Temas de relações internacionais, de política externa e de diplomacia brasileira, com ênfase em políticas econômicas, em viagens, livros e cultura em geral. Um quilombo de resistência intelectual em defesa da racionalidade, da inteligência e das liberdades democráticas.
O que é este blog?
Este blog trata basicamente de ideias, se possível inteligentes, para pessoas inteligentes. Ele também se ocupa de ideias aplicadas à política, em especial à política econômica. Ele constitui uma tentativa de manter um pensamento crítico e independente sobre livros, sobre questões culturais em geral, focando numa discussão bem informada sobre temas de relações internacionais e de política externa do Brasil. Para meus livros e ensaios ver o website: www.pralmeida.org. Para a maior parte de meus textos, ver minha página na plataforma Academia.edu, link: https://itamaraty.academia.edu/PauloRobertodeAlmeida;
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terça-feira, 5 de maio de 2015
Chile e Bolivia: acesso ao mar na Corte da Haia - Fantasmas do passado historico nunca passam
Mises Daily: a falacia do jogo de soma zero em economia - Matt Palumbo
A verdade simples é esta: "inequality, contrary to popular belief, actually promotes growth".
As pessoas não gostam de admitir, ou melhor, elas recusam essa simples realidade, mas é um fato. Igualdade, como já nos provaram os países socialistas, leva à estagnação e ao declínio.
Que o diga a China...
Paulo Roberto de Almeida
Why Larry Summers Doesn’t Understand Economic Inequality
This fallacy is one that any student of economics is familiar with, but the layman may not be: the fixed pie fallacy.
The fixed pie fallacy is synonymous with the zero-sum fallacy in economics: that anyone’s benefit comes at someone else’s expense.
In other words, if one person earns a dollar, someone else is worse off by a dollar.
We know the logic behind the fallacy is faulty because if it were true, no transactions would take place. People aren’t so misinformed that they would remain blind to coming out the loser in half the transactions they take part in.
Well, maybe I’ve spoken too soon in saying that only the layman would be unfamiliar with this fallacy. Weighing in on the income inequality debate in a piece at the Financial Times, former Harvard President Larry Summers attempted to quantify how much better off most Americans would be had inequality remained at 1979 levels. “If the US had the same income distribution it had in 1979, the bottom 80 per cent of the population would have $1tn — or $11,000 per family — more. The top 1 per cent $1tn — or $750,000 — less,” writes Summers.
Quoctrung Bui of NPR reported on Summers’s argument and broke it down even further, estimating the benefits by income quintile. Under the 1979 income distribution, the bottom 20 percent would be earning $3,282 more, the next 20 percent $6,928 more, the middle 20 percent $8,752 more, and the next 19 percent would be earning $17,311 more. This only leaves the demonized top 1 percent, which would be earning $824,844 less.
Bui was intellectually honest enough in his reporting of Summers’s argument that he included this comment: “Of course, this is a purely theoretical exercise. It combines two different worlds: an economy as big as today's, but with 1979 levels of inequality. Some economists would argue that this could never exist, because economic growth has been driven by forces, such as globalization and technological change, that have also driven up inequality.” A question that must be answered is whether or not the economic pie would be smaller, the same size, or larger had inequality not risen by the same extent since the late 70s. The consensus among rich countries is the last option: that inequality, contrary to popular belief, actually promotes growth. Quoting Harvard economist Robert Barro in the Journal of Economic Growth, “higher inequality tends to retard growth in poor countries and encourage growth in richer places.” Even Jared Bernstein in a report for the liberal Center for American Progress stated “there is not enough concrete proof to lead objective observers to unequivocally conclude that inequality has held back growth.”
Since we know that rising inequality has promoted growth above what it has otherwise been, we can’t simply look at economic output today and figure out how much each quintile would be earning had the income distribution remained at its 1979 levels. A good exercise would be to compare current levels of output and earnings distribution against the counterfactual: a smaller economy with 1979 levels of distribution.
