Um vídeo, absolutamente, a ver...

A nota abaixo é complementada por um vídeo onde Branko Milanovic apresenta o seu novo livro Global Inequality: A New Approach for the Age of Globalization. Há quem coloque este livro na divisão do livro Capital no Século XXI de Piketty. Sugiro que vejam o vídeo primeiro; é o mais importante e a leitura da nota, depois do vídeo, será mais clara. Foi das coisas mais interessantes que vi nos últimos tempos. Para quem se interessa pela discussão das consequências da globalização, pelo fenómeno do crescimento da desigualdade e pelas eleições norte-americanas, é um labor incontornável.

Understanding Society: Global inequality

Indústrialização e globalização - algumas leituras

Fui colecionando, a este propósito, alguns artigos. São todos muito interessantes, e carreando muito material para reflexão: o bold é meu .

Apple, America and a Squeezed Middle Class - NYTimes.com

It is hard to estimate how much more it would cost to build iPhones in the United States. However, various academics and manufacturing analysts estimate that because labor is such a small part of technology manufacturing, paying American wages would add up to $65 to each iPhone’s expense. Since Apple’s profits are often hundreds of dollars per phone, building domestically, in theory, would still give the company a healthy reward. 

But such calculations are, in many respects, meaningless because building the iPhone in the United States would demand much more than hiring Americans — it would require transforming the national and global economies. Apple executives believe there simply aren’t enough American workers with the skills the company needs or factories with sufficient speed and flexibility. Other companies that work with Apple, like Corning, also say they must go abroad. [....]

Wages weren’t the major reason for the disparities. Rather it was costs like inventory and how long it took workers to finish a task. [....]

Making It in America - Magazine - The Atlantic

In the past decade, the flow of goods emerging from U.S. factories has risen by about a third. Factory employment has fallen by roughly the same fraction. The story of Standard Motor Products, a 92-year-old, family-run manufacturer based in Queens, sheds light on both phenomena. It’s a story of hustle, ingenuity, competitive success, and promise for America’s economy. It also illuminates why the jobs crisis will be so difficult to solve.

The Washington Monthly - The Magazine - The Myth of American Productivity

Politicians say we have the most productive workers in the world. They don't know what they're talking about. 

Alternatively, companies can cut costs by seeking out cheaper suppliers around the world—to use the business school term, they can engage in global supply chain management. A U.S.-based computer company can lower its costs by moving its customer call center from South Dakota to India. Walmart can shift its clothing purchases from a Chinese shirt manufacturer to a cheaper supplier in Vietnam. Apple can find a cheaper offshore supplier for its iPhone display screen. 

But here’s the rub: both of these corporate strategies— domestic productivity improvements and global supply chain management—show up as productivity gains in U.S. economic records. When federal statisticians calculate the nation’s economic output, what they are actually measuring is domestic “value added”—the dollar value of all sales minus the dollar value of all imports. “Productivity” is then calculated by dividing the quantity of value added by the number of American workers. American workers, however, often have little to do with the gains in productivity attributed to them. For instance, if Company A saves $250,000 simply by switching from a Japanese sprocket supplier to a much cheaper Chinese sprocket supplier, that change shows up as an increase in American productivity—just as if the company had saved $250,000 by making its warehouse operation in Chicago more efficient.[....]

Economist's View: Upward Redistribution

[....] David Ignatius is one of the people who works in this industry. His Post column today urges readers to contemplate the awful thought that, quoting Francis Fukuyama:"What if the further development of technology and globalization undermines the middle class and makes it impossible for more than a minority of citizens in an advanced society to achieve middle-class status?”It is very useful to the One Percent to pretend that their wealth and the near stagnation in living standards for everyone else is just the result of "the further development of technology and globalization." However this has nothing to do with reality. Globalization has hurt the living standards of the middle class... In the same vein it is not technology by itself that has made some people very rich. It is largely government granted patent and copyright monopolies that have made people rich. These polices are becoming increasingly inefficient mechanisms for supporting innovation and creative work. [....]

Why doesn't Britain make things any more? | Business | The Guardian: 

In the past 30 years, the UK's manufacturing sector has shrunk by two-thirds, the greatest de-industrialisation of any major nation. It was done in the name of economic modernisation – but what has replaced it? [....]

