Estão em curso, a-propósito da crise, duas polémicas interessantes, abrangendo ambas, Paul Krugman. Numa ele critica o plano apresentado pelo Secretário do Tesouro norte-americano para pôr em ordem a banca (talvez, amanhã, faça o ponto do que tem sido escrito a esse respeito); noutra, ele critica a actuação da União Europeia quanto ao combate à crise - não está sozinho nessa crítica - mas, o que é mais grave (para mim, mas para muita outra gente) sugere que o Euro poderá ter sido um erro, aliás, numa linha que é habitual a muitos economistas norte-americanos.
Essa questão do Euro fica para outra ocasião - para já fica a polémica. O artigo de Krugman é o primeiro.
Op-Ed Columnist - A Continent Adrift - NYTimes.com
"Why is Europe falling short? Poor leadership is part of the story. European banking officials, who completely missed the depth of the crisis, still seem weirdly complacent. And to hear anything in America comparable to the know-nothing diatribes of Germany’s finance minister you have to listen to, well, Republicans. But there’s a deeper problem: Europe’s economic and monetary integration has run too far ahead of its political institutions. [...]
Now Spain needs to find new sources of income and employment to replace the lost jobs in construction. In the past, Spain would have sought improved competitiveness by devaluing its currency. But now it’s on the euro — and the only way forward seems to be a grinding process of wage cuts. This process would have been difficult in the best of times; it will be almost inconceivably painful if, as seems all too likely, the European economy as a whole is depressed and tending toward deflation for years to come. Does all this mean that Europe was wrong to let itself become so tightly integrated? Does it mean, in particular, that the creation of the euro was a mistake? Maybe. But Europe can still prove the skeptics wrong, if its politicians start showing more leadership. Will they?"RGE - A Nobel-prize winner adrift
"I don’t know whether it’s my European blood raging or my dismay with Paul Krugman’s degeneration from an academic I admired to a dogmatic commentator who banks on his economist’s reputation to promote a narrow political ideology. Krugman’s latest “prey” are European policymakers, in an op-ed piece that is so shallow and uncorroborated in its assertions, and so one-size-fits-all in its prescriptions, that it might have well been written by an American freshman student of European studies in a rush to finish his midterm exam."ECB Official Lorenzo Bini Smaghi Responds to Criticism From Paul Krugman - Real Time Economics - WSJ
"In a recent article in the International Herald Tribune, Professor Paul Krugman states that Europe may have made a mistake in adopting the euro ten years ago. His point, he claims, is corroborated by the euro area’s apparent institutional inability to react to the severe crisis we are facing at present, an inability which, he claims, may have disastrous results. The claims made in the article are in no way supported by empirical evidence. [...] Let’s get the facts straight, starting with the question of fiscal policy, an area in which – according to Krugman – Europe has failed, more so than the United States, to enact an effective recovery policy. This conflicts with recent IMF calculations, which show that the fiscal stimulus in European countries is wholly comparable to that seen in the United States, particularly when taking into account measures to cushion the effect of automatic stabilisers, which, by contrast with the United States, are a major factor in Europe. For instance, for the period 2009-10, discretionary measures adopted in Germany total 3.5% of GDP, compared with 3.8%in the United States. In some European countries, such as Italy, the size of such stimulus measures is relatively limited owing to the high levels of debt, but in other countries the total fiscal stimulus is larger than in the United States. The perception that more has been done in the United States probably stems from the extensive financial measures adopted in support of the US banking system. It should be pointed out, however, that the US banking system was in greater need of such measures than the European banking system. When overall stimulus measures are considered in relation to the situation, the differences are indeed fairly limited. As regards monetary policy, the degree of stimulus can be better measured by comparing market interest rates, rather than official interest rates. Such a comparison shows that European rates are more or less in line with those observed in the United States, and are even lower in some cases. For example, 6 and 12-month interbank interest rates in Europe are slightly lower than their US equivalents. Furthermore, real interest rates – i.e. net of inflation – are markedly lower in Europe than in the United States, and retail interest rates on mortgage lending and lending to non-financial corporations are of a comparable magnitude, if not somewhat lower in Europe. As regards action taken by the central bank, following the initial liquidity injection of in excess of €90 billion in August 2007, the ECB’s balance sheet has steadily grown, increasing by approximately €600 billion to reach a level of 16% of GDP (compared with 13% of GDP for the US Federal Reserve). There is a major difference, however: the ECB lends to the banking system against collateral, thereby reducing the risks for European taxpayers. According to Krugman, the fact that the ECB does not have a government behind it which can cover any losses accounts for its being overly cautious. However, this assumption implies that the taxpayer should bear the burden – through inflation – of the difficulties experienced by the banking system. I’m not so sure that this is what US citizens want, and it is certainly not what people in Europe want. To sum up, Krugman’s argument is that it is better to have only one decision-maker in a crisis, rather than 16 governments which need to coordinate their actions, as is the case in the euro area. In theory, this seems reasonable. But it doesn’t explain how the most fateful decision of all – the decision to allow a systemically important bank to fail in the midst of a financial crisis – was taken by a single decision-maker, while the 16 euro area governments have managed to avoid making such a large mistake. Neither does it explain how euro area governments have managed to agree on measures aimed at bank recapitalization, at guarantees to bank liabilities and on principles for removing toxic assets from banks’ balance sheets, decisions which have become a point of reference for all the countries of the G20. Krugman concludes that countries such as Spain would have been better off without the euro. Again, in theory he has a point, since devaluing one’s currency might seem attractive in the current circumstances. In practice, however, when global trade grinds to a halt and the financial market is in distress, the depreciation of a currency can trigger a loss of market confidence in the country, which can further aggravate the economic and financial crisis. This is what happened in Italy in 1992-93, for example. Krugman should travel to those European countries which do not yet have the euro and would really like to introduce it as soon as possible; he would not fail to notice that the reality is very different from textbooks economic theory. Nobody can claim that Europe is perfect; quite the opposite. We should continue to strengthen economic integration and the coordination of financial and economic policies. We just need to build on what we already have, in particular the euro. Lorenzo Bini Smaghi"Transatlantic divergence in tackling the crisis, by Charles Wyplosz, Vox EU:
"While the US calls for a coordinated macroeconomic policy reaction to the ongoing recession, France and Germany are calling for microeconomic measures to prevent the next crisis. While the US is concerned about mounting unemployment and the associated distress of millions of households, France and Germany worry about their public debts. The G20 will not be able to paper over these differences, which reflect deep divergences in the way economic policies are prepared and understood. Denial in Europe It all looks like France and Germany, among other European countries, failed to realise the depth of the recession and the historical hardship that it is gradually creating. Alternatively, it looks like the US authorities are needlessly panicking, sowing the seeds of an outburst of inflation and massive public debt. History will eventually tell who is right. A good bet is that the Europeans are in denial or, worse that they cynically count on the US budget deficit to pull the world out of the recession. After all, the US is where the crisis was created."
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