Anomalias

Dr. Jeff Masters' WunderBlog : Rare October snowstorm hammers Northeast U.S. : Weather Underground

The most extraordinary October snowstorm in over two centuries in the Northeast U.S. has finally come to an end this Sunday afternoon. Not since the infamous snow hurricane of 1804 have such prodigious amounts of snow been recorded in New England and, to a lesser extent, in the mid-Atlantic states. In fact, the snowfall, in most cases, has exceeded that of even the great October snow of 1804. Trees that had not yet lost their leaves suffered tremendous damage from the wet, heavy snow, and snapped branches and falling trees brought down numerous power lines, leaving at least 2.5 million people without electricity.

Evoluções

The End of Population Growth - Sanjeev Sanyal - Project Syndicate

According to the United Nations’ Population Division, the world’s human population hit seven billion on October 31. As always happens whenever we approach such a milestone, this one has produced a spike in conferences, seminars, and learned articles, including the usual dire Malthusian predictions. After all, the UN forecasts that world population will rise to 9.3 billion in 2050 and surpass 10 billion by the end of this century. Such forecasts, however, misrepresent underlying demographic dynamics. The future we face is not one of too much population growth, but too little. Most countries conducted their national population census last year, and the data suggest that fertility rates are plunging in most of them. Birth rates have been low in developed countries for some time, but now they are falling rapidly in the majority of developing countries. Chinese, Russians, and Brazilians are no longer replacing themselves, while Indians are having far fewer children. Indeed, global fertility will fall to the replacement rate in a little more than a decade. Population may keep growing until mid-century, owing to rising longevity, but, reproductively speaking, our species should no longer be expanding.

As anomalias têm tendências definidas

Last Two Winters' Warm Extremes More Severe Than Their Cold Snaps, Study Finds | ThinkProgress

Scientist:  “The warm extremes kept trending just as one would expect in a period of accelerating global warming.”

Locations where the seasonal “severe cold index” (blue circles) or “severe heat index” (red circles) fell above the 95% confidence interval of the North Atlantic Oscillation regression for (a, c) Winter 2010 and (b, d) Winter 2011.

Keynes face à conjuntura

A primeira transcrição abaixo é uma citação famosa de Keynes. Poderia acrescentar-se que os ditos homens práticos não só são escravos das ideias dos outros, como acabam por as distorcer por ignorância. Marx num dado momento, face às interpretações que lhe estavam a ser feitas em França por "soi-disant" marxistas, retorquiu, de modo acerbo, se uma coisa não era, era marxista. Keynes tem sofrido da mesma sina -a leitura do artigo abaixo relembra-o: ver a segunda transcrição, que deve ser complementada pela leitura de todo o artigo. 

What Would John Maynard Keynes Tell Us to Do Now? : The New Yorker

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist. Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back.

Yet Keynes was anything but a spendthrift. When deficits and debts reached historically high levels, he believed, it was necessary to spell out how they would be reduced in the long term. As Backhouse and Bateman observe in their timely and provocative reappraisal, Keynes never said that deficits don’t matter (the lesson that Dick Cheney reportedly drew from President Reagan). He believed not only that large-scale deficit spending should be confined to recessions, when business investment was unusually curtailed, but that it should be directed mainly toward long-term capital projects that eventually would pay for themselves. When some of his followers, by way of postwar planning, advocated using tax cuts and deficit spending to “fine-tune” the economy on an ongoing basis, Keynes struck a note of caution. “If serious unemployment does develop, deficit financing is absolutely certain to happen, and I should like to keep free to object hereafter to the more objectionable forms of it,” he wrote

Leituras sobre o momento actual

Das mais antigas para as mais recentes.

• Isto é inadmissível!- A Escolha do Editor - Jornal de negócios online: a propósito disto poderão achar interesse nesta minha história exemplar.

• Pedro Lains: Crise dos 30?

• Até onde vamos empobrecer? Camilo Lourenço - A Escolha do Editor - Jornal de negócios online

• Estado Social à alemã- A Escolha do Editor - Jornal de negócios online

• Colocar o encargo sobre os estrangeiros- Opinião - Jornal de negócios online

Para perceber o que se passa nos EUA. e que tem graves consequências para todos nós ...

Isto pode ser complementado com aquilo que referenciei aqui.

The 1% Have a Stranglehold on Politics: New Al Jazeera Documentary Sheds Light on the Koch Brothers | ThinkProgress

A senhora que fala em nome dos Republicanos, é mesmo Republicana, ou está representar o papel de uma Republicana? Isto chega a um ponto, em que eu próprio começo a duvidar ...

Margens de erro: Science: What It's Up To?

