandate to its core macroeconomic mission and giving it greater operational independence would make it more evenhanded. Raghuram Rajan makes a related point: delegating more authority to the IMF’s management—coupled with reform to more fairly allocate quotas, the financial contributions paid by each member—could help bring a fragmented world together on critical issues.

Among these is climate change. That brings us to Masood Ahmed’s piece, which considers the ongoing debate over the IMF’s proper role in addressing the climate threat.

The Fund, of course, has long adapted to change. The IMF’s Ceyla Pazarbasioglu shows how much the organization has evolved in its regular reviews of member economies and its regional and global analyses. In a similar vein, Atish Rex Ghosh and Andrew Stanley chart how IMF lending, in particular, has evolved rapidly over the past 30 years. And historian Harold James draws lessons from the past for global financial risk management.

As we move forward, one thing remains clear. “We cannot have a better world without international cooperation,” notes Georgieva. Taking inspiration from John Maynard Keynes, one of the IMF’s founding fathers, she concludes: “Keynes would encourage us to go even further as a global ‘transmission line’ for sound economic policies, financial resources, knowledge—and as the ultimate platform for global economic cooperation.”

We also mark the 60th anniversary of this quarterly magazine, Finance & Development. Just as the Bretton Woods institutions and the global economy have adapted, so too has F&D. Today we are a platform on which thought leaders in many fields and from many countries explain and debate issues central to the global economy.

I want to express my gratitude to all our readers and contributors as we look forward to another 60 years of fresh thinking and inspiring debate.

 

D-Day 80 years on: World War II - Adam Tooze

This week we commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day, 6 June 1944, when American, British, Canadian and French troops landed on five beaches along the coastline of Normandy in Northern of France to begin the liberation of Western Europe. Time was running out for the Empire that Hitler’s Germany had built in Western Europe after its staggering military victories in 1939-1941.

The rest of the world may be somewhat puzzled by this trip back in time, but for “the West” the 80th anniversary of “D-Day” is the perfect occasion for a rally. For the United States, France and the Commonwealth (the former members of the British Empire), D-Day is the decisive turning point in “our” World War II. 

In June 1944 the landings had been a long time coming. After a series of crushing defeats between 1939 and 1942, the comeback of the British Empire and the USA in World War II began in North Africa in 1942 and continued in Italy 1943. But, it was the landing in Normandy in June 1944 that were the decisive breakthrough. The destruction of the German forces in Northern France opened the door to the liberation of Paris and to the eventual meeting with the Red Army in Central Germany in May 1945. 

Many evenings, growing up in West Germany in the 1970s, my parents, who were children of wartime Britain, would tune in to the BBC World Service. The broadcast began then with a radio call sign that the BBC had used in World War II: “This is London” followed by an orchestral rendition of the 17th century tune Lillibullero (or Lilliburlero). Translated into morse code the opening bars sound out the “Victory V” - dit-dit-dit-dah. As a child, I imagined people across occupied Europe huddled around their radio sets listening for that tune, waiting for the moment of D-day to come.

That may seem like an extraordinary degree of nostalgia, but the war then was not ancient history. It was no further away than the late 1980s or early 1990s are for us today. Those wartime broadcasts were closer to us in the 1970s than the original release of Madonna’s greatest hits are to us today, or George Michael singing “White Christmas” in 1984, let alone Abba. 

That memory, so close and so far, stirs in me still. And it troubles me.

What troubles me now is how this “legendary” history of World War II continues to operate at the heart of Western political ideology. How it is used, 80 years later to frame and shape our understanding of a radically different world. What I struggle with is how to frame a historical understanding of the war that wrenches it out of this framing, that is not saccharine, that is not nostalgic that is not atavistic, but speaks in more challenging and eye-opening ways to the present. 

I’ve been thinking about this for a while. And I want in this mini series to pull together some pieces through which to approach this question.

What is surprising is that almost 80 years after the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan the history of World War II is still a live historical and ideological reference point. In Russia and China, victory day is still commemorated with true pomp and ceremony. The horrors of the period - whether the Holocaust, Soviet violence, mass bombing, the Bengal famine, or Japan’s atrocities in China and Korea - shape memory and trauma culture down to the present day, in different ways. 

In an odd twist of history, World War II has been markedly more present during Joe Biden’s Presidency than it was under either Trump or Obama. It may have something to do with Biden’s age. The American President was born in November 1942, 18 months before D-Day, when the battle of Stalingrad was still raging. 

But it is not just personal nostalgia that is at stake here. Biden’s references to World War 2 are also programmatic. They go hand in hand with his emphatic revival of Atlanticism and bold claims to American leadership in a struggle of democracy v. autocracy.

As Biden travels to France this week, in some corners of US media, the D-Day anniversary is already generating a bow-wave of rhetorical enthusiasm. The NBC headline blares: 

Which dictators does Biden have in mind? Foreign powers for sure. But in 2024 it is first and foremost the United States itself that is at stake. As NBC’s Peter Nicholas blithely continues: 

“In the background of the president's trip to France this week will be his rematch against Donald Trump, who questioned some of the pillars of the post-World War II order. … President Joe Biden leaves the campaign trail this week and flies to France for the 80th anniversary of D-Day, where he’ll give speeches touting American alliances that beat back dictatorships bent on world conquest. Biden is in a long string of presidents who have delivered that sort of message over the years as they built and sustained a Western bloc rooted in free markets, democratic governance and individual freedoms.”

