Europa atravessa o Rubicão

Rodrigo Constantino

Os governos europeus estão aceitando a flexibilização das metas de austeridade acordadas no Tratado de Maastrich. Até a Alemanha, suposto bastião da austeridade fiscal, tem concordado com essa medida. O ministro das Finanças, Wolfgang Schauble, ao menos quer condicionar tal afrouxamento às reformas trabalhistas, mas entende que esse é o caminho, até porque o modelo americano, mais liberal, levaria a uma revolução na Europa, segundo ele.

Pode ser que sim. Afinal, décadas de “welfare state” produzem o nefasto costume de esperar sempre mais benesses estatais. Privilégios são fáceis de garantir, basta uma canetada do governo; mas são difíceis de cumprir no longo prazo, pois como sabia Margaret Thatcher, o socialismo dura até durar o dinheiro dos outros. E nesse modelo, com incentivos inadequados para a produção de riquezas, invariavelmente o dinheiro desaparece, foge para locais mais amigáveis aos negócios.

As regras do Tratado de Maastrich serviam como camisa de força para governos perdulários, algo freqüente na Europa. Mas, com uma visão míope voltada apenas para o curto prazo, as autoridades pretendem ignorar tais amarras e usar os gastos públicos para alavancar o crescimento econômico. Falsa dicotomia: o governo não produz riqueza; ele apenas tira do setor privado e transfere para o setor público, que quase sempre gasta mal, seguindo critérios políticos em vez de econômicos, e muitas vezes com desvios corruptos pela ausência do escrutínio dos donos desses recursos.

Logo, acreditar que a gastança estatal produz crescimento é ignorar as leis econômicas e da natureza humana, além da experiência histórica. Ao rasgar as regras de Maastrich, os países da zona do euro podem estar cruzando seu Rubicão, um caminho sem volta. É mais fácil tirar o gênio da garrafa do que recolocá-lo lá dentro. Os keynesianos sempre lembram as medidas anticíclicas quando é para expandir o governo, nunca para retraí-lo. Mas a conta precisa ser paga, inexoravelmente.

Com impostos absurdamente elevados, inúmeros privilégios para o setor público, déficits fiscais fora de controle, endividamento público extremamente elevado, e leis trabalhistas engessadas, a Europa vive uma espécie de esclerose econômica. Não é à toa que o desemprego, especialmente dos mais jovens inexperientes, está em patamares preocupantes. O tecido social fica esgarçado. É um terreno fértil para aventureiros de plantão, para populistas e demagogos que vendem soluções mágicas – e desastrosas.

A Europa tem um legado fantástico para o mundo, e sérias manchas no currículo também, como o fascismo, o nazismo e o comunismo. Espero que a região consiga atravessar essa crise e sobreviver, sem uma decadência muito acentuada. Para adicionar insulto à injúria, há o grave problema da islamização crescente, alimentada pelo multiculturalismo que segrega em vez de assimilar esses imigrantes.

O modelo de estado de bem-estar social precisa ser drasticamente revisto. Os europeus precisam abandonar a visão de que o estado é um ente abstrato, que obtém seus recursos de Marte e distribui benesses de forma altruísta. Nada mais falso. O caminho necessário é doloroso, mas fundamental para salvar a região. A austeridade não é o inimigo; é um remédio amargo, mas crucial. A Europa precisa de mais setor privado e menos estado. Espero que não seja tarde demais para dar essa guinada. 

Nigel Farage straight to the point!

If I were a German

Charles Gave, GaveKal Research

If I were a German, this is how I would analyze the euroland crisis:

The monetary union was supposed to transform the Greeks, Italians, French and Spaniards into solid citizens, who played less and worked more. As a German, I did not believe a word of it, but I was willing to give them a chance. Meanwhile I myself had to keep reforming because the world out there was becoming quite competitive (China, etc). So this is what I did in the post-EMU years; but my fellow members did not, of course. And guess what? They have problems—and apparently, it is my fault?