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Linhas de argumentação alternativas

Open Thread Plus Solar Cartoon(s) of the Day | ThinkProgress

E já agora mais este gráfico sobre a desigualdade na distribuição do rendimento nos EUA

EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » Chart of the Day: U.S. Income Growth 1979-2007

A propósito, convinha que o Norte da Europa não esquecesse este momento da história europeia, ou a contrário, se lembrassem (eles, os alemães) que, se tinham razões de queixas justificadas sobre o Tratado de Versalhes, não lhes deram um bom seguimento ...

Grasping Reality with Both Hands - Quote of the Day: October 27, 2011

"If the European Civil War is to end with France and Italy abusing their momentary victorious power to destroy Germany and Austria-Hungary now prostrate, they invite their own destruction also, being so deeply and inextricably intertwined with their victims by hidden psychic and economic bonds."

--John Maynard Keynes: The Economic Consequences of the Peace

E também este ...

If American Land were Distributed the way American Wealth Is | Informed Comment

Também tem a ver com desigualdade ... | Video on TED.com

Hans Rosling and the magic washing machine | Video on TED.com

What was the greatest invention of the industrial revolution? Hans Rosling makes the case for the washing machine. With newly designed graphics from Gapminder, Rosling shows us the magic that pops up when economic growth and electricity turn a boring wash day into an intellectual day of reading.

De como a desigualdade prejudica as sociedades (nomeadamente, a nossa)| Video on TED.com

Richard Wilkinson: How economic inequality harms societies | Video on TED.com

We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.

Um dos factores que devem ser tidos em linha de conta para perceber o que se passa tem a ver com as consequências, não só sociais, mas também económicas e psicológicas, da desigualdade. O que se diz nesta intervenção a esse propósito é exemplar. A demonstração gráfica é-o igualmente. Ter em atenção o posicionamento de Portugal. Uma dica (no caso de não se lembrarem): a melhor forma de inspecionar os gráficos é suspender a passagem do vídeo.

Absolutamente magnífico!

Stunning New Cassini Image: A Quartet of Moons

Titan, Dione, Pandora and Pan pose for Cassini's cameras along with Saturn's rings, seen nearly edge-on in this view. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Crescimento económico na Europa: performances, políticas, reformas e gráficos interessantes

O bold não é meu.

EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » Growing Pains: Europe’s Dilemma

As the crisis in Europe deepens, it is worth asking how it all went wrong in the first place. In the past decade there have been stark differences in per capita GDP growth in Europe. Growth rates have ranged from close to zero in Italy and Portugal to more than 4 percent in the best performers. Why do some countries in Europe grow much faster than others? And how can those falling behind catch up before it is too late?

In part, these differences reflect “convergence”. It is much easier for poor countries to grow faster than it is for rich countries because they can import technology they do not already have. It is much more difficult to grow fast if you are already rich and at the technology frontier—now you can only get richer by innovation.

US's political cartoons

Para ver mais ir a Top Ten Occupy Wall Street Cartoons | ThinkProgress

Para que serve a utopia

Haveriam qualificações, menores, a fazer, mas que, tudo sobpesado, não serão tão importantes como isso. Na verdade, nunca tem sentido estar a qualificar a poesia.

Eduardo Galeano - El Derecho al Delirio (Legend) - YouTube

Anda toda a gente desesperada com os políticos europeus ....

O sublinhado e o bold na transcrição do artigo de Krugman são meus.

Remember That There Is a Very Simple Solution to Europe's Current Financial Crisis?

Duncan Black:

Eschaton: Do I Hear 80%?: It isn't totally my preferred solution, but we should remember that the crisis and problems are fake, that there is a simple solution. Cancel Greece's debts and have the ECB give free money to the banks.

BRUSSELS — Eurozone finance ministers said Saturday that they have agreed that banks should accept substantially bigger losses on their Greek bonds, with a new report suggesting that writedowns of up to 60 percent may be necessary.

Alternatively, poor and middle class people can continue to suffer as Greece's economy is destroyed. Rich people across the world agree that the solution to every problem is more suffering for poor people.

And Paul Krugman:

There's A Hole In The Bucket: [A]t this point the urgent need is for a big Panzerfaust — a bailout fund big enough to head off a self-fulfilling liquidity crisis for Italy. But such a fund would be backed by the credit of the euro area’s remaining AAA governments, basically Germany and France — yet at this point the euro situation has deteriorated sufficiently that taking on another commitment would undermine French credit. There’s a hole in the bucket, and every attempt to fix that hole ends up being stymied because, well, there’s a hole in the bucket.

The answer to the whole conundrum is to back the rescue, not with French guarantees, but with the power of the printing press — to put the ECB behind the effort. But the ECB won’t and maybe can’t (under current rules) do that.

And meanwhile, austerity programs are leading to severe slumps in Greece and elsewhere. Who could have imagined that?

