China-Brasil: conferencia do centro empresarial

4ª Conferencia Internacional do CEBC

A emergência da China, econômica antes, política em seguida, é um dos fatos mais relevantes da cena global ao início do novo século. Ela já é o principal parceiro econômico e primeiro investidor no Brasil.

A nova potência desperta admiração e, ao mesmo tempo, apreensão. Suscita, sobretudo, muitas indagações. As suas taxas de crescimento são sustentáveis? As exportações continuarão a crescer em ritmo acelerado? A transição política e econômica em curso levarão a uma mudança de rota ou apenas a alguns ajustamentos? As novas lideranças políticas terão as condições para lidar com os efeitos de uma crise econômica global e com as manifestações sociais ao nível local e no ambiente de trabalho? Para onde caminha o já denso intercâmbio bilateral entre o Brasil e a China?

Estas e muitas outras questões relevantes serão debatidas por ocasião da 4a Conferência Internacional Brasil-China, com um grupo seleto de renomados especialistas e de altos dirigentes das mais importantes companhias, tanto brasileiras, quanto chinesas. Sempre dentro de uma ótica empresarial e do fortalecimento do relacionamento bilateral.

Além de altas autoridades, os palestrantes já confirmados incluem:

·         Claudio Frischtak, Consultor do Conselho Empresarial Brasil-China

·         David Kelly, Diretor de Pesquisas do China Policy e Professor da Universidade de Pequim

·         Frederico Curado, Presidente e CEO da Embraer

·         José Antonio do Prado Fay, Presidente da BRF Brasil Foods

·         Kerry Brown, Diretor Executivo do China Studies Center da Universidade de Sidney

·         Luo Xiaopeng, Associado Sênior do Carnegie Endowment for International Peace e Consultor da China Policy

·         Mauricio Mesquita, Economista-Chefe do Setor de Comércio e Integração do Banco Interamericano de Desenvolvimento (BID)

·         Murilo Ferreira, Presidente da Vale

·         Nicholas Lardy, Membro Sênior do Instituto Peterson de Economia Internacional

·         Veni Shone, Presidente da Huawei no Brasil

Teremos uma grande satisfação em contar com a sua presença e ativa participação neste importante evento sobre BRASIL – CHINA EM UM MUNDO EM TRANSIÇÃO, organizado pelo Conselho Empresarial Brasil – China, a realizar-se no dia 21 de novembro próximo, no Hotel Renaissance, Alameda Santos 2233, em São Paulo.

As inscrições e o programa do evento estão disponíveis no site www.cebc.org.br/brasilchinaemtransicao

A Secretaria Executiva do CEBC estará à disposição para quaisquer esclarecimentos adicionais que se façam necessários, pelo telefone (21) 3212-4350 ou pelo e-mail: conferencia@cebc.org.br.

Embaixador Sergio Amaral

Presidente

Conselho Empresarial Brasil-China

Julia Dias Leite

Secretária Executiva

Conselho Empresarial Brasil-China

Venezuela: os muitos livros e as leituras do Coronel

Acho que eu compro mais livros por ano do que o Coronel autoriza para aquisições externas...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Chávez limita compras de ''livros de direita''

Ruth Costas

O Estado de S.Paulo, 11 de julho de 2009

Há pelo menos três livrarias no aeroporto de Caracas, mas se estiver em busca de um escritor consagrado da literatura latino-americana para passar o tempo antes do embarque, o visitante sairá frustrado de qualquer uma delas. O colombiano Gabriel García Márquez? "Não." O mexicano Carlos Fuentes ou o argentino Julio Cortázar? "Também não." O peruano Mário Vargas Llosa? "Nem pensar, só tenho esses aqui", diz a vendedora, desconcertada, apontando para uma estante quase vazia que começa com "Culinária para Crianças" e termina numa série de análises sobre o socialismo do presidente Hugo Chávez

No centro da capital venezuelana ou em bairros de classe média a situação é a mesma. "As autoridades não estão liberando dólares para importar livros, papel ou tinta. E não adianta dizer que o problema é a crise, pois sabemos que há uma questão ideológica por trás disso: para esse governo, literatura ?desengajada? não é prioridade", diz Andrés Boersner, dono da tradicional livraria Noctua.

