Crescimento, inovação, PEC, vinho,...

Daniel Bessa

Crescimento no PEC é flor de estilo

o crescimento económico de Portugal está hipotecado nos próximos anos, de forma muito séria, não directamente por culpa do PEC, mas sim das políticas de "insustentabilidade" que marcaram a década de 90.

Portugal está inserido no grupo de países que só podem crescer pela inovação

Vinho: pós-graduação católica

Are you?

Are you a tax cheat?
Blake Ellis, staff reporterFebruary 19, 2010: 4:39 PM ET

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Do you cheat on your taxes? If so, you're not alone. More Americans are fudging their taxes and an increasing number of people are scared of being audited, a survey from the IRS Oversight Board shows.

Thirteen percent of those surveyed said cheating is acceptable, according to an annual poll conducted for the Internal Revenue Service Oversight Board. That's up 4% from 2008. Four percent of Americans said they cheat on their taxes "as much as possible," up 1% from the year before.

o resto aqui.

Há uns que andam de bicicleta. A voar, não sei...

By Nouriel Roubini and Arnab Das
2/11/2010 | Last Updated
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
The extent of the fiscal pressures facing Greece, and the inherent inability of the EU/ECB to handle such crises with the deliberation and conditionality required, suggest the need for IMF involvement if the EU is to avoid a larger, more devastating round of contagion across the weaker tier of eurozone members. The interlinked nature of EMU turns a relative midget – Greece, accounting for a mere 3 percent of the eurozone’s GDP, into a systemic entity. Thus, if Greece is, as RGE believes, “too-interconnected-to-fail,” the EU needs to put theoretical concerns about moral hazard and global prestige aside, [...]

(o resto é a pagar)

Roubini Global Economics

Obama ao Congresso: não ralha. Troveja! Excomunga!! Lança raios e coriscos!!!

(a imagem é de New Orleans)

(ainda a explorar o Economic Report of the President dos EUA ao Congresso. O texto assinado pelo presidente é seguido pelo The Annual Report of the Council of Economic Advisers, que é da autoria do presidente deste órgão, para o caso Christina Romer. O todo costuma ser de consulta obrigatória. Mais uma vez, os destaques no texto são meus)

um discurso extremamente duro.

...
But to understand where we must go in the next year and beyond, it is important to remember where we began one year ago.
Last January, years of irresponsible risk-taking and debt-fueled speculation—unchecked by sound oversight—led to the near-collapse of our financial system. We were losing an average of 700,000 jobs each month. Over the course of one year, $13 trillion of Americans’ household wealth had evaporated as stocks, pensions, and home values plummeted. Our gross domestic product was falling at the fastest rate in a quarter century. The flow of credit, vital to the functioning of businesses large and small, had ground to a halt. The fear among economists, from across the political spectrum, was that we could sink into a second Great Depression.
Immediately, we took a series of difficult steps to prevent that catastrophe for American families and businesses.
...
To achieve this, and to prevent an economic collapse, we were forced to use authority enacted under the previous Administration to extend assistance to some of the very banks and financial institutions whose actions had helped precipitate the turmoil. We also took steps to prevent the collapse of the American auto industry, ... Indeed, the decision to stabilize the financial system helped to avert a larger catastrophe,
...
More than 7 million jobs have been lost since the recession began two years ago. This represents not only a terrible human tragedy, but also a very deep hole from which we’ll have to climb out.
...
In recent years, spending bills and tax cuts for the very wealthiest were approved without paying for any of it, leaving behind a mountain of debt. And while Wall Street gambled without regard for the consequences, Washington looked the other way. As a result, the economy may have been working for some at the very top, but it was not working for all American families.
...
Beneath the statistics are the stories of hardship. I’ve heard all across America—hardships that began long before this recession hit two years ago. For too many, there has long been a sense that the American dream — a chance to make your own way, to work hard and support your family, save for college and retirement, own a home — was slipping away.
And this sense of anxiety has been combined with a deep frustration that Washington either didn’t notice, or didn’t care enough to act.
...
In addition, I’ve proposed a set of common sense reforms to prevent future financial crises. For while the financial system is far stronger today than it was one year ago, it is still operating under the same rules that led to its near-collapse. These are rules that allowed firms to act contrary to the interests of customers; to hide their exposure to debt through complex financial dealings that few understood; to benefit from taxpayer-insured deposits while making speculative investments to increase their own profits; and to take on risks so vast that they posed a threat to the entire economy and the jobs of tens of millions of Americans.

“If a government wants to cheat, it can cheat”

Corrupção?
Escândalo?
Habilidade?
Nada disso.
Apenas imaginação, criação, ginástica mental.
(obrigado ao professor Sandro pela dica deste artigo do NYT: Wall St. Helped to Mask Debt Fueling Europe’s Crisis .)
os destaques no texto citado são meus.

...
Wall Street did not create Europe’s debt problem. But bankers enabled Greece and others to borrow beyond their means, in deals that were perfectly legal.
...
"If a government wants to cheat, it can cheat,” said Garry Schinasi, a veteran of the International Monetary Fund’s capital markets surveillance unit, which monitors vulnerability in global capital markets.
...
For all the benefits of uniting Europe with one currency, the birth of the euro came with an original sin: countries like Italy and Greece entered the monetary union with bigger deficits than the ones permitted under the treaty that created the currency. Rather than raise taxes or reduce spending, however, these governments artificially reduced their deficits with derivatives.

Derivatives do not have to be sinister. The 2001 transaction involved a type of derivative known as a swap. One such instrument, called an interest-rate swap, can help companies and countries cope with swings in their borrowing costs by exchanging fixed-rate payments for floating-rate ones, or vice versa. Another kind, a currency swap, can minimize the impact of volatile foreign exchange rates.

But with the help of JPMorgan, Italy was able to do more than that. Despite persistently high deficits, a 1996 derivative helped bring Italy’s budget into line by swapping currency with JPMorgan at a favorable exchange rate, effectively putting more money in the government’s hands. In return, Italy committed to future payments that were not booked as liabilities.

“Derivatives are a very useful instrument,” said Gustavo Piga, an economics professor who wrote a report for the Council on Foreign Relations on the Italian transaction. “They just become bad if they’re used to window-dress accounts.”

In Greece, the financial wizardry went even further. In what amounted to a garage sale on a national scale, Greek officials essentially mortgaged the country’s airports and highways to raise much-needed money.