What a tragedy. A rich, productive continent, which has produced arguably the most decent societies in human history, is tearing itself apart because its elite insisted on embarking on a dubious monetary project[não concordo com isto] and now can’t bring itself to take the steps necessary to give that project a chance of working.[mas concordo em absoluto com isto]

Curioso, existem no Partido Republicano norte-americano, indivíduos que não são loucos, ou que não pactuam com a loucura dominante.

Este candidato republicano, Jon Huntsman, que era diferente dos outros, isso já tinha percebido - foi o único a afirmar que não questiona o aquecimento global e a nossa responsabilidade nele; a sua posição sobre a tese que "os grandes bancos não podem falir" confirma-o; que as suas hipóteses de ser nomeado, por isso mesmo, são diminutas, tal não oferece dúvidas; mas que acalenta um tanto ao quanto as perspectivas sobre como isto tudo pode evoluir, isso acalenta. Enfim ... No texto existe uma referência interessante, mas que ecoa como verdadeira, aos problemas da zona Euro: Fifth, the eurozone is on the verge of calamity in large part because they built very large banks with huge implicit subsidies – and this facilitated an irresponsible accumulation of public sector debt.

Estava a escrever isto e revisitei o artigo no Baseline Scenário, para ir copiar a referência à zona  Euro e li o primeiro comentário. Não Posso deixar de o reproduzir: "A Republican showing enough intelligence to speak out against fraud and regulatory capture by Too Systemically Threatening To Fail (TSTF) banks and Muammar Gaddafi being caught, both happening in a 36 hour period!?!?!?!?!?! Geez, this keeps up and I’m going to start feeling hope for this country. I don’tremember drinking any Gin this morning….. ? hmmm……."

Jon Huntsman: Too Big To Fail Is Too Big « The Baseline Scenario

The idea that big banks damage the broader economy has considerable resonance on the intellectual right. Tom Hoenig, recently retired president of the Kansas City Fed, has been our clearest official voice on this topic. And Gene Fama, father of the efficient markets view of finance, said on CNBC last year, that having banks that are too big to fail is “perverting activities and incentives” in financial markets – giving big financial firms, “a license to increase risk; where the taxpayers will bear the downside and firms will bear the upside.”The mainstream political right, however, has been reluctant to take on the issue. 

This changed on Wednesday, with a very clear statement by Jon Huntsman in the Wall Street Journal on regulatory capture and its consequences. Before the 2008 financial crisis: “The largest banks were pushing hard to take more risk at taxpayers’ expense.” And now,

“More than three years after the crisis and the accompanying bailouts, the six largest American financial institutions are significantly bigger than they were before the crisis, having been encouraged to snap up Bear Stearns and other competitors at bargain prices. These banks now have assets worth over 66% of gross domestic product—at least $9.4 trillion, up from 20% of GDP in the 1990s. There is no evidence that institutions of this size add sufficient value to offset the systemic risk they pose.” This message could work politically, for five reasons [....]

Apontamentos de ocasião

Tentando dar sentido a algumas coisas:

• O Presidente da República tentou recentrar-se a nível do espectro político? Eu penso que isso é possível. A razão seria a de ganhar graus de liberdade face ao Governo junto da opinião pública, e capacidade de influência junto do Partido Socialista - no actual contexto não é saudável ter uma Presidência colada ao Governo de forma não qualificada ("Um presidente, um governo, uma maioria", não é  um bom slogan nos dias que correm). Se tal tentativa de descolagem se confirmasse como eficaz poderia ser útil à potenciação da capacidade de arbitragem da Presidência nos próximos tempos, onde a dificuldade e a complexidade sócio-políticas irão aumentar. A minha dúvida é a de saber se isso - admitindo que estou a ler bem o que se passa - teria sido concertado com o Primeiro Ministro. 

• Outra questão é a de saber se a crítica do Presidente assenta numa efectiva convicção técnica. Não há razões para duvidar da dimensão do acréscimo inesperado do défice. Independentemente das razões e das responsabilidades em presença, o certo é que isso determina, e de forma inexorável, o tamanho do esforço a ser feito. O que fica sob julgamento, portanto, é como distribui-lo. A possibilidade de ser feito de modo diferente não foi demonstrada, na ausência do recurso ao incumprimento do Memorando. Quanto muito, é a opinião de alguns, que deveria ter-se aproveitado o momento para optar por uma taxa única no IVA, e de outros, que o corte dos subsídios poderia ter sido alargado ao sector privado, possibilitando um esforço médio menor, e mais equitativo para os funcionários públicos. Eu vejo as razões porque o Governo não quis ir por aí - os custos políticos seriam, no seu juízo, incomportáveis. Existem, no entanto, razões técnicas que justificassem a extensão da aplicação da medida ao sector privado? As consequências macroeconómicas da alternativa não seriam muito diferentes  - não haveriam, por exemplo, pelo menos de modo directo, alterações na estrutura de custos das empresas. Da argumentação do Governo, a diferenciação salarial do sector público versus o privado parece não se confirmar, mas o argumento da segurança do emprego não pode ser negado nesta conjuntura, e com as alterações legislativas laborais previstas, ainda mais Tudo visto, não consigo descortinar uma bondade técnica clara na crítica do Presidente. Ela poderá ser, contudo, correcta do ponto de vista político - veja-se o que diz o Pacheco Pereira quanto aos perigos de medidas que descriminam uma parte da população - mas, o facto de ser desadequada no quadro da actuação de um Presidente, e ainda assim, ter sido expressa, reforça a minha tese. A minha tese ela pode estar errada: um conhecido meu afirmava que os políticos acreditam, em regra, naquilo dizem (não são tão maquiavélicos como isso), mas tem piada.   