Leituras sobre a China

Diversas leituras sobre a China. O que se passa na China e a capacidade de descortinar para onde ela vai, é um exemplo acabado da coexistência possível de diversas narrativas, todas elas comportando uma dada adequação à realidade, um dado nível de verdade, quando a realidade em presença é substancialmente complexa. A conjugação destas leituras ilustra bem esse ponto. A regra a retirar é a da necessidade de tentar sempre obter um vector que considere todas essas narrativas.

Aliás, e a este respeito, chamo a atenção para um livro que li recentemente (compra na Feira do Livro, em Ponta Delgada) sobre o papel da China na globalização: Fast Boat to China, High-Tech Outsourcing and the Consequences of Free Trade, Andrew Ross, Vintage Books. Ele chama a atenção para o elementar facto, a esmagadora das vezes esquecido, da globalização ser impulsionada, determinada e defendida, em primeiro lugar e principalmente, pela estratégia das multinacionais dos países desenvolvidos, e para o facto dos trabalhadores e o governo chinês terem disso uma aguda consciência, que deve integrar como elemento importante a explicação da sua resposta e aproveitamento das possíveis potencialidades do fenómeno.

• How Walmart Is Changing China - Magazine - The Atlantic

• China Credit Squeeze Prompts Suicides - Bloomberg

• China’s economic growth ‘miracle’ and its outlook by 2020 | vox - Research-based policy analysis and commentary from leading economists

• UnderstandingSociety: China's role in world history?

• From ‘Made in China’ to ‘Bought in China’ - Ideas - The Boston Globe

E também, sobre o mesmo tópico, isto ...

The optimists of Davos past now face a world whose script has gone awry | Timothy Garton Ash | Comment is free | The Guardian:

"Western capitalism survives, but limping, wounded, carrying a heavy load of debt, inequality, demography, neglected infrastructure, social discontent and unrealistic expectations. Meanwhile, other variants of capitalism – Chinese, Indian, Russian, Brazilian – are surging ahead, exploiting the advantages of backwardness, and their economic dynamism is rapidly being translated into political power. The result? Not a unipolar world, converging on a single model of liberal democratic capitalism, but a no-polar world, diverging towards many different national versions of often illiberal capitalism. Not a new world order, but a new world disorder. An unstable kaleidoscope world – fractured, overheated, germinating future conflicts.

- Sent using Google Toolbar"

Conviria que lessem o artigo todo.

Da New Left Review, duas leituras interessantes

• New Left Review - Ho-fung Hung: America'sHead Servant? The PRC's Dilemma in the Global Crisis: "The subprime mortgage crisis and ensuing global downturn led many to speculate whether any challenger might emerge to replace the us as the dominant player in the capitalist world economy. [1] Because the financial crisis in the us and global North had originated in high indebtedness, low productivity and overconsumption, it seemed natural to look to their polar opposites—the East Asian exporters’ huge holdings of us debt, productive capacity and high savings rates—to identify likely candidates. Immediately after last year’s collapse of Lehman Brothers lifted the curtain on the global recession, there were proclamations of the final triumph of the East Asian, and above all Chinese, model of development; American establishment commentators concluded that the Great Crash of 2008 would be the catalyst for a shift of the centre of global capitalism from the us to China. [2] But by the spring of 2009, many had realized that the East Asian economies were not as formidable as appearances had suggested. While the sharp contraction in demand for imports in the global North had led to crash landings for Asia’s exporters, the prospect of either the us Treasuries market or the dollar bottoming out presented them with the difficult dilemma of either ditching American assets, and hence triggering a dollar collapse, or buying more, preventing an immediate crash but increasing their exposure to one in future. State-directed investment, rolled out late last year under the prc’s mega-stimulus programme, fostered a significant recovery for China as well as its Asian trading partners, but the growth generated is unlikely to be self-sustaining. Chinese economists and policy advisers have been worrying that the prc will falter again once the stimulus effect fades, as it is unlikely that American consumers will be picking up the slack any time soon. Despite all the talk of China’s capacity to destroy the dollar’s reserve-currency status and construct a new global financial order, the prc and its neighbours have few choices in the short term other than to sustain American economic dominance by extending more credit. In what follows, I will trace the historical and social origins of the deepening dependence of China and East Asia on the consumer markets of the global North as the source of their growth, and on us financial vehicles as the store of value for their savings. I then assess the longer-term possibilities for ending this dependence, arguing that, to create a more autonomous economic order in Asia, China would have to transform an export-oriented growth model—which has mostly benefited, and been perpetuated by, vested interests in the coastal export sectors—into one driven by domestic consumption, through a large-scale redistribution of income to the rural-agricultural sector. This will not be possible, however, without breaking the coastal urban elite’s grip on power."Penso que já tinha referenciado este artigo antes, mas não se perde nada em referenciá-lo de novo.
  

