OS BANCOS NO LABIRINTO

Subitamente, os banqueiros passaram de prodígios, que punham na sombra em termos de resultados e proveitos proveitos próprios a esmagadora maioria dos outros terráqueos desprovidos do dom do cálculo de juros, a réus causadores da crise, que continua galopante mas sem lhes abalar decisivamente os abusos e os interesses.

A causa motora do desastre financeiro que despoletou a crise (os bónus chorudos que os incentivaram a descurar os riscos e a abusar da confiança dos que lhes confiaram as economias) mantem-se, em muitos casos, incólume.

.

É possível abolir a prática de incentivos na gestão bancária, independentemente dos valores que eles possam atingir? Não creio que o Estado possa impor qualquer restrição à atribuição de retribuições, fixas ou variáveis, a empresas privadas. Pode, através de uma política mais agressiva de progressão tributária desincentivar remunerações para além de certo limite, pode impor condições às empresas a quem são atribuidas vantagens, mas não pode estabelecer regras que são competência exclusiva das assembleias de accionistas.

.

Também não pode estabelecer regras de concessão de crédito ainda que a conjuntura esteja fortemente perturbada por uma crise de consequências imprevisíveis. A actividade bancária resume-se, essencialmente, à gestão do risco do crédito concedido e do risco assumido só devem os bancos, se forem privados, dar conta aos depositantes e aos accionistas.

.

É neste quadro de responsabilidades que se tem de apreciar o desempenho da Caixa Geral de Depósitos, enquanto banco do Estado, e onde convergem os interesses públicos e accionistas, no apoio às pequenas e médias empresas, que constituem parte importante do tecido económico do país, e que quanto mais se rompe mais cresce o desemprego e a conflitualidade social.

.

A CGD, disse um dos seus administradores no penúltimo "Prós e Contras", tem tido até agora um comprometimento com as PME relativamente reduzido. É forçoso, portanto, que o governo dê instruções ao banco do Estado no sentido de se destacar do comportamento assumido pelas administrações bancárias privadas, liderando processos de moralização no sector e de apoio financeiro à economia real, e em especial ao sector das empresas produtoras de bens e serviços transaccionáveis, inquestionavelmente preenchido sobretudo por PME.

.

E proibir-lhe terminantemente a realização de operações de crédito que consubstanciem o financiamento a operações meramente financeiras. Na actual conjuntura a existência da CGD como banco do Estado faz todo o sentido; mas só faz sentido se for um referencial moral que o sistema perdeu, incluindo a própria CGD.

OS ECONOMISTAS PERCEBEM ALGUMA COISA DISTO?

Economists Are Always Wrong

.

A Conversation With Nassim Nicholas Taleb
Options trader Nassim Nicholas Taleb made his name and career anticipating the powerful historic events he calls "Black Swans," which include World War I, the rise of the Internet and the stock market crash of 1987. In two books published in 2001 and 2007, he urges readers to concentrate more on what they don't know than on what they do.
More recently, Taleb has blasted bankers and economists who issued reassuring forecasts right up to the brink of the current global financial crisis. He spoke recently with Washington Post reporter Peter Whoriskey. Excerpts:
You're a fierce critic of the entire field of economics. Don't economists know anything?
You have close to a million people out there in economic life. How many people saw the extent of what could happen in this financial crisis? Some people said we'd have a problem of too much leverage, but very few saw the potential total impact that could come out of it. They didn't see the cascading effects that can be produced by a complex system.
Years ago, I noticed one thing about economics, and that is that economists didn't get anything right. I wanted to find out the reason. They would say their models are not perfect. But data show that you do much worse using their models than you would without them. It's a bull [expletive] science.
Can you give a specific example?
Every time I saw [Federal Reserve Chairman Ben] Bernanke [on television], I would have a fit of rage. He claimed that we were in a period of "great moderation." He did not understand that Black Swans are preceded by low volatility and the buildup of hidden risks. He mistook absence of volatility for the absence of risk. It was like someone sitting on dynamite and saying "It's okay, we're safe because nothing has happened."
In a complex system, things that are fragile should be allowed to fail very fast. [Former Fed Chairman Alan] Greenspan and Bernanke let something fragile, like the banks, survive very long. The longer it takes to break, the worse the outcome.
That's why I think Obama needs to start with a new economic team -- Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and Lawrence Summers were among those who didn't see this coming in the first place. He needs new people who understand complex systems.
What about economist Nouriel Roubini? Wasn't he calling attention to the potential danger?

