Enquanto isso, a situação económica a nível mundial é a seguinte:

Um ponto da situação económica mundial, interessante a diversos títulos. O bold é meu.

Global Economy Heading Downhill? | A Fistful Of Euros

[....] In the first place these massive liquidity injections are not self sustaining, ie they give things a hefty push forward but even so they  don’t manage to jump start the various economies, especially in the developed world. They work for a bit, and then run out of steam. The fact that they systematically run out of steam tells me, at any rate, that something somewhere is broken, and that re-iterated injections on their own won’t sort the problem out.  

In Japan this very same “something” has now been broken since 1992, and continual liquidity injections and mounting government debt have not made it better. This is not the point to go in depth into what the something is, my story on this is scattered here and there across the various pieces of analysis I write. Suffice it to say that excessive debt and rapid population ageing have to form part of the picture. Both constitute an important drag on growth. But the principal aim of this post  isn’t to add to the debate about what it is that broken, it is simply to plead for a recognition that something is, and that, as a result, the situation won’t simply “right” itself. This time there is no hidden helping hand.

What the various liquidity injections do do is buy time. Some people scorn that, and would rather take their armageddon full face and now. Each to his taste. If I get to die tomorrow and rather than  today I am not ungrateful. [....]

Pois!

O bold e o sublinhado são meus. 

The euro crisis: A fatal recession? | The Economist

[....] And the descent into recession seems to be continuing for the euro area. Retail sales across the currency area plunged in September. Perhaps more disconcertingly, Germany's industrial production dipped 2.7% for the month. This is a very bad scenario for the single currency. The periphery is plunging into austerity. To have any hope of economic growth, which will be necessary to translate fiscal cuts into an actual improvement in budget sustainability, peripheral economies must significantly increase the contribution of net exports to growth. But these economies overwhelmingly export to each other. About 50% of Portuguese exports go to Spain, Germany, and France. Nearly 50% of Spanish exports go to France, Germany, Portugal, and Italy. Roughly a third of Italian exports go to Germany, France, and Spain. Roughly a third of French exports go to Germany, Italy, and Spain. Of the large euro-zone economies, Germany's exports are sold to the broadest and most diverse portfolio of customers. Nevertheless, over a third of its exports are sold to the euro zone, and its two largest non-euro customers are Britain and America, neither of which is in great economic shape and both of which would also like to increase their net exports.

So one key problem is that troubled euro-zone countries would all like to sell more to other troubled euro-zone countries whose economies are shrinking. They'd also like to sell a lot more to Germany, and indeed, Germany should buy more from the south as part of a broad euro-zone adjustment. But Germany's economy may also start shrinking thanks to the poor outlook for most of its export customers; a big fiscal expansion could offset this but is highly unlikely to materialise. The rich world as a whole would love to start selling lots more to China, but China is (understandably but unfortunately) uncomfortable with that, at least in the very short term.

While those among the world's large economies with the ability to signficantly increase domestic purchases are unwilling to do so, there will be substantial contractionary pressure on depressed rich economies. That dynamic will be unpleasant for countries like America and Britain. But it may well prove fatal for the euro zone.

Sobre o estado dos EUA, um debate na CNN, entre Sachs e Niall Ferguson

Jeffrey Sachs And Niall Ferguson On The State Of America | The Browser

Descubram com quem eu concordo, mas o mais curioso é comparar o que diz Naomi Klein, em The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (estou ainda ao meio), sobre o papel de Jeffrey Sachs na transformação das economias da Bolívia, Rússia, e Polónia, em economias "capitalistas", com aquilo que ele diz agora - penso, no entanto, que sei como se defenderia se fosse acusado de contradição: em todo o caso seria, extremamente interessante, ouvi-lo sobre essa questão.

Análise exemplar ...

É um artigo que foi referenciado como exemplar por uns quantos. 

No entretanto, permitam-me destacar uma frase do que se diz abaixo, e que descreve bem as angústias dos anti-economicistas:

Já dizia o poeta britânico A.E. Housman que pensar que dois e dois são quatro, e não cinco ou três, tornou há muito o coração do homem pesaroso, o qual permanecerá assim por muito mais tempo. 

Eis a dura realidade: os credores precisam dos devedores | Económico

Bem-aventurados os credores, porque possuirão a terra. Não se trata do Sermão da Montanha, muito embora os credores acreditem nele: se fôssemos todos credores não teríamos dívidas por pagar nem crises financeiras.

No entender dos credores, é assim que nos devemos comportar. Pois bem, estão errados. Como o mundo não pode negociar com Marte, os credores são inseparáveis dos devedores. Aqueles têm de acumular activos sobre estes, ou seja, acabam por tornar-se vítimas da sua própria armadilha.

