Debating a Post-American World: a book on international relations

Um livro de que participei, e sobre o qual já informei aqui, 


Clark, Sean and Sabrina Hoque (eds.):
Debating a Post-American World: What Lies Ahead?
(London: Routledge, 2011, 288 p.; ISBN-10: 0415690552; ISBN-13: 978-0415690553, p. 135-141; available: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9780415690553/); capítulo Paulo Roberto de Almeida: “Attraction and Repulsion: Brazil and the American world”
(ver: http://www.pralmeida.org/01Livros/2FramesBooks/PostAmericanWorld.html)


foi objeto de uma entrevista num blog canadense dedicado aos estudos internacionais, como me informa um dos organizadores, em comunicação pessoal, que reproduzo abaixo:

From: Sabrina Hoque <shoque@xxxxx.xx>

Subject: Promoting 'What Lies Ahead'

Date: 21 de janeiro de 2012 07:40:39 GMT+00:00

To: Paulo Roberto de Almeida

Cc: sean.clark@xxxxx.xx

Good morning Dr. Almeida,

Published in the UK on December 7, I'm happy to tell you that our book, 'What Lies Ahead', is now also available in North America. Sean and I hope you successfully received your complimentary contributor's copy, as those were mailed out from the UK in mid-December (though it may have been delayed by the holiday mail crush). If you haven't received a copy of a book by January 27, please do let us know and we will follow up with the publishers.

In addition to the steps Routledge is taking, Sean and I have also been busy promoting and marketing our book. Here are a few updates:

- Copies of our book have been sent out to several journals who are interested in writing a review: International Journal, Canadian Foreign Policy Journal, International Affairs, Canadian Journal of Political Science, and The Diplomat (online journal).

- There will be a book launch at Dalhousie's 7th Annual Political Science Graduate Student Symposium (March 2012), with our books available for purchase. The symposium is regularly attended by graduate students from across North America, faculty, members of the Canadian International Council, and the broader public community. The theme of this year's symposium is: "Rise of the Rest: Opportunities and Implications".

- Sean and I were recently interviewed by Verkko.ca (a Canadian online network for International Affairs)

The interview is available at: http://www.verkko.ca/members/blog_view.asp?id=640691&post=136880

At this stage, we welcome any further suggestions or recommendations you may have on how we may do more to market the book.

Lastly, Sean and I will both be attending ISA in San Diego this year (April 2012). Please let us know if you will be attending as well, as it would be great to meet up and perhaps enjoy a celebratory drink together!

Should you have any questions or concerns, please do not hesitate to contact me at shoque@dal.ca. I look forward to continued correspondence with you, and hope to see you at ISA.

Sincerely,

Sabrina Hoque

PhD Candidate of International Relations

Doctoral Fellow, Centre for Foreign Policy Studies

Dalhousie University

Debating a Post-American World: What Lies Ahead (Routledge, 2011)

Just Published: http://www.routledge.com/9780415690553

http://www.verkko.ca/members/blog_view.asp?id=640691&post=136880

50 Scholars Debate Post-American World in Newly Released Book

Posted By verkko.ca, January-10-12

Two PhD candidates in International Relations at the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies at Dalhousie University, Sean Clark and Sabrina Hoque have edited a newly released book called Debating a Post-American World What Lies Ahead? Verkko recently sat down with the two to talk about this project.

1) Tell us about your publication and how this project came about?

Fareed Zakaria's argument regarding the Post-American World garnered a lot of scholarly attention, engaging with the debate on the US' role in world politics, and whether its position was indeed shifting with respect to rising powers. As editors, we aimed to bridge the gap between theory and current world events by bringing together academic and policy experts who offer their perspectives on the debate.