So what am I to do in such a situation? I have not been that successful historically (nor has anybody else) at telling the other countries in Europe how they should manage themselves. Even if our orders are filtered through a pan-European body, it will look about as independent from Germany as Philippe Petain or Vidkun Quisling.

Plus it will cost a lot to even try. They call it "federalism," I call it theft. The implementation of these reform policies would easily have me transferring €100bn or more of my income to these guys every year during a transition phase...which will probably last forever. This is what the East Germans cost annually during the unification, but at least these guys were Germans and I had let them down big time in the past. Anyway, lending more money to a guy managing himself in a bankruptcy is just not a good idea.

Of course, if the euro project ended today, this too would be expensive. For the last ten years, I have sold €1 trillion more to my neighbors than I have bought from them. During which time, my banks lent the same amount to EMU sovereigns. If the euro breaks now, I could easily lose half of my roughly €1 trillion in claims on the rest of the EMU. These IOUs would be worth at most €500bn—and the capital of my financial system is around €350bn.

So my choice, broadly speaking, is take a big loss up front or pay without hope some 4% to 5% of my annual income forever. I choose the first one. However, I should be careful not to be too tough for quite a while. I am perceived everywhere in Europe as the fellow who destroyed Europe twice in the last century. I do not want a third catastrophe on my head—even if the euro was not our idea, but a stupid French invention which they fed to Helmut Kohl on the idea that otherwise they would refuse the German reunification (as if they could).

It is better, therefore, to bide my time. This allows my companies to diversify their exports while my financial firms write off as much as they can. The price to pay is to go to all these stupid meetings in Brussels and accept some silly plans concocted by a bunch of guys who have never understood what a proper currency is. After accepting in principle, I then hold up the implementation on technicalities—then do it all over again at the next summit.

The objective is to wait for the French to follow the Greeks and Spaniards into bankruptcy. I was a little bit worried by the previous French president who did one or two things which were quite sensible. Fortunately, the French electorate took care to replace him with a fellow who is raising taxes and scaring away business—a socialist agenda which almost guarantees to sink the economy (see The Coming French Depression). (This incidentally is very good news for my companies, as a lot of their most dangerous competitors are being destroyed by their own government.)

The French, not known for taking a beating quietly, will be in the streets as soon as the economic demise unfolds. Their long rates will shoot up, sending the primary deficit exploding upwards. By the middle of next year France will be mired in a recession, have an out-of-control budget deficit and also need to raise a huge amount of money. Promises to rein in the budget deficit will be revealed as an absurd fantasy, and the new government will be left with no good options. In the end it will be the French who destroy the euro. Which will lead to a France very much weakened, and a very efficient and productive Germany which will survive the revaluation.

I cannot believe our luck. After all, Kohl was a genius.

Raios de sol entre nuvens carregadas

Rodrigo Constantino

Junho tinha tudo para ser mais um mês pesado para os mercados. As eleições gregas tiveram resultado positivo pela ótica dos investidores, com a derrota da esquerda radical representada pelo Syriza. Mas a alegria durou pouco e os mercados seguiram estressados. A Espanha anunciou novo pacote de ajuda aos bancos, na casa dos 100 bilhões de euros, mas nem isso foi suficiente para sustentar uma recuperação. Os títulos do governo espanhol de 5 anos chegaram a abrir 50 pontos-base durante o mês. Tudo parecia indicar a continuação do bear market, com os agentes rejeitando até as boas notícias.

Até que aos 45 minutos do segundo tempo a Europa conseguiu marcar um gol importante. O desempenho positivo de junho foi todo feito no último dia útil do mês, após o comunicado do novo (o 19^o) summit dos países do euro. A principal mensagem extraída do novo acordo foi a sinalização de que a Alemanha havia cedido mais do que parecia disposta, ao concordar com a criação de um mecanismo único de supervisão bancária e com o uso do European Stability Mechanism (ESM) para recapitalizar os bancos diretamente.

Com o mercado cansado de cair e leve, a notícia foi a deixa para o rali que salvou o fechamento do primeiro semestre do ano. O petróleo subiu 7% só no dia 29, ainda assim fechando com queda de 4% no mês. O S&P 500 subiu 4% e o DAX 2,5%, quase tudo no último dia de junho.