And then comes the zinger: 

“As yet unknown is whether he'll be the last. The race between Biden and Republican Donald Trump is a toss-up at this stage, and if Trump returns to power, there are no assurances he would keep the basic pillars of the post-World War II order intact. As president, Trump considered pulling out of the NATO alliance, which has been a bulwark against Russian aggression since the depths of the Cold War … A senior Trump White House official said in an interview that Trump came within a "wisp" of dropping out of NATO at a summit meeting in Brussels in 2018. More recently, Trump said he would let Russia to do "whatever the hell they want” to European countries that didn’t spend enough on military defense.”

And other members of the Washington foreign policy establishment chime in no less unequivocally: 

“This is a very important opportunity for President Biden to reaffirm our NATO alliance and emphasize that the world is really on the cusp of a turning point,” said Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. “We are living through the middle of the fight for democracy and freedom over authoritarianism.”

Clearly, D-Day as a pillar of historical memory, helps to anchor a conventional understanding in the Washington establishment of what American world leadership should look like. 

The use of World War II and in particular the Normandy landings in this way has its own history. The first major collective commemoration of D-Day took place in 1984 at the instigation of French President François Mitterrand. The early 1980s were a tense moment in the final phase of the Cold War. Normandy was a stage that both Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan relished. And the Biden team clearly know this. 

Biden will speak twice in Normandy this week, first on Thursday, the anniversary of the beach landings and then again, on Friday at Pointe du Hoc, where U.S. Army Rangers scaled cliffs to knock out a German gun emplacement and where Ronald Reagan spoke in 1984, giving a then-famous speech which culminated in the line: “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc.” As NBC reminds us, Reagan went on to win re-election by a landslide.

The 1980s were also the moment when Holocaust consciousness became profoundly influential in Western politics on both sides of the Atlantic. As Reagan’s speech suggests this gave World War II a new significance. Fighting the Nazis became a matter of fighting a murderous anti-semitic regime. In Biden’s fierce attachment to Israel, we see echoes of that revival of Holocaust memory that impacted his generation profoundly. 

Commemorating D-Day in this way is ironic in two ways. 

First the United States and the British Empire were fighting a war in 1944 not as members of a NATO alliance, defined by “Western values”, but in alliance with Stalin’s Soviet Union and China. The commitment of resources to Normandy meant deprioritizing the war in Asia, where China - both its Nationalist and Communist wings - was playing a key role in draining the Japanese military. Meanwhile, in Europe D-day would simply never have been possible without the huge weight of casualties inflicted by the Red Army on Germany’s military. A staggering 80 percent of the battle casualties of the Wehrmacht were inflicted not in the West but on the Eastern Front (Overmans). Arguably a more important anniversary in military terms than D-Day will be 80th anniversary of the destruction of Germany’s Army Group Center in Operation Bagration launched by the Red Army on 22 June 1944. 

The new memory politics of D-Day shaped since the 1980s is ironic also, in that nowhere in the calculations that motivated D-day did the Holocaust feature. In 1944, the Western Allies were not fighting Nazi Germany to stop the Holocaust. They showed scant regard for the Jewish representatives who pleaded for earlier action or bombing of the camps. Stalin’s demands for a “Second Front” and the advances of the Red Army were a factor in the calculations of Churchill and Roosevelt. The fate of the Jews was not. The first concentration camp to be liberated was Majdanek near Lublin in Poland in July 1944. Not until 1945 did the Western allies begin to wake up to the full horror of the Nazi regime and all the way down to the present day there is a tendency to insist that the war in the West was different and “clean”. 

The other way in which World War II is notably present for President Biden is in his many evocations of the “arsenal of democracy”.

The other way in which World War II is notably present for President Biden is in his many evocations of the “arsenal of democracy”.

Nor is this reference limited to the Biden administration. The enthusiasm for FDR's industrial rearmament after 1940 helped to fire the original Green New Deal back in 2018. If the United States could turn itself into a giant mass producer of military aircraft, why should it not be able to pull off the green energy transformation? 

Far from this being a passing phase, to my surprise this same narrative recurs full blast, in the spring of 2024 in Stephanie Kelton’s new documentary, “Finding the Money”. It features an extended section on how generous financing enabled the World War II production miracle complete with the inevitable footage of bombers rolling off Fordist production lines. 

Certainly, D-Day was nothing if not a display of the massive force assembled by the arsenal of democracy. That will be a basic theme of this mini-series: modern war as mobilization. But once again there is an ambiguity in this simplistic celebration of the US-led Western war effort as an inspiration for progressive politics in the 21st century. 

The first point is that the more material is mobilized, the more we flaunt productive power, the more we downplay the role of the fighting men on the frontline. Materialism cuts against heroism. The US Army Rangers scaling the cliffs at Pointe du Hoc were fighting with great bravery, but they had behind them a truly staggering arsenal. Nor was this an accident. The Western way of war, exemplified by D-day put firepower above manpower wherever possible. This is how rich democracies fight if they can. Those who suffer horrendous casualties are, almost by definition, either poor or desperate. 