Da responsabilidade alemã ...

Um texto muito claro, e pedagógico. O bold é meu.

The euro crisis: Why not blame Germany? | The Economist

KANTOOS writes:

The German government remains under attack for not "taking leadership“ in the Euro crisis. This rests on the assumption that a known solution is ready to be implemented, but the German government just refuses to accept it. That is wrong.

No, I don't believe it's wrong. The crisis in the euro zone is not mysterious. People are proposing lots of different solutions to the problems because they're trying to hit on the magical combination of policies that will win political support from key players—notably the German government. But we know what the matter is. Many members have too much debt. Prior to the crisis, all euro-zone countries were able to borrow on terms which suggested that markets believed the full faith of the euro zone as a whole to be behind individual members, and some governments borrowed too much. After the crisis, markets weren't so sure about what the full faith of the euro zone meant, and spreads between the bonds of different euro-zone governments diverged. For the past year and a half, some euro-zone economies have struggled to make their way out of trouble within the confines of the union: without the ability to depreciate their currencies or set an independent monetary policy. The austerity adopted to try and balance budgets gutted internal demand, leaving those struggling economies dependent on external demand for growth. But where an independent currency would have fallen to help markets clear, euro-zone members were forced to make their adjustment through declines in nominal wages—a difficult and painful process even in countries like Ireland, which have very flexible labour markets. Other euro-zone governments have offered enough help to prevent an implosion of the financial system, but not enough to do much about massive unemployment problems in places like Spain and Greece. Without growth, closing budgets through austerity is like trying to climb a falling ladder.

Leituras sobre os ajustamentos orçamentais e o seu impacto na dívida e no crescimento

Pois é - faz todo o sentido o que se diz no primeiro artigo referenciado, e concorre para a imagem que se vai criando sobre isto tudo. 

A ideia que uma contração orçamental  consiga ter efeitos expansionistas foi ventilada num paper (ver também, a propósito, aqui e aqui) de   Alesina e Ardagna onde se afirmava, nomeadamente, que os melhores resultados em termos de ajustamento, medidos pelos rácios da dívida e do défice sobre o PIB, nos paises da OCDE entre 1970 e 2007, se tinham conseguido com cortes na despesa (e sem aumentos dos impostos).Mas uma análise mais detalhada dos casos estudados indicou (estou a referir de memória já que não consegui recuperar as referências  - há esta aqui que não aborda bem aquilo que estou a dizer) que os sucessos (Irlanda, nos anos 80; Suécia, nos anos 90, ...), sem entrar em outras qualificações, teriam ocorrido (necessariamente) em situações particulares e no quadro de situações económicas internacionais favoráveis. Daqui se retira que se todos fazem o mesmo, e o mesmo que fazem é contração orçamental, nada feito.

O segundo artigo referenciado, de Olivier Blanchard  e Carlo Cottarelli, aborda também a questão dos ajustamentos orçamentais, e o que diz é muito mais matizado e qualificado. É de leitura completa imprescindível: é ler e comparar com o que está a suceder em Portugal.

O bold em ambos casos é meu.

Líderes europeus perderam a noção do todo | Económico

Os muitos erros cometidos na resposta à crise da zona euro têm uma causa comum: a zona euro é uma grande economia fechada. Cada um dos seus 17 membros é pequeno e aberto, ao passo que os líderes políticos que governam a zona euro têm uma mentalidade de pequena economia aberta - todos, sem excepção. Mas não só. A maior parte dos economistas ao seu serviço também usa pequenos modelos económicos abertos.

Mobilizar o conhecimento dos que não "sabem"? Video on TED.com

Bunker Roy: Learning from a barefoot movement | Video on TED.com

In Rajasthan, India, an extraordinary school teaches rural women and men -- many of them illiterate -- to become solar engineers, artisans, dentists and doctors in their own villages. It's called the Barefoot College, and its founder, Bunker Roy, explains how it works.