In a recent debate hosted by Intelligence Squared U.S., Scott Winship of the Brookings Institution did what I outline. In his opening remarks, he argued:
So, essentially if you enlarge the pie enough, the economic pie enough, then the poor and middle class actually can get more pie even if their slice becomes skinnier.So, when we take into account the effects that inequality has on economic growth into the equation, Summers’s purely theoretical exercise becomes just that, a purely theoretical exercise. Quintiles at different levels of income distribution would not be thousands of dollars better off had inequality remained the same as it had in 1979 for the past thirty years, because the economy would not have grown by the same amount. We don’t even know if they would be any better off at all. The fixed pie fallacy may make for good politics, but it has no place in economic analysis.
If you claim that absent rising inequality, the middle class would have had thousands of dollars more than they did, as you sometimes hear, there are a couple of really big assumptions hidden behind that. One is that if we had capped the incomes at the top, that the economic pie would have become just as big as it actually did. The second assumption is that if we had capped those incomes, then essentially the proceeds would be equally distributed across the population. Now, in actuality, if we somehow managed to cap the incomes of the top 1 percent, what would likely happen is we'd be shifting incomes to knowledge workers and professionals who are in the upper middle class or in the rest of the top 10 percent.
To see how important these assumptions actually are, consider one possible outcome if we had successfully held the top 1 percent’s income share in 2007 to their 1979 level, okay? So assume, for sake of argument, that, that would have reduced economic growth, not by a lot, say, by 8 percent. And assume that the middle 20 percent, instead of receiving 20 percent of the proceeds from this redistribution, got 13 percent of the proceeds. Well, I've done the math, and what it works out to is that in this scenario the middle class actually would be no better off for having limited the increases at the top.
Note: The views expressed on Mises.org are not necessarily those of the Mises Institute.
Academia.edu: paper mais requisitado da semana - Paulo R. de Almeida
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segunda-feira, 4 de maio de 2015
PT&Brothers, Business Consulting Incorporated (By R.A.)
“Alô, Ângela, aqui é o Vaccarezza. Eu sei que não está tudo bem, eu estava no exterior. Eu estou ligando primeiro para me solidarizar e para dizer que sou amigo do Léo. Eu sei que você não precisa de nada, mas se você precisar de alguma coisa, queria que contasse comigo”.
Venezuela: inflacao e penuria trazem caos economico e politico:surrealismo total
Todas as compras feitas pelos venezuelanos são computadas em um sistema de dados para garantir que cada consumidor não tente comprar os mesmos produtos racionados em um período menor do que sete dias.Soldados patrulham as filas fora dos supermercados, policiais da guarda bolivariana ficam dentro dos supermercados, e funcionários públicos conferem as carteiras de identidade à procura de falsificações que poderiam ser utilizadas para driblar o sistema de racionamento. Procuram também por imigrantes com visto expirado. Um funcionário público da imigração grita alertando que transgressores serão presos.[...]O governo enviou tropas para patrulhar as enormes filas que se estendem por várias quadras. Alguns estados proibiram as pessoas de esperaram fora dos supermercados ao longo das madrugadas, e funcionários do governo estão de prontidão perto das portas de entrada e saída, prontos para prender qualquer um que tenta driblar o sistema de racionamento.
Jornalistas são proibidos de filmar ou tirar fotos das prateleiras vazias. Já os consumidores também estão sob instruções rígidas. Você só pode comprar bens escassos em dias específicos da semana, dependendo do número final na sua carteira de identidade. Sendo assim, se, por exemplo, a sua carteira de identidade termina em zero ou em um, você só pode ficar em uma fila às segundas-feiras. E, ainda assim, isso não significa que o sabonete e o leite que você quer comprar estarão necessariamente disponíveis naquele dia.[…]É comum ver pessoas entrando em filas sem nem sequer saber o que está à venda. Elas simplesmente veem a fila, entram nela e então perguntam a quem está imediatamente à frente para o que é aquela fila. E é extremamente provável que essa pessoa à frente também tenha feito exatamente o mesmo com a pessoa que está à frente dela.Testemunhamos uma fila que só se movia quando algumas pessoas que já estavam lá na frente desistiam de esperar e iam tentar a sorte em outro lugar. Isso significa que as pessoas que estavam lá no fim da fila, dobrando a esquina, não viam isso, e acreditavam enganosamente que estava havendo algum progresso e que a fila de fato estava se movendo. E isso as estimulava a permanecer na fila por mais tempo.Só que, para tragédia geral, essa fila não era para absolutamente nada. Simplesmente ouviu-se um rumor de que o supermercado em questão havia recebido uma remessa de algo — ninguém sabia o quê —, e isso bastou para que se formasse uma fila. No final, não havia nada. Apenas mais um dia perdido.