Furthermore, for all the productive achievement of the USA during World War II, America’s output was no miracle. The US produced what you would expect from a highly productive industrial economy, coming out of a deep recession with ample underemployed resources, liberally provided with purchasing power. Over the period 1939 to 1944, the ratio of armaments production in the Allied coalition to that in the Axis corresponds broadly speaking to the ratio of GDP and steel production. If there was a productive “miracle” in World War II it was not to be found in the West, not in Britain, the United States or Germany, but in the Soviet Union. 

Source: Goldsmith, “The Power of Victory” (1946) 

The really remarkable achievement in this table compiled by Goldsmith, Director of Economics at the US War Production Board, were not the American numbers, but the fact that in the critical years of 1942 and 1943 the Soviet Union outproduced Nazi Germany. And it was not just a matter of quantity. Soviet weapons production was not just gigantic in scale it was also good. Detroit, for all its productive prowess, never produced a tank that could compare with the T-34 or JS series. 

But apart from correcting US hubris what is the significance of these numbers for us today? This surely is the deepest irony and unsettlement of any serious thinking about World War 2. What we celebrate when we celebrate the wartime economies of the Allies is the concentrated and massive deployment of material and energy for the vast production of means of destruction and not just for the production of those tools of war. The entire conduct of the war was based on the vast deployment of energy. The Allied armies, most notably at D-day, were swimming in oil. Never before had a war been as motorized or as dependent on hydrocarbon fuels. 

From the vantage point of the 21st century, if there is a historical grand narrative that does justice to the significance of World War II, you could claim that it is is the question of global political organization, NATO etc. This was indeed new. To call the global blocs that emerged after 1945 “empires” is to lack historical imagination. The Cold War blocs were newfangled assemblages of power based on a far more self-conscious articulation of global ideologies, economic development and military power than any empire had ever delivered. Certainly nothing the Europeans had established in the 18th or 19th centuries came close to measuring up. Crucially, in a stark contrast to the experience after World War I, wartime models of production and organization were continued into the aftermath of 1945. 

The most important manifestation of that continuity of mobilization was in the field of energy. World War II gave birth both to the atomic age and the widespread adoption of oil as a key driver of economic growth after 1945. Allied victory and postwar affluence were based not just on their superior political and social organization but on their vastly greater mobilization of natural resources. And from the vantage point of the 21st century this after all is what Bidenomics and the Green New Dealers are gesturing to in their enthusiasm for the 1940s moment. What connects us to that historical moment is what environmental historians call the “Great Acceleration,” the vast and dramatic acceleration of humanity’s appropriation of nature that reached a turning point in the middle of the 20th century. 

In its globe-spanning dimensions, in its multifaceted integration of the land, the sea, and the air, and in its violent intensity, World War II was the launching point for the Great Acceleration, a giant process of mobilization that continues down to the present day. 

Not for nothing Christophe Bonneuil and Jean-Baptiste Fressoz in their remarkable work The Shock of the Anthropocene propose the term the Thanatocene to describe this melding together of material mobilization and war. 

If the Anthropocene is the idea that humanity as a whole has become a force reshaping the planet in geological terms, the Thanatocene captures the way that war-fighting has animated that process and given it extra force. 

One can think of this as exemplified by the extraordinary armies mobilized by the Allies for the invasion of Normandy, but this collapses what were in fact three different modes of war-fighting that came together to make World War 2 the extreme event that it was. 

The first was the gigantic clash of land armies and accompanying tactical air power that culminated in the huge campaigns of World War 2. It was preeminently the war waged between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, and it was out of that furnace that the Soviet military emerged as the most formidable land army the world had ever seen. It founded Soviet domination across Eastern Europe and into the Far East, crushing the Japanese empire in Manchuria as an afterthought in August 1945. This stood in a tradition that extends back, by way of the great struggle with Napoleon, to the emergence of Russia as a modern military power under Peter the Great. The Normandy campaign - both the landings and the subsequent break out across France - are arguably the only moment when Western war-fighting, that is war-fighting by Britain and the United State, ever approached the scale and drama of this mode of war. It involves a gigantic logistical effort about which I will have more to say in this mini-series. 

The second type of warfare on display in World War II was colonial and racial war, wars like those waged by Italy in Africa from the 1930s, Japan in China and Nazi Germany in the Soviet Union. This involved a project of occupying territory and remaking its population. It was settler colonialism backed by a level of military force never before seen. In the face of an emerging discourse of racial equality and rights, it ostentatiously and explicitly flouted their disregard, insisting on the central significance of racial distinction and hierarchy, up to and including enslavement and genocide. This war would reshape the ethnic map of Europe and do gigantic damage in Asia. As I outlined in an Chartbook 258 earlier this year the remaking of the map of the Middle East and the formation of the Western-sponsored state of Israel were part of that process of territorial and demographic rearrangement that also included the ethnic cleansing of over 12 million Germans from Eastern Europe after 1945. 

But the war witnessed not only this savage form of state-making, but also its opposite, a new type of revolutionary anti-colonial warfare, based above all in a mobilized peasantry. The Chinese Communist Party under Mao Zedong would lay claim to this tradition. But it had its counterparts in the war against Germany waged by Soviet partisans and Josip Broz Tito’s Partisan armies in Yugoslavia. After 1945, it would remake large parts of Asia and Africa. I’ll return to this in a future post in this series. 