Os países com maior dívida em termos absolutos

EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » The Most Important Facts About the Global Debt Crisis

É, vivemos num mundo global ....

Parece que todos - bem, quase todos - perceberam que Portugal tem de fazer o que tem de ser feito - fora questões de detalhe (eu sei, eu sei...) e de imputação dos sacrifícios do ajustamento. Não vejo em que se poderia fazer muito de diferente no quadro do afunilamento definido pelo tempo disponível e as condicionantes em presença. Estamos prisioneiros do curtíssimo prazo. Não existem graus de liberdade significativos. O País foi, ao longo das duas últimas duas décadas, encarreirando-se para um beco muito estreito. Muitas coisas deveriam ter sido feitas ou evitadas a tempo - aí havia graus de liberdade; agora, não há. A crise internacional estreitou ainda mais o beco e tornou-o excepcionalmente perigoso. Não há alternativa; a revolução não é solução: ela não tem template;  e se as coisas falham com este tipo de governação, pode tudo ir pelo cano abaixo, de modo irremediável: liberdades, direitos, níveis de vida, e, muito em particular todos, mas todos os direitos dos trabalhadores. Se uma solução radical se pode perfilar no horizonte - é possível, ainda que pouco provável (espero eu) - ela não é de esquerda.

Parece que todos - bem, quase todos - perceberam que aquilo que Portugal tem de fazer é uma condição necessária de sairmos do beco, mas não, de modo algum, uma condição suficiente. Percebem que é preciso que, externamente, outros façam aquilo que têm de fazer. E também é percebido algumas dessas coisas que têm de ser feitas, como uma gestão diferente da resposta europeia, em termos técnicos e políticos. Mas o problema ultrapassa o quadro europeu e as suas discussões político-institucionais, as suas questões da governança económica e a sua gestão do problema das dívidas soberanas. O problema é, também, e principalmente, de política económica global. O texto abaixo é exemplar na arrumação das questões a esse nível - o bold é meu, e o sublinhado tem a ver, em particular, com a situação portuguesa.

Uma questão que não se percebe bem em termos europeus é a ineficiência demonstrada pelos líderes europeus: não creio que se trate só de deficiências pessoais de verticalidade e coragem política: existem outros motivos que, aí sim, poderão ser acomodados por essas deficiências. Algumas pistas (daqui) que não esgotam o assunto: 

"Bringing us to the question of why it took policy makers a year and a half to get to this point. The answer is that there are strong incentives to delay. The Greek government, for which restructuring is an admission of failure, continues to hope that good news will magically turn up. Likewise, French banks holding Greek bonds cling to whatever thin reed of optimism they can and lobby furiously against restructuring. European policymakers, for their part, worry that a sovereign-debt restructuring will damage the financial system and be a black mark for their monetary union.

Centre for European Reform: Global trade imbalances threaten free trade

The developed world’s slide into recession threatens an outbreak of protectionism. Unlike in 2008, governments now have few tools with which to combat a renewed economic downturn, which raises the likelihood of it developing into a slump. If so, protectionist pressure is certain to build. The country that moves first to erect trade barriers will no doubt take the blame for the resulting damage to the trading system. But the real villains will be the countries that skew their exchange policies, tax systems and industrial structures to gain export advantage. The irony is that the countries that are most dependent on free trade – those that produce more than they consume – are the biggest obstacle to a sustained recovery in the global economy. They need to change course before it is too late: all will suffer if countries move to erect new trade barriers, but the surplus economies will suffer most.

As alterações têm vindo a ser piores do que o previsto pela ciência

Evidence Builds That Scientists Underplay Climate Impacts | ThinkProgress

The observed rate of Arctic ice loss exceeds the projections of all IPCC climate models — by NSIDC scientist Julienne Stroeve updated through 2011 (via Climate Crocks, click to enlarge).

Questões sobre os EUA....

Não é possível entender o nosso mundo sem tentar perceber os EUA; não é possível entender a situação em que estamos sem perceber o quadro conceptual e ideológico onde se insere a política norte-americana, em particular, a sua direita; não é possível entender o peso desmesurado do partido republicano sem perceber, nomeadamente isto que vem abaixo. Aliás, falta uma coisa: era necessário perceber como isto que vem abaixo se articula, sinergeticamente,  com a ideologia dos mercados não regulamentados e do esvaziamento do Estado, e o interesse da plutocracia (sim eu sei: o conceito era muito utilizados pela propaganda stalinista) ou da corporatocracia estadounidense.