This assumption provides another key reason why the "post-American world” was chosen as the central topic for discussion. One of the chief purposes of this book has been to provide students with an extensive overview of the current debate surrounding the prospects for a "Post-American world". It has been our experience that students are eager to consider and discuss the potential for a truly massive shift in the international distribution of power. As graduate students ourselves, we know how important it is to be able to analyze global events with a theoretical lens. The topic therefore offers a unique opportunity to combine theory and practice in one setting. Indeed, this book illustrates how knowledge is best advanced when the two are considered in tandem. Above all, we hope we to communicate the fact that today’s students will graduate into a world fraught with much tragedy and peril – but also tremendous promise.

2) Why do you feel this publication is particularly relevant today?

For all the tension and dangers of the Cold War era, the international system remained relatively stable. The postwar decades had a degree of predictability to them: the Soviet’s had their sphere and we in the West had ours. Each attended to their own backyard in relative peace, and certainly faced no challenger outside this nuclear dyad. This left Europe and Japan to rapidly rebuild from the ashes of World War II, joining North America in an unrivaled period of prosperity. Even living standards in the Soviet empire, propelled by harsh, Stalinist industrialization, grew at a modest but predictable rate. Much of the rest of the world, however, stayed poor. Latin America tipped into autocracy and hyperinflation. Asia languished under repressive dictators like Mao and Kim Il-Sung, with massive famine following megalomania. In sub-Saharan Africa, average life expectancy in the postwar period actually declined. In short, those who were rich and powerful in 1945 generally found themselves in the same enviable position when the millennium came to an end.

In contrast, the world of today is far more dynamic. A modern-day foreign investor in Africa is just as likely to be Chinese, Turkish, or Indian in origin than British or American. Some estimates project that China’s economy, at least when measured in purchasing power parity, will overtake that of the United States before the decade is out. Indian firms like Tata and ArcelorMittal are lean and hungry and unafraid of battling with the traditional, Western behemoths of General Electric and General Motors. Brazil, in a sharp contradiction to neo-Marxist expectations, now imports aircraft components from wealthy Europe and America, exporting back finished products in return. Over the past decade, six of the world’s ten fastest-growing countries were found in Africa. Even if the decline of the West has been over-stated, the political and economic relationship between the global North and South has never been so competitive.

Given this remarkable tumult, we see no better time to examine what implications these changes might bring. Change is coming fast and furiously, and we think both scholars and students will be interested in an analysis of where and how their world is going to be affected.

3) Who are some of the key contributors to your book?

To our good fortune, we were able to solicit think-pieces from over 50 contributors. Given the range of topics addressed in our book, you can imagine that each of our contributors brings their own unique and key perspective to the debate. Indeed, this is one of the appeals of our edited volume - students are able to connect, compare, and contrast individual scholars with theory and current events. We also put together an innovative panel at the recent 2010 Annual convention in Montreal, hosted by the International Studies Association. Our panel, consisting of a selection of our contributors: Joseph Nye, William Wohlforth, Mark Brawley, Tim Shaw, William R. Thompson, Ronald Tammen, Christopher Layne, and Thomas Fues, debated the prospects of a Post-American world and was received with wide enthusiasm, with over a 100 conference participants in attendance.

4) What are some of the key issues addressed in your book?

Our book is divided into five parts, with international relations scholars and policy experts exploring and discussing a wide range of topics. The edited volume is an effort to frame the debate regarding the question of ‘what lies ahead’. First and foremost is to ask if we are destined for, to use Fareed Zakaria’s term, a "post-American world.” In other words, will America retain a leading role in world affairs, or will its slippage mirror the fallen titans of ages past? To achieve the former, some very large hurdles will have to be overcome. In Part I, we conduct a realist-type evaluation of future power trends. These dynamics are examined not only from the perspective of the United States, but also from that of the "risers and the rest.” Part III enters into a more specific discussion regarding the course and conduct of wars to come, including the future of nuclear weapons, arms control, and "liberal wars in the age of risk.” Part IV looks more to the liberal concerns of laws and institutions, and how they might fare in a world absent of American hegemony. Lastly, Part V touches upon issues often overlooked by mainstream scholarship: energy and the environment. The post-American world may, after all, end up being dark and hungry.