"Os estoques, inclusive os das indústrias farmacêutica e alimentícia, estão chegando a níveis críticos", disse Eduardo Garmendia, presidente da Confederação Venezuelana das Indústrias (Conindustria). "Todo o sistema já está sendo afetado pela dificuldade de se conseguiu matérias-primas, mas tudo é ainda pior no quesito bens essenciais, pois estes estão sofrendo um impacto direto; estamos falando de remédios e comida".No caso dos alimentos, os estoques das principais indústrias do país irão durar menos de um mês, de acordo com dados publicados pela Câmara Venezuelana da Indústria de Alimentos (Cavidea)."Há empresas de alimentos que, até hoje, neste ano, ainda não conseguiram um único dólar", disse Pablo Baraybar, presidente da Cavídea. "Em algumas linhas de produção, temos estoques para apenas mais 10 ou 20 dias".Isso certamente tornará as coisas exponencialmente mais difíceis para aqueles venezuelanos que sofrem diariamente para colocar comida em suas mesas.O que pode ocorrer daqui a apenas algumas semanas é a total paralisação do país após o esgotamento de todos os estoques, pois as empresas não estão recebendo do governo os dólares necessários para pagar pelas importações.[...]É por isso que o governo venezuelano vem fazendo uma intensa propaganda sobre a possibilidade de que a China esteja disposta a fornecer um empréstimo de US$ 10 bilhões para projetos de infraestrutura na Venezuela."O governo está a todo o momento dizendo 'os chineses estão vindo, os chineses estão vindo; os chineses são os únicos que podem nos salvar desse martírio", disse Russ Dalen.Só que, quando o dinheiro chinês chegar — caso isso realmente ocorra —, ele só poderá ser utilizado para importar produtos da China ou ser investido em projetos específicos previamente aprovados pelos governos venezuelano e chinês, o que não necessariamente irá trazer alívio para os milhões de venezuelanos, que, dentro de poucos meses, não mais conseguirão obter leite e farinha nas prateleiras dos supermercados após passarem o dia inteiro na fila.
Acima, uma fila na Romênia em 1986; abaixo, uma fila na Venezuela em 2015 |
domingo, 3 de maio de 2015
O mito Rothschild: 200 anos desde Waterloo, o antissemitismo persiste - Brian Cathcart
BRIAN CATHCART
Thirty years after the dust had settled on the fields of Waterloo, a poisonous anti-Semitic pamphlet circulated in Europe, claiming the Rothschild family had accrued its vast wealth on the back of Wellington's triumph. The 'facts' were entirely made up
In the summer of 1846, a political pamphlet bearing the ominous signature "Satan" swept across Europe, telling a story which, though lurid and improbable, left a mark that can be seen to this day.
The pamphlet claimed to recount the history of the richest and most famous banking family of the time – the Rothschilds – and its most enduring passage told how their vast fortune was built upon the bloodshed of the battle of Waterloo, whose bicentenary falls this year.
Here is the story that "Satan" told.
Nathan Rothschild, the founder of the London branch of the bank, was a spectator on the battlefield that day in June 1815 and, as night fell, he observed the total defeat of the French army. This was what he was waiting for. A relay of fast horses rushed him to the Belgian coast, but there he found to his fury that a storm had confined all ships to port. Undaunted – "Does greed admit anything is impossible?" asked Satan – he paid a king's ransom to a fisherman to ferry him through wind and waves to England.