Mas será que o acordo desta vez foi realmente um game changer? Ou será que estamos diante de “mais do mesmo”, ou seja, um jogo de xadrez em que a Alemanha morde e assopra ao mesmo tempo, sem, entretanto, mergulhar de vez no caminho da união fiscal e dos euro-bonds? Esta parece ser a pergunta mais relevante, pois boa parte do mercado sonha com a emissão de bonds comunitários, enquanto Angela Merkel, poucas horas antes do resultado do summit, ainda afirmava que esta não seria a solução durante o tempo em que ela estivesse viva. São palavras fortes. Será que suas ações contradizem sua retórica?

Analisando o acordo com mais cuidado, talvez não exista motivo para tanto otimismo assim. É preciso lembrar que não houve aumento de capacidade de recursos no ESM, ou seja, a Alemanha não aceitou colocar novos recursos no bolo comum para resgatar bancos periféricos. Além disso, Merkel disse que só aceita recapitalizar esses bancos após um novo regime regulatório organizado pelo ECB, o que deve ocorrer somente no final do ano. Restam vários entraves a este passo, a começar pela Inglaterra aceitar que seus bancos sejam regulados pelo ECB. O diabo, como sempre, está nos detalhes. E estes só serão decididos no summit do dia 9 de julho.

Muitos investidores ainda alimentam a expectativa de que, no final do dia, a Alemanha terá que ceder às principais demandas dos demais e sucumbir ao projeto comunitário que criaria, na prática, os Estados Unidos da Europa. A própria Merkel parece desejar isso, desde que a Alemanha consiga, no processo, impor reformas estruturais que tornariam os outros países mais competitivos e parecidos com a própria Alemanha. Por ela reconhecer que dificilmente isso se dará durante sua gestão, a retórica de que não haverá euro-bonds enquanto ela estiver viva (politicamente) pode fazer sentido. O problema é que a economia não anda no passo lento da política.

O tempo joga contra este projeto, pois cada vez as divergências econômicas ficam maiores. O risco de vitória do Syriza na Grécia já foi um efeito disso. As tensões sociais se agravam, os ajustes impostos são muito dolorosos, e partidos radicais terão cada vez mais audiência para suas “soluções mágicas”. Os socialistas liderados por François Hollande tiveram expressiva vitória no Parlamento em junho também, marcando de vez a mudança de rumo na segunda maior economia da região. Em outras palavras, as reformas estruturais e de austeridade já subiram no telhado, e a Alemanha está totalmente isolada. As divergências devem aumentar daqui para frente.

A dúvida surge automaticamente: se a Alemanha tiver que antecipar o projeto comunitário mesmo sem as reformas estruturais dos outros, será que ela aceita? Será que o alemão aceita custos tão explícitos para transferir riqueza aos demais? Será que os alemães, os holandeses e os finlandeses deixarão o nacionalismo para trás e passarão a enxergar somente europeus em volta?

Considero esta hipótese bastante remota. Projetos paridos na elite e impostos de cima para baixo raramente vingam. São vítimas daquilo que Hayek chamou de “arrogância fatal”, e não contam com o apoio legítimo do povo. Não podemos esquecer que a Europa ainda possui democracias plenas em seus países membros. O antagonismo entre o euro e a democracia fica evidente quando se chega perto das eleições, principalmente nos elos mais fracos do grupo.

Eventualmente, na própria Alemanha isso poderá ocorrer, quando ficar mais claro o tamanho da conta que seus pagadores de impostos terão de arcar. Por isso muitos defendiam e ainda defendem o ECB como a única saída politicamente viável, ou seja, a rota disfarçada da inflação, que demora mais a escancarar a magnitude da fatura dos que são “convidados” a assumir os rombos.