Também estão em falta muitos clássicos, livros universitários e técnicos. "Hoje, de 50 títulos que me pedem, não tenho 45", conta Boersner. "Fiquei deprimido ao entrar numa livraria em Barcelona e ver todas as novidades literárias que não chegam mais na Venezuela."

O curioso é que a situação chegou a esse ponto apenas três meses depois de Chávez ter anunciado seu "Plano Revolucionário da Leitura", cujo objetivo é "estimular a leitura para ampliar a consciência". Mas é claro que não é qualquer leitura. Apenas a que "desenvolva uma ética socialista" e "desmonte o imaginário capitalista para dar novo contexto à história".

As bibliotecas públicas receberam caixas e caixas de obras "revolucionárias": coletâneas de discursos de Chávez, livros escritos por ministros, Cartas de Marx para Engels, o diário de Che Guevara na Bolívia e biografias de Simón Bolívar. Estão sendo organizados em bairros pobres os "Esquadrões Revolucionários de Leitura", cujo objetivo é "refletir e contribuir para a construção do socialismo do século 21".

E apesar de as editoras privadas não conseguirem importar papel, tinta e peças para seu maquinário, editoras ligadas ao governo distribuem milhares de livros a preços que não passam de US$ 2. Mais uma vez, não são quaisquer livros. Há sim, alguns clássicos como Dom Quixote de la Mancha, de Miguel de Cervantes, mas a maior parte é o que as autoridades definem como "livros de esquerda".

IDEAIS SOCIALISTAS

"Recuperamos obras que estavam esquecidas, pois antes só havia espaço para a literatura de direita", disse ao Estado Miguel Márquez, presidente da editora Los Perros y las Ranas, ligada ao governo. Ela foi criada em 2006, ao receber uma doação de Cuba, e já distribuiu 50 milhões de livros. "São livros que contribuem para humanizar nossa sociedade, ou seja, para acabar com a valorização do dinheiro, típica do capitalismo, e impulsionar o socialismo."

Enquanto isso, as obras "não revolucionárias" são cada vez mais raras. "Tradicionalmente, mais de 80% dos livros lidos na Venezuela são importados de países como México e Espanha, mas agora eles chegam a conta-gotas", diz Yolanda de Fernández, da Câmara Venezuelana do Livro. Ela explica que, desde 2008, o governo passou a exigir um "certificado de não produção ou produção insuficiente" para a importação de livros. Ou seja, hoje a rede que quiser comprar qualquer título precisa esperar a emissão de um documento que diga que ele não é publicado na Venezuela.

Se o processo já era complicado nos últimos meses, com a queda do petróleo pressionando as reservas de Chávez, tornou-se ainda mais lento. "Mesmo com o certificado, os dólares para importar livros simplesmente não são liberados", diz Yolanda. Como o limite para as compras externas é cada vez menor, as distribuidoras preferem, quando podem, comprar best sellers (como o brasileiro Paulo Coelho) , o que reduz ainda mais a variedade de títulos em circulação no país.

O resultado desse processo é o que a oposição vem chamando de "a revolução cultural do presidente Chávez".

"As autoridades deste governo não conseguem entender, afinal, para que serve um livro de poesia ou um Dostoievski", diz Boersner. "Eles só sabem que não devem acrescentar muito à sua revolução."

Frase da semana: democracia (Mencken)

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

Louis Mencken

Nossos aliados nos Brics: India e seu lixo...

India’s Plague, Trash, Drowns Its Garden City During Strike

Kuni Takahashi for The New York Times

A man picks up trash in a landfill on the outskirts of Bangalore that was closed after complaints about pollution. Vast mounds of garbage are scattered throughout the city.