Reaching London 24 hours before official word of Wellington's victory, Rothschild exploited his knowledge to make a killing on the Stock Exchange. "In a single coup," announced the pamphlet, "he gained 20 million francs."
Beyond all doubt this tale was anti-Semitic in intent. Satan was in reality a left-wing controversialist called Georges Dairnvaell, who made no attempt to hide his loathing for Jews –and the Rothschilds in particular. Though they had been little known in 1815, by 1846 the Rothschilds had become the Rockefellers or the Gateses of their age, their name a byword for fabulous wealth. Nathan himself had died in 1836 and so could not rebut the claims.
Every aspect of Dairnvaell's tale – the ruthlessness, the guile, the greed – represents a derogatory racial stereotype, and he was writing at a moment when such attitudes were having one of their periodic surges of popularity in Europe.
The story was also false: Nathan Rothschild was not at Waterloo or even in Belgium at the time. There was no Channel storm. And he made no great killing on the stock market.
Yet the Satan pamphlet, translated into many languages and reprinted many times, gave this legend such a grip on history that, albeit often in modified or diluted forms, references to it can still be found today both in popular culture and in scholarly works.
Versions appear in a Hollywood film of 1934 and the 2009 Sebastian Faulks novel A Week in December; in past editions of the Dictionary of National Biography and Encyclopaedia Britannica; in Elizabeth Longford's acclaimed 1970s biography of the Duke of Wellington; and (with a very different analysis) in Niall Ferguson's authorised history of the Rothschilds. Perhaps more predictably, the story provided the plot for a Nazi film of 1940 entitled The Rothschilds: Shares in Waterloo, and the tale can be read on many anti-Semitic websites.
How does a crude racist smear endure for so long? More importantly, how has it survived as a supposed sub-plot of history – towards which even the most respected writers have felt obliged to nod – when it is one of those myths that, on being challenged with inconvenient facts, simply adjusts its form? For example, when it was finally accepted that Nathan Rothschild was definitely not at Waterloo, the story changed: the banker was in London, but had made elaborate preparations to get the news first, either by special messenger or pigeon post. An additional twist was added. Once he knew Wellington had won, Rothschild was said to have deliberately provoked a collapse of the stock market by spreading false rumours of a defeat, so allowing him to pick up shares at rock-bottom prices and double his profits later, after official news of the victory had sent the markets soaring.
Nathan Rothschild was a German banker, businessman and financierNathan Rothschild was a German banker, businessman and financier
Was there any truth to this revised version, or to any of the other variants that have surfaced over the years? We will come to that.
The legend has had innocent uses – for example, the former CIA chief Allen Dulles repeated it in a 1963 book on espionage as he wanted to illustrate the value of early information. Other writers have adopted the tale simply as a good yarn, without any anti-Semitic intent.
Even the Rothschild family, always deeply uncomfortable with the story, has tried to domesticate it. Their preferred version glosses over any alleged profits and stresses that Nathan's first action on hearing of the victory had been that of any good citizen of the time: he informed the government. (This was the version Elizabeth Longford embraced.)
All the while, error and trickery were hampering attempts to separate the myth from the facts. What apparent evidence was there? For many years, historians cited a line from the London Courier newspaper dated 20 June 1815, two days after the battle and a day before official news of the victory arrived. It stated simply: "Rothschild has made great purchases of stock."
On the face of it, this supported the legend, but there is a problem: those words do not appear in surviving copies of that day's Courier. Instead, it now appears that the purported quotation originated in the writings of a Scottish historian, Archibald Alison, in 1848 – two years after the Satan pamphlet was published.
Further backing for the legend came in the form of an entry in the 1815 diary of a young American visitor to London, James Gallatin. On the day of Waterloo, he writes of great public anxiety over events in Belgium, adding: "They say Monsieur Rothschild has mounted couriers from Brussels to Ostend and a fast clipper ready to sail the moment something is decisive [on the battlefield] one way or the other."
Once again, this is not what it seems. The Gallatin diary was exposed in 1957 as a fake cooked up late in the 19th century – long after the Satan story had gained currency.
