Conjuntura

A situação económica mundial continua a não ser clara. Enquanto o Presidente do FED fala, pela primeira vez, de recessão, em público, há quem afirme que o pior - no referente às perturbações nos mercados financeiros - terá já sido ultrapassado devido às medidas tomadas. Não sei - o mais prudente é considerar que não vimos tudo o que temos para ver nesta matéria.

Abaixo dou conta de um conjunto de artigos, de que fui tomando notícia, ao longo dos últimos dias. Com o número de artigos referenciados e com os trechos que escolhi, isto vai dar uma nota extensa - mas quis arrumar o blogue e os rascunhos, neste particular.

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  FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - The prudent will have to pay for the profligate: Pedagógico e instrutivo: explana quais as restrições de campo com que a política económica tem de lidar nesta conjuntura e dá pistas sobre o que poderá suceder - o reaparecimento da inflação, em força nos EUA, é uma possibilidade:

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  "You have enjoyed a debt-financed spending spree. But times are now harder: you find it impossible to roll over your debt; you have to pay much higher interest rates than before; or you find that the value of the assets you pledged as collateral is now less than your loan. What can you do? Provided enough of you are in trouble, you call for help from the fairy government-mother. Thus, George Magnus of UBS, among the wisest analysts of this crisis, has already observed, with some approval, that the crisis “is spawning an array of well scripted but highly unconventional public policy responses” – that is to say, rescues of various kinds.* Over-indebted individuals have just three choices: reduce spending below income, sell assets they own to somebody else or, if the worst comes to the worst, default. But one person’s debt is another person’s asset, one person’s expenditure is another person’s income; one person’s sale is another person’s purchase and one person’s default is another person’s loss. If very many individuals reduce their spending, in order to pay down their debt, the economy slumps. If many try to sell assets they own, their prices crash. If many default on their debts, financial intermediaries implode. The economics of an entire economy are not the same as the economics of a single household. That was perhaps the most important point John Maynard Keynes made.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  ... Hélène Rey of the London Business School has demonstrated ... three ways in which markets have malfunctioned: via the originate-to-distribute model, with its weak incentives to assess loan quality and wide diffusion of assets of unknown quality; via the vicious spiral in credit default swaps, with rising prices forcing a higher cost of funds on banks, so worse credit standing and so forth; and, finally, via tumbling market valuation of assets, with distressed sales in thin markets lowering solvency and forcing further sales. Each drowning institution drags others down with it. The solution they all desire is for the government to act as lender of last resort against illiquid instruments and buyer of last resort of impaired ones. While the former activity has been known since the days of Walter Bagehot’s Lombard Street, the latter is an overt bail-out. But for the sector as a whole, any other way of reducing excessive liabilities is far too slow, collectively ruinous, or both.
  

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  Now consider a second crucial sector: US households. They have been spending more than their income for a decade. Indeed, this spending has been the single most important counterpart of the persistent US surplus on the capital account (or deficit on the current account). In the process, households have accumulated ever more debt. How might households seek to reduce their indebtedness, collectively? They can try to sell assets. But they can sell houses only to one another, which would not, in aggregate, help. They can sell equities to the rest of the world, but their prices might crash first. They can default. Indeed, many seem likely to do so. But that would damage the financial sector’s solvency and, through that, either the government’s balance sheet, via bail-outs, or the balance sheet of other households, via losses on financial assets. Finally, they can cut back on spending. But that would guarantee a recession, if not a slump.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  In the fourth quarter of 2007, household savings were still as low as ever, at 2 per cent of GDP. Imagine that they rose swiftly back to where they were in the early 1990s. That would be an increase of 4 percentage points of GDP. The result would be a deep recession. It is no surprise, therefore, that politicians are trying to rescue the housing market, while the Federal Reserve has been slashing interest rates with vigour. In such predicaments, the government always emerges as the lender, borrower and spender of last resort. It will act by bailing out insolvent people and institutions, by either replacing or guaranteeing the lending activities of the private financial sector and, not least, by running larger fiscal deficits, as private-sector financial deficits shrink.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  ...A jump in public debt is an invisible increase in long-term private obligations. But this is socialised private debt: the prudent pay for the profligate. An escape from the public sector’s debt trap exists: the mass default known as inflation. By destroying the purchasing power of money, the government can engineer a speedy reduction in indebtedness across the economy, at the expense of creditors, principally the elderly and foreigners. Inflation is a magic tax on creditors whose proceeds are directly transferred to debtors. The bottom line is simple. Neither households nor the financial sector, as a whole, can de-leverage swiftly, other than via a calamitous mass default or by shifting their debt elsewhere, usually on to the government. For an entire economy, particularly a huge one, to recover from debt-addiction is hard. However much one may loathe the idea, a private-sector financial mania will finish up as public-sector pain.

