Leituras sobre a conjuntura económica e economia (I)

• Cenário de choque divulgado pela Société Générale - Expresso.pt: "Não sendo uma previsão, mas 'uma exploração de perigos', o panorama para os próximos três a quatro anos nos países desenvolvidos, alvitrado pelo relatório negro de 68 páginas divulgado ontem pela Société Générale (SG), aponta para crescimento 'anémico' à japonesa, regresso à ortodoxia orçamental, riscos de inflação ou de estagflação em 2012 [...], e de oportunidades em algumas commodities que denotam tendência altista. A questão crítica, segundo o relatório de choque, poderia resumir-se à expressão de campanha política: É a dívida (pública), estúpido! Intitulado 'Worst-Case Debt Scenario', com a assinatura do analista de estratégia Daniel Fermon [...]  

Segundo o cenário, a dívida pública externa (não incluindo a dos privados) dos Estados nos países desenvolvidos passará, em média, de 75% do produto interno bruto (PIB) de cada país em 2007 (antes da Grande Recessão) para 115% no próximo ano. [...]  Fermon foi questionado sobre quais os caminhos prováveis face a este disparo da dívida pública. O analista apontou três caminhos, admitindo que um quarto de falência dos Estados (como aconteceu à Islândia) possa ser colocado de parte: regresso de uma dinâmica de inflação muito clara a partir de 2012 [...]; intervencionismo do Estado de sentido distinto ao actual, com vista a aliviar a carga (...]; e inovação acelerada à la Schumpeter [...]. No campo da intervenção dos governos, [...]: a) reprivatizações; b) aumento dos impostos (e das receitas fiscais); c) redução drástica pelo lado da despesa dos Estados; c) desvalorizações competitivas da moeda. [...] Alguns analistas acusam este tipo de relatórios como sendo veículos de pressão sobre os governos para o abandono das políticas anticrise que já estariam a durar excessivamente.

• "Where will we be in one year? | Free exchange | Economist.com: "The good news is, the OECD's latest economic forecast revises up sharply projected economic growth for member nations. The bad news is, that still leaves OECD economies in pretty dismal shape. [...] And as you can see, things will like be as bad or worse in the euro zone, particularly around the periphery. So where will we be in one year? Well, if things continue on in this manner, the developed world will be concluding a second consecutive year of near-record high unemployment, and entering a third. The international economic institutional architecture developed in the wake of the Second World War has simply not been tested under these circumstances."

•  Top-down versus bottom-up macroeconomics | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists: "Hayek argued that no individual is capable of understanding the full complexity of a market system. Instead, individuals only understand small bits of the total information. The main function of markets consists in aggregating this diverse information. If there were individuals capable of understanding the whole picture, we would not need markets. This was in fact Hayek’s criticism of the “socialist” economists who took the view that the central planner understood the whole picture and would therefore be able to compute the whole set of optimal prices, making the market system superfluous.

Rational expectations models as intellectual heirs of central planning [?]  My contention is that the rational expectations models are the intellectual heirs of these central-planning models. Not in the sense that individuals in these rational expectations models aim at planning the whole, but in the sense that, as the central planner, they understand the whole picture. These individuals use this superior information to obtain the “optimum optimorum” for their own private welfare. In this sense, they are top-down models."

• Balancing Fiscal Support with Fiscal Solvency « iMFdirect: "As I noted in my last post, government deficits in many countries—particularly in advanced countries—have jumped dramatically in the wake of the global crisis, and government debt has reached levels that could jeopardize longer term macroeconomic stability and growth. These countries will need to tighten fiscal policy significantly sometime down the road, especially where demographic trends are pushing up health and pension spending. But fiscal deficits cannot be lowered in the immediate future. For the time being, fiscal (and monetary) policies must continue to support economic activity. The economic recovery is uneven and could be threatened by any premature withdrawal of policy support. Private demand is still unable to stand on its own two feet. This gives rise to a policy conundrum. How can we reconcile the competing requirements of short-term support for the economy and longer term fiscal solvency?"