• New Left Review - Susan Watkins: Shifting Sands: "Correlations between anniversaries and historical conjunctures are likely to be ironic. When nlr was launched in London fifty years ago, in January 1960, it was one of myriad small harbingers of left renewal. Anti-colonial forces were registering victories in Africa, Asia and the Arab world; the Communist movement was emerging from the stranglehold of Stalinist orthodoxy; in North America, Western Europe and Japan a new generation chafed at the conformism of Cold War culture. By the mid-60s the Review had staked out a programme of mapping these three world zones in a series of comparative studies of national social formations—not least its own. Strongly oriented towards Continental theory and practice, the journal played its part in the intensive debates within Marxism that accompanied the heady days of 68. It helped to pioneer work on women’s liberation, ecology, media, film theory, the state. By the 1990s, the journal survived within an international landscape that would have seemed a sci-fi dystopia in 1960: the Kremlin’s economic policy run by Friedmanites, the General Secretary of the ccp lauding the stock exchange; Yugoslavia, the most pluralist and successful of the workers’ states, decimated by imf austerity policies and subjected to a three-month nato bombing campaign, cheered on by liberal opinion in the West; social democratic parties competing to privatize national assets and abolish labour gains. Neo-liberalism reigned supreme, enshrining a model of unfettered capital flows and financial markets, deregulated labour and internationally integrated production chains. On its fortieth anniversary, at the high noon of globalization and American supremacy, nlr was relaunched by its editorial committee in a spirit of uncompromising realism: ‘the refusal of any accommodation with the ruling system, as of any understatement of its power’. [1] Ten years on again, the continuation of the neo-liberal era itself has been thrown into question by the eruption of an epic financial crisis at the heart of the system. During the grandes journées of September 2008 Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the giant us institutions at the centre of the mortgage-backed securities market, were taken into government stewardship after their shares had plunged by 90 per cent. Lehman Brothers went bankrupt, Merrill Lynch was forced into a shotgun marriage with Bank of America, hbos with Lloydstsb; a tottering Citigroup, whose stock value had fallen from $244bn to $6bn, was shored up by government funds, Washington Mutual pulled from receivership by JPMorganChase. Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and Société Générale were saved by massive Treasury transfusions into their bankrupt insurer, aig. In the months that followed, world output, trade, equity, credit and investment ground to a halt, while unemployment soared towards double digits across the Northern hemisphere. Running into trillions of dollars in direct and indirect support, the bailouts of the financial institutions will weigh on domestic economies—above all in the us and uk—for years to come. But did the massive state interventions also signal the end of the neo-liberal model? Ideologically, the wealth-creating prowess of big finance has been one of its central legitimating claims. There was a feeling, not just on the left, that the crisis could not but leave the paradigm itself discredited; it might even have dealt a body-blow to American hegemony. The humbling of the Wall Street giants—us Treasury Secretary Paulson offering to go down on his knees before Congress on their behalf—seemed to suggest that the world stood on the brink of a new era. Since then the financial system has been stabilized, although none of its underlying problems have been resolved. But despite the torrent of literature on the crisis, its historical meaning remains obscure. What ended, and what did not, in September 2008?"