Mao spoke metaphorically of guerilla fighters operating like fish in water. But the actual fighting at sea as in the air was reserved by the 1940s for the richest combatants. This is the third dimension of World War II as a physical confrontation. Alongside conventional land war, and colonial and guerrilla struggles, the air war and its close relative, the naval blockade, were the quintessential expression of a hypermodern mode of warfare, in which Britain and the United States, more than any other combatants invested the largest part of their war efforts. By the end of the war, the British and Americans could project force literally around the planet. Huge convoys of ships could carry tens of thousands of soldiers and their equipments across Oceans. Fleets of over a thousand aircraft guided by electronic beams carried thousands of tons of bombs to targets in Europe and Asia. This war unleashed new forms of horror including the incineration of cities from the air. And the bombing was appallingly indiscriminate. In the bombing ahead of D-Day in 1943 and 1944, British and American bombers killed at least 50,000 French civilians. This almost certainly exceeds the number of French civilians killed by the German occupation authorities other than in the resistance. 

Air war in particular was vastly expensive, accounting for forty percent or more of the economic war effort of the Germans, Americans or British. By the end of the war, aerospace industries were the largest sectors of the industrial economy and remade entire regions with new factories and workforces. Out of this gigantic effort was born the technology of modern logistics, radar and sonar, a new generation of aircraft with jet propulsion, and the Manhattan Project. Meanwhile, Germany’s vain effort to find an answer to the West’s air power gave birth to ballistic weapons programs. By the end of the war, cameras mounted on the tips of captured German V-2 rockets fired vertically upward rather than at London or Antwerp provided the first glimpses of the outer edge of the atmosphere and the curvature of the Earth. The war thus literally transformed the way that we see our planet as is captured in this extraordinary newsreel from 1946.

The landings in Normandy in June 1944 concentrated these many facets of modern war. Starting there I want in this series to look at different facets of the way in which war functioned as an accelerator of the great acceleration and how we think and commemorate that process. Posts will include the new modes of war-fighting in the West, the logistical and mechanical base of the war - Jerricans, bulldozers - and other modes of modes of war-fighting. 

A "desrussificação" da Europa central e oriental começando pelos Estados bálticos

Uma série de videos extremamente úteis na compreensão dos fundamentos históricos e das implicações geopolíticas contemporâneas sobre a resistência dos povos da Europa central e oriental contra as ameaças colocadas pelo expansionismo da Rússia liderada por Vladimir Putin: 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNlWeul1IYA

How War In Ukraine is DERUSIFYING Baltic States

The Military Show

Explore how Lithuania and the Baltic states are actively derussifying and standing strong against Russian influence. 🇱🇻🇪🇪 Learn about their historical struggles, current political actions, and unwavering support for Ukraine. 🇺🇦✊ Understand why  these countries are drawing a clear line in the sand, rejecting Russian cultural and political presence, and leading the charge for a free and independent future. 🌍🚫 #Derussification #Lithuania #Latvia #Estonia#StandWithUkraine #BalticSolidarity #NoToRussianAggression #HistoricalStruggles #PoliticalActions #EuropeanUnity#Bal 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QO9iJ2_aHaE

Why Kaliningrad Will be Ukraine 2.0

The Military Show

To the outside world, Kaliningrad is simply a part of Russia 🌍. But change is brewing in this western exclave. From a strategic military hub 🛡️ to a potential flashpoint for conflict ⚔️, Kaliningrad's future hangs in the balance. Could it become Ukraine 2.0? 🇺🇦 Dive into Kaliningrad’s complex history and evolving geopolitical significance in our latest video. #Kaliningrad #Russia #Geopolitics #Ukraine #BalticStates #NATO #Military #History #Conflict #Europe#WorldWarIII #BalticSea #Lithuania

 #Independence #Putin #Poland …

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkraqF-wO74

How the US and UK’s Aid Package to Ukraine Will Destroy Putin

🇺🇦 Ukraine has faced immense challenges in its war with Russia, with significant losses including Avdiivka. However, new aid packages from the U.K. and U.S. are set to turn the tide. Massive military support is boosting Ukraine's defenses, potentially derailing Putin's ambitions. Join us as we explore how this seismic shift could reshape the war's outcome. 🌍✊ #UkraineWar #StandWithUkraine #UKAid #USAid #Putin #MilitarySupport #TurningTheTide #RussiaUkraineWar#DefendUkraine #SupportUkraine #UkraineStrong #FreedomForUkraine #EndTheWar #ww3 #worldwar3  #GlobalSu …

Como a Ucrânia pode vencer a Rússia - The Economist

 The Economist: In Crimea, Ukraine is beating Russia. It is becoming a death trap for the Kremlin’s forces.

Ukraine success in Crimea provides lessons about how Ukraine can succeed elsewhere. 