Minha visão é de que o euro é um projeto fracassado. A questão que surge é a seguinte: insistir em seu salvamento com mais manipulações beneficia a Europa? Penso que não. Assim como a União Soviética, postergar o dia do julgamento faz apenas com que a dor seja maior depois. Quanto mais tempo levar para a ruptura do euro, maiores serão as divergências entre seus membros. E, por tabela, maior será a necessidade de transferências dos mais ricos para os mais pobres. Isso é socialismo. Ele nunca funciona.

Como um viciado em drogas, porém, o mercado celebra euforicamente cada nova rodada de estímulo das autoridades, ainda que a nova onda tenha menor intensidade e duração. Até o dia em que o organismo não agüenta mais.

A crise europeia está muito longe do fim. Haverá momentos de tranqüilidade aparente e até de otimismo. Um futuro sombrio aguarda a Europa. Não vamos nos enganar com alguns raios de sol esporádicos que surgem no horizonte. 

Merkel: Just Say Nein to Eurobonds

By MATTHEW WILL, WSJ

The European financial crisis has created an unusual mix of allies. Politicians, hedge fund managers, liberal pundits and the financial press are determined to convince German Chancellor Angela Merkel that economic salvation requires the European Central Bank to issue eurobonds.

Prior to last week's European Union summit in Brussels, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development endorsed French President Francois Hollande's plan to do just that and insisted Mrs. Merkel agree. She wouldn't, but at the summit she was all but held captive until relenting to some other bailout.

Meanwhile, money managers have waged their own campaign to get Mrs. Merkel on board. Financier George Soros has predicted dire consequences for Europe if Germany does not acquiesce. Harvard historian Niall Ferguson accused Mrs. Merkel of repeating the mistakes of Weimar Germany that led to the collapse of democracy. He did not use the "N word," but we all know an appeal to German guilt when we see one.

Each faction has its own reason for pressuring Germany but all share a common characteristic: They are wrong.

Historically, nations tax, borrow and spend until there is nothing left to tax and borrow. Because of the risk of riot, insurrection or removal from office, politicians refuse to directly cut spending. Instead, they print money. Unfortunately, the citizenry does not realize printing money and the ensuing inflation amount to a cut in benefits. Then politicians lay the blame for inflation on greedy capitalists who raise prices.

Europe's bad boys have played this trick repeatedly, undermining the value of their currency and reducing their citizens' standard of living. From 1980 to the launch of the euro in January 1999, the Italian lira and Portuguese escudo lost 108% and 244% of their value against the U.S. dollar, respectively. Greece devalued the drachma 583% against the dollar from 1981 until its euro entry in January 2001. Meanwhile, the deutsche mark remained remarkably stable against the dollar, gaining a mere 1.74% over 20 years.

Now the people borrowing and spending the money, such as Greece, Italy and Portugal, are not the same people controlling the money supply. This is handled by the European Central Bank, whose policies Germany monitors closely. When spendaholics reach their tax and borrow limits they can no longer print money. Thus the violent convulsions reverberating through countries that must face the music.

Until now, investors saw socialist calls for more borrowing and more spending as ridiculous, since no one will loan them money. The only reason private investors now care is because they were recently forced to take a 70% loss on Greek government bonds.

Then came the stroke of genius that united the forces of socialism and capitalism: Allow the profligate nations such as Greece, Italy, Portugal, etc., to borrow and spend, but require Germany to pay back the loans.

In its November 2011 Green Paper, the European Commission proposed that each eurozone member be fully liable for the entire issuance of eurobonds. Germany, with the highest GDP and good credit, has the most to lose from such an approach.

Therein lies the common ground between investors looking to save their own portfolios and politicians looking to spend their way into office. Who cares what happens to Germany and the other responsible nations?

Unfortunately, the long-term consequence of this approach will be global economic chaos. In the past, patterns of taxing, borrowing, spending and the printing of money destroyed local economies. These collapses occurred over time, and the impact was isolated. If Germany assumes the ultimate obligation of paying the debt of other nations, the bubble grows. When Europe gets to the point of collapse, who will guarantee that debt?