Três das quatro maiores economias do mundo - China, Alemanha e Japão - são credores, gerem excedentes da balança corrente em tempos de bonança e de crise, e julgam-se no direito de repreender os devedores acerca das suas loucuras. A China, superpotência ascendente, adora admoestar os EUA pela sua imprudência. O Japão, aliado dos EUA, é mais discreto. No caso da Alemanha, as suas ambições estão mais perto de casa, uma vez que deseja transformar os seus parceiros da zona euro em bons alemães.

Só faltava estes ...

Swimming Naked in China | The Diplomat

For quite some time, analysts of China have been puzzled by a strange phenomenon: the country’s public and financial institutions are decidedly subpar by any international standard, but its economic growth rate is anything but. This puzzle can only be explained by two conclusions: either China has been fudging its growth data, or Chinese institutions aren’t as bad as outsiders commonly think.

There is, however, a third possibility. During the peak of the credit bubble in the United States, bankers on Wall Street had a popular saying: “When the tide is high, nobody knows you are swimming naked.” What this aphorism means is that apparent economic prosperity can cover up many dubious if not outright shady practices that eventually lead to financial calamities.

So if we apply this expensive lesson learned from Wall Street, it’s hard not to suspect that a lot of people have been swimming naked in China in recent years as well. The prudish Communist Party hasn’t acquired Scandinavian-level tolerance and allowed nudist beaches in China (it has not). Instead, based on the recent spate of worrying financial news out of China, it’s obvious that high economic growth has concealed many high-risk and illegal activities and practices that may have bolstered growth, but also sowed the seeds for financial mass destruction.

Recordando ...

America's other 87 deficits - Opinion - Al Jazeera English

The United States has a classic multilateral trade imbalance. While it runs a large trade deficit with China, it also runs deficits with 87 other countries. A multilateral deficit cannot be fixed by putting pressure on one of its bilateral components. But try telling that to the US' growing chorus of China bashers.

The US' massive trade deficit is a direct consequence of an unprecedented shortfall of domestic saving. The broadest and most meaningful measure of a country’s saving capacity is what economists call the “net national saving rate” - the combined saving of individuals, businesses and the government. It is measured in “net” terms to strip out the depreciation associated with ageing or obsolescent capacity. It provides a measure of the saving that is available to fund expansion of a country’s capital stock, and thus to sustain its economic growth.

In the US, there simply is no net saving any more. Since the fourth quarter of 2008, the US’ net national saving rate has been negative - in sharp contrast to the 6.4 per cent of GDP averaged over the last three decades of the twentieth century. Never before in modern history has the world’s leading economic power experienced a saving shortfall of such epic proportions.

Não se parece - tendencialmente - com uma "recuperação" em L?

Calculated Risk's Recoveryless Recovery Chart Once Again

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 [....]

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.

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.

Dívida acumulada por diferentes presidentes dos EUA

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


Clicar para aceder a uma versão maior.

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. [....]

Relembrando como chegamos aqui, a nível internacional, ...

Estamos quanto à crise em "águas profundas". O lago encheu devido a diversos contributos, facto que é sistematicamente ignorado. O que se segue lembra alguns desses contributos e fá-lo como introdução a um paper - que não li ainda - sobre o que se pode fazer. O bold abaixo é meu.

The Way Forward | NewAmerica.net

Notwithstanding repeated attempts at monetary and fiscal stimulus since 2009, the United States remains mired in what is by far its worst economic slump since that of the 1930s.¹ More than 25 million working-age Americans remain unemployed or underemployed, the employment-to-population ratio lingers at an historic low of 58.3 percent,² business investment continues at historically weak levels, and consumption expenditure remains weighed down by massive private sector debt overhang left by the bursting of the housing and credit bubble a bit over three years ago. Recovery from what already has been dubbed the “Great Recession” has been so weak thus far that real GDP has yet to surpass its previous peak. And yet, already there are signs of renewed recession.

Leituras diversas destes últimos dias sobre questões de economia

Das mais antigas para as mais recentes:

Debt and Dumb | Politics | Vanity Fair: As a young artillery captain in the Revolutionary War, Alexander Hamilton learned a crucial lesson: Good credit, based on the power to tax, is essential to a nation’s security. As the first U.S. Treasury secretary, he built America’s fiscal policy on that principle. Will the Tea Party destroy his legacy?

Working In The Dark | The New Republic: This was Keynes’s case for conscious corrective fiscal and monetary policy. Its relevance for today should be obvious. It is a vulgar error to characterize Keynes as an advocate of “big government” and a chronic budget deficit. His goal was to stabilize the private economy at a generally prosperous level of activity.