Yes, Roubini got it right. But Roubini wasn't right because he's an academic economist. He was right because he is a very insightful fellow. He is so good he managed to surmount his education in economics.
Other than you, who would be the right choice for the Obama administration?
I know who should not be on his team -- anyone who did not understand that the world financial system included more risks than it showed. This leaves plenty of individuals outside the administration and outside the economics profession who warned about it. Aside from Roubini, the closest thing in the economics profession would be Ken Rogoff. I would also require that the person be a business person -- someone who did not make a career writing papers to impress fellow economists.
So what's your prescription for the economy?
The first thing we need to do is to get rid of the vicious bonus system at banks that encourages you to take these huge hidden risks. When it all blows up, they still have their bonuses, because the Black Swans happen only every so often. You see a lot of people walking around who are massively wealthy who never made a penny for their investors.
Look at [former Treasury secretary Robert] Rubin at Citigroup. He made and kept a $115 million bonus while the taxpayer has to bail them out. We should not be paying the Bob Rubins anymore. We have to have clawback provisions to make sure that we punish people for their bad bets.
I am in favor of partially nationalizing the banks for this reason and banning complex derivatives. Nobody understands them. I would also start indicting the vendors of these financial risk management systems that everyone relied upon to tell them everything was okay when it wasn't.
How do you define a Black Swan? If they're so unexpected, how can we prepare for them?
A Black Swan is an exception, like the bird. It is an event with massive consequences that is unexpected. My idea is not simply to say that these things happen. My idea has been to identify the vulnerabilities, the spots where people are driving the school bus blindfolded. In banking, I identified a huge amount of risk taking on the part of banks that were using bogus models to estimate their risks.
It was so painful to watch the banking system become so fragile to the Black Swans. Now there is wealth turning into air as we speak.
What do you see ahead? What do you make of the mainstream economists who predict that the economy will turn around later this year or next?
Look, globalization has created this interlocking fragility. At no time in the history of the universe has the cancellation of a Christmas order in New York meant layoffs in China. So for a while it created the illusion of stability, but it has created this devastating Black Swan.
Complex systems do not like debt. So it will proceed to destroy tens of trillions in debt until society rebuilds itself in an ultraconservative manner. We are in for a worse ride than people think.
People have the problem of denial. This is one of the things I learned in Lebanon. Everybody who left Beirut when the war started, including my parents, said, 'Oh, its temporary.' It lasted 17 years! People tend to underestimate the gravity of these situations. That's how they work.
Is this crisis going to last 17 years?
Unfortunately no, complex systems cascade much faster than that. However, the destruction will be deeper than people anticipate. It will bring down a lot of people.
My rosy scenario is that a better economic environment will develop, a low-debt, robust growth world, in which whatever is fragile will be allowed to break early and not late.
My nightmare scenario is that the government saves Citibank once again, as well as the other banks, and business resumes as usual. Then, the next time the system breaks, it breaks much, much bigger.

DC

"... should the Chinese investments stop propping up the (USA) market "
Se isto acontecer, o que se segue?
.
"China deal ends for Credit Suisse"
Ensinaram a 'pescar' e foram pescados...?
(citações e comentários, aqui)
.

Depois da crise nada ficará como dantes, dizem uns;

Alguma coisa mudará, para que, depois da crise, tudo fique na mesma, dizem outros.

Nada ficará na mesma, penso eu, e a crise irá acelerar o processo de aceleração de desenvolvimento económico e social da China que, inevitavelmente, acelerará os processos de germinação da democracia no que ela tem de mais estruturante: a liberdade de expressão. O que acontece a seguir? Ninguém sabe.

.

China e Estados Unidos encontram-se agora amarrados por compromissos económicos e financeiros que, se fossem rompidos, prejudicariam dramaticamente ambas as partes e, colateralmente, todas as economias do mundo. Numa altura em que a crise é global essa ruptura só poderia ter consequências ainda mais desvastadoras. O artigo do Washington Post que transcrevi, aqui, no Aliás, é muito elucidativo do que está em jogo entre as duas potências e das suas vulnerabilidades em caso de conflito económico grave entre elas.

.

Não penso, portanto, que a China arrisque confrontar os EUA com o peso das reservas que tem acumuladas porque desse confronto, se viesse a observar-se, resultariam perdas provavelmente maiores para os chineses, e para o resto do mundo.

.

Por outro lado, a crise está a demonstrar aquilo que já não deveria carecer de demonstração: a vertente financeira da economia sustenta-se fundamentalmente na confiança entre os agentes económicos e, muito particularmente, nas instituições financeiras, e não no maior ou menor engenho de produção de activos financeiros virtuosos; a honorabilidade que fomenta a confiança é de maturação lenta e pode desfazer-se em instantes; a habilidade para engendrar formas de multiplicação de rendimentos financeiros não sustentados em criação real de bens e serviços é a forma mais eficaz de destruição económica. Sabe-se isso há muito tempo, mas esquece-se com o passar dele.

.

Os chineses (na sequência dos japoneses, coreanos, entre outros) foram hábeis em copiar e depois inovar na produção de bens com que inundaram o ocidente. Não pode espantar ninguém que, sem dificuldade, tenham apreendido também os meandros da criatividade ocidental na gestão financeira das suas poupanças e das dos outros. E se, por enquanto, os chineses precisam dos mercados ocidentais para a colocação das suas produções de bens, facilmente os dispensam na área financeira.

.

Depois da crise, será, redobradamente, assim.