Eventually, money will be printed and the standard of living will fall for citizens of irresponsible nations. This is a historical reality. The only real question is, do we prefer that the entire European bubble burst at once, or mitigate the risk by allowing local bubbles to burst periodically over time? The best possible answer is for Angela Merkel to just say nein to more eurobonds.

Mr. Will is professor of finance at the University of Indianapolis.

How the Euro Will End

By GERALD P. O'DRISCOLL JR, WSJ

The euro is the world's first currency invented out of whole cloth. It is a currency without a country. The European Union is not a federal state, like the United States, but an agglomeration of sovereign states. European countries are plagued by rigidities, including those in labor markets—where language differences and the protection of trades and professions in many countries impede labor mobility. That makes it difficult for their economies to adjust to cyclical and structural economic shifts.

For such reasons, when the euro was created in 1999, Milton Friedman famously predicted its demise within a decade. He was wrong about the timing, but he may yet be proven right about the fact.

Greece is the epicenter of a currency and fiscal crisis in the euro zone. Markets fear a "Grexit," or Greek exit from the euro. That exit is almost a foregone conclusion. The endgame for the euro will be played out in Spain.
But first to Greece, which is devolving from a money-using economy. Firms, households and even the government are short on cash. The government isn't paying its suppliers and workers in a timely fashion, so households cannot pay their bills to businesses with whom they transact. Businesses, in turn, cannot pay their suppliers. There is a cascade of cash constraints.

Normally, credit supplements cash in economic transactions. But there is scant credit in Greece. Anyone who can is moving their money out of the country, either to banks in other euro-zone countries, such as Germany, or out of the euro to banks in Switzerland, the United Kingdom and U.S. (the franc, pound and dollar, respectively).

Absent a truly dramatic event, Greece will exit the euro not by choice but by necessity. It will do so not because the drachma (its old currency) is superior to the euro, but because the drachma is superior to barter. Greek standards of living, which have already fallen substantially, will fall further in the short- to medium-term. It will then be up to the Greek people to forge a new future.

While a Greek exit from the euro zone will have substantial repercussions, it won't unleash the doomsday scenario painted by some. A Spanish exit would be an entirely different matter. Unlike Greece, Spain is a major economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, at official exchange rates in 2011 the Spanish economy was more than five times the size of Greece's. And unlike Greece, Spain has numerous banks, some large and global.

The Greek tragedy began with a fiscal crisis—brought on by the government spending more money than it took in—that became a banking crisis. In Spain, there is a fiscal crisis that exacerbates a banking crisis.

Fiscal and banking crises are often linked because in modern economics the state and banking are joined together. Banks purchase government debt, supporting the state, and governments guarantee the liabilities of banks. When one party is weakened, so is the other.

Spanish banks are impaired not only because the Spanish government is running large fiscal deficits, but also because of bad loans to the private sector. Many Spanish banks lent heavily to property developers and to individuals who wanted to purchase homes built by the developers. Spain's construction sector is substantially larger relative to the rest of its economy than is the construction sector in other euro-zone countries or the U.S. And bank debt to finance that sector grew much faster than elsewhere.

Spanish banks have taken huge write downs on their loans, but not enough. Only the exact size of the future write downs is in doubt, not that they will be very large. The Spanish government has effectively nationalized one bank, Bankia—due to threatened insolvency—but will very likely be faced with more takeovers.

The Spanish government has finally admitted that it does not have the funds to recapitalize its banks. EU finance ministers have reportedly committed up to 100 billion euros ($125 billion) for that effort. Experience with banking crises in general suggests that early estimates of losses will prove to be too low. Political leaders start with denial and then offer only belated recognition of the size of banking problems. That was true in the U.S. savings and loan crisis of the 1980s and the 2007-08 bust in housing finance, the banking crisis in Ireland, so far in Spain.

How the Spanish banking situation is handled will determine the future of the euro and possibly of the larger European Union. Will German's taxpayers and those of other solvent countries be willing to fund an even larger bailout of Spanish banks to save impecunious Spaniards? Will the citizens of EU countries outside the euro zone, such as Sweden and the U.K., be asked to chip in? Or will Spain be allowed to descend into a catastrophic 1930s-style banking crisis and Great Depression?