Algumas sobre globalização, e todas para ler (qualquer delas)

• The Irish Economy » Blog Archive » Jeffrey Sachs: Rethinking Macroeconomics The politicians posture without understanding the technical underpinnings of the structural challenges: their magnitude, timing, spatial extent, future dynamics, or costs of mitigation and adaptation. The real experts are very far from the podiums and negotiating tables. The macroeconomists, as I’ve stressed, don’t even recognize that medium-term (decadal or even generation-long) programs to address energy, climate, and extreme poverty are vital for sustained economic growth. We will need, urgently, to strengthen global institutions so that they can provide reliable expert guidance, quantification, monitoring, and oversight of global cooperative actions. The data matter, and we are flying blind. We would do well to start the new macroeconomics with three crucial and interconnected challenges: climate and energy security, food and nutrition security (including land use, water use and biodiversity), and poverty reduction.
  
•  
• FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - How the noughties were a hinge of history: "The only truly global power was in rapid relative decline. Not long before, it had won a pyrrhic victory in a costly colonial war. New great powers were on the rise. An arms race was under way, as was competition for markets and resources in undeveloped areas of the world. Yet people still believed in the durability of the free trade and free capital flows that had nurtured prosperity and, many believed, had also underpinned peace. That was how the world looked to many at the end of the “noughties” of the 20th century. Yet catastrophe lay ahead: a world war; a communist revolution; a Great Depression; fascism; and then another world war. The world order – built on competing great powers, imperialism and liberal markets – proved incapable of providing the public goods of peace and prosperity. It took calamity, the cold war and the replacement of the UK by the US as hegemonic power to re-establish stability. That then facilitated decolonisation, unprecedented economic expansion, the collapse of communism and yet another epoch of market-led global integration.  “History does not repeat itself, but it rhymes,” as Mark Twain is supposed to have said. The noughties of the 21st century now have the same fin de regime feeling as those of a century ago. Then the US, Germany, Russia and Japan were on the rise; now it is China and India. Then it was the Boer war; now it is the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then it was an arms race between Germany and the UK; now it is the military build-up in China. Then the protectionism of the US undermined liberal trade; now conflicts between the US and China undermine our ability to tackle climate change. Then the US was isolationist; now China and other rising powers demand untrammelled sovereignty. The noughties of the 21st century were marked by historic changes." 
•  
• The Big Picture » Blog Archive » Stiglitz: 6 Harsh lessons We Failed to Learn: "Economics Nobel laureate and Columbia University professor Joseph E. Stiglitz has what very well be the best year end piece I have seen to date"

EUA e China: relações económicas

Informação relevante sobre o que pode bem vir a ser um traços constitutivos do futuro - um aspecto não referido é que parte do desiquilíbrio das relações comerciais da China com os EUA resulta das exportações das empresas dos EUA, deslocalizadas e sediadas na China, para o próprio EUA.

Robert Reich's Blog: Obama, China, and Wishful Thinking About American Jobs

Elementos de interesse para a discussão da globalização

UnderstandingSociety: A modern world-system?: "Immanuel Wallerstein created a huge stir in the 1970s with the publication of The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the European World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (1974). The book is an intellectual masterpiece, synthesizing a vast range of fundamental literature on the economic history of Europe and the world. You could look at the book as the first serious and extended effort to theorize globalization -- a term that barely existed at the time of publication. Or you could look at it as a general theory of colonialism -- an account of the pathways and influences through which the metropole dominated and exploited the periphery. It is worth looking back at this work today to tease out some of the guiding assumptions about history, sociology, and globalization it reflected."

Chama a atenção para a actualidade do tema, e para contributos importantes para a sua discussão.

Sobre futuras (?) guerras de cultura e religião

Como alguém dizia ontem, em minha casa, "in a contrarian way", "a cruz deve ser defendida pela espada". Pois! O futuro está sempre prenhe das boas e más possibilidades. A ver vamos: eventualmente, o aquecimento global resfriará estas possibilidades. Ler em  Calling for greater religious strife with Islam - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com.

Um dólar fraco seria bom?

"A lower dollar is desirable because it would help America achieve the right kind of recovery. The US economy is severely constrained by household and financial sector deleveraging and possibly by a permanent fall in potential growth. In the absence of another housing bubble and consumer boom, an export-led recovery is the best growth strategy the US could employ. 