The Evangelical Rejection of Reason - NYTimes.com

THE Republican presidential field has become a showcase of evangelical anti-intellectualism. Herman Cain, Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann deny that climate change is real and caused by humans. Mr. Perry and Mrs. Bachmann dismiss evolution as an unproven theory. The two candidates who espouse the greatest support for science, Mitt Romney and Jon M. Huntsman Jr., happen to be Mormons a faith regarded with mistrust by many Christians.

The rejection of science seems to be part of a politically monolithic red-state fundamentalism textbook evidence of an unyielding ignorance on the part of the religious. As one fundamentalist slogan puts it, “The Bible says it, I believe it, that settles it.” But evangelical Christianity need not be defined by the simplistic theology, cultural isolationism and stubborn anti-intellectualism that most of the Republican candidates have embraced.Like other evangelicals, we accept the centrality of faith in Jesus Christ and look to the Bible as our sacred book, though we find it hard to recognize our religious tradition in the mainstream evangelical conversation.

Uma nota histórica que vem a propósito

George Monbiot é um indignado dos meus. Quando é necessário vai mesmo contra a corrente do politicamente correcto à esquerda: por exemplo, defende a necessidade de recorrer ao nuclear como modo de mitigar os efeitos da emissão de CO2. 

O artigo deve ser lido na totalidade, mas transcrevo aquilo que para mim é novidade, a subsidiação de Herbert Spencer.

Millionaires and corporations are using tax breaks to help sway public opinion | George Monbiot | Comment is free | The Guardian

Since the late 19th century, the very rich have been paying people to demand less government. The work of Herbert Spencer, for example, was sponsored by Andrew Carnegie, John D Rockefeller and Thomas Edison. Spencer believed that society changed according to evolutionary laws. Humans were evolving towards perfection, but this process was inhibited by interference from the state. By protecting people from the consequences of their own actions (or their own bad luck), it stopped the winnowing process that would otherwise result in the survival of the fittest.

Social security, publicly funded education, compulsory vaccination, laws enforcing safety at work all interrupted social evolution. But a self-regulated free market would swiftly ensure that those who were best adapted would survive and triumph. It's not hard to see why the millionaires loved him. They saw themselves as winners of the evolutionary race, taking their rightful place at the pinnacle of the social order. Any attempt to limit their freedoms would prevent society from achieving perfection. [....]

A indignação nos EUA

Fui sempre um indignado ao longo da minha vida e ao longo dela a minha indignação evoluiu, aprofundou-se, alargou-se e compelexizou-se. Daí, não haver surpresa para mim, da minha empatia com os "indignados" em diversas coisas, em diversas temáticas, sem deixar de ter a certeza que deles me separam diferenças profundas, e muito mais. Aprendi que as canalhices que identificamos com propriedade  nos outros não implicam que sejamos, necessariamente, virtuosos, e que se conseguimos provar os erros dos outros isso não comprova de modo automático a verdade do que defendemos. Li algures uma citação dos Upanishads onde se comparava a verdade, ou a sabedoria, ao gume do fio de uma espada: o espaço do erro é todo aquele para além, em todas as direcções, do gume da espada. Há todo o campo para estarmos todos enganados, donde o que se pode almejar é que estejamos menos enganados do que os outros, mas para consegui-lo, isso dá muito trabalho, que o diga Karl Marx que levou anos a entrar todas as manhãs na biblioteca do Museu Britânico para estudar. A certeza é que, efectivamente, não se estuda o suficiente, não se sabe o suficiente, e, o que é mais grave, não se conhece a história, e essa, como o disse Mark Twain, se não se repete, muitas vezes rima.

En todo o caso tenho uma particular simpatia, e eu percebo bem porquê, pelos "indignados" dos EUA, os Ocupem Wall Street. Eles estão, geograficamente, no fulcro do problema .

Abaixo dois textos, bem diferentes, que deveriam ser lidos na totalidade. A situação nos EUA chegou a um ponto em que para muita gente esse movimento surge quase como  a única esperança de algo diferente, face ao descrédito do Partido Democrata e à loucura dos outros. Não acredito nisso.

Economist's View: Paul Krugman: Losing Their Immunity

Losing Their Immunity, by Paul Krugman, Commentary, NY Times: As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. ... The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy? The answer is: yes, many of the protesters do understand..., that’s why they’re protesting. ...

My favorite quote came from an unnamed money manager who declared, “Financial services are one of the last things we do in this country and do it well. Let’s embrace it.” ... But ... the financialization of America wasn’t dictated by the invisible hand of the market. What caused the financial industry to grow much faster than the rest of the economy starting around 1980 was ... deregulation...

Not coincidentally, the era of an ever-growing financial industry was also an era of ever-growing inequality of income and wealth. ... All of this was supposed to be justified by results: the paychecks of the wizards of Wall Street were appropriate, we were told, because of the wonderful things they did. Somehow, however, that wonderfulness failed to trickle down to the rest of the nation — and that was true even before the crisis. ...