5) In your opinion, what are the main challenges to Canada and the rest of the world caused by a transition from American dominance to the rise of alternative powers?

A post-American world is one ripe with opportunity for countries like Canada, but one that is also fraught with dangers we cannot control. As a resource exporter, the rapid industrialization of the Global South provides a tremendous boon to the Canadian economy. The ever-longer queue for Canadian iron, oil, beef, and timber has already meant a fortuitous partial de-coupling of Canada from the United States economy, sparing Canadians the steep recession that America continues to find itself mired in. Wealthy societies make for good customers and, as we have learned with the recent Keystone XL debacle, it never hurts to have alternative clients waiting in the wings.

This rosy take relies, of course, on the assumption that the present, Washington-centric world order can continue to mollify the rising South’s political and economic ambitions. If not, the growth of these new powers may bring sustained international confrontation. We have already seen rumblings by China and others that the present set of multilateral institutions are not up to the task. Public communiqués, for example, assert China’s intentions of a "peaceful rise”—yet this image fits uncomfortably alongside the elaborate military parades of the People’s Republic's Diamond Jubilee of October 1, 2009. Guns, pride, and fear can make for a potent mix. Indeed, there is always the possibility that, like in 1914, a changing international economic balance could really lead things awry. To this prospect, policymakers of countries both large and small must remain constantly vigilant.

World Bank looks at European crisis (The Economist)

Europe's debt crisis

At bursting point?

Jan 27th 2012, 0:31 by The Economist | BRUSSELS

THIS grotesque map of the world, depicting Europe as a bloated balloon, caught my eye this week, and powerfully illustrates one of the factors in Europe's debt crisis. It depicts the countries of the world sized according to the amount of government spending*. thatthey spend on social protection, from pensions to health, education and unemployment benefits.

In the words of the World Bank, which published it in a report issued this week ("Golden Growth: Restoring the lustre of the European Economic model", here), Europe is the world's “lifestyle superpower”. As opposed to America, which spends almost as much as the rest of the world put together on defence, Europe spends more than the rest of the globe combined on social policies.

In many ways this is an admirable aspect of Europe's economic model, which combines high living standards with high standards of social welfare. The trouble is, such spending is helping to bankrupt governments—not least because those very same caring policies ensure that Europeans live longer, requiring more expenditure on health care and the payment of pensions for more years.

Anybody who wants to understand the strengths and weaknesses of European economies in this time of crisis would do well to read the report (the overview is here).

First the strengths. Europe, say the authors, invented a unique “convergence machine” by admitting successive waves of poorer countries and quickly raising their standards of living. Convergence has been accelerated by the free flow of trade and capital within the European Union. As the report puts it:

Between 1950 and 1973, Western European incomes converged quickly towards those in the United States. Then, until the early 1990s, the incomes of more than 100 million people in the poorer southern periphery—Greece, southern Italy, Portugal, and Spain—grew closer to those in advanced Europe. With the first association agreements with Hungary and Poland in 1994, another 100 million people in Central and Eastern Europe were absorbed into the European Union, and their incomes increased quickly. Another 100 million in the candidate countries in Southeastern Europe are already benefiting from the same aspirations and similar institutions that have helped almost half a billion people achieve the highest standards of living on the planet. If European integration continues, the 75 million people in the eastern partnership will profit in ways that are similar in scope and speed.

Yet this convergence machine is spluttering, and deep reforms are needed. Much effort has been expended on explaining the nature of the financial crisis of the past two years. The sharpest and most concise analysis I know of is a recent policy brief by Jean Pisani-Ferry, director of the Bruegel think-tank in Brussels ("The euro crisis and the new impossible trinity", here). This argues that the problems are deeper than a lack of fiscal discipline: there is a flaw in the way the euro zone was designed, without a lender of last resort, without joint bonds and with a vicious feedback loop that weakens both sovereigns and their banks. There is a tendency in Brussels to think that, if only the euro zone were to make the leap to federalism, all would be solved. Far from it.