Those lessons are straightforward, really: 

1. Saturate Ukraine with weapons 1/

2. Provide long-range striking capabilities

3. Allow to use these capabilities on the target area

The Economist: Ukraine is now able to hit any target in Russian-occupied Crimea with deadly effect due to the arrival of ATACMS ballistic missiles with a 300km range. 3/

The E: The U.S. has eased restrictions on using American weapons against military targets in Russia, allowing Ukraine to hit Russian forces attacking or preparing to attack Kharkiv. 4/

The E: Ukraine is systematically making Crimea uninhabitable for Russian forces, degrading Russia's air defenses, hitting air bases, and striking critical logistics and economic targets. 5/

The E: Ukraine has demonstrated the ability to hit Russian warships, with many landing vessels destroyed and much of the Black Sea Fleet relocating away from Sevastopol. 6/

The E: Russia's expensive S-400 air defense systems have been found wanting, vulnerable to decoy drones revealing their positions and Ukrainian sabotage. 7/

The E: Ukraine aims to isolate Crimea, push Russian air and sea forces away from southern Ukraine, and strangle it as a logistics hub for Russia. 8/

The E: Disrupting the new railway line from Russia into Crimea will be a challenge, as Russia recognizes the vulnerability of the Kerch Bridge. 9/

There are two lessons from Crimea. 

1. It is possible to beat Russia with consistent application of long-range weapons. Yes, it is working.  10/

2. As Crimea is a weak spot for Russia and Putin, Ukraine can gain meaningful leverage over Russia by denying Crimea to Russians 11/

The first lesson implies that the West shouldn't be afraid to give Ukraine weapons to strike deeper into Russia. 

Indeed, Crimea, Black Sea Fleet, and the Kerch Bridge all have been pronounced a red line by Russia only to be revealed a bluff 12/

But also if Crimea goes, Putin is likely to lose power. He sold the entire project to Russian people on the ease of getting Crimea. 13/

Russia has become a victim of its own greediness. Once it got Crimea, it had to protect it. That's why the land bridge through Mariupol. This is in fact the only strategic achievement of Russia post 2022. 14/ 

But now Crimea and the land bridge create a weakness that Ukraine is exploiting making the Kremlin and Putin look losers. 15/

Ukraine should and will push harder on Crimea, getting badly needed leverage. 

Many people in the West believe Ukraine won't be getting Crimea back any time soon if at all. 16/

But if Ukraine continues bombing all military positions there, Crimea will de fact not be of any interest or use to Russia. 17/

Then, Russia might simply have to abandon it. I hope it happens soon. I also hope the lessons of the Ukrainian success in Crimea are applied elsewhere, in particular, across the border in Kharkiv. 18X

Louis Morquin:

Next step in my mind, should be, once Crimea is de facto demilitarised, to cut the land bridge just north east of Crimea. Witch could have secondary advantage to shorten the front line. Kharkiv should for now put out reach of Russian weapons.

O que há de errado com Javier Milei?- Anthony W. Pereira (Estadão)

O que há de errado com Javier Milei?

Presidente da Argentina se autodenomina o primeiro presidente ‘liberal libertário’ da história; análise de discursos mostra, no entanto, que ele promove princípios duvidosos que levantam questões sobre sua capacidade de gerenciar uma economia real

Por Anthony W. Pereira

O Estado de S. Paulo, 3/06/2024

https://www.estadao.com.br/internacional/o-que-ha-de-errado-com-javier-milei/

Javier Gerardo Milei, o presidente da Argentina eleito em 2023, se autodenomina o primeiro presidente “liberal libertário” da história. Ele está atacando o déficit fiscal do Estado para reduzir a inflação, que está quase 300%, embora seu adereço de campanha, uma motosserra, tenha se mostrado desnecessário.

Em janeiro, o governo federal da Argentina experimentou seu primeiro superávit orçamentário mensal em 12 anos. Muitos investidores domésticos e internacionais estão aplaudindo essas reformas. Os argentinos comuns esperam que a austeridade resultante seja em breve substituída por crescimento econômico e melhoria dos padrões de vida.

Até certo ponto, as reformas são uma resposta sensata a anos de gastos excessivos do governo. Os déficits fiscais em países em desenvolvimento são custosos, não apenas por causa da inflação resultante, mas também pelo alto custo dos empréstimos e o dinheiro perdido em pagamentos de juros. Pode-se pensar que Milei, cujo primeiro artigo publicado foi sobre hiperinflação e seu efeito nos mercados, é a pessoa certa na Presidência da Argentina no momento certo, bem preparado por sua educação (ele tem dois mestrados em economia) para reduzir a inflação e restaurar o crescimento da economia.

No entanto, Milei é uma figura complicada. Ele começou na corrente principal do pensamento econômico latino-americano, como um pós-keynesiano com inclinações estruturalistas. Durante seus estudos no Instituto de Desenvolvimento Social e Econômico e na Universidade Torcuato Di Tella, ambos em Buenos Aires, ele se apaixonou pelos pensadores da Escola Austríaca de Economia. Com o fervor de um convertido, ele desenvolveu um apreço particular pelas ideias do economista vienense Friedrich von Hayek (1899-1992). Isso tornou seu pensamento econômico incomum. Uma análise de alguns dos discursos e publicações de Milei revela que ele promove sete princípios duvidosos que levantam questões sobre sua capacidade de analisar e gerenciar uma economia real.

O primeiro princípio é que os mercados são sistemas naturais, espontâneos e autorregulados que antecedem os Estados e que são moralmente puros, pois são baseados na propriedade privada, contratos voluntários e respeito pelas vidas dos outros.

Essa ideia pode ser encontrada em O Caminho da Servidão de Hayek (1944). Os Estados, por outro lado, são artificiais e baseados na violência e predação. Nas palavras de Milei, “o Estado é financiado por meio de impostos, e os impostos são cobrados coercitivamente… Isso significa que o Estado é financiado através da coerção e que quanto maior a carga tributária, maior a coerção e menor a liberdade”.