[...] But a strong dollar is the last thing the US economy needs right now. There are two further factors that support a weaker dollar. The first is, of course, the double-digit public sector deficit, which has already unnerved investors and which is not going to come down with any haste. The second is monetary policy. 

[...] What about the rest of the world? Would the Europeans, for example, not fight tooth and nail against a weakening dollar? Not necessarily. Just look at the situation from the perspective of the European Central Bank. Ideally, it would like to exit early by withdrawing liquidity support and raising interest rates, but it is severely constrained because many European banks are still dependent on low interest rates and ECB life support operations for their survival. Fiscal policy is also extremely loose and likely to remain so. From the ECB’s point of view, a strong euro is probably the most effective insurance against resurgent inflation, at a time when interest rate policy remains constrained. A strong euro would nicely take care of Germany’s persistent current account surplus.[...] 

[...] I expect a much reduced current account surplus for Germany in the next few years and, for the eurozone, a sizeable, probably not excessive, current account deficit. The sensible goal of a more balanced world economy is entirely consistent with a weaker dollar and a stronger euro.

[...] Exchange rates cannot solve the problem of global imbalances. They did not in the past. Reform of the global monetary system is necessary for sustained balance. [...] a reduced international role for the dollar would be in the best strategic interests of the US as continued imbalances would end up producing intolerable instability, no matter whether they are financed or not. 

[...] I expect we will [...move] towards a dual system in which the dollar and the euro act as the world’s de facto reserve currencies. The rise in the euro’s international role, which is already formidable, is not a reflection of the strength of the eurozone economy but of the liquidity of its bond markets and the need of foreign investors to diversify." 

Ler o artigo completo em FT.com / Columnists / Wolfgang Munchau - Making the case for a weaker dollar.

Relevância actual de Marx

Muito interessante:

"Is Marx's vision still relevant in the twenty-first century world?

At bottom, Marx's biggest ideas were "critique," "exploitation," "alienation," "ideology," and "class." He also constructed a fairly specific theory of capitalism and capitalist development -- a theory that has historical pluses and minuses -- and a theory of socialism that can be understood along more democratic and more authoritarian lines. We might say that his theory of capitalism was too deeply grounded in the observed experience of mid-nineteenth-century Britain, and his theory of socialism paid too little attention to the crushing possibilities of power wielded by a future socialist state. Too much economics, too little politics in his worldview -- and too much of a Hegelian "necessitarianism" in his expectations about the future.

History has shown us a few things that Marx too would have recognized, with the benefit of another century of experience. History does not conform to a necessary logic of development. Capitalism is not one thing, but a set of institutions that have proven fairly malleable. There is no single "logic of capitalist development." Compromises and institutional accommodations are possible between contending economic classes. Social democracy, democratic socialism, Stalinist communism, fascist dictatorship, and liberal democracy are all feasible political institutions governing "modern" economic development.

So we might take a deep breath, take a step back, and ask a big counterfactual: How might Marx, with his critical eye for inequality and power and his acute sensibilities as a sociologist -- how might this social critic and theorist have processed the social realities of China in Shanghai in the 1980s? [...]"

Continuar a ler (recomenda-se) em UnderstandingSociety: If Marx had been born in Shanghai

Comam carne regional! ... ou os perigos para a saúde da globalização.

Mas se duvidam da pertinência do conselho, façam o favor de ler The world is flat, kind of gross Free exchange Economist.com e o início do seu apontamento:

"EZRA KLEIN pulls an interesting quote from a recent New York Times piece on E. coli infections and the meat processing industry. Brace yourself:

The frozen hamburgers that the Smiths ate, which were made by the food giant Cargill, were labeled “American Chef’s Selection Angus Beef Patties.” Yet confidential grinding logs and other Cargill records show that the hamburgers were made from a mix of slaughterhouse trimmings and a mash-like product derived from scraps that were ground together at a plant in Wisconsin. The ingredients came from slaughterhouses in Nebraska, Texas and Uruguay, and from a South Dakota company that processes fatty trimmings and treats them with ammonia to kill bacteria. [...]"