The World Bank report shows that Europe has deep structural flaws to contend with. Perhaps most worrying is the slowdown in labour productivity, the underlying driver of economic growth over the long term. This chart (right) shows how Western Europe had almost closed the productivity gap with America by 1995. But thereafter it started to lag ever farther behind the United States (and kept losing its lead over Japan).

The effect is most alarming on the Mediterranean rim. These next two charts show that, as expected, in 2002 northern Europe was more productive than southern Europe, which in turn led the new member states of eastern Europe. But between 2002 and 2008 something strange happened. The convergence machine went into reverse for southern Europe. While the easterners were roaring ahead to catch up with the northerners, prroductivity in Mediterranean countries actually fell.

Part of the reason is contained in this chart (right). It shows how foreign direct investment was abruptly redirected from southern countries to the new member states in the east. Mediterranean members faced a triple challenge: they were hit hard by globalisation and the loss of low-tech industries such as textiles; they faced competition from cheaper labour in ex-communist members; and the adoption of the euro made it harder for them to adjust through devaluation. Yet Club Med has only itself to blame. 

A premature adoption of the euro by southern economies is sometimes blamed for this reversal of fortune. Others say that letting the formerly communist countries into the European Union so soon did not give the south enough time to become competitive. But perhaps the most likely explanation is that of all the economies in Europe, the entrepreneurial structures of Greece, Italy, Portugal, and Spain were least suited for the wider European economy. For one thing, a sizable part of net output in southern economies is generated in small firms—almost a third of it in tiny enterprises (with fewer than 10 workers). This is not an entrepreneurial profile suited for a big market. Unsurprisingly, with the expansion of the single market in the 2000s, foreign capital from the richer economies of Continental Europe quickly changed direction, going east instead of south as it had done in the 1990s.

Did the south need more time to adjust, or did it squander opportunities? The latter seems more plausible. Ireland has shown that EU institutions and resources can be translated quickly into competitiveness. The Baltic economies are now doing the same. The chief culprits for the south’s poor performance were high taxes and too many regulations, often poorly administered. While these mattered less when its eastern neighbors were communist and China and India suffered the least business-friendly systems in the world, they are now crippling southern enterprise.

All is not lost. Northern European states, especially Nordic countries, show it is possible to innovate, raise productivity and maintain generous social welfare at the same time. This is the World Bank's explanation for their success:

What has the north done to encourage enterprise and innovation? Much of its success has come from creating a good climate for doing business. All the northern economies are in the top 15 countries of 183 in the World Bank’s Doing Business rankings; at 14th, Sweden is the lowest ranked among them. They have given their enterprises considerable economic freedom. Their governments are doing a lot more. They have speeded up innovation by downloading the “killer applications” that have made the United States the global leader in technology: better incentives for enterprise-sponsored research and development (R&D), public funding mechanisms and intellectual property regimes to foster profitable relations between universities and firms, and a steady supply of workers with tertiary education. Tellingly, Europe’s innovation leaders perform especially well in areas where Europe as a whole lags the United States the most. These features make them global leaders; combining them with generous government spending on R&D and public education systems makes their innovation systems distinctively European.

Even so, there are reasons to worry, even in northern Europe. For instance:

What has been more perplexing is Europe’s generally poor performance in the most technology-intensive sectors—the Internet, biotechnology, computer software, health care equipment, and semiconductors. Put another way, the United States, the Republic of Korea, and Taiwan, China, have been doing well in sectors that are huge now but barely existed in 1975. Europe has been doing better in the more established sectors, especially industrial machinery, electrical equipment, telecommunications, aerospace, automobiles, and personal goods. The United States has young firms like Amazon, Amgen, Apple, Google, Intel, and Microsoft; Europe has Airbus, Mercedes, Nokia, and Volkswagen.