SUGESTÕES

Paul Volcker to Barack Obama

Robert Reich

Former Fed Chair Paul Volcker is briefing President Obama today on how well the stimulus package is doing. I have no inside knowledge of what he's saying, but if I were Volcker (and I'm not -- he's almost two feet taller than I am), I'd say the following:

Mr. President, it's way too early to know exactly what the stimulus is doing because the money is barely out the door, but I've got to tell you I'm worried as hell. Unemployment is at 8 percent, and underemployment is over 14 percent of the workforce. The economy is shrinking much faster than it was when you put the stimulus together. It will be more than a trillion dollars short of its full capacity this year, and I have every reason to believe the same next. State governments alone are hundreds of billions in the hole, creating a huge drag. So your $787 billion over two years, only two-thirds of which is direct spending, isn't going to get us nearly far enough. I'd strongly recommend you make ready a second stimulus, about the same size, and get it enacted as soon as possible, with the proviso that it will be implemented if and when unemplyment hits 8.5 percent or underemployment reaches 15 percent.Oh, and by the way, Mr. President. You may not want to hear this, but your Treasury Secretary is making things worse. His dithering on what to do about Wall Street, and his incapacity to speak clearly to the Street and to the public about what needs to be done, is spooking everyone. Why doesn't he just put the irrevocably insolvent banks into receivership under the FDIC, sell off their assets, protect depositors, and reimburse taxpayers with whatever remains? Let the rest of the banks fend for themselves -- working out their bad loans with their creditors. As to AIG, well, that's a complete basketcase. Put it out of its suffering. Take it over, sell its assets, protect policy holders (you'll need to create a big co-insurance plan with every other major insurer in the world), then get out.

Want a cigar?

AMARRADOS

China Uneasy About U.S. Debt
Washington borrows more to combat the economic crisis as its biggest creditor demands a guarantee.

Exerting its new influence as the U.S. government's largest creditor, China yesterday demanded that the Obama administration "guarantee the safety" of its $1 trillion in American bonds as Washington goes further into debt to combat the economic crisis.
Chinese Premier Wen Jinbao made the demand at the end of the National People's Congress in Beijing at a time when relations between the two nations show fresh signs of strain.
"We have lent a huge amount of money to the U.S. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets," Wen said. "To be honest, I am definitely a little worried."
China surpassed Japan last year as the largest foreign holder of Treasury bonds. Any indication that it intends to cease those purchases -- or, worse, stage a sell-off -- could drive up the cost of borrowing for the U.S. government, as well as send mortgage rates higher for millions of Americans.
That reality, experts say, has given China more leverage in its dealings with Washington, with some seeing Wen's comments yesterday as amounting to economic saber-rattling. The words came only days after a confrontation in international waters between a U.S. military ship and five Chinese vessels that sparked recriminations on both sides of the Pacific. Chinese officials have also signaled alarm over a growing "protectionist" sentiment in the U.S. Congress that could further endanger its exports, now in sharp decline as world demand spirals during the global economic crisis.
Those circumstances illustrate the pitfalls the Obama administration is facing as it charts its relationship with China. In January, for instance, the administration signaled that it would confront Beijing on the manipulation of its currency, the yuan, which has been kept artificially low against the U.S. dollar, making Chinese products cheaper around the world. Critics call that one of the major factors behind the U.S. trade deficit.
"The power that China now has is that its actions are seen as a leading indicator of the confidence that foreign investors will have in the ability of the U.S. government to pay the debt," said Eswar Prasad, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "These comments are saber-rattling in the sense that they are using that leverage to tell the U.S. to back off on currency policy and trade policy."
A number of Chinese officials have expressed concern about the future of Beijing's holdings of U.S. debt. American officials have sought to ease those concerns, effectively acknowledging the importance of China's role as Washington's banker. Last month, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton urged the Chinese to keep buying U.S. bonds. Asked about the increasingly jittery reaction in China to the rising U.S. debt, White House economic adviser Lawrence H. Summers yesterday defended the expensive policies that are forcing the nation to borrow a record $2.5 trillion this year, by White House estimates.

"In the short run, the need is to get the economy going again," Summers told a packed auditorium at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. Summers acknowledged that fiscal stimulus and various financial-sector bailouts are forcing the nation to borrow massive sums, but the alternative, he said, would be much worse. "If deflation sets in, if the GDP collapses further . . . if that happens, the magnitude of the federal borrowing, as large as it is today, will be dwarfed. It will be far, far larger."
But concern is rising about the value of U.S. bonds. Though they remain the choice for investors seeking a safe haven in hard economic times, analysts are already murmuring about a possible downgrade on the rating of U.S. Treasurys in the future. The talk comes as Washington is issuing more debt and printing more dollars to stimulate the economy -- something that could bring down the value of the dollar in the months to come. That, in turn, would dilute the value of the U.S. dollar-denominated bonds held by the Chinese and other investors. Wen called on the United States to "maintain its good credit, to honor its promises and to guarantee the safety of China's assets."
Wen, however, stopped far short of saying China would cease purchasing Treasurys. Although analysts say China may already be moving to curb some purchases of U.S. debt, any move to sell off its current holdings would severely deflate their value on world markets -- hurting the Chinese as well as the Americans. Years of red-hot growth have allowed China to build up the world's largest reserves -- some $2 trillion. But analysts say almost half are held in U.S.-government-backed debt.
The White House sought to reassure global investors about the safety of U.S. Treasury securities. "There is no safer investment in the world than in the United States," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Longer-term Treasurys weakened slightly in trading after Wen's comments about soaring U.S. debt.
Additionally, it is not in China's interest to enter into economic confrontation with its largest client -- the United States -- particularly as its exports are in free fall worldwide. Though the Department of Commerce yesterday said the U.S. trade deficit narrowed 9.7 percent in January to its smallest level since October 2002, the deficit with China alone actually increased slightly, to $20.57 billion.
"I think what they're trying to say right now is, 'Don't take any steps that would impair our ability to access your market,' " said Auggie Tantillo, executive director of the American Manufacturing Trade Action Coalition, an organization of U.S. businesses critical of China's trade policies. "The Chinese are starting to flex their muscles, they are becoming more powerful commercially and economically, and they want us to know it."