Spanish banking problems are not the end, but only the beginning, of European banking problems. Banks in France, the U.K. and Germany also hold large amounts of the sovereign and private debt of Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain. The government of Cyprus has already made an "exceptionally urgent" request for funds to recapitalize its banks, and markets are now worried about Italy's debt, which limits Rome's ability to deal with banking problems.

The euro zone is in a crisis, in the correct sense of the word, a turning point from which it will either recover or enter a terminal phase. One important factor that may determine the outcome is the degree of leadership in Europe.

By and large, political leaders in Europe are a feckless lot. There are exceptions, particularly in some of the Nordic countries (e.g., Estonia), but the absence of leadership may be the decisive factor leading to the euro's demise. In Spain and elsewhere, leaders have been willing to apply temporary fixes to their banking problems rather than to recognize the true size of the problem. The banks, not fiscal deficits, will be the undoing of the euro.

In the end, I side with Milton Friedman. If Europe had made the political decision for a federal state, a single currency would have been a natural outcome. When 17 states decided to adopt the euro first without political union, they got it backward.

Mr. O'Driscoll is a senior fellow at the Cato Institute. He was formerly a vice president at the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and later a vice president at Citigroup.

Eurocopa & eurocrises

JOÃO PEREIRA COUTINHO, Folha de SP

1. Sempre gostei da Eurocopa. O futebol é um pormenor. As minhas razões são políticas. Gosto da Eurocopa porque ela é a expressão tangível (e bem ruidosa) da diversidade nacional europeia que nenhuma construção federal será capaz de suprimir.

Dias atrás, a chanceler Angela Merkel declarou em entrevista: a solução para os problemas do euro passa por mais "integração" dos países da zona do euro. Tradução: é necessária uma estrutura política federal, ou aparentada, com a Alemanha no topo e a Europa transformada numa união semelhante aos Estados Unidos da América.

Angela Merkel, claro, não lê a imprensa portuguesa. Se lesse, veria o que escreveram a respeito do jogo Alemanha x Portugal (que os portugueses, injustamente, perderam por 1 a 0). A retórica antigermânica era violenta, o que se entende: o país está sob resgate financeiro internacional, com a bênção punitiva da Alemanha.

Por isso o jogo não foi um jogo. Antes, o ajuste de contas entre o servo e o capataz. Infelizmente, ganhou o capataz.

Mas as rivalidades que a Eurocopa oferece não são apenas explicadas por crises econômicas momentâneas. Existem também memórias históricas que persistem em retornar à superfície.

Jogos como Polônia x Rússia ou França x Inglaterra são evocações fantasmagóricas de lutas seculares que deixaram a sua pegada arqueológica. Quando essas equipes se voltarem a enfrentar na Eurocopa, não será apenas de futebol que a mídia irá falar.

Que lições ensina a competição? Uma lição simples: nos Estados Unidos, os New York Yankees podem ter uma rivalidade conhecida com os Boston Red Sox. Mas, quando a hora do jogo se aproxima, o estádio enche-se de americanos, não de "new yorkers" ou de "bostonians". E todos eles cantam o único hino que interessa -o hino de um país, forjado com o sangue da Guerra Civil.

Na Europa, não existe um único país; nem sequer, como pretendem os federalistas, diferentes "regiões" que podem fazer parte de um super

Estado com capital em Bruxelas.

O que existe são nações múltiplas que, na hora do confronto desportivo, regressam a um sentimento primordial de pertença: a uma língua, uma cultura, uma identidade. Nações que, mesmo em tempos de paz, conservam ainda na memória afinidades comuns -ou aversões mútuas.

Não é por acaso que um jogo entre Portugal x Inglaterra (dois velhos aliados) nunca tem a carga "bélica" de um Portugal x Espanha.

