Sobre o capitalismo (II)

São reflexões oportunas, se atendermos o momento que passa, e ambas com muito interesse. Uma é do Nobel de Economia Amartya Sen e a outra, de Martin Wolf, do Financial Times. Leitura (fortemente) recomendada. Os gráficos acima foram retirados do artigo de Martin Wolf - é o primeiro de uma série.

• Capitalism Beyond the Crisis - The New York Review of Books
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  "2008 was a year of crises. First, we had a food crisis, particularly threatening to poor consumers, especially in Africa. Along with that came a record increase in oil prices, threatening all oil-importing countries. Finally, rather suddenly in the fall, came the global economic downturn, and it is now gathering speed at a frightening rate. The year 2009 seems likely to offer a sharp intensification of the downturn, and many economists are anticipating a full-scale depression, perhaps even one as large as in the 1930s. While substantial fortunes have suffered steep declines, the people most affected are those who were already worst off.

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  The question that arises most forcefully now concerns the nature of capitalism and whether it needs to be changed. Some defenders of unfettered capitalism who resist change are convinced that capitalism is being blamed too much for short-term economic problems—problems they variously attribute to bad governance (for example by the Bush administration) and the bad behavior of some individuals (or what John McCain described during the presidential campaign as "the greed of Wall Street"). Others do, however, see truly serious defects in the existing economic arrangements and want to reform them, looking for an alternative approach that is increasingly being called "new capitalism."
  
  
  
  

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  FT.com / Comment / Analysis - Seeds of its own destruction
  
  
  
  
  
  
  

  "Another ideological god has failed. The assumptions that ruled policy and politics over three decades suddenly look as outdated as revolutionary socialism. “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the government and I’m here to help.’” Thus quipped Ronald Reagan, hero of US conservatism. The remark seems ancient history now that governments are pouring trillions of dollars, euros and pounds into financial systems. “Governments bad; deregulated markets good”: how can this faith escape unscathed after Alan Greenspan, pupil of Ayn Rand and predominant central banker of the era, described himself, in congressional testimony last October, as being “in a state of shocked disbelief” over the failure of the “self-interest of lending institutions to protect shareholders’ equity”? In the west, the pro-market ideology of the past three decades was a reaction to the perceived failure of the mixed-economy, Keynesian model of the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. "

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  "[...] In the US, core of the global market economy and centre of the current storm, the aggregate debt of the financial sector jumped from 22 per cent of gross domestic product in 1981 to 117 per cent by the third quarter of 2008. In the UK, with its heavy reliance on financial activity, gross debt of the financial sector reached almost 250 per cent of GDP (see charts). Carmen Reinhart of the University of Maryland and Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard argue that the era of liberalisation was also a time of exceptionally frequent financial crises, surpassed, since 1900, only by the 1930s. It was also an era of massive asset price bubbles. [...]
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  [...] At the peak, America absorbed about 70 per cent of the rest of the world’s surplus savings. Meanwhile, inside the US the ratio of household debt to GDP rose from 66 per cent in 1997 to 100 per cent a decade later. Even bigger jumps in household indebtedness occurred in the UK.
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  [...] We are witnessing the deepest, broadest and most dangerous financial crisis since the 1930s. As Profs Reinhart and Rogoff argue in another paper, “banking crises are associated with profound declines in output and employment”. This is partly because of overstretched balance sheets: in the US, overall debt reached an all-time peak of just under 350 per cent of GDP – 85 per cent of it private. This was up from just over 160 per cent in 1980. Among the possible outcomes of this shock are: massive and prolonged fiscal deficits in countries with large external deficits, as they try to sustain demand; a prolonged world recession; a brutal adjustment of the global balance of payments; a collapse of the dollar; soaring inflation; and a resort to protectionism. The transformation will surely go deepest in the financial sector itself. [...]
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  [...] Yet a huge financial crisis, together with a deep global recession, if not something far worse, is going to have much wider effects than just these. Remember what happened in the Great Depression of the 1930s.[...]
  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  

  
  
  
  
  [...] These changes will endanger the ability of the world not just to manage the global economy but also to cope with strategic challenges: fragile states, terrorism, climate change and the rise of new great powers. At the extreme, the integration of the global economy on which almost everybody now depends might be reversed. Globalisation is a choice. [...]"