By GARDINER HARRIS

The New York Times, October 26, 2012 18 Comments

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MANDUR, India — Outside Bangalore’s last official landfill, the garbage trucks regularly lined up here for hours, their burdens putrefying in the afternoon sun. A stinking mountain of trash, the landfill has been poisoning local waters and sickening nearby villagers. Another dump site was in even worse shape before it was closed recently after violent protests.

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With Bangalore’s last landfill about to close permanently and the city running out of abandoned quarries to quietly divert a day’s load, the waste system may simply collapse.

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Bangalore, the capital of India’s modern economy and home to many of its high-tech workers, is drowning in its own waste. Last week, local villagers blocked the roads leading to the Mandur landfill on the city’s outskirts even as many of Bangalore’s trash haulers went on strike, saying they had not been paid in months. Some neighborhoods have not had trash pickups for nearly three weeks, and vast mounds of garbage are scattered through what is known in India as the Garden City.

Trash is India’s plague. It chokes rivers, scars meadows, contaminates streets and feeds a vast and dangerous ecosystem of rats, mosquitoes, stray dogs, monkeys and pigs. Perhaps even more than the fitful electricity and insane traffic, the ubiquitous garbage shows the incompetence of Indian governing and the dark side of the country’s rapid economic growth. Greater wealth has spawned more garbage, and the managers of the country’s pell-mell development have been unable to handle the load.

“Bangalore used to be India’s cleanest city,” said Amiya Kumar Sahu, president of the National Solid Waste Association of India. “Now, it is the filthiest.”

Bangalore’s garbage crisis grew directly out of its stunning success. Technology companies started settling in Bangalore in the 1980s. As they grew, many created pristine campuses hacked out of urban chaos, supplying their own electricity, water, transportation and a rare sense of tranquillity.

But the dirty secret of these campuses and the gated enclaves where their executives built their houses is that they had nowhere to put their trash. Many hired truckers to take the mess out of the city, careful not to ask where it went. The truckers found empty lots or willing farmers and simply dumped their loads.

The city soon followed the companies’ lead. Its door-to-door trash pickup program, started in 2000, was seen as a model in a country where comprehensive municipal trash systems are still rare. But few — including city officials — knew where the trash was taken or, after landfills opened, how it was disposed of.

“We never followed scientific landfill practices,” Rajneesh Goel, Bangalore’s chief civil servant, said in an interview.

As Bangalore’s population exploded with the success of its technology industry, the stresses in the waste system came close to a breaking point. Now, with Bangalore’s last landfill here in Mandur about to close permanently and the city running out of abandoned quarries to quietly divert a day’s load, the system may simply collapse.

“All that groundwater contamination is going to come to us; more than 300 of our lakes are already gone,” Dr. Goel said at a recent public meeting where he pleaded for help. “The problem is getting out of hand, and eventually it will swallow us up. We have to do something.”

The choice facing Dr. Goel is stark: find a new place to dump 4,000 tons of garbage a day, or make that garbage somehow disappear. Since the city’s atrocious oversight of past landfills has made new ones all but impossible to secure, he is now trying to create — almost from scratch — one of the most ambitious recycling programs in the world.

Dr. Goel conceded that success was far from certain.

“I’m trying to give you a very rosy picture, but don’t get taken in,” he said after outlining his plans. “It’s a 50-year-old story, and there are certain constraints in the system.”

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Niharika Mandhana contributed reporting from Mandur and Bangalore, India.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 27, 2012, on page A4 of the New York edition with the headline: India’s Plague, Trash, Drowns Its Garden City During Strike.