• Is this recession another Great Depression? Salon: Interessante leitura, embora deprimente (nada que não se saiba já) - faz um paralelo entre a situação actual e o que aconteceu após 1929:

  "We have not seen a nationwide decline in housing like this since the Great Depression," said the CEO of Wells Fargo late last year. "It is now clear that the U.S. and global financial markets are experiencing their worst financial crisis since the Great Depression," wrote economist Nouriel Roubini last week."
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  "... But we could get there. In fact, it would be all too easy. All we have to do is ignore what the markets and other economic indicators are telling us right now and continue down the disastrous path we've been merrily skipping along for the last 25 or so years. Want to see "The Great Depression: The Sequel"? Here's a handy three-step do-it-yourself action plan: 1. Continue to ignore growing income inequality and govern the United States for the benefit of the rich at the expense of the many. 2. Continue to whittle away at the safety nets that exist to cushion Americans from economic ill winds. 3. Continue to weaken government oversight of Wall Street. "

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  Primavera em Berlim - DiarioEconomico.com: Um artigo de Bruno Maçães. Refiro-o aqui devido ao que diz neste excerto, mas o artigo deve ser lido na totalidade. A posição da indústria alemã é muito significativa e cruza com a discussão da actuação do BCE (ver aqui):
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  "A segunda ideia está relacionado com a crise que atravessamos e, mais especificamente, com a pergunta que todos querem ver respondida. Será que a economia europeia vai sobreviver à recessão americana e à valorização do euro? Recentemente, uma delegação da indústria alemã exigiu, para surpresa geral, a manutenção das taxas de juro da zona euro ao nível actual, parecendo mais preocupada com o risco de inflação do que com a perda de competitividade das exportações. A verdade é que as exportações alemãs continuam a crescer, independentemente da valorização aguda do euro, e para muitos a explicação reside num facto tão simples quanto extraordinário: muitos dos bens produzidos neste país são tão superiores à concorrência internacional que podem ser vendidos a qualquer preço. Há outras explicações, menos benignas, indicando que o crescimento recente das exportações pode depender de tendências mais ou menos passageiras da economia global. A questão é crucial: se a especialização da economia alemã em bens e sectores orientados para a exportação se atenuar, a vantagem comparativa dos restantes países da zona euro noutros bens e sectores também tenderá a desaparecer."

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  FT.com / Columnists / Clive Crook - Financial markets need more than a patch-up: Ém um artigo que refere as posições dos candidatos presidenciais e historia a conjuntura financeira. Vale aqui pela conclusão:

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  "The right answer may well be it is all of the above: innovation run amok; privately rational but socially harmful risk-taking; and an extra measure of moral hazard (thanks to the Fed’s new procedures) now thrown in. Each has its own implications for the future supervision of financial markets – but in one respect they point the same way. Running repairs alone will not do. We need an entirely new model."

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  The Regulation of the Mixed Economy in Action Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong's Fair, Balanced, and Reality-Based Semi-Daily Journal: Muito, muito interessante - uma lição de história sobre o modo como o mercado financeiro britânico foi supervisionado pelo Banco de Inglaterra, com uma citação de Marx e Engel, e transcrição dos artigos referidos abaixo. Termina de forma exemplar (ver abaixo todo o último parágrafo):
  
  
  
  
  
  

  "Both the highly-intelligent Martin Wolf and the highly-intelligent David Wessel, I think, overstate the importance of what has happened in financial markets this month. Both of them--very smart as they are--talk as if there has been a big shift: an end to laissez-faire in financial markets: as if the Federal Reserve's discretionary actions to try to stabilize markets mark 'the day the dream of global free-market capitalism died' or 'the time the U.S. government discarded a half-century of rules... [o]n the Richter scale of government activism, the government's recent actions don't (yet) register at FDR levels.... But something big just happened.'"
  
  

  From my perspective, at least, there never was such an animal as laissez-faire in financial markets...
  
  

  ...Why, then, are Martin Wolf and David Wessel with their Krell-like brains surprised at the fact that the Federal Reserve is composed of men (and women) willing to "assume a grave responsibility for the purpose of meeting" a financial crisis? I think that they are surprised because they--at some level--drank the koolaid, breathed in the miasma, were deranged by the effluvia of the vast right-wing conspiracy--the "drown the government in the bathtub" types. The argument against progressive income taxation requires a claim that the rich don't need any help from government, and is fatally undermined by any admission that the rich stand to benefit from the safety net as much--nay, enormously more in dollar terms--than the poor. But, as Robert Peel would put it, in financial matters the question is never laissez-faire vs. regulation, but always good smart regulation vs. bad stupid regulation."
  
  
  

• The financial system What went wrong Economist.com: A ler:
  

  "And what of all the clever and misused wizardry of modern finance? Mr Greenspan was half right. Financial engineering can indeed spread risk and help the system work better. Like junk bonds, reviled at the end of 1980s, securitisation will rebound, tamed and better understood—and smaller. That is financial progress. It is a pity that it comes at such a cost."

• Crises sistémicas e padrões de regulação - DiarioEconomico.com: Artigo de Luís Silva Morais

  
  

  
  

  
  
  "A grande questão na actual crise do sistema financeiro diz respeito à dimensão dos cenários de intervenção pública."