Portanto, os Estados devem ser radicalmente limitados. Mesmo a aceitação de um Estado “vigia” que se limita à defesa nacional e à proteção da propriedade privada é perigosa. Na mente de Milei, o trabalho libertário de Robert Nozick (1974) é inaceitável. Isso torna Milei muito mais extremo do que os Chicago boys, incluindo Milton Friedman.

O problema com a caricatura de Milei sobre Estados e mercados é que ela ignora a história entrelaçada dos mercados capitalistas e dos estados-nação modernos. Como argumentou o antropólogo Karl Polanyi em A Grande Transformação (1944), os Estados muitas vezes criaram mercados onde antes não existiam. E os Estados não foram os únicos a exercer a coerção historicamente. Atores privados também o fizeram. Na Índia do século XVIII, por exemplo, a Companhia das Índias Orientais, uma empresa capitalista, colonizou o país com um exército privado.

O Estado pode reivindicar o monopólio dos meios de coerção legítima, mas raramente atinge um monopólio absoluto da coerção na prática. No século 21, grupos criminosos privados bem armados são atores significativos na economia global. E empresas legais podem usar a coerção, por exemplo, empresas de retomada de posse, agentes de fiança e empresas de segurança privada. A ideia de que as transações de mercado são sempre puramente voluntárias e consensuais é desmentida pela realidade e pela história do capitalismo.

Como consequência dessa dicotomia simplista que vê o mercado como puro e moral e o Estado como coercitivo e parasitário, Milei articula um segundo princípio enganoso: não há falhas de mercado. Ele apresenta esse argumento invocando uma definição casuística. Porque “o mercado é um mecanismo de cooperação social, onde você troca voluntariamente direitos de propriedade… falar de uma falha de mercado é um oxímoro”.

Mas isso contradiz a observação empírica e a teoria econômica. Os mercados respondem à demanda efetiva (o dinheiro que as pessoas têm para gastar) e regularmente subproduzem bens e serviços que as pessoas desejam: por exemplo, tratamento médico para os pobres ou habitação acessível para os jovens. E o professor Joseph Stiglitz ganhou o Prêmio Nobel de Economia em 2001, em parte, por seu trabalho mostrando a ubiquidade das falhas de mercado. Afirmar que os mercados não podem falhar por definição é uma forma perversa de fundamentalismo de mercado.

Milei também adota um terceiro princípio, defendido por Friedrich von Hayek em O Caminho da Servidão, de que qualquer intervenção do Estado nos mercados inevitavelmente arrasta as sociedades ao longo do “caminho da servidão”. 

Isso é um artigo de fé para muitos adeptos da escola austríaca de economia, mas é contradito pela história econômica. A afirmação de Hayek de que qualquer forma de regulamentação estatal ou medidas de Estado de bem-estar social levam inevitavelmente ao totalitarismo foi demonstrada como falsa na Europa, onde o tamanho do Estado de bem-estar variou entre os países e flutuou dentro deles sem qualquer tendência inevitável à asfixia dos mercados ou das liberdades individuais.

As reformas econômicas realizadas pelo presidente Reagan nos Estados Unidos (1981-1989) e por Margaret Thatcher no Reino Unido (1979-1990), inspiradas em parte por Von Hayek, contradizem sua ideia sobre a inevitabilidade do aumento do controle estatal.

Nas democracias, as fronteiras entre Estados e mercados podem ser redesenhadas a cada geração. E nas economias do século 21, a ideia de que os mercados podem funcionar bem sem nenhuma regulamentação – sem testes para novos medicamentos, sem proibições ao trabalho infantil, sem padrões de segurança – é absurda. Em muitos casos, as regulamentações são exigidas por investidores privados. Na privatização do setor de telecomunicações na América Latina nos anos 1990, muitos investidores privados exigiram regulamentação para poder prever seus ganhos futuros; o Estado foi levado ao trabalho de regular as novas empresas de telecomunicações pelas próprias empresas.

Um quarto princípio que Milei defende é que qualquer um que não seja um fundamentalista extremo do mercado é um “coletivista” e um inimigo do “Ocidente”.

Socialistas, social-democratas, democratas cristãos, teóricos do mercado social, progressistas – qualquer um que acredita em tributação progressiva, redes de segurança social e na necessidade de alguns bens públicos – são comunistas cuja ideologia é baseada na inveja, no ressentimento, no ódio e no roubo.

As pessoas no setor privado são “heróis”, mas as pessoas que trabalham para o Estado são burocratas tentando impor sua vontade sobre os outros ou membros parasitários da “casta” política.

De alguma forma, Milei se exclui dessas generalizações, embora esteja na folha de pagamento do setor público. Ele aparentemente quer que acreditemos que ele é motivado pelas intenções mais puras, enquanto todos ao seu redor no aparato estatal querem intimidar e roubar outras pessoas para ganho próprio.

O quinto princípio de Milei é que o establishment (“academia, organizações internacionais, teóricos econômicos e políticos”) é contra o capitalismo.=

Mais uma vez, isso é uma simplificação excessiva que distorce a realidade. A maioria das instituições tradicionais não é anticapitalista. Elas podem ter projetos de reforma, como reduzir a pobreza e a desigualdade, ou mitigar as mudanças climáticas, mas muitos desses projetos reformistas têm os mercados capitalistas em seu núcleo.