DISCORDÂNCIAS

Europa discorda dos EUA, China e Japão sobre abordagem do combate à crise

Os Estados Unidos, hoje apoiados pelo Japão e China, defendem um estímulo económico coordenado internacionalmente, enquanto – ao contrário das três maiores economias do mundo – a maioria dos países europeus insiste no reforço da regulação dos mercados e instituições financeiras.

.

Manifestação convocada pela CGTP, para protestar contra as políticas do governo e reclamar aumentos de salários e maiores garantias de emprego, ultrapassou as 200 mil pessoas, afirmou o secretário-geral da central sindical.

.

Numa altura em que os indicadores económicos apontam para uma acentuação da crise global, o nível de degradação não parece ainda ter atingido o ponto em que os consensos acerca dos caminhos a prosseguir serão impostos pelos resultados do desastre. Por enquanto, vivem-se ainda os tempos de discussão em função dos interesses dos grupos influentes até as extensões das lesões atingirem os pontos de ruptura e não admitirem alternativas.

MADE OF

Madoff detido depois de assumir a culpa por 11 crimes
O investidor Bernard Madoff, responsável por um esquema de fraude em pirâmide que atinge os 50 mil milhões de dólares (cerca de 39 mil milhões de euros), foi hoje detido à ordem do tribunal de Nova Iorque onde o seu caso está a ser apreciado. O julgamento de Madoff, que arrisca uma pena total de 150 anos, foi marcado para 16 de Junho.

NO BOM CAMINHO

Clientes vão pedir arresto de bens de antigos administradores do BPP
Os clientes do Banco Privado Português (BPP) que se dizem "burlados" pela equipa de João Rendeiro durante o período em que este assumiu a gestão do banco, estão a preparar um pedido de arresto dos bens dos antigos administradores do banco.

.

Nunca tive quaisquer relações com o BPP. Até porque sempre pensei que era um banco para gente chique e muito abonada.

.

Impressionava-me a disponibilidade de alguma intelectualidade, literária e artística, para colaborar com depoimentos acerca da função do dinheiro nas suas vidas, publicados na revista Única do Expresso. À margem dos depoimentos, publicados em página dupla, havia sempre um arrazoado medíocre a puxar a brasa à sardinha do BPP.

Intrigava-me a explosão de vitalidade de um banco recente que investia em arte contemporânea, acessível a uma minoria de iniciados ou convencidos disso, e que exibia na Elipse, um museu escondido em Alcabideche.

Mas, em tempos de fogo de artifício bancário generalizado, mais girândola menos girândola, poucos dariam por ela na festa.

.

O pedido de arresto de bens de antigos administradores que os clientes "burlados" anunciam fazer parece-me um bom caminho para a clarificação de um imbróglio que se tem "burlados" terá "burlões". Assim o entendam os tribunais, e não deixem ficar a justiça apodrecer no pântano como é seu hábito.

.

Porque a reparação das fraudes não se faz com a prisão dos "burlões" mas com a devolução das apropriações que eles fizeram, em proveito próprio e dos coniventes.

A GRANDE DESILUSÃO

ACERCA DOS PRINCÍPIOS MORAIS

Adam Smith’s market never stood alone
By Amartya Sen

.

