O que são os mercados?

Segundo o dicionário Piberam da língua portuguesa (http://www.priberam.pt/DLPO/), o mercado é:

"mercado (latim mercatus, -us, comércio, tráfico, negócio)
s. m.
1. Lugar público coberto ou ao ar livre onde se compram mercadorias postas à venda; reunião de comerciantes no mesmo local, para vender.
2. Cidade onde se faz o comércio de certos objectos!objetos.
3. Saída económica.
4. Convenção de compra e venda.
5. Qualquer arranjo entre as pessoas, contrato.
6. Estado da oferta e da procura."

Bom, agora que sabemos do que estamos a falar irei-vos apresentar um comentário eleito pelo Paul Krugman sobre uma descrição que pode estar mais perto da realidade do que se pensa. Esta descrição dirige-se sobretudo aos intermediários porém estes são agentes imprescindíveis na actual negociação da dívida pública soberana.


Podem ver o comentário referido aqui.

Portugal: Cortes salariais de 20 ou 30%

o pessoal viu esta do Krugman?

May 17, 2010, 9:42 am
Et Tu, Wolfgang?
Perhaps the most startling and frustrating thing about the debate over the fate of the euro is the way almost everyone avoids confronting the core issue — the elephant in the euro. With a unified currency, adjustment to differential shocks requires adjustments in relative wages — and because the nations of the European periphery have gone from boom to bust, their adjustment must be downward. At this point, wages in Greece/Spain/Portugal/Latvia/Estonia etc. need to fall something like 20-30 percent relative to wages in Germany. Let me repeat that:

WAGES IN THE PERIPHERY NEED TO FALL 20-30 PERCENT RELATIVE TO GERMANY.

But nobody is willing to say that outright. Even the ever-pessimistic (and hence realistic) Wolfgang Munchau writes

None of the governance reform proposals that are currently discussed even attempt to answer the questions of how Spain is going to get out of this hole, and how the competitiveness gap between the north and the south of the eurozone is going to be closed … What the eurozone needs is an increase in domestic consumption in the north, particularly in Germany, and labour and product market reforms in the south, most importantly in Spain.

How many readers will get that what he’s really saying is that

WAGES IN THE PERIPHERY NEED TO FALL 20-30 PERCENT RELATIVE TO GERMANY.

How hard will it be to achieve this? Look at Latvia, which has pursued incredibly draconian austerity. Unemployment has risen from 6 percent before the crisis to 22.3 percent now — and wages are, indeed, falling. But even in Latvia labor costs have fallen only 5.4 percent from their peak; so it will take years of suffering to restore competitiveness.

The official answer is that this just shows the need for more flexible labor markets. But this was a subject we all batted back and forth in the initial debate about the euro, circa 1990: nobody has labor markets that flexible. If the euro isn’t workable without highly flexible nominal wages, well, it isn’t workable.

Anyway, this is my morning euro rant.

aqui.

Um Fundo Monetário Europeu?

Food for thought
>>>Towards a Euro(pean) Monetary Fund

by Daniel Gros and Thomas Mayer

The turmoil affecting southern euro area countries (notably Greece) has ushered in the second phase of the financial crisis: that of sovereign default. It is now time to look for a new framework that allows the Union to deal with the failure of one of its members. In this new CEPS Policy Brief, CEPS Director Daniel Gros and Deutsche Bank's Chief Economist Thomas Mayer argue for the setting up of a European Monetary Fund. One of the tasks of this Fund would be to manage the insolvency of euro area countries in an orderly way.

no DB Research

Banksters

Os senhores da crise, por José Manuel Rolo, na revista Economia Global e Gestão.

note bem - Os pinguins estão inocentes.

Razões para cepticismo sobre a recuperação (Roach)

O Roubini pode ser o Mr. Doom, mas o Roach não pode/deve ser ignorado - até porque não lhe fica atrás.

There are four key reasons to remain skeptical about the vigor and sustainability of any rebound in the global economy:

First, the financial crisis itself is far from over. The latest International Monetary Fund estimates put the potential for worldwide writedowns of toxic assets at approximately $3.4 trillion; so far, realized markdowns have been only about half that amount. This points to further earnings impairments for financial institutions and concomitant restraints on their lending capacity.

Second, the breadth of this global recession was staggering. At its low point in March 2009, 75 percent of the world’s economies were contracting. Typically, the figure is closer to 50 percent. This means it will be much harder to turn around this recession-torn world.