Ártico

Largely unnoticed, a silent drama has been unfolding over the past weeks in the Arctic. The long-term consequences will far outstrip those of the international debt crisis or the demise of the Libyan dictatorship, the news stories now commanding media attention. The drama – more accurately, a tragedy – playing out in the North is the rapid disappearance of the polar ice cap, the Arctic Ocean’s defining feature.

In September, the sea-ice cover on the Arctic Ocean melted all the way back to the record-low level recorded in September 2007. At 4.4 million square kilometers, it was the smallest ice cover since satellite observations began 40 years ago, with 40% less ice than in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Back in 2007, the record low stunned climate scientists, who considered it an outlier in an otherwise much slower decline in sea-ice cover. We blamed unusual wind conditions in the Arctic that year. But satellite data since then have proven us wrong. This year, we reached the same low level without exceptional wind conditions. It is now clear that we are not just seeing a steady decline of sea-ice cover, but a rapidly accelerating decline.

If this continues, we will probably see an ice-free North Pole within the next 10-20 years. Yes, that sounds shocking. But there is good reason to fear that the rate of decline will indeed continue to rise, and that satellite images of a blue polar ocean will grace the covers of news magazines sooner rather than later.

The reason is that the ice is also getting thinner. [....]

Continuar a ler em  The Vanishing Arctic - Stefan Rahmstorf - Project Syndicate

Dívida acumulada por diferentes presidentes dos EUA

EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » U.S. Debt Accumulation by President


Clicar para aceder a uma versão maior.

Do voto com virtude

Ecoa o que se diz aqui.

Quote of the Day: October 16, 2011: The Value of Representative Government

"Representative institutions are of little value, and may be a mere instrument of tyranny or intrigue, when the generality of electors are not sufficiently interested in their own government to give their vote, or, if they vote at all, do not bestow their suffrage on public grounds, but sell them for money, or vote at the beck of some one who has control over them, or whom for private reasons they desire to propitiate. Popular election thus practiced, instead of a security against misgovernment, is but an additional wheel in its machinery."

--John Stuart Mill, Considerations on Representative Government

Da necessidade de refletir para além do curto prazo, no país, na região ....

Um irlandês reflecte sobre o futuro do seu país, ou melhor reflete sobre o modo como o seu país deve refletir sobre o seu futuro:

Dublin Review of Books | What’s The Plan? - Moving Ireland Back Towards Growth - Michael O’Sullivan

Over the next four years in Ireland, a cottage industry will grow up around the centenary of the 1916 revolution. A manifest achievement of recent years has been the normalisation of our relationship with the United Kingdom. We are also more cognisant of the influence the Church has had on our state. Economically, the ratio of Irish to British GDP is now higher, but the chaotic way in which we have developed mocks the notion of a state in control of its own destiny. Above all else, the most stark contrast between the Ireland of today and that of 1916 can be found in how far we have strayed from the values that we prized then, and how we have serially failed to think strategically about our “august destiny”.

De uma maneira ou outra dizem respeito aos Açores ....

Estes dois artigos, de um modo ou outro, tem a ver com a discussão da realidade açoriana - o primeiro, sobre a complexidade, tem a ver com o modo como a economia lida com a relação entre complexidade, especialização e dimensão (tamanho); o segundo, tratando da questão (muito importante) de como a regionalização se articula com o combate à desigualdade, mapeia, e é isso que transcrevo, de modo sucinto e, até mais ver, abrangente, as potencialiades positivas e negativas que podem ser assacadas às autonomias.

…My heart’s in Accra » Ricardo Hausmann on Economic Complexity

Hausmann argues that to succeed economically, humans have learned how to specialize.Some tasks require a full human’s worth of knowledge – a person-byte – to carry them out successfully. Others require much more knowledge – building a complex product like a computer might require a kilo-person byte or more – the highly specialized knowledge and skills of a thousand different people. “Modern man is useless as an individual. Making a computer is a team sport.”

 [....] the difference in wealth and income between the nations is closely related to the ability of firms to take on complex tasks. [...] They’ve only got so much knowledge they can apply to producing complex and high value products.

Leituras sobre a economia mundial e a dos EUA

Naquela linha de dar amplitude e profundidade de campo à perspectivação do nosso sarilho, leituras recomendadas na totalidade: as transcrições não fazem justiça a todo o conteúdo, e surgem, por vezes, mais a sublinhar uma ou outra preocupação.

Chamo, em particular, a atenção à coleção de gráficos e quadros que acompanham a nota Charts (a terceira). A nota do FT sobre a conversa com Clinton (a diversos passos, muito interessante) não tem qualquer transcrição porque o jornal não quer, e embora não creia que mereça a sua atenção aquilo que faço ou deixo de fazer, cumpro com o definido. O bold é meu.