Ascensao do sovietismo, pela forca - Anne Applebaum

Dessa autora, eu já li sua monumental história do "Gulag", que recomendo, para aqueles que pretendem saber a verdade sobre os milhões de mortos ou escravizados sob o regime soviético.
Agora ela comparece com um outro livro sobre a extensão do gulag, misturado com gulash, servido uniformemente a milhões de cidadãos da Europa central e oriental obrigados a se submeter aos tacões do Exército Vermelho, vigiados pelos diversos serviços de espionagem da mais formidável máquina totalitária que já existiu em todos os séculos de história "civilizada" (em termos, já que durante nove décimos dessa história a humanidade conviveu com a escravidão, e no último a escravidão respondeu pelo nome de sistema soviético).
Paulo Roberto de Almeida 

Europe after the second world war

The power of red

How the Soviet empire’s ambitions contained the seeds of its own destruction

The Economist, Oct 20th 2012 | from the print edition

Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe 1944-1956. By Anne Applebaum. Allen Lane; 614 pages; £25. Doubleday; $35. Buy from Amazon.com,Amazon.co.uk

IN THE spring of 1945 the Polish city of Lodz was swamped with refugees. Local women organised themselves to help. Opening a shelter at the city railway station, they called themselves the Women’s League. Five years later the league had been transformed. It had a central office in Warsaw, which controlled its regional offices, and its goals were to “raise the level of women’s social consciousness” and to mobilise them “to the most complete realisation of the goals of the Six-Year Plan”. It had become, in other words, the women’s section of the Polish Communist Party. All over central Europe fledgling elements of civil society—clubs, associations, schools and churches—were thus co-opted into new, Soviet-occupied communist states. How did this happen, and why did the Soviet Union’s attempt to impose totalitarianism on its new empire ultimately fail? These are the questions that lie at the core of Anne Applebaum’s illuminating new book.

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Though from the outset, central Europeans suffered arbitrary expropriations and arrests, initially the Soviet authorities sought to create the semblance of national independence and political pluralism. Local communist parties ruled in notional coalitions. National symbols were reinstated. In Berlin, the future spymaster Markus Wolf hosted a radio programme entitled “You Ask, We Answer”, which as well as praising Russian communism, answered listeners’ queries on vegetable supplies and the reopening of the Berlin zoo.

The mask dropped with the first post-war elections. These were held, Ms Applebaum stresses, because central Europe’s “little Stalins” sincerely believed they would win. In the event, in Hungary’s national elections of November 1945, the communists took just 17% of the vote, and in January 1947 the Polish Peasants’ Party, led by a former member of General Wladyslaw Sikorksi’s government-in-exile, won a parliamentary election so thoroughly, despite violent intimidation, that the results had brazenly to be falsified. Nowhere were the real victors allowed to take power, and opposition leaders were subsequently arrested or fled into exile.

The solution to this, Moscow believed, was not less communism but more. Central Europeans, like Russians, could be moulded into Homo sovieticus: conformist, optimistic, hard-working and socially conscious. Across the block, schoolchildren, like their Russian counterparts before them, started learning ditties in praise of Stalin. In factories, workers competed to become Stakhanovite “shockworkers”. Writers and artists, lured home by promises of fat commissions and vast print runs, found themselves turning out unreadable novels and Socialist Realist murals.

But Stalinism contained the seeds of its own destruction. In a system that seeks to control everything, Ms Applebaum points out, any sort of spontaneity or individuality, however apolitical, becomes a form of protest. And spontaneity there was. In newly built steel towns, anxious officials reported, workers failed to attend the theatre after work, haunting instead pubs and underground brothels. Young people began sporting drainpipe trousers, ducktail quiffs, kipper ties andmakarturki, named for the style of sunglasses worn by General Douglas MacArthur. In Germany, hundreds of thousands crossed from East to West, despite ever-tightening Soviet border controls. Everywhere, people told bitterly satirical jokes.