Nas páginas finais das suas memórias, Jean Monnet, um dos pais fundadores da Comunidade Europeia do Carvão e do Aço, semente da atual União Europeia, escrevia: "A soberania das nações do passado não consegue mais resolver os problemas do presente: não consegue mais garantir a essas nações o progresso e controle do seu futuro. A Comunidade [Europeia do Carvão e do Aço] é apenas um estágio rumo ao novo mundo do futuro".

Jean Monnet, manifestamente, nunca assistiu à Eurocopa.

2. A Espanha vai receber um empréstimo dos restantes países da zona do euro no valor de 100 bilhões de euros. Para recapitalizar o seu setor bancário exaurido. Tudo está bem quando acaba bem?

Longe disso. Um dos melhores estudos que li sobre a crise europeia pertence a Jay Shambaugh. Título: "The Euro's Three Crisis". Tese poderosa: a crise do euro é, na verdade, composta por três crises. Uma crise bancária, uma crise de endividamento e uma crise de crescimento. A Espanha tem as três em proporções avassaladoras. O que significa que resolver a primeira deixa as outras duas intactas.

Pior: de acordo com Jay Shambaugh, as três crises estão tão interligadas que mexer em apenas uma delas muitas vezes piora as restantes. A Irlanda tentou resolver a sua crise bancária -e agravou brutalmente a crise de endividamento. A Grécia tentou corrigir o endividamento com medidas de austeridade -e matou o crescimento.

Enfrentar a crise do euro, avisa Shambaugh, é enfrentar as três crises, não apenas usar remendos para uma delas.

Quem acredita que a Espanha resolve os seus problemas com 100 bilhões de euros para o setor bancário vai ter surpresas desagradáveis a curto prazo.

Euro - o encontro final

Vídeo que mostra como será o último dos encontros da Comunidade Europeia para negociar a saída ou permanência da Grécia no euro.

Sensible Keynesians see no easy way out

By Raghuram Rajan, Financial Times 

In the long run we are not dead, we will still be recovering from the Great Recession. We should therefore weigh stimulus policies not just on their immediate effect but on their consequences over time. Sensible Keynesians recognise this. They bet that reviving growth through government spending today outweighs the future loss of growth as the debt taken on to fund current spending is paid back. Consider two circumstances where this may apply.

The first is in a fully fledged panic where demand collapses, banks and companies fail and organisational capital is destroyed. Save, possibly, for Greece, it is hard to argue any industrial country is there today.

The key question then is whether more government spending can make a real difference to the most severe employment problems. Here the case for a general stimulus becomes less compelling. In the US, demand is weakest in communities where a boom and bust in house prices has left an overhang of household debt. Lower local demand has hit employment in industries such as retail and restaurants. A general increase in government spending may be too blunt – greater demand in New York is not going to help families eat out in Las Vegas (and hence create more restaurant jobs there). Targeted household debt write-offs in Las Vegas could be a better use of stimulus dollars.The second is when persistent high unemployment leads the long term unemployed to lose the habits and skills that make them employable. This is probably the more pertinent case in several industrial countries, such as the US and Spain. Increasing employment in a sustainable way today could more than pay for itself if people who would otherwise drop out of the workforce earn incomes.

However, the past build-up of debt in now depressed areas may suggest that demand was too high relative to incomes. If so, demand, without the dangerous stimulant of borrowing, will stay weak. Policy should instead help workers move where there are suitable jobs – for instance, by helping them offload their homes and the associated debt without the stigma of default.

Employment is also lower in states that experienced a housebuilding bust. In these states, unemployment is higher among construction workers and in related jobs such as real estate brokerage. Could big publicly funded infrastructure projects, modelled on those in the 1930s, re-employ them? Possibly not, since today’s built-up US is less in need of infrastructure on that scale. Moreover, it is not clear that a worker used to putting up drywall can move easily to laying fibre-optic cable. Perhaps it would be better policy to support retraining for private jobs.

Japan, which had a huge property boom and bust in the late 1980s, provides a salutary warning of the difficulties of stimulus through infrastructure spending. Even though Japan covered much of the country with concrete, it never fully emerged from the crisis. For the Japanese, the long run has arrived, and they are older, fewer and have the highest government debt in the G7.