The productivity gap is especially important in Europe, given that Europeans tend to work less than Americans, while spending more on social protection. 

The hallmark of the European economic model is perhaps the balance between work and life. With prosperity, Americans buy more goods and services, Europeans more leisure. In the 1950s, Western Europeans worked the equivalent of almost a month more than Americans. By the 1970s, they worked about the same amount. Today, Americans work a month a year more than Dutch, French, Germans, and Swedes, and work notably longer than the less well-off Greeks, Hungarians, Poles, and Spaniards..

And on top of fewer working hours in the day, and taking longer holidays, Europeans have tended to retire earlier—even as they lived longer. By 2007, the French could expect to draw pensions for 15 years longer than they did in 1965. On current trends for immigration and participation in the workforce, says the World Bank, the 45 European countries in its study will lose 50m workers over the next 50 years. Which brings us to that spending bulge.

Europe’s states are not big spenders on either health or education. The variation among countries stems from a difference in spending on pensions and social assistance. Europe’s countries also differ how they tax these benefits; Northern European countries tax the social security benefits of people with high incomes more than others in Europe. After taxes are considered, the southern periphery is the biggest social spender in Western Europe. But the reason why Europe spends more than its peer on public pensions is the same in the north, center and south. This is not because Europe has the oldest population (Japan’s is much older) nor because of higher pension benefits (annual subsidies per pensioner are about the same in Greece as in Japan). It spends more because of easier and earlier eligibility for pensions.

So the outlook is gloomy. Even with greater productivity, even if governments can reduce unemployment and bring more women into the workforce, Europeans will have to stay in work for many more years. Even so, the workforce will decrease. So Europeans will have to rethink migration policies too.

* A correction to my post last night: the World Bank's map is sized according to all government spending, not just spending on social policies. The World Bank tells me the map would be even more distorted were it to focus only on public spending on health, education and welfare benefits.

Os iPads na ilha da fantasia - Kleuber Cristofen Kleber Cristofen PiresPires

Meu amigo economista Kleuber Cristofen Pires faz uma análise irretocável das bobagens do governo no que esse ajuntamento de esquizofrênicos econômicos acredita ser "política industrial", um travestimento ridículo para dar dinheiro a capitalistas de guichê, que vão ganhar dinheiro em cima de todos os brasileiros apenas porque alguém no governo quis porque quis ter iPads fabricados no Brasil (sem perguntar o custo e as distorções dessa medida totalmente artificial).
A pretensão, repito, é ridícula, e custosa, e vai revelar mais uma vez como o Brasil é não apenas mercantilista, mas totalmente em descompasso com as tendências mundias de integração produtiva.
Nossos dirigentes são caipiras, e mais do que isso, são totalmente defasados no plano econômico e diplomático. O Brasil se isola num mundo cada vez mais globalizado, com políticas mesquinhas no plano econômico.
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Os Ipad's na Ilha da Fantasia
Kleber Cristofen Pires
Posted: 26 Jan 2012 11:53 AM PST

Com a nacionalização de Ipad's,governo usa o casuísmo para fins eleitorais.