The End of the Future - Peter Thiel - National Review Online: The technology slowdown threatens not just our financial markets, but the entire modern political order, which is predicated on easy and relentless growth. The give-and-take of Western democracies depends on the idea that we can craft political solutions that enable most people to win most of the time. But in a world without growth, we can expect a loser for every winner. Many will suspect that the winners are involved in some sort of racket, so we can expect an increasingly nasty edge to our politics. We may be witnessing the beginnings of such a zero-sum system in politics in the U.S. and Western Europe, as the risks shift from winning less to losing more, and as our leaders desperately cast about for macroeconomic solutions to problems that have not been primarily about economics for a long time.

John Kay - The Map is Not the Territory: An Essay on the State of Economics

Robert Reich explica em dois minutos a verdade acerca da economia (norte-americana, mas com extensões para outros lados ....)

A verdade acerca da economia - YouTube:

A propósito dos tempos que correm, um pouco de história económica ...

Bleed the Foreigner - Harold James - Project Syndicate

Today, the world is threatened with a repeat of the 2008 financial meltdown – but on an even more cataclysmic scale. This time, the epicenter is in Europe, rather than the United States. And this time, the financial mechanisms involved are not highly complex structured financial products, but one of the oldest financial instruments in the world: government bonds.

While governments and central banks race frantically to find a solution, there is a profound psychological dynamic at work that stands in the way of an orderly debt workout: our aversion to recognizing obligations to strangers.

The impulse simply to cut the Gordian knot of debt by defaulting on it is much stronger when creditors are remote and unknown. In 2007-2008, it was homeowners who could not keep up with payments; now it is governments. But, in both cases, the lender was distant and anonymous. American mortgages were no longer held at the local bank, but had been repackaged in esoteric financial instruments and sold around the world; likewise, Greek government debt is in large part owed to foreigners.

Because Spain and France defaulted so much in the early modern period, and because Greece, from the moment of its political birth in 1830, was a chronic or serial defaulter, some assume that national temperament somehow imbues countries with a proclivity to default. But that search for long historical continuity is facile, for it misses one of the key determinants of debt sustainability: the identity of the state’s creditor.

Aliás, recomenda-se mesmo o termos medo!

The world economy: Be afraid | The Economist

Há muita gente com medo ...

Krugman:

Defeatism: Martin Wolf is getting frantic, as well he should. The austerians have brought us to the brink of a vast disaster. A recession in Europe looks more likely than not; and the question for the United States is not whether a lost decade is possible, but whether there is any plausible way to avoid one. Wolf directs us to a recent speech by Adam Posen (pdf), which opens with a passage that very much mirrors my own thoughts:

Both the UK and the global economy are facing a familiar foe at present: policy defeatism. Throughout modern economic history, whether in Western Europe in the 1920s, in the US and elsewhere in the 1930s, or in Japan in the 1990s, every major financial crisis-driven downturn has been followed by premature abandonment—if not reversal—of the macroeconomic stimulus policies that are necessary to sustained recovery. Every time, this was due to unduly influential voices claiming some combination of the destructiveness of further policy stimulus, the ineffectiveness of further policy stimulus, or the political corruption from further policy stimulus. Every time those voices were wrong on each and every count. Those voices are being heard again today, much too loudly. It is the duty of economic policymakers including central bankers to rebut these false claims head on. It is even more important that we do the right thing for the economy rather than be slowed, confused, or intimidated by such false claims. Indeed. Posen’s “unduly influential voices” are my Very Serious People. And it has been an awesome spectacle watching the VSPs search, obsessively, for reasons not to fight mass unemployment. Fiscal policy must tighten to appease the invisible bond vigilantes and please the confidence fairy. Interest rates must rise because, well, um, inflation, well, no, low rates cause moral hazard — yes, that must be it.

O que é sinistro nisto não é só o conteúdo, mas também, o tom, o modo como é dito - isto é gente perigosa e devia ser policiada como é bom de ver

O bold é meu. Para ver as declarações do "trader" aceder à BBC News via endereço abaixo.

BBC News - 'Anyone can make money from a crash', says market trader

Ministers from the world's richest nations are reportedly on the way to agreeing a deal for troubled eurozone countries.Following the IMF meeting in Washington, the BBC understands that three elements have been discussed.They include a so-called "haircut" of Greece's sovereign debt, meaning institutions holding Greek debt would have to write off half of what they were owed. The plan also envisages an increase in the size of the European Union bailout fund to two trillion euros. European governments hope to have the plan in place in five to six weeks.

But one independent market trader - Alessio Rastani - told the BBC the plan "won't work" and that people should be trying to make money from a market crash.

____________________________

PS: Fui alertado para isto pelo Apocalypse: You, too, can profit from collapse | The Economist  que diz o seguinte: "Between the remarkable take on the global economy in this video and the interviewee's traderly insouciance, I'm not sure whether to laugh or cry. Or grab a pitchfork. Or call him for investment advice. You be the judge."