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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quarta-feira, 29 de abril de 2020

José Eduardo Faria: Governo Bolsonaro não possui legitimidade - O Estado da Arte

A Crise: “Bolsonaro não comanda nem tem legitimidade”, diz José Eduardo Faria

Nouriel Roubini sobre as dez razões da Grande Depressão


Ten reasons why a 'Greater Depression' for the 2020s is inevitable

Ominous and risky trends were around long before Covid-19, making an L-shaped depression very likely
a robot conveyor belt

After the 2007-09 financial crisis, the imbalances and risks pervading the global economy were exacerbated by policy mistakes. So, rather than address the structural problems that the financial collapse and ensuing recession revealed, governments mostly kicked the can down the road, creating major downside risksthat made another crisis inevitable. And now that it has arrived, the risks are growing even more acute. Unfortunately, even if the Greater Recession leads to a lacklustre U-shaped recovery this year, an L-shaped “Greater Depression” will follow later in this decade, owing to 10 ominous and risky trends.
The first trend concerns deficits and their corollary risks: debts and defaults. The policy response to the Covid-19 crisis entails a massive increase in fiscal deficits – on the order of 10% of GDP or more – at a time when public debt levels in many countries were already high, if not unsustainable.


Worse, the loss of income for many households and firms means that private-sector debt levels will become unsustainable, too, potentially leading to mass defaults and bankruptcies. Together with soaring levels of public debt, this all but ensures a more anaemic recovery than the one that followed the Great Recession a decade ago.
A second factor is the demographic timebomb in advanced economies. The Covid-19 crisis shows that much more public spending must be allocated to health systems, and that universal healthcare and other relevant public goods are necessities, not luxuries. Yet, because most developed countries have ageing societies, funding such outlays in the future will make the implicit debts from today’s unfunded healthcare and social security systems even larger.
A third issue is the growing risk of deflation. In addition to causing a deep recession, the crisis is also creating a massive slack in goods (unused machines and capacity) and labour markets (mass unemployment), as well as driving a price collapse in commodities such as oil and industrial metals. That makes debt deflation likely, increasing the risk of insolvency.


A fourth (related) factor will be currency debasement. As central banks try to fight deflation and head off the risk of surging interest rates (following from the massive debt build-up), monetary policies will become even more unconventional and far-reaching. In the short run, governments will need to run monetised fiscal deficits to avoid depression and deflation. Yet, over time, the permanent negative supply shocks from accelerated de-globalisation and renewed protectionism will make stagflation all but inevitable.
A fifth issue is the broader digital disruption of the economy. With millions of people losing their jobs or working and earning less, the income and wealth gaps of the 21st-century economy will widen further. To guard against future supply-chain shocks, companies in advanced economies will re-shore production from low-cost regions to higher-cost domestic markets. But rather than helping workers at home, this trend will accelerate the pace of automation, putting downward pressure on wages and further fanning the flames of populism, nationalism, and xenophobia.


This points to the sixth major factor: deglobalisation. The pandemic is accelerating trends toward balkanisation and fragmentation that were already well underway. The US and China will decouple faster, and most countries will respond by adopting still more protectionist policies to shield domestic firms and workers from global disruptions. The post-pandemic world will be marked by tighter restrictions on the movement of goods, services, capital, labour, technology, data, and information. This is already happening in the pharmaceutical, medical-equipment, and food sectors, where governments are imposing export restrictions and other protectionist measures in response to the crisis.

terça-feira, 28 de abril de 2020

Chanceler acidental irrita israelenses e judeus - Israel Times

Brazilian foreign minister compares social distancing to concentration camps

In rant on his blog, Ernesto Araujo also calls measures to contain the coronavirus a communist plot

Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo with Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, in Washington, on March 11, 2020. (Brazilian Foreign Ministry/ Flickr)
Brazilian Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo with Mike Pompeo, US Secretary of State, in Washington, on March 11, 2020. (Brazilian Foreign Ministry/ Flickr)
RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil’s foreign minister compared social isolation to Nazi concentration camps in a critique of a book recently released by an Italian publisher.
“According to the author, Arbeit macht frei is the correct motto of the new era of global solidarity that is coming as a result of the pandemic,” wrote Ernesto Araujo in an April 22 post on his Portuguese-language blog, Meta Political Brazil. “The communists will not repeat the Nazis’ mistake and this time they will use it correctly.
“How? Perhaps convincing people that it is for their own good that they will be trapped in this concentration camp, devoid of dignity and freedom. It occurs to me to propose a definition: the Nazi is a communist who did not bother to deceive his victims,” Araujo wrote.
He was discussing the book “Virus” by popular far-left Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Zizek.
Brazil’s Foreign Minister Ernesto Araujo speaks at the Chamber of Commerce in Washington, March 18, 2019. (Susan Walsh/AP)
Several Jewish groups reacted to the foreign minister’s statement, which was part of a post titled, “The commie-virus has arrived.”
“Chancellor Araujo’s bizarre comparison is a clear example of the trivialization of what concentration camps were, which took so many lives and left so much suffering. It is in bad taste, dangerous, and demonstrates a complete ignorance of the subject,” said Ariel Krok, a Brazilian member of the steering committee of the World Jewish Congress Jewish Diplomatic Corps.
The minister also criticized the legitimacy that nations are lending to the World Health Organization, which is leading efforts to combat the coronavirus internationally.
“Under the pretext of the pandemic, the new communism tries to build a world without nations, without freedom, without spirit, directed by a central agency of ‘solidarity’ in charge of watching and punishing. A permanent global state of exception, transforming the world into a major concentration camp,” Araujo added.
Brazil’s President Jair Bolsonaro removes his mask to speak to journalists after a press conference on the new coronavirus, at the Planalto Presidential Palace in Brasilia, Brazil, Wednesday, March 18, 2019. (AP Photo/Andre Borges)
Jews for Democracy, a left-wing group that opposes Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro and his staff, strongly cautioned against the comparison between Nazism and communism.
“The Nazi regime was far-right in its essence. To compare this with the errors of communism is absurd,” read a note from the group on social media. “Likening Nazism and communism is one of the most dangerous historical revisionisms today. They are not and will never be the same.”
“Those who insist on making this kind of analogy use a disgusting barbarian argument, disrespecting the memory of more than six million Jews and their families,” Persio Bider, president of the Organized Jewish Youth, told The Times of Israel.