Exactly 90 years ago, in March 1919, faced with another economic crisis, Vladimir Lenin discussed the dire straits of contemporary capitalism. He was, however, unwilling to write an epitaph: “To believe that there is no way out of the present crisis for capitalism is an error.” That particular expectation of Lenin’s, unlike some he held, proved to be correct enough. Even though American and European markets got into further problems in the 1920s, followed by the Great Depression of the 1930s, in the long haul after the end of the second world war, the market economy has been exceptionally dynamic, generating unprecedented expansion of the global economy over the past 60 years. Not any more, at least not right now. The global economic crisis began suddenly in the American autumn and is gathering speed at a frightening rate, and government attempts to stop it have had very little success despite unprecedented commitments of public funds.
The question that arises most forcefully now is not so much about the end of capitalism as about the nature of capitalism and the need for change. The invoking of old and new capitalism played an energising part in the animated discussions that took place in the symposium on “New World, New Capitalism” led by Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, Tony Blair, the former British prime minister, and Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, in January in Paris.
The crisis, no matter how unbeatable it looks today, will eventually pass, but questions about future economic systems will remain. Do we really need a “new capitalism”, carrying, in some significant way, the capitalist banner, rather than a non-monolithic economic system that draws on a variety of institutions chosen pragmatically and values that we can defend with reason? Should we search for a new capitalism or for a “new world” – to use the other term on offer at the Paris meeting – that need not take a specialised capitalist form? This is not only the question we face today, but I would argue it is also the question that the founder of modern economics, Adam Smith, in effect asked in the 18th century, even as he presented his pioneering analysis of the working of the market economy.
Smith never used the term capitalism (at least, so far as I have been able to trace), and it would also be hard to carve out from his works any theory of the sufficiency of the market economy, or of the need to accept the dominance of capital. He talked about the important role of broader values for the choice of behaviour, as well as the importance of institutions, in The Wealth of Nations ; but it was in his first book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, published exactly 250 years ago, that he extensively investigated the powerful role of non-profit values. While stating that “prudence” was “of all virtues that which is most helpful to the individual”, Smith went on to argue that “humanity, justice, generosity, and public spirit, are the qualities most useful to others”.*
What exactly is capitalism? The standard definition seems to take reliance on markets for economic transactions as a necessary qualification for an economy to be seen as capitalist. In a similar way, dependence on the profit motive, and on individual entitlements based on private ownership, are seen as archetypal features of capitalism. However, if these are necessary requirements, are the economic systems we currently have, for example, in Europe and America, genuinely capitalist? All the affluent countries in the world – those in Europe, as well as the US, Canada, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and others – have depended for some time on transactions that occur largely outside the markets, such as unemployment benefits, public pensions and other features of social security, and the public provision of school education and healthcare. The creditable performance of the allegedly capitalist systems in the days when there were real achievements drew on a combination of institutions that went much beyond relying only on a profit-maximising market economy.
It is often overlooked that Smith did not take the pure market mechanism to be a free-standing performer of excellence, nor did he take the profit motive to be all that is needed. Perhaps the biggest mistake lies in interpreting Smith’s limited discussion of why people seek trade as an exhaustive analysis of all the behavioural norms and institutions that he thought necessary for a market economy to work well. People seek trade because of self-interest – nothing more is needed, as Smith discussed in a statement that has been quoted again and again explaining why bakers, brewers, butchers and consumers seek trade. However an economy needs other values and commitments such as mutual trust and confidence to work efficiently. For example, Smith argued: “When the people of any particular country has such confidence in the fortune, probity, and prudence of a particular banker, as to believe he is always ready to pay upon demand such of his promissory notes as are likely to be at any time presented to him; those notes come to have the same currency as gold and silver money, from the confidence that such money can at any time be had for them.”
Smith explained why this kind of trust does not always exist. Even though the champions of the baker-brewer-butcher reading of Smith enshrined in many economics books may be at a loss to understand the present crisis (people still have very good reason to seek more trade, only less opportunity), the far-reaching consequences of mistrust and lack of confidence in others, which have contributed to generating this crisis and are making a recovery so very difficult, would not have puzzled him.
There were, in fact, very good reasons for mistrust and the breakdown of assurance that contributed to the crisis today. The obligations and responsibilities associated with transactions have in recent years become much harder to trace thanks to the rapid development of secondary markets involving derivatives and other financial instruments. This occurred at a time when the plentiful availability of credit, partly driven by the huge trading surpluses of some economies, most prominently China, magnified the scale of brash operations. A subprime lender who misled a borrower into taking unwise risks could pass off the financial instruments to other parties remote from the original transaction. The need for supervision and regulation has become much stronger over recent years. And yet the supervisory role of the government in the US in particular has been, over the same period, sharply curtailed, fed by an increasing belief in the self-regulatory nature of the market economy. Precisely as the need for state surveillance has grown, the provision of the needed supervision has shrunk.
This institutional vulnerability has implications not only for sharp practices, but also for a tendency towards over-speculation that, as Smith argued, tends to grip many human beings in their breathless search for profits. Smith called these promoters of excessive risk in search of profits “prodigals and projectors” – which, by the way, is quite a good description of the entrepreneurs of subprime mortgages over the recent past. The implicit faith in the wisdom of the stand-alone market economy, which is largely responsible for the removal of the established regulations in the US, tended to assume away the activities of prodigals and projectors in a way that would have shocked the pioneering exponent of the rationale of the market economy.
Despite all Smith did to explain and defend the constructive role of the market, he was deeply concerned about the incidence of poverty, illiteracy and relative deprivation that might remain despite a well-functioning market economy. He wanted institutional diversity and motivational variety, not monolithic markets and singular dominance of the profit motive. Smith was not only a defender of the role of the state in doing things that the market might fail to do, such as universal education and poverty relief (he also wanted greater freedom for the state-supported indigent than the Poor Laws of his day provided); he argued, in general, for institutional choices to fit the problems that arise rather than anchoring institutions to some fixed formula, such as leaving things to the market.
The economic difficulties of today do not, I would argue, call for some “new capitalism”, but they do demand an open-minded understanding of older ideas about the reach and limits of the market economy. What is needed above all is a clear-headed appreciation of how different institutions work, along with an understanding of how a variety of organisations – from the market to the institutions of state – can together contribute to producing a more decent economic world.

------------------
*An anniversary edition of ‘The Theory of Moral Sentiments’ will be published by Penguin Books this year, with a new introduction in which I discuss the contemporary relevance of Smith’s ideas
The writer, who received the 1998 Nobel Prize in economics, teaches economics and philosophy at Harvard University. A longer essay by him on this topic appears in the current edition of The New York Review of Books

AS CONTAS DE 2004

As contas de 2004 da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa foram "chumbadas" pelo Tribunal de Contas, é a notícia que acabo de ouvir no noticiário das 20 da Antena 2 da RDP. Chumbadas por várias razões que não importa agora analisar.

.

Eu não sou adepto de Santana Lopes, o presidente da Câmara de Lisboa em 2004, e não votaria nele se votasse em Lisboa. Mas esta é uma lamentável notícia.

.