The Instability of Inequality - Nouriel Roubini - Project Syndicate

[....] Of course, the malaise that so many people feel cannot be reduced to one factor. For example, the rise in inequality has many causes: the addition of 2.3 billion Chinese and Indians to the global labor force, which is reducing the jobs and wages of unskilled blue-collar and off-shorable white-collar workers in advanced economies; skill-biased technological change; winner-take-all effects; early emergence of income and wealth disparities in rapidly growing, previously low-income economies; and less progressive taxation.

The increase in private- and public-sector leverage and the related asset and credit bubbles are partly the result of inequality. [....] Firms in advanced economies are now cutting jobs, owing to inadequate final demand, which has led to excess capacity, and to uncertainty about future demand. But cutting jobs weakens final demand further, because it reduces labor income and increases inequality. Because a firm’s labor costs are someone else’s labor income and demand, what is individually rational for one firm is destructive in the aggregate. The result is that free markets don’t generate enough final demand. [....]

Evidências ...

Dois artigos. O primeiro é mais um ponto da situação. O segundo é uma tese sobre a origem da pequena idade do gelo: é convincente, e logo pode ser mais uma evidência .... Leituras recomendadas na totalidade.

WRI's Review of Climate Science 2009-2010: "As a Whole, the Literature Paints a Bleak Picture" | ThinkProgress

What are the key findings of this scientific review?

We divide up the report according to changes to physical, hydrological, and ecological systems, as well as advances in technologies. As a whole, the literature paints a bleak picture. We are continuing to see accelerating change in many systems, with some changes happening much faster than initially envisioned.

Some of the key findings:

• 2000-2009 was the warmest decade on record since 1880 (NASA).
• The climate system has a number of different feedback mechanisms built into it, some of which are better known than others. New evidence suggests that as temperature rises, there may be positive feedbacks (processes that reinforce processes) through less cloud cover and in changes in aerosols, soils, peatlands, and Arctic ice cover, which can accelerate climate change impacts.
• Observations show that multi-year winter sea ice area decreased by 42 percent between 2005 and 2008 and that there was a thinning of ∼0.6 m in multi-year ice thickness over the same 4 years (average thickness of the seasonal ice in midwinter is ∼2 m) (Kwok et al.).
• Ocean acidification – caused by the buildup of carbon dioxide concentrations – was only recently recognized as a threat to coral in areas such as the Great Barrier Reef (and is happening much more quickly than anticipated (De’ath et al.)). It is now recognized as having implications for the entire ocean food web which is critical to whales, fish, and mollusks (snails and scallops) (Munday et al., Gooding et al. and Comeau et al.).
• The rate of mass loss in the East Antarctic Ice Sheet may be greater than previously estimated (Chen et al.).
• Based on physiological estimates, a global average temperature increase of 7° C, which is toward the extreme upper part of the range of current projections, would make large portions of the world uninhabitable to humans (Sherwood et al.).

Porque razão os judeus têm tido o sucesso económico que tem tido?

E a resposta abaixo fornece, também, pistas para as razões porque Portugal tratou os seus judeus como tratou, e, implicitamente, o preço que se pagou, e continua-se a pagar - sim, mesmo quatro séculos depois - por isso. Leitura recomendada na sua totalidade.

Why Do Jews Succeed? - Jerry Z. Muller - Project Syndicate

In recent decades, economists have been struggling to make use of the concept of human capital, often defined as the abilities, skills, knowledge, and dispositions that make for economic success. Yet those who use the term often assume that to conceptualize a phenomenon is a first step to manipulating it. And, indeed, “human-capital policy” is now much in fashion. But what if many of the abilities and dispositions in question are a product of history, capable of being understood and explained but not readily replicated?[...]

To the extent that human capital involves character traits and varieties of “know-how” that are transmitted within the realms of the family and the community, rather than by formal education, it becomes both methodologically elusive and difficult to manipulate by public policy.  [....]

Such factors provide a sense of why attention to the history of Jews under capitalism helps us to understand capitalism more generally. It reminds us that much of success in a capitalist society is based on cultural and historical factors that produce qualities such as innovativeness, willingness to tolerate risk, and willingness to defer gratification through savings and education.[....]

Exploring the economic history of the Jews also reminds us that groups that are disproportionately successful are met by different political reactions. Societies long oriented to economic dynamism tend to welcome the economically successful, viewing them as a source of mutual gains.

But cultures that tend to resent the economically successful – either as an affront to equality, or on the implicit assumption that the economic gains of some must be at the expense of others – tend to be more hostile toward Jews and given to conspiratorial theories to explain their economic success. Most societies lie somewhere along a spectrum between these two poles. [....]