Third, the demand side of the global economy is likely to be restrained by a protracted pullback of the over-extended American consumer. In the face of a massive labor market shock to jobs and wage earnings, together with the bursting of property and credit bubbles, the consumption share of the U.S. economy is likely to fall by five full percentage points of gross domestic product -- from its current record of 71.2 percent to the pre-bubble norm of 66 percent.

This should reduce trend growth of real consumption from the almost 4 percent pace of the pre-crisis decade to 1.5 percent to 2 percent over the next three to five years. No other consumer in the world is capable of filling this void.

Fourth, the supply side of the global economy suffers from massive imbalances, especially China-centric developing Asia. While, on the surface, post-crisis resilience of the Chinese economy has been impressive, it turns out that 95 percent of the 7.7 percent GDP growth realized in the first three quarters of 2009 was concentrated in the fixed investment sector, which already accounts for an unheard of 45 percent of GDP.

EUA: Mercado livre? Livre iniciativa? Pois...Pois... Digam isso a este insuspeito radical estatista

SIXTEEN months ago, our financial system teetered on the brink of collapse. The Treasury, the Federal Reserve and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation took actions that were unpopular and previously unthinkable — but absolutely necessary to stave off an economic catastrophe in which unemployment could have exceeded the 25 percent level of the Great Depression.
...
Congress must pass financial regulatory reform. (...) Our overriding goal in restructuring our financial architecture should be that taxpayers never again have to save a failing financial institution.
(...)
First, we must create a systemic risk regulator to monitor the stability of the markets and to restrain or end any activity at any financial firm that threatens the broader market. Second, the government must have resolution authority to impose an orderly liquidation on any failing financial institution to minimize its impact on the rest of the system.

quem defende isto?

Henry M. Paulson Jr., the secretary of the Treasury from 2006 to 2009, [e] author of “On the Brink: Inside the Race to Stop the Collapse of the Global Financial System”, no The New York Times, do dia 15, no artigo "How to Watch the Banks", de onde veio também o 'boneco'.

Obama ao Congresso: 1.º, inovação...

ainda no Economic Report

(destaques meus)

For growth to be truly sustainable — for our prosperity to be truly shared and our living standards to actually rise—we need to move beyond an economy that is fueled by budget deficits and consumer demand. In other words, in order to create jobs and raise incomes for the middle class over the long run, we need to export more and borrow less from around the world, and we need to save more money and take on less debt here at home. As we rebuild, we must also rebalance.
In order to achieve this, we’ll need to grow this economy by growing our capacity to innovate in burgeoning industries, while putting a stop to irresponsible budget policies and financial dealings that have led us into such a deep fiscal and economic hole.
That begins with policies that will promote innovation throughout our economy. To spur the discoveries that will power new jobs, new businesses — and perhaps new industries—I have challenged both the public sector and the private sector to devote more resources to research and development. And to achieve this, my budget puts us on a path to double investment in key research agencies and makes the research and experimentation tax credit permanent.

(p. 7)

EUA: Uma ressaca maior que a bebedeira

A propósito do relatório económico anual do presidente dos EUA , que é sempre um grande - fisica e figuradamente - documento, repesquei esta parte, relativa à última aula de GC e ao gráfico lá em baixo:

The boom was fueled in part by irresponsible and in some cases predatory lending practices, risky investment strategies, faulty credit ratings, and lax regulation. When the boom ended, the result was widespread defaults and crippling blows to key financial institutions, magnifying the decline in house prices and causing enormous spillovers to the remainder of the economy.

(p.39).

Stiglitz sobre o PIB e a crise

A pedido de várias famílias, aqui vai um vídeo: Joseph Stiglitz - Problems with GDP as an Economic Barometer


Depois, há mais um livro do Stiglitz, que sairá em abril: The Stiglitz Report: Reforming the International Monetary and Financial Systems in the Wake of the Global Crisis, em paperback.

a descrição na Amazon é esta: The fact that our global economy is broken may be widely accepted, but what precisely needs to be fixed has become the subject of enormous controversy. In 2008, the president of the United Nations General Assembly convened an international panel, chaired by Nobel Prize–winning economist Joseph Stiglitz and including twenty leading international experts on the international monetary system, to address this crucial issue.