Lamentável, desde logo porque as contas da autarquia capital do país foram chumbadas;

Depois, porque foram chumbadas com quatro anos de atraso, quando o efeitos dos erros cometidos, quaisquer que eles sejam, serão dificilmente remediáveis;

.

Mas sobretudo lamentável porque ocorre com um atraso intolerável que, só por si, deveria determinar o chumbo do Tribunal de Contas; mas também porque é anunciado em ano de eleições autárquicas.

.

Se não é propositado não deixa de parecer. Nem Costa nem Santana deveriam precisar ou merecer isto.

OS TRABALHOS DE OBAMA

CONTRA OS BETÕES

As oposições são contra os betões, os governos a favor. Como quem manda são os governos, os betões não param de crescer em Portugal.

.

Ontem, segundo relata o Público de hoje, num seminário da CAP, João Salgueiro considerou arriscado que os planos contra a crise assentem numa política de betão, que não resolve os dois grandes problemas que agora se enfrentam: o desemprego e o desequilíbrio da balança comercial. "Deveria haver uma campanha nacional para explicar o potencial da agricultura ... Quando vemos o que os países mediterrânicos exportam para o resto da Europa vemos o que não fizemos em Portugal".

.

O mesmo jornal publica um artigo - Riqueza gerada pela agricultura caiu 23 por cento desde 1992 - respigado de um balanço da integração da agricultura portuguesa, da autoria de Francisco Avilez, e de onde se salienta, para além da queda brutal de quase 1/4 da riqueza produzida pelo sector em menos de 20 anos, a forte componente dos subsídios (63%) e a débil contribuição da venda dos produtos (37%) no rendimento das explorações agrícolas.

.

A perda da importância do sector primário, e nomeadamente da agricultura e das pescas, já vem de longe. Não só em termos de emprego (que seria sempre inevitável) mas, sobretudo, da perda de produção, uma perda perigosamente demolidora da independência alimentar dos portugueses, sendo este um aspecto que nunca vi abordado pelas oposições, e aos governos, já se sabe, importam mais os betões.

.

Porque, mais do que ser subsídio dependente, o que é gravíssimo é a incapacidade da agricultura portuguesa para reequilibrar a balança alimentar externa. Mas, pior do que esta incapacidade (que não é senão reflexo da incapacidade de formação de competências e de criar condições para conseguirmos o que os outros europeus conseguem) é a falta de consciencialização colectiva da ameaça que paira sobre a colectividade, e que ninguém vê.

.

Partimos do princípio de que, como o nascer do Sol, a nossa alimentação está garantida, venha ela de Espanha, França, Nova Zelândia, do Chile, ou de outra parte qualquer. Mantemos um exército, marinha e força aérea, para o eventual ataque de um inimigo que não sabemos por onde irá entrar. Esquecemo-nos, porém, que, em caso de um conflito que nos obrigue a justificar a existência da tropa, a primeira coisa que vai acontecer é a ruptura dos canais de abastecimentos externos.

.

Poderemos ter (e ninguém acredita que tenhamos), em caso de guerra, as armas e os homens preparados para repelir o inimigo; o que não teremos, seguramente, é o sufiente para comer.

-------

Também nunca entendi porque razão a tropa não é mobilizada para a vigilância das florestas durante o Verão. A forma mais fácil e eficaz do inimigo atacar Portugal seria lançar fogo ao paiol em que se transforma a floresta portuguesa durante o tempo quente.

---------

Quando o desemprego aumenta, o abandono da terra continua, a dependência alimentar cresce, há algo que está errado. Ou não?