No dia 25/01/2012, foi publicada noDiário Oficial da União a Portaria Interministerial nº 034, de 23 de janeiro de 2012, que concede diversos benefícios fiscais à empresa taiwanesa FOXCONN Indústriade Eletrônicos Ltda, especialmente isenção de IPI, PIS e Cofins, para a produção de Ipad's em território nacional, mediante os compromissos de investimento em pesquisa e desenvolvimento e utilização de componentes de fabricação nacional segundo os percentuais estipulados pela parafernália de artigos contidos no Decretonº 5. 906/2006 e leis que o sustentam.
Desta forma, pretendem os nossos burocratas que os consumidores brasileiros sejam contemplados com os disputados produtos da Apple, tão inacessíveis atualmente, comunidades produzidas nacionalmente e a preços razoáveis.
Vejam, prezados leitores, a que ponto chegou o particularismo legislativo: Desta nossa Constituição esquizofrênica, da qual que se pode extrair o que se quiser conforme as interpretações convenientes ao momento, dá-se um pisão naquele artigo 5º, que diz sermos todos iguais perante a lei, e criam-se leis que fingindo de abstratas, foram e vão sendo sancionadas com vistas a atender interesses bastante específicos;adiante, baixa-se um decreto que as regulamente e que torça ainda um pouco mais a palmeira para se alcançar o coco que finalmente, será colhido por meio de uma portaria.
Tudo muito constitucional, tudo muito legal....mas nada justo!
Agora, por que eu, como dono de uma padaria ou de uma fábrica de fios têxteis, não tenho direito igualmente a tais isenções fiscais? Então eu também não preciso investir no desenvolvimento dos meus produtos?
O sistema constitucional e legal erguido sobre a doutrina positivista sempre há de desembocar nos particularismos justificados pelos argumentos mais criativos, para privilegiar os setores que o estado considera como estratégicos ou convenientes, por qualquer motivo, por mais esdrúxulo que seja,desde que ele seja a razão de ser de si próprio.
Na correr deste rio, são tragados como as terras caídas os nefastos potencialismos de seleção por parte de quem ocupa as cadeiras decisórias do estado, a decidir quem pode e quem não pode ser contemplado por suas benesses, conforme as retribuições que este possa prover para o agigantamento do poder dos agentes do estado.
Malgrado toda boa vontade e lídima honestidade possível neste mundo, nem por isto afasta-se o perigo do dirigismo estatal sobre a economia, fadando-se ao fracasso inexorável os seus projetos, pelo simples motivo de que em um sistema capitalista livre prevalece uma fantástica interdependência que não pode ser reproduzida em cativeiro.
Sobre isto, há um famoso artigo, chamado de “Eu, o lápis”, de Leonard E. Reed, que explica magistralmente a intrincada e impossível de rastrear teia de relações humanas capazes de fazer com que uma criança tenha em mãos o tão singelo instrumento de escrever, do qual reproduzo adiante um trecho para degustação:

Não há nenhuma pessoa na face da terra que saiba me fazer. Soa fantástico, não?
Minha árvore genealógica começa com uma árvore, um cedro de fibras retas que cresce no norte da Califórnia e em Oregon. Agora contemple todas as serras, tratores, cordas e incontáveis outros equipamentos utilizados na coleta e transporte dos troncos de madeira até a estrada de ferro. Pense agora em todas as pessoas e incontáveis habilidades que foram necessárias para a fabricação desses equipamentos: a mineração do ferro, a fabricação do aço e a transformação deste em serras, machados e motores; o cultivo do sisal e todo o seu processo de transformação em cordas fortes e resistentes; pense ainda nas áreas de corte dos troncos de cedro onde os lenhadores dormem em camas e têm as suas refeições servidas em grandes mesas em salas ainda maiores, o cozimento e cultivo de toda a comida necessária para alimentar a todos. Afirmo, milhares de anônimos são responsáveis por cada copo de café que os lenhadores bebem.
…

Temo pela Apple, tão reconhecida pela qualidade dos seus produtos, eis que será obrigada a substituir os fornecedores mais confiáveis que contribuíram para a sua excelente reputação por outros desconhecidos que se só se mantêm no mercado por conta de privilégios fiscais parecidos com os que irá desfrutar.

O Brasil não depende necessariamente de produzir tablets e Ipads em solo nacional; considerando as naturais vocações e o ambiente criado pelo regime tributário e burocrático de alfaiataria vigente - isto é, confeccionado sob medida para cada cidadão – dificilmente nosso país alcançaria as vantagens comparativas que outros países possuem.