The 1846 Rothschild pamphlet written by Satan
The first modern attempt to challenge the myth was made in the 1980s by a Rothschild – Baron
Victor, a retired scientist and public servant who wrote a book about his ancestor Nathan. It was Victor who identified the powerful role played by the Satan pamphlet, and he debunked many of the dafter allegations.
But he also discovered in the Rothschild archives a document that muddied the water.This was a letter written to Nathan Rothschild by a bank employee in Paris about a month after Waterloo, and it included the statement: "I am informed by Commissary White you have done well by the early information which you had of the victory gained at Waterloo." Proof, it seemed, that the legend had some foundation in fact. There matters have stood since the 1980s, and in those years the old legend has enjoyed a new lease of life online, while historians and writers have continued to pay it lip service.
But fresh evidence has now surfaced which allows us finally to put this story in its proper context. Newspapers published in the week of Waterloo make it clear that the first person to bring authentic news of the victory at Waterloo to London was not Nathan Rothschild; rather, it was a man who had learnt of it in the Belgian city of Ghent and made a dash to England.
This shadowy figure, identified only as "Mr C of Dover", was telling his story freely in the City from the morning of Wednesday 21 June – at least 12 hours before the official news arrived. It was published in at least three newspapers that afternoon. We also know that a news report written that Wednesday evening referred to Nathan Rothschild receiving a letter from Ghent reporting a victory and passing his news to the government – though this was noted alongside reports of two other, similar letters.
So, while it is confirmed that Rothschild had early news, he was not the only one.
Did Rothschild have time to buy shares? Apparently, but in the thin market of the period, it could not have been enough to accumulate holdings sufficient to earn him the millions that Dairnvaell wrote of. Nor did he manipulate the market to double his gains, for, contrary to legend, there was no slump in prices that Wednesday.
Nathan Rothschild may have "done well" from his purchases when stocks rose sharply following the confirmation of the victory, but his gains were dwarfed by those of numerous rival investors who, without any advantage of early information, had bought key government securities earlier, more cheaply and in quantity.
Two hundred years on from Waterloo, then, not much is left of Satan's tale. It's just possible to see the factual elements upon which a vivid myth was built: Nathan Rothschild did have early information and it seems he did buy shares. But it was only by taking these facts out of their relatively humdrum context and adding a heap of falsehoods on top – relays of horses, storms in the channel, pigeon post, market manipulation – that a narrative of any interest was fashioned.
There is no doubt why that was done: to smear the Rothschilds and Jews generally. Perhaps this bicentenary year of Waterloo would be a good time to recognise that smear for what it is.
Brian Cathcart is professor of journalism at Kingston University London and the author of 'The News from Waterloo' (£16.99, Faber)
Barbosa's and Telles Ribeiro's Books: short reviews in Foreign Affairs
The Washington Dissensus: A Privileged Observer’s Perspective on US-Brazil Relations; His Own Man
Reviewed by Richard Feinberg
The troubled U.S.-Brazilian relationship also provides the backdrop for the novel His Own Man. The book’s climactic scene involves a confrontation between the novel’s narrator, a Brazilian diplomat stationed in Los Angeles, and a former chief of the CIA station in Brasília, now retired in La Jolla, California, whose garage is stacked with documents detailing Washington’s covert attempts to foment anticommunist military coups in Latin America in the 1970s. “Maybe that’s why we stand alone today . . . isolated as hell,” the old spook muses, “unable to deal with a world that for the most part despises us.” The historical memories of Americans are famously short, and Ribeiro, a veteran Brazilian diplomat, clearly wants to remind readers in the United States of the cost of U.S. support for the military dictatorship that ruled Brazil from 1964 until 1985—and of the scars carried by people throughout Latin America whose lives were forever altered by the torture and murders carried out during the Cold War by Washington’s authoritarian allies in the region. As His Own Man makes clear, that legacy helps explain the attitudes and behaviors of today’s elites in Brazil—members of the generation that suffered under military rule—and their lingering distrust of U.S. power.