A BANHA DA COBRA

A failure to control the animal spirits
By Robert Shiller

(... )
We are seeing, in this financial crisis, a rebirth of Keynesian economics. We are talking again of his 1936 book The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, which was written during the Great Depression. This era, like the present, saw many calls to end capitalism as we know it. The 1930s have been called the heyday of communism in western countries. Keynes’s middle way would avoid the unemployment and the panics and manias of capitalism. But it would also avoid the economic and political controls of communism. The General Theory became the most important economics book of the 20th century because of its sensible balanced message.
In times of high unemployment, creditworthy governments should expand demand by deficit spending. Then, in times of low unemployment, governments should pay down the resultant debt. With that seemingly minor change in procedures, a capitalist system can be stable. There is no need for radical surgery on capitalism.
Adherents to Keynes’s message were so eager to get this simple policy implemented, on both sides of the Atlantic, that they failed to notice – or perhaps they intentionally disregarded – that the General Theory also had a deeper, more fundamental message about how capitalism worked, if only briefly spelled out. It explained why capitalist economies, left to their own devices, without the balancing of governments, were essentially unstable. And it explained why, for capitalist economies to work well, the government should serve as a counterbalance.
The key to this insight was the role Keynes gave to people’s psychological motivations. These are usually ignored by macroeconomists. Keynes called them animal spirits, and he thought they were especially important in determining people’s willingness to take risks. Businessmen’s calculations, he said, were precarious: “Our basis of knowledge for estimating the yield 10 years hence of a railway, a copper mine, a textile factory, the goodwill of a patent medicine, an Atlantic liner, a building in the City of London amounts to little and sometimes to nothing.” Despite this, people somehow make decisions and act. This “can only be taken as a result of animal spirits”. There is “a spontaneous urge to action”.
There are times when people are especially adventuresome – indeed, too much so. Their adventures are supported in these times by a blithe faith in the future, and trust in economic institutions. These are the upswing of the business cycle. But then the animal spirits also veer in the other direction, and then people are too wary.
George Akerlof and I, in our book Animal Spirits (Princeton 2009), expand on Keynes’s concept and tie it in to modern literature on behavioural economics and psychology. Much more clarity about the psychological underpinnings of animal spirits is possible today.
For example, social psychologists, notably Roger Schank and Robert Abelson, have shown how much stories and storytelling, especially human-interest stories, motivate much of human behaviour. These stories can count for much more than abstract calculation. People’s economic moods are largely based on the stories that people tell themselves and tell each other that are related to the economy.
We have seen these stories come and go in rapid succession in recent years. We first had the dotcom bubble and the envy-producing stories of young millionaires. It burst in 2000, but was soon replaced with another bubble, involving smart “flippers” of properties.
This mania was the product not only of a story about people but also a story about how the economy worked. It was part of a story that all investments in securitised mortgages were safe because those smart people were buying them. Those enviable people who are buying these assets must be checking on them, therefore we do not need to. We need only run alongside them.
What allowed this mania and these stories to persist as long as they did? To a remarkable extent we have got into the current economic and financial crisis because of a wrong economic theory – an economic theory that itself denied the role of the animal spirits in getting us into manias and panics.
According to the standard “classical” theory, which goes back to Adam Smith with his Wealth of Nations in 1776, the economy is essentially stable. If people rationally pursue their own economic interests in free markets they will exhaust all mutually beneficial opportunities to produce goods and exchange with one another. Such exhaustion of opportunities for mutually beneficial trade results in full employment. By this theory it could not be otherwise.
Of course, some workers will be unemployed. But they will be unable to find work only because they are in a temporary search for a job or because they insist on pay that is unreasonably high. Such unemployment is viewed as voluntary, and evokes no sympathy.
Classical theory also tells us that financial markets will also be stable. People will only make trades that they consider to benefit themselves. When entering financial markets – buying stocks or bonds or taking out a mortgage or even very complex securities – they will do due diligence in seeing that what they are buying is worth what they or paying, or what they are selling.
What this theory neglects is that there are times when people are too trusting. And it also fails to take into account that if it can do so profitably, capitalism will produce not only what people really want, but also what they think they want. It can produce the medicine people want to cure their ills. That is what people really want. But if it can do so profitably, it will also produce what people mistakenly want.
It will produce snake oil. Not only that: it may also produce the want for the snake oil itself. That is a downside to capitalism. Standard economic theory failed to take into account that buyers and sellers of assets might not be taking due diligence, and the marketplace was not selling them insurance against risk in the complex securities that they were buying, but was, instead, selling them the financial equivalent of snake oil.
There is a broader moral to all this – about the nature of capitalism. On the one hand, we want to take advantage of the wisdom of Adam Smith. For the most part, the products produced by capitalism are what we really want, produced at a price that we are willing and able to pay. On the other hand, when confidence is high, and since financial assets are hard to evaluate by those who are buying them, people will and do buy snake oil. And when that is discovered, as it invariably must be, the confidence disappears and the economy goes sour.
It is the role of the government at two levels to see that these events do not occur. First, it has a duty to regulate asset markets so that people are not falsely lured into buying snake-oil assets. Such standards for our financial assets make as much common sense as the standards for the food we eat, or the purchase medicine we get from the pharmacy. But we do not want to throw out the good parts of capitalism with the bad. To take advantage of the good parts of capitalism, when fluctuations occur it is the role of the government to see that those who can and want to produce what others want to buy can do so. It is the role of the government, through its counterbalancing fiscal and monetary policy, to maintain full employment.
The principles behind such an economy are not the principles behind a socialist economy. The government insofar as possible is only creating the macroeconomic conditions that will allow the economy to function well.
That is the role of government. Its role is to ensure a “wise laisser faire”. This is not the free-for-all capitalism that has been recommended by the current economic theory, and seems to have been accepted as gospel by economic planners, and also many economists, since the Thatcher and Reagan governments. But it also is a significant middle way between those who see the economic disasters and unemployment of unfettered capitalism, on the one hand, and those who believe that the government should play no role at all.
The idea that unfettered, unregulated capitalism would invariably produce the good outcomes was a wrong economic theory regarding how capitalist societies behave and what causes their crises. That wrong economic theory fails to take account of how the animal spirits affect economic behaviour. It fails to take into account the roles of confidence, stories and snake oil in economic fluctuation.
The writer is the Arthur M. Okun professor of economics at Yale University and co-founder and chief economist of MacroMarkets. To join the debate go to www.ft.com/capitalismblog

POF!

O PREÇO CERTO

A crise, para além das vigarices financeiras engendradas nos EUA e contrabandeadas por todo o mundo, é atribuida consumismo que as produções a baixo custo no Oriente incutiram no Ocidente. Já no Japão, por exemplo, é a idiosincrasia austera e prudente que caracteriza a maior parte do povo nipónico que refreia o consumo e lhes debilita a economia.

.