A decisão pela produção nacionalizada destes aparelhos, portanto, reflete algo muito distinto de uma visão estratégica por parte do governo: a satisfação dos seus interesses políticos, no tanto que poderá lucrar nas urnas com a propaganda de que somos um país que detém uma tecnologia de ponta, o que nem de longe há de passar pela verdade, eis o notório processo de desindustrialização que estamos testemunhando.

Em uma sociedade livre, capitalista e próspera, a inovação tecnológica emerge da conjunção de um sem-número de colaboradores diretos e indiretos, uns inventando novos processos, outros novos materiais, outros novas ferramentas, e assim por diante. Mais do que isto, segundo o pensamento do filósofo francês Alain Peyrefitte, o gênio criativo de uma nação desperta como a reação em cadeia que é fruto de uma complexa combinação de elementos.

Infelizmente, pagarão por isto todas as empresas brasileiras que possuem algum potencial de inovação tecnológica mais urgente e necessária em qualquer outro setor e que serão sobrecarregadas por terem de pagar impostos por elas e pelos apaniguados. Obviamente, no fim da linha, pagarão a mais todos os brasileiros, mesmo aqueles que jamais sonharão em adquirir um Ipad em suas vidas.

Botar uma fábrica da Apple para produzir tablets em solo caboclo segundo condições um tanto artificiais estipuladas pelo governo soa como o papagaio que é ensinado a produzir sons que se aparentam a palavras.

Banco Central fica submisso ao governo (e esquece as metas de inflacao)

A Ata do Copom parece ter sido escrita pelo governo

Editorial O Estado de São Paulo, 27 de janeiro de 2012

A leitura da Ata da 164.ª reunião do Comitê e Política Monetária (Copom) deixa a estranha impressão de ter sido escrita pelo ministro da Fazenda - dado seu estilo otimista -, e não por autoridades monetárias independentes.

No passado recente, o Copom preocupava-se com atingir o centro da meta de inflação definida pelo Conselho Monetário Nacional (de 4,5%). Já não há sequer referência à meta, mas se assinala que a taxa poderá ser de 5,50% neste ano e de 5% em 2013, como se o foco agora fosse o intervalo de inflação.

Parece, pois, que a responsabilidade pelo controle da inflação deixou de ser da política monetária e passou para a evolução da situação internacional. Esta, com razão, preocupa as autoridades monetárias, que, no entanto, deveriam dar alguma informação sobre medidas que poderiam adotar para reduzir ao mínimo os efeitos, no Brasil, da crise que os países ricos atravessam.

Assim, é importante verificar, no texto do documento, a substituição da política monetária - que depende do Banco Central - como meio de combater a inflação pela política fiscal, que depende do governo. Sempre achamos que o Banco Central deveria alertar o governo sobre os efeitos inflacionários de uma política fiscal frouxa. Isso, todavia, não dispensa o Copom de firmeza na política monetária. Por outro lado, ao elogiar o governo pela obtenção de um superávit primário, as autoridades monetárias não parecem atentar para como ele foi obtido: se com aumento de receitas ou corte de despesas de custeio e de investimentos, esquecendo de que, dependendo do recurso usado, os efeitos sobre a inflação são muito diferentes.

Timidamente, todavia, ao recomendar ao governo que leve em consideração a necessidade de expansão moderada do crédito, os membros do Comitê advertem sobre o inconveniente das concessões exageradas de subsídios por intermédio de operações de crédito.

Embora reconheça que o descompasso entre as taxas de oferta e de demanda na economia é decrescente, o documento lembra, com toda razão, que a concessão de aumentos de salários deve ser compatível com aumento da produtividade, sob pena de favorecer as pressões inflacionárias.

O Copom acha que se deve reconhecer a contribuição que tiveram na redução das taxas de juros o aumento de oferta de poupança externa e a redução do seu custo de captação. Por isso enfatiza "a elevada probabilidade de concretização de um cenário que contemple a taxa Selic se deslocando para o patamar de um dígito".