The cracks widened dramatically with Stalin’s death in March 1953. Within months, strikes broke out in several German cities, demands for better pay being underlined by attacks on party headquarters and Russian-language bookshops. Walter Ulbricht and his puppet government holed up in the offices of the Soviet ambassador, and Russian tanks, not East German police, fired at the demonstrators. Three years later a second shock (Nikita Khrushchev’s “Secret Speech” to the 20th party congress, denouncing Stalin’s purges and personality cult) sparked the Hungarian uprising. It was crushed, but so too was the totalitarian dream.

Human beings, as Ms Applebaum rousingly concludes, do not acquire “totalitarian personalities” with ease. Even when they seem bewitched by the cult of the leader or of the party, appearances can deceive, she writes. When it seems as if they buy into the most absurd propaganda—marching in parades, chanting slogans, singing that the party is always right—the spell can suddenly, unexpectedly, dramatically be broken.

from the print edition | Books and arts

Estudos na Alemanha: programa MGG

Programa de Capacitação – Managing Global Governance 2013 A GIZ – Cooperação Alemã para o Desenvolvimento e o DIE – Instituto Alemão para o Desenvolvimento, em nome do Ministério Federal da Cooperação Econômica e do Desenvolvimento da Alemanha (BMZ), têm a satisfação de informar sobre a abertura de inscrições para a 11ª edição do programa de capacitação MGG – Managing Global Governance, a ser realizado na Alemanha no período de junho/ julho a dezembro de 2013. Diante do crescente fenômeno da globalização, a paz, a prosperidade, o desenvolvimento sustentável e a estabilidade social podem apenas ser atingidos por meio da expansão da cooperação internacional. Desenhar e construir um sistema mais efetivo de governança global é uma das tarefas primordiais neste processo de cooperação entre países. Também é um importante requisito para se alcançar os padrões de desenvolvimento afirmados em acordos internacionais como os Objetivos de Desenvolvimento do Milênio, promulgado pela Organização das Nações Unidas. Neste cenário, torna-se indispensável que países como Brasil, China, México, Índia, África do Sul, Egito, Indonésia e Paquistão assumam um papel de destaque, tanto em contextos regionais como globais, para o enfrentamento de desafios mundiais – tais quais a redução da pobreza, o crescimento econômico e a sustentabilidade ambiental. O programa MGG está formatado em três etapas: Etapa Preparatória (no país de origem do candidato, com duração de 2 meses), Etapa de Capacitação (na Alemanha, com duração de 6 meses) e Etapa de Seguimento (no país de origem do candidato, com duração de 6 meses). A Etapa de Capacitaçãoinclui um período de formação e outro período de estágio em uma Organização Internacional ou da Comunidade Europeia. O público alvo a que se dirige o programa MGG é de jovens especialistas e executivos, bem como decisores que trabalham na administração pública, no setor privado ou instituições de pesquisa. Sua atuação prioritária deve estar orientada para políticas internacionais, relações internacionais ou cooperação internacional, em áreas como comércio, finanças, meio ambiente, segurança e desenvolvimento. Espera-se como resultado da capacitação que o participante desenvolva uma proficiência analítica, bem como uma capacidade para elaborar e moldar políticas ou projetos em sua área de atuação específica. Após concluído o programa de capacitação, o participante haverá também ingressado em uma rede internacional que reúne especialistas e executivos de instituições proeminentes de diversos países, dentre os quais México, África do Sul, Índia e China. Este programa de capacitação é integralmente financiado pelo Governo alemão, requerendo-se como contrapartida da Instituição parceira a autorização de dispensa do funcionário para participar do programa bem como o pagamento da passagem aérea. É indispensável que o participante seja fluente no idioma inglês. Nesse sentido, considerando a importante contribuição que a Fundação Getulio Vargas poderá oferecer ao debate internacional a respeito da Governança Global, temos a grata satisfação de convidar um representante que Vossa Senhoria possa por bem designar, a inscrever-se para participar do referido programa. Informamos que o prazo para recebimento das inscrições é dia 09 de dezembro de 2012, e que a seleção final dos participantes será feita pela sede da GIZ na Alemanha e comunicada oficialmente no final de dezembro de 2012. Em anexo encontram-se informações detalhadas a respeito do formato e metodologia do programa MGG, bem como a ficha de inscrição. Em caso de dúvidas, favor entrar em contato com Carla Pereira através do email: carla.pereira@giz.de. Nessas condições, agradeceríamos receber uma manifestação de interesse acerca da participação no programa MGG e reiteramos nossa disposição para esclarecer eventuais dúvidas e também apoiar ao longo do processo de candidatura e etapa preparatória. Atenciosamente, Carla Pereira GIZ no Brasil Gerente  Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH Rua Verbo Divino 1.488, 3º andar, Bloco A 04719 904 – São Paulo SP Brasil T +55 11 5187-5095 F +55 11 5187-5099 E carla.pereira@giz.de I www.giz.de