Durante muito tempo, ouviu-se em Portugal, de todos os lados: estamos a viver acima das nossas possibilidades; consumimos mais do que produzimos. Agora que a crise aumenta o desemprego e coloca muitas famílias na penúria, os vizinhos (ou pelo menos a maior parte deles) colocam as barbas de molho e restringem os consumos. Resultado: agravam a situação. Sem consumo, não há produção, sem produção não há emprego, sem emprego não há consumo. Só não fica baralhado com este consome/não consome quem continua a ter meios para continuar a consumir e pouco lhe importam as desgraças alheias.

.

Evidentemente, que a coisa não é assim tão complicada: O problema nunca foi (pelo menos na perspectiva que o estamos a analiasar) uma questão de consumir muito mas o de consumir mais do que o que se produz. De modo que, quando hoje se ouvem vozes alarmadas de que os consumos estão a cair e com isso se arruina ainda mais a economia, precisamos, antes de mais, saber de que consumos estamos a falar. Se esses consumos são de produções que vieram de longe, é lá longe que eles sustentam o emprego.

.

À quase totalidade dos consumidores é indiferente que aquilo que compra seja "made in Portugal " ou "made no estrangeiro". Não existe nenhuma percepção colectiva do que está em causa nas opções de escolha do que se consome. Coloca-se muito mais ênfase na necessidade de exportar mais (para onde se o consumo cai em toda a parte?) do que na importância da produção de vizinhança.

.

A RTP, que se encosta ao orçamento do Estado para pagamento de um serviço público que não se percebe por onde anda, poderia, e deveria, promover a divulgação das vantagens de consumir mas sobretudo de consumir aquilo que é produzido em Portugal. Não o faz e entretem o pagode com alguns programas que alienam ainda mais a já débil consciência colectiva dos portugueses.

.

As principais facturas que pagamos ao estrangeiro são as da energia e a da alimentação. Sabe-se que não é possível passar sem a energia e os combustíveis que importamos (a alimentação é também energia). Poderíamos, contudo, se os nossos hábitos se modificassem, ajudar a reduzir a enorme dependência energética que nos torna todos os dias cada vez mais devedores a um ritmo que não é possível sustentar por muito mais tempo.

.

Ou dizendo melhor: possível é, desde que emigremos para onde de onde vem aquilo que consumimos e não produzimos.

RUMO A OUTRAS TERRAS

Explanation: Streaking skyward, a Delta II rocket carries NASA's Kepler spacecraft aloft into the clear night of March 6. The dramatic scene was recorded in a time exposure from the crowded pier in Jetty Park at the northern end of Cocoa Beach, Florida, about 3 miles from the Cape Canaveral launch site. Kepler's mission is to search for Earth-like planets orbiting in the habitable zone of other stars. A planet orbiting within a star's habitable zone would have a surface temperature capable of supporting liquid water, an essential ingredient for life as we know it. To find Earth-like planets, Kepler's telescope and large, sensitive camera will examine a rich star field near the plane of our Milky Way Galaxy. Located in the constellation Cygnus, Kepler's field of view will allow it to monitor the brightness of many stars in the solar neighborhood and detect a slight dimming as a potential Earth-like planet crosses in front of the star.

MAIS OU MENOS CRISE

Presidente do BCE admite proximidade do regresso ao crescimento económico
O presidente do Banco Central Europeu (BCE) disse hoje que os investidores estão a subestimar a possibilidade de um regresso ao crescimento e que o mundo pode estar a aproximar-se de um ponto de viragem.

.

Queda adicional de 12%
Roubini prevê S&P500 nos 600 pontos este ano
O professor de Economia da Universidade de Nova Iorque, Nouriel Roubini, afirmou que o índice Standard & Poor’s 500 deverá cair para os 600 pontos este ano, ou até mesmo para valores inferiores, uma vez que a crise económica se está a intensificar.

.

Há muito tempo que acompanho as posições de Nouriel Roubini acerca do evoluir da crise; provavelmente, serei mesmo o blogger que há mais tempo o citou na blogosfera portuguesa. Roubini ganhou a admiração de meio mundo ao prever e quantificar a dimensão da crise. A sua perspectiva continua do lado pessimista.

.

Contrariamente a Roubini, Trichet aparece agora com uma visão optimista para a Europa, prevendo a inversão do ciclo para breve. Se considerarmos que a generalidade dos analistas prevê que recuperação aconteça nos EUA antes de chegar à Europa, a diferença Trichet-Roubuni é ainda mais notável.

.

Tem tudo isto alguma influência no desenrolar crise? Tem de ter. A psicologia de crise que se instalou alimenta, evidentemente, a crise. As palavras de Trichet, que não podem ser de todo infundadas, ou até pouco sérias, terão por enquanto uma influência menor sobre o comportamento dos agentes económicos em todo o mundo do que as de Roubini e de todos os que estão do lado dele, e que são a esmagadora maioria.

.

Seria bom que Trichet fosse mais explícito e convincente nos seus argumentos. A inversão da onda de pessimismo é essencial à inversão do ciclo depressivo económico.

Pela minha parte sou pelo Trichet, desta vez. O que é que se pode perder com isso? Argumentos, não tenho. Espero que Trichet os tire da manga.

CONTRA AS NACIONALIZAÇÕES DOS BANCOS

Paul Krugman
.
Anti-nationalization arguments
A quick note (quick because I’m on deadline for the column) on several arguments out there:
.
Read more…

A EXPLICAÇÃO DA CRISE