Futebol e globalização

Em qualquer caso, o mote deste blogue daria toda a cobertura a esta nota, The Soccer Theory of Globalization (Aid Watch), mas acontece que isto cruza com a economia, e a discussão de alguns aspectos da globalização:

"Some “soccer economists” argue that nations that are worse at soccer have benefited from exporting their players to world-class foreign clubs, where they gain valuable skills and experience before returning to play for their home country This is similar to recent literature that questions the traditional Brain Drain fear, with the Brain Circulation alternative – skilled emigrants bring home skills and connections that could be as valuable to their home country as the skills brought back by exported soccer players.

But there is also a homegrown story. As Dani Rodrik points out, the Egyptian team that beat Italy had a majority of players with experience playing in domestic, rather than foreign clubs. The USA team that similarly surpassed expectations has key players from both domestic and foreign clubs. So taking advantage of globalization perhaps requires BOTH strong domestic capabilities and international links."

O futuro promete vir a ser assim ...

... pelo menos no que respeita ao modo como a indústria será dada no século XXI. Mas, se a visão aqui apresentada é correcta - e tudo aponta para que seja correcta: diminuição inexorável do emprego industrial, por via do desenvolvimento tecnológico, e os concomitantes ganhos de eficiência, em todo o mundo - mais se torna imperioso tudo aquilo que se deve fazer na educação.

Aquilo que se diz aqui tem toda a aplicação ao nosso caso.

Recomenda-se, vivamente, a leitura.

• Robert Reich's Blog: The Future of Manufacturing, GM, and American Workers (Part I)

• Robert Reich's Blog: The Future of Manufacturing, GM, and American Workers (Part II)

• Robert Reich's Blog: The Future of Manufacturing, GM, and American Workers (Part III)

Limites ao crescimento

Em finais da década de 60, do século XX, reuniram-se em Roma, um conjunto de cientistas - conhecido pelo Clube de Roma - para estudar, na base da extrapolação das tendências verificadas até então, da viabilidade do modelo de crescimento económico seguido por todo o mundo.

O resultado do seu trabalho foi publicado em 1972, sob o título dos 'Limits to Growth' . A tese do trabalho poderia ser sintetizada da seguinte forma: "the human race is in for a disaster. Considering that the population was growing at a rate of over two percent annually at that time, while industry was growing at up to five to seven percent, modern civilization was bound to reach the limits of growth in the first decades of the 21st century." O relatório foi criticado acerbamente e sujeito a derisão.

Estamos em 2009 e o trabalho poderá continuar a ser criticado (embora, sem complacência) e já não é sujeito a derisão pelo "main stream" da economia (espero!) e da ciência:

• 'Limits to Growth' Author Honored for Once-Ridiculed Warnings SolveClimate.com;

• Was The Economic Crisis Predicted Thirty Years Ago:

  "The Club's first report, which had the tell-tale title 'Limits to Growth,' caused a shock. It was compiled by a group of scientists headed by Dennis L. Medows, who decided to create a cybernetic model of global development."

Sobre as razões da crise a nível mundial

Recomendo a leitura. O artigo discute as causas da crise e o papel dos desiquilíbrios da economia global, nomeadamente, o da poupança: Capital flows and the financial crisis When a flow becomes a flood The Economist.

Sobre o capitalismo

Reflexão oportuna sobre o capitalismo.

Ler em Dani Rodrik: Coming soon - Capitalism 3.0

A alternativa ao Homem de Davos

Timothy Garton Ash discute a responsabilidade do "soi-disant" Homem de Davos, no que se passa, mas alerta que a alternativa, o Homem Nacionalista, seria (bem) pior.

Ler em The knives are out for Davos Man. But the alternative is much more alarming Comment is free The Guardian.

Como será 2009, em termos económicos?

Alguns economistas respondem: o quadro como seria de esperar não é bom - surgem, na margem, contudo, algumas opiniões menos pessimistas sobre o momento do início da recuperação (mais cedo do que se espera).