China: a enorme censura do Big Brother

China Blocks Web Access to Times After Article

By KEITH BRADSHER

The New York times,: October 25, 2012

HONG KONG — The Chinese government swiftly blocked access Friday morning to the English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The New York Times from computers in mainland China in response to the news organization’s decision to post an article in both languages describing wealth accumulated by the family of the country’s prime minister.

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The authorities were also blocking attempts to mention The Times or the prime minister, Wen Jiabao, in postings on Sina Weibo, an extremely popular mini-blogging service in China that resembles Twitter.

The Foreign Ministry spokesman on duty in Beijing early Friday morning did not immediately answer phone calls for comment.

China maintains the world’s most extensive and sophisticated system for Internet censorship, employing tens of thousands of people to monitor what is said, delete entries that contravene the country’s extensive and unpublished regulations and even write new entries that are favorable to the government.

Rebecca MacKinnon, a senior fellow specializing in Internet free expression and privacy issues at the New America Foundation, a nonpartisan group headquartered in Washington, said that the Chinese interruption of Internet access was typical of the response to information that offended leaders.

“This is what they do: they get mad, they block you,” she said.

The English-language and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times are hosted on servers outside mainland China.

A spokeswoman for The Times, Eileen Murphy, expressed disappointment that Internet access had been blocked and noted that the Chinese-language Web site had attracted “great interest” in China.

“We hope that full access is restored shortly, and we will ask the Chinese authorities to ensure that our readers in China can continue to enjoy New York Times journalism,” she said in a statement, adding, “We will continue to report and translate stories applying the same journalistic standards that are upheld across The New York Times.”

Former President Jiang Zemin of China ordered an end to blocking of The New York Times Web site after meeting with journalists from The Times in August 2001. The company’s Web sites, like those of most other foreign media organizations, have remained mostly free of blocking since then, with occasional, temporary exceptions.

By 7 a.m. Friday in China, access to both the English- and Chinese-language Web sites of The Times was blocked from all 31 cities in mainland China tested. The Times had posted the article in English at 4:34 p.m. on Thursday in New York (4:34 a.m. Friday in Beijing), and finished posting the article in Chinese three hours later after the translation of final edits to the English-language version.

Publication of the article about Mr. Wen and his family comes at a delicate time in Chinese politics, during a year in which factional rivalries and the personal lives of Chinese leaders have come into public view to a rare extent and drawn unprecedented international interest.

The Times’s statement called China “an increasingly open society, with increasingly sophisticated media,” adding, “The response to our site suggests that The Times can play an important role in the government’s efforts to raise the quality of journalism available to the Chinese people.”

The New York Times is not the first international organization to run into trouble with Chinese censors. Google decided to move its servers for the Chinese market in January 2010, to Hong Kong, a semiautonomous Chinese territory outside the country’s censorship firewalls, after the company was unable to reach an agreement with the Chinese authorities to allow unrestricted searches of the Internet.

Bloomberg published an article on June 29 describing wealth accumulated by the family of Vice President Xi Jinping, who is expected to become the country’s next top leader as general secretary of the Communist Party during the coming Party Congress.