Pense em microcrédito ou esquemas de comércio de carbono. O pânico moral de Milei contra o “globalismo” tem mais a ver com seu desejo de se identificar com a extrema-direita transnacional do que com uma leitura precisa da realidade global.

O sexto princípio de Milei é que a União Europeia (UE) é uma performer econômica fraca, crescendo lentamente porque é excessivamente regulamentada.

Nesse ponto, ele é extremamente inconsistente. Segundo Milei, o capitalismo é bom porque criou prosperidade. Se Milei estivesse genuinamente interessado em prosperidade, em vez da promoção do fundamentalismo de mercado, ele poderia ter notado que 24 dos 50 países mais prósperos (medidos pelo PIB per capita em paridade do poder de compra) são membros da UE.

A receita tributária como porcentagem do PIB na UE é em média de cerca de 20%. Por outro lado, a lista de países onde a receita tributária é mais baixa como porcentagem do PIB, e, portanto, têm mais “liberdade”, pela definição de Milei, inclui alguns dos países mais pobres do mundo, como a República Centro-Africana, Iêmen, República Democrática do Congo, Afeganistão, Chade, Bangladesh e Sudão.

Em vez de encontrar uma correlação estrita entre prosperidade e um Estado minimalista, o que encontramos é que as economias mais ricas do mundo, a maioria das quais também têm o maior desenvolvimento humano, são economias mistas com Estados ativos que combinam mercados capitalistas e setores públicos fortes que entregam serviços que as pessoas desejam, como transporte, saúde e educação.

O sétimo princípio de Milei é implícito, e não diretamente declarado. Este é o de que a Argentina prova a correção da economia da Escola Austríaca e que seus concidadãos devem apoiar suas reformas.

Em seu discurso inaugural, ele argumentou que a história do crescimento econômico na Argentina de 1850 a 1930, quando comparada ao período pós-1930, prova a superioridade da economia liberal sobre seus rivais heterodoxos. Mas as taxas de crescimento econômico nacional raramente têm uma única causa, e as condições na economia global criam variáveis que estão fora do controle dos formuladores de políticas no nível do Estado-nação.

A repulsa de Milei ao “coletivismo” não o impede de invocar um coletivismo próprio, o nacionalismo argentino. Em uma entrevista recente, ele foi citado dizendo: “Não há chance de uma revolta social, a menos que haja um evento politicamente motivado ou [um envolvendo] infiltrados estrangeiros. Governos de esquerda trabalham juntos para tentar sabotar aqueles que não são como eles”.

As simplificações excessivas e a certeza moral dos sete princípios de Milei se encaixam com a aspiração do presidente argentino de ser o bad boy da extrema-direita global.

Milei foi à Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) nos Estados Unidos em fevereiro de 2024 e abraçou entusiasticamente Donald Trump, interferindo na corrida eleitoral dos EUA, ao mesmo tempo que tentava obter o apoio da administração Biden para suas reformas econômicas. Milei também viajou para a Espanha para se misturar com seus irmãos no Partido Vox em 18-19 de maio de 2024.

Milei insultou o papa e outros presidentes da América Latina, incluindo Lula do Brasil, Gustavo Petro da Colômbia e Andrés Manuel López Obrador do México, bem como o primeiro-ministro da Espanha Pedro Sánchez. O argentino também descartou as mudanças climáticas como uma “mentira socialista” e criticou o feminismo, sem reconhecer a enorme contribuição que o aumento da igualdade de gênero tem feito para o desenvolvimento econômico mundial.

Os princípios de Milei não são baseados em pesquisas empíricas sobre economias reais. Eles são artigos de fé. Milei grita slogans, exige lealdade e evita perguntas. Seu argumento de que não se pode falar de “justiça social” porque a frase foi contaminada pela esquerda não é coerente.

As palavras mais importantes no debate político – democracia, direitos humanos, legitimidade, consenso – são inerentemente contestadas. Se não pudermos usá-las quando são empregadas por pessoas com quem discordamos, o discurso democrático se torna impossível.

Por que as ideias de Milei importam? Pode-se pensar que são irrelevantes para seu desempenho como presidente. Muitos líderes de Estados tiveram ideias incoerentes ou ridículas, ou até mesmo nenhuma ideia. No entanto, o governo de Milei está engajado em uma luta intransigente para reduzir o déficit fiscal do Estado a zero. A questão é que isso provavelmente não vai satisfazer Milei.

Como um liberal libertário que acha que o Estado não tem direito de existir e que apenas o mercado deve operar em um nirvana de autorregulação, ele provavelmente quer reduzir o setor público a ponto de torná-lo disfuncional.

A visão excessivamente simplificada de Milei sobre o mundo, seus princípios enganosos e seu messianismo moral podem, portanto, eventualmente torná-lo muito perigoso para o bem-estar de seus concidadãos.

Unesp lança livro de memórias de Rubens Ricupero - Euler de França Belém (Jornal Opção)

 Imperdível!