Chamo atenção, nomeadamente, para os artigos da Foreign Policy:

• Tirado do RGE Monitor's Newsletter:
  
  

  Navigating the First Global Economic Recession
  
  

  With the industrial world already in outright recession and the emerging world navigating towards a hard landing (growth well below potential) we expect global growth to be flat (around -0.5%) in 2009. This will be the worst global recession in decades as the fallout of the most severe financial crisis since the Great Depression took a toll first on the U.S. and then – via a variety of channels of recoupling – on the rest of the global economy.
  
  

  We forecast that the United States economy is only half way through a recession that started in December 2007 and will be the longest and most severe in the post war period. U.S. GDP will continue to contract throughout all of 2009 for a cumulative output loss of 5% [...] our forecast is much worse than the current consensus forecast seeing a growth recovery in the second half of 2009; we also predict significantly weak growth recovery – well below potential - in 2010. [...]
  
  

  The latest cyclical upswing in the Eurozone (incl. large four Germany, France, Italy, Spain) was largely driven by a temporary but powerful boost to domestic investment from disappearing risk premia in the aftermath of the adoption of the single currency, and by external demand from a buoyant world economy.

  Both demand sources fizzled out by the second half of 2008, leaving the Eurozone as a whole and its largest members exposed to diverging deleveraging patterns in the face of suboptimal EMU-wide automatic fiscal stabilizer mechanisms. The latest record low readings of leading and sentiment indicators point to a severe recession ahead in 2009 that shapes up to be worse than the 1992/93 crisis. For the Eurozone we expect a below consensus y/y contraction in real GDP of around –2.5%, with negative growth in each of the four quarters of the year.
  
  

  The United Kingdom economy is poised to shrink in 2009. Our forecast of a -2.3% growth in real GDP is below consensus as we do not expect a recovery in the second half of the year.
  
  

  [...] Countries with the largest current-account deficits—notably Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Bulgaria — are the most exposed to sharp corrections. Estonia and Latvia are already in the midst of sharp recessions, and Latvia turned to the IMF for help in December to avert crisis. The risk of an outright financial crisis is high in a number of countries in this region.
  
  

  
  
  

  
  
  

  [...]We expect Asia ex-Japan’s growth to slow down sharply to 3.8% in 2009. Hong Kong, Singapore and Taiwan will remain in recession through H1 2009, which might extend into Q3 2009 while the ASEAN economies will slow significantly from the 2004-07 growth trends. We believe China will experience a hard landing in 2009, with growth unlikely to exceed 5%, a sharp slowdown from the 10% average of the last 5 years. The reversal of capital flows and high credit cost will pull down India’s growth significantly to around 5% in 2009 from an estimated 6% in 2008. Japan’s domestic demand continues to be an unreliable growth driver, and its export machine - the growth engine of recent years - is stalling given the global contraction and a stronger yen. Consequently, we foresee real GDP growth contracting 2.5% in 2009 after almost flat growth for 2008 as a whole.
  
  

  Australia's recession will likely end in 2009 after starting in Q4 2008. Average annual GDP growth in 2009 will be flat to sluggish (0-1%) after registering an estimated 1.6% in 2008. New Zealand may have a tougher time than Australia during the global recession, with GDP expected to contract 1% in 2009 after growing around 1% in 2008.
  
  

  Given that the global recession will reduce demand for Middle East and North Africa’s resource and non-resource exports, and the global liquidity crunch will reduce capital inflows, growth is expected to slow to an average of 3% in 2009 from almost 6% in 2008.

  [...] Commodity prices, which already fell sharply in the second half of 2008, will face further price pressure in 2009. We estimate an average WTI oil price of $30-40 a barrel in 2009, as the fall in demand continues to outstrip supply cuts and production delays.




• Gloom at the AEA meetings Drastic times The Economist Walker's World: Depression looms (UPI, Terra Daily).




• Foreign Policy: The Worst Is Yet to Come
  
  

  "Five economists whose prophetic warnings went unheeded preview the next stage of the global financial crisis."

• 2008: Annus Horribilis, RIP The Big Picture
  
  

  "The Aftermath of Financial Crises: What happens to an economy after a financial crisis?"

• Guatemala News Will Banks and Financial Markets Recover in 2009?

Comportamento das exportações de alguns países até Dezembro passado

- o gráfico é do NYT e apanhei-o no Global Slowdown in Exports The Big Picture.