Since then, Bloomberg’s operations have encountered a series of problems in mainland China, including the blocking of its Web site, which is in English.

A version of this article appeared in print on October 26, 2012, on page A12 of the New York edition with the headline: China Blocks Web Access To Times After Article.

Shifting tectonic plates in the banking industry - Otaviano Canuto

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Shifting Tectonic Plates Under Global Banking

Markets , Global-Banking , Global-Banking-Markets , Global-Jobs-Market , World News

Posted: 10/24/2012 1:23 pm

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The global financial crisis has reversed an expansionary trend of international activities by banks from advanced countries that had been at play for decades. From the late 1970s to 2008, banks not only found new opportunities for intermediation in increasing cross-border capital flows, but they also raised their profile in domestic credit provision abroad. We are now watching an upheaval of that landscape, its ground dramatically shifting with the unfolding of the crisis.
As highlighted by Mansoor Dailami and Jonathon Adams-Kane in this week's Economic Premise- - "What Does the Future Hold for the International Banking System?" - European banks wrote their own chapter of that story (see chart below, from Dailami's and Adams-Kane's report). The European integration set the stage for their expansion, going much beyond the euro area's limits. They also became key agents in the operation of the U.S. "shadow banking" system, releasing themselves from dependence on retail deposits by borrowing in money markets to build a fast-growing asset base denominated in U.S. dollars.
The pre-2008 era in global finance may be called a "Great Leveraging." Banks and non-banking financial institutions overstretched their balance sheets, indulging themselves on sources of non-deposit funding in order to scale up asset holdings that were many times larger than their capital base. Their newly found source of funding was highly sensitive to interest rate changes, credit risks and events. On the other side of their balance sheets, real estate bubbles and other hyper-inflated assets in the U.S. and some parts of Europe comprised the top of an asset pyramid erected with flimsy foundations.
A "Great Deleveraging" started when, under market and regulatory pressures from 2007 onwards, financial institutions were forced to liquidate assets and retrench lending. Bank lending fell from 68 percent of global GDP in early 2008 to 50 percent in 2009, where it has remained. Raising more capital would have been the alternative to selling assets and shrinking loan portfolios, but clearly the confidence in the solidity of banks' edifices had evaporated.
Japanese banks did not embark on the "Great Leveraging", as they spent the last two decades healing from their own previous financial follies. U.S. banks managed to make rapid progress in deleveraging, and their loan-deposit ratios had already declined substantially by 2011. It is on the European side that the process kept unfolding at high-speed, and yet failed to reach comfort levels in terms of capital-asset ratios.
So what, you might ask? Isn't the system simply returning to the initial configuration prior to the "Great Leveraging", with European banks devolving part of their overreach? Let me single out two processes among those approached by Dailami and Adams-Kane that preclude such a return to the origin.
Firstly, the European deleveraging has been more of an unraveling process, one in which the end game remains elusive and banks may still undergo substantial balance-sheet downsizing. The financial crisis morphed into fiscal crises in several countries, and negative feedback loops between banks' portfolios and public debts have been at play. The euro area banking system is now fragmented into national systems, some of them facing dependence on fragile public debts, as well as large declines in deposits.
Secondly, the center of gravity of global growth is shifting toward developing countries. Not by chance, while European banks deleveraged and divested their stakes in the U.S, like their American counterparts they have made efforts to uphold domestic positions in dynamic developing countries. However, emerging-market-owned banks have been the greatest beneficiaries of that gravity shift and are seizing the opportunity to gradually become global players, snapping up market spaces left open by retrenching banks.
Such movement of tectonic plates has kept high the peril of landslides for euro deleveraged area banks, and one may expect the adoption of unconventional monetary policies by the European Central Bank to stay heavy and for long. On the other hand, given the structural fragility of the standing banking edifice, with remaining deleveraging pressures, one may not envisage an end to the euro area crisis if actions are not taken outside the monetary policy realm.
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