• Robert J. Samuelson - Hold the Hysteria (For Now) - washingtonpost.com: Cruza com o artigo da Salon.com referido acima:

  "The Great Depression doesn't settle the issue. True, massive bank failures converted an ordinary recession into a calamity; but it's also true that government policy -- excessive rigidity by the Federal Reserve -- actually aggravated the banking collapse. Still, economic conditions in the 1930s (average unemployment: 18 percent) were so different from today's that casual references to 'depression' amount to fear-mongering. If catastrophe strikes, it will probably result from something we don't now know or haven't yet imagined."

• Ponto de viragem - DiarioEconomico.com: Artigo de Miguel Castro Coelho:

  "...No último dia 16 de Março, o sr. Alan Greenspan classificou a situação actual como “a pior crise financeira desde o final da segunda guerra mundial” e tornou públicas três reflexões paradoxais que importa a este respeito recordar. Primeiro, segundo o sr. Greenspan, todos aqueles que (como ele) confiam no interesse próprio das instituições financeiras para proteger os interesses dos accionistas têm razões para estar em estado de choque perante os antecedentes da crise actual. Contudo, o ilustre ex-presidente da Reserva Federal Americana apressa-se a notar que seria um erro abandonar o sistema de auto-regulação financeira enquanto mecanismo de equilíbrio fundamental do mercado financeiro global.Segundo, o problema essencial, na perspectiva do sr. Greenspan, reside nas limitações dos actuais modelos de avaliação de risco e previsão macroeconómica, que não incorporam um tratamento diferencial apropriado entre momentos de expansão/euforia e recessão/medo. No entanto, reconhece ao mesmo tempo que a maior parte dos comportamentos duvidosos nos mercados financeiros em períodos de expansão/euforia não são o resultado de ignorância ou má avaliação de risco mas da necessidade dos operadores participarem na corrente de euforia para não perderem quota de mercado. Também reconhece que um hipotético aumento da eficácia dos modelos de gestão de risco na identificação de episódios de euforia poderia, por si só, ter como efeito o seu prolongamento e ampliação.Terceiro, perante isto, conclui que num futuro rescaldo da crise é fundamental proteger a concorrência e flexibilidade dos mercados enquanto forma mais fiável de protecção contra falhas económicas cumulativas.

  A conclusão do sr. Greenspan ilustra bem aquele que é o maior risco que esta crise pode reservar para o futuro: o risco de nada se aprender, nada se fazer, e reincidir nos mesmos erros. Limita-se a desviar o olhar dos problemas nos sistemas de incentivos que caracterizam as instituições financeiras modernas e da sua capacidade para gerar crises e tomar como refém o resto da economia.

  ...Ignorar a tendência das instituições financeiras modernas para gerar resultados avultados no curto prazo, sem reflectir adequadamente os riscos que criam no médio/longo prazos e a sua capacidade para, mais tarde, tomar o resto da economia como refém quando os riscos vêm à superfície tem tanto de ingénuo quanto de perigoso. Ingénuo porque roça o fundamentalismo de mercado. Perigoso porque o fundamentalismo de mercado normalmente paga-se caro.

• The limits of change Free exchange Economist.com:

  "Given the scope of the challenges waiting for a new administration, it seems likely that attitudes toward institutional reform and conduct may end up being more important than attitudes toward policy. For years, the process of creating policy at home and abroad has moved fitfully. Success for the next president may be best judged by how well he or she was able to lubricate the world's political machinery and create consensus, rather than how much of the party platform became."

• An Explanation for Soaring Commodity Prices vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists:

  "The standard story for high commodity prices is rapid growth by China, India and company. But world growth is slowing, while commodity prices still hit new highs. This column suggests that the key may be low real interest rates. ..."

• Comment is free: Crony capitalism:

  "Geologists say they learn the most from extreme events like earthquakes that reveal the reality of the earth's crust. For the past 25 years, critics of the Fed have been dismissed, and the Fed's high standing has blinded the reality of its revolving door with Wall Street and its class-based conduct of policy. Now, the Fed's response to Wall Street's panic has revealed the reality of its crony capitalist world. That provides an opening for long-needed reform."

• Grasping Reality with Both Hands: Economist Brad DeLong's Fair, Balanced, and Reality-Based Semi-Daily Journal: Pois é!

  "When it comes to risky behavior in the market, America has a double standard. We're told that economic risk-taking as the key to entrepreneurial success, but when big entrepreneurs take big risks that fail it's amazing how often they get bailed out. Indeed, the history of modern American business is littered with federal bailouts, loan guarantees, and no-questions-asked reorganizations. Some are well known, such as the Chrylser bailout of 1979, the savings and loan bailout of 1989, and the airline bailout of 2001. Most occur in the relative dark, such as the 1998 bailout of giant hedge fund Long-Term Capital Management (courtesy of former Fed chair Alan Greenspan), the not infrequent bailouts of under-funded corporate pension plans by the government's Pension Benefit Guarantee Corporation, price supports for big agribusinesses facing market downturns, or the current bailout of Wall Street being engineered by Ben Bernanke's Fed...."