Unesp lança livro de memórias de Rubens Ricupero

 Euler de França Belém

Jornal Opção, 26 maio 2024 às 00h01

https://www.jornalopcao.com.br/colunas-e-blogs/imprensa/unesp-lanca-livro-de-memorias-de-rubens-ricupero-608004/

O livro do diplomata e ex-ministro da Fazenda discute o Estado Novo, a Segunda Guerra Mundial, o Plano Real e os governos do PT

O livro “Memórias” (Unesp, 712 páginas), de Rubens Ricupero, custa 144 reais e começa a circular nas livrarias em junho.

A rigor, por não ter lido a obra, não posso avalizá-la. Mas, pelo histórico de Rubens Ricupero, direi que se trata de um livro “imperdível” (ao menos para mim, que me interesso pela história do país). Com a vantagem de que escreve muito bem, com o máximo de clareza e percepção aguda do Brasil e do mundo.

“A Diplomacia na Construção do Brasil — 1750-2023” (Versal Editores, 756 páginas), de Rubens Ricupero, é um excelente livro sobre a história do país. Portanto, não apenas de sua diplomacia.

Então, pode-se esperar muito das memórias do diplomata e ex-ministro da Fazenda e do Meio Ambiente.

Nas memórias, de acordo com a editora, Rubens Ricupero, que foi ministro da Fazenda do governo de Itamar Franco, revela os bastidores da elaboração e da aplicação do Plano Real.

Rubens Ricupero menciona a Segunda Guerra Mundial, definidora do mundo no qual vivemos, o Estado Novo — a ditadura cruenta de Getúlio Vargas, entre 1937 e 1945 — e o golpe civil-militar de 1964. Discute as questões climáticas e analisa os últimos governos, até o terceiro de Lula da Silva, entre 2023 e 2024.

Dado o conhecimento de Rubens Ricupero, além do fato de as memórias serem alentadas, o preço é quase irrelevante. As ideias e a história do ex-ministro valem ouro. Aos 87 anos, ele tem muito o que contar, e, sobretudo, sabe como contar.

TSE decide não participar como observador de eleições na Venezuela (G1 - Globo)

TSE decide não participar como observador de eleições na Venezuela

G1 - Globo | Política, 03 de junho de 2024 

Itamaraty não recebeu manifestação oficial do tribunal brasileiro. Na semana passada, venezuelanos revogaram convite para que a União Europeia enviasse observadores para acompanhar o pleito em julho.

O Tribunal Superior Eleitoral (TSE) informou que não vai enviar observadores brasileiros para as eleições presidenciais na Venezuela, previstas para o dia 28 de julho.

O Ministério das Relações Exteriores (Palácio Itamaraty) não recebeu manifestação oficial do tribunal, mas diplomatas disseram que seguem monitorando o cenário no país vizinho e estão cientes da posição da Corte Eleitoral brasileira.

Os observadores, normalmente, são designados por organismos internacionais, por meio de um acordo prévio entre as nações, para acompanhar eleições de um país.

A presença dessas missões, segundo definição do próprio TSE, tem como objetivo garantir que o processo eleitoral decorra em clima de transparência, isenção e legalidade.

Na semana passada, a Venezuela revogou o convite para que a União Europeia enviasse observadores internacionais para as eleições presidenciais. O anúncio foi feito pelo chefe do Conselho Nacional Eleitoral (CNE), Elvis Amoroso.

O Conselho é controlado, na prática, pelo presidente Nicolás Maduro, que concorre ao terceiro mandato. O escritório da União Europeia em Caracas lamentou a decisão e solicitou ao Conselho Eleitoral da Venezuela para reavaliar a decisão.

O governo de Maduro fez um acordo com a oposição no ano passado para realizar eleições. Depois disso, os Estados Unidos retiraram as sanções econômicas.

No entanto, em abril, os americanos voltaram a impor sanções, pois consideraram que o governo venezuelano não estava se esforçando suficientemente para que a votação seja limpa.

Missões internacionais já fizeram denúncias sobre irregularidades em eleições venezuelanas no passado.

Os observadores afirmaram que houve uso de recursos do Estado na campanha, diferença de tempo de TV e meios de comunicação entre partidos e também desqualificação de candidatos.

As eleições na Venezuela ocorrem sob desconfiança da comunidade internacional de que Maduro não assegure eleições livres e democráticas - o que contraria um compromisso assinado pelo governo venezuelano em outubro de 2023.

Alinhado a Maduro, o Conselho Nacional Eleitoral tirou da disputa duas opositoras: Maria Corina Machado, desqualificada pela Controladoria da Venezuela, e Corina Yoris, que não conseguiu ao acessar o sistema automatizado do CNE por razões não especificadas.

Agora, as duas apoiam Edmundo González Urrutia.

Imagens de Virtude e do Poder - Bolivar Lamounier - Modesto Carvalhosa

 

 

 

Vemos hoje a difícil construção de nossa democracia em meio a múltiplas narrativas e jogos de poder.

 

É hora de buscar marcos teóricos para esclarecer os horizontes. IMAGENS DA VIRTUDE E DO PODER é uma obra provocativa neste sentido.

 

Venha participar com seu autor Bolívar Lamounier, doutor em Ciência Política (Universidade da Califórnia, LA) e renomado especialista em Ciência Política.

Participe pelo YouTube, na segunda-feira, dia 03 de junho, às 18h30.

 

Para assistir a live de segunda é só clicar no link 👇

 

https://www.youtube.com/live/VepRjaLv318?si=VFmSYbe2CzmB9SDI