The Stiglitz Report, released by the committee in late 2009, sees the recent financial crisis as the latest and most damaging of several concurrent crises—of food, water, energy, and sustainability—that are tightly interrelated. The analysis and recommendations in the report cover the gamut from short-term mitigation to deep structural changes, from crisis response to reform of the global, economic, and financial architecture.

The report establishes a bold agenda for policy change, that is sure to be the gold standard for understanding and contending with the international economy for many years to come. The Stiglitz Report is essential reading for anyone concerned about a secure and prosperous world.

Stiglitz - novo livro: Free Fall

Acaba de sair mais um livro de Stiglitz: Freefall: America, Free Markets, and the Sinking of the World Economy.

O primeiro capítulo intitula-se The Making of a Crisis.

Começa assim:

The only surprise about the economic crisis of 2008 was that ir came as a surprise to so many. For a few observers, it was a textbook case that was not only predictable but also predicted. A desregulated market awash in liquidity and low interest rates, a global real estate bubble, and skyrocketing subprime lending were a toxic combination. Add in the U. S. fiscal and trade deficit and the corresponding accumulation in China of huge reserves of dollars - an unbalanced global economy - and it was clear that things were horribly awry.

E continua assim umas linhas depois:

The basic outlines of the story are well known and often told. The United States had a housing bubble. When that bubble broke and housing prices fell from their stratospheric levels, more and more homeowners found themselves "underwater". They owed more on their mortgages than what their homes were valued. As they lost their homes, many also lost their life savings and their dreams for a future - a college education for their children, a retirement in comfort. Americans had, in a sense, been living in a dream.

Mais:

Low interest rates and lax regulation fed the housing bubble. As housing prices soared, homeowners could take money out of their houses.

The economy was out of Kilter: two-thirds to three-quarters of the economy (the GDP) was housing related: constructing new houses or buying contents to fill them, or borrowing against old houses to finance consumption. It was unsustainable - and it wasn´t sustained. The breaking of the bubble at first affected the worst mortgages (the subprime mortgages, lent to low-income individuals), but soon affected all residencial real estate.
When the bubble popped, the effects were amplified because banks had created complex products resting on top of the mortgages. Worse still, they had engaged in multibillion-dollar bets with each other and with others around the world. This complexity, combined woith the rapidity with which the situation was deteriorating, and the banks' high leverage (they, like households, had financed their investments by heavy borrowing), meant that the banks didn't know wether they owed to their depositors and bondholders exceeded the value of their asset. The trust and confidence that underlie the banking system evaporated.

Para acabar a citação:

What would replace the unbridled consumption of Americans that had sustained the economy in the years before the bubble broke? How were America and Europa goin to manage their restructuring, for instance, the transition toward a service-sector economy that had been difficult enough during the boom?

Afinal, agora é que acaba:

How did it all happen? This is not the way market economies are supposed to work. Something went wrong - badly wrong.

Blogue deprimente? Depois dos 4 a 1?!!

Nada disso!!

Vejamos por exemplo a piada das agências de notação:

La dette souveraine française et les agences de notation : la France en sursis ?
En réaction au rapport Rocard-Juppé remis le 19 novembre au Président de la République, et à la proposition d’un grand emprunt de 35 milliards d’euros, Moody’s, l’une des trois principales agences de notation, a estimé que le projet affaiblissait la notation de la dette souveraine française - qui jouit de la note « triple A » la plus élevée - sans pour autant la menacer ...

(artido de uma economista do OFCE que até cita um economista português e fala dos animal spirits).

Também há a piada dos economistas (esta é mesmo para provocar!!!)

está aqui.

Pronto. Voilá um cheirinho:

Une perte de crédibilité

Devenus incapables de penser les crises, les économistes sortent de celle-ci largement discrédités. Passage en revue des nombreuses critiques auxquelles ils font face.

"Ce n'est pas l'une des heures les plus glorieuses de la profession." Ce constat désabusé du professeur de Princeton et éditorialiste vedette Paul Krugman résume bien la situation: les économistes ont pris la main bien visible de la crise en pleine figure. Même la reine d'Angleterre, en visite à la célèbre London School of Economics en novembre 2008, n'a pas manqué de les apostropher. Après avoir écouté plusieurs explications de la crise, elle s'est exclamée: "Si ces problèmes étaient si importants, comment se fait-il que personne ne les ait remarqués?"

Excellente question, Votre Majesté, et qui va bien plus loin que celle communément posée de savoir pourquoi les...

Private joke: à lista das deprimências faltava o post das patentes.