The US government can still spend. The UK is more on the margin. With a huge financial sector dependent on the government’s financial standing, it can take fewer chances with its finances. Austerity is painful, which is why austerity tomorrow is not credible. Yet shared tax increases and spending cuts can instil a sense of national purpose to help a country weather tough times.

For Greece, government spending is the problem, not the solution. A responsible government would implement judicious austerity, firing the party hacks who were hired in the go-go years, cutting wages and pensions and restructuring itself to collect taxes and provide useful services, even while retaining transfers to the indigent and elderly. As public sector workers share the private sector’s pain, national solidarity could improve. Also, improved government efficiency and other structural reforms will make it easier for Europe to provide the financing that will prevent even more savage cuts to government functions. And it will make it easier to write down Greek debt further and attract private investment, giving people hope of growth.

Targeted government spending, or reduced austerity, along the lines suggested by sensible Keynesians, might be feasible in some countries and helpful in speeding recovery. But we should examine each policy based on a country’s circumstances. We should be particularly wary of populist Keynesians, who parrot “in the long run we are dead” to justify any short-sighted government action. They do the world a disservice by suggesting there are easy ways out. By misleading people and their leaders, they may well precipitate revolution rather than recovery.

Time to plan a velvet divorce for the euro

By Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

As I read the umpteenth article on the “Grexit”, a phrase from the filmMarathon Man ran around my head. In this cult-thriller, Laurence Olivier plays a war criminal turned dentist who tortures Dustin Hoffman by drilling through his dental nerves without anaesthetic. As he does so, he asks repeatedly “Is it safe?”

“Is it safe?” is the question European leaders have been asking themselves for months, as they contemplate Greece leaving the eurozone. Late last year I found myself discussing this very question with a senior European politician. He had noticed that I had written repeatedly that the eurozone was a flawed construction that was likely to collapse. If that was the case, I was asked, would it not be better to break the whole thing up now?

At this point, I heard myself becoming shifty and evasive – “The trouble,” I replied, “is that I keep being told that a break-up would cause a catastrophe. Until I can tell you convincingly why that’s untrue, I can’t responsibly advocate it.”

But prevarication is no longer good enough. In the coming months, Europe may be forced to decide.

So – to answer the question that I dodged back in December – yes, I do think that it would ultimately be better if the eurozone broke up. This might not involve a complete reversion to national currencies. A hard core of euro-users, centred on Germany, might survive. But the current euro will have to go.

It is true that the transition from here to there will be painful and dangerous. My colleague Martin Wolf laid out an updated version of thefull horror scenario in Friday’s FT – involving a breakdown of law and order in Greece, and financial collapse across Europe. How could anyone responsibly run that risk?

The answer is that the alternatives to eurozone break-up are inherently implausible and deeply unattractive. At the weekend G8 leaders called for Greece to stay in the eurozone. Their present plan seems to involve some magical mix of stimulus and austerity that restores both budgetary balance and growth. But even if they can agree a real plan and even if it works – and neither outcome is likely – the eurozone’s structural problems would remain.

Without the option of devaluing their currencies, uncompetitive economies are left with “internal devaluation” – otherwise known as wage cuts and mass unemployment. It is true that countries such as Greece badly need economic reforms. But these reforms – conducted within the straitjacket of monetary union with Germany – are causing political and economic turmoil.

The real problem, however, is political. The euro does not have a political union behind it so it simply lacks the key institutions needed to make monetary union work. There is no strong central government to enforce budgetary discipline and no large federal budget to fund transfers from rich to poor areas. And, as we are discovering, there is no euro-wide bank-deposit insurance scheme.

In theory, the eurozone might rectify this error by moving to a real political union. But the idea of a permanent transfer of sovereignty from Athens to Brussels has been rejected by all sides in Greece. Meanwhile, in Germany, the idea of a transfer union – involving a permanent gush of subsidies from northern to southern Europe – remains anathema.

Even if EU politicians were able to overcome such objections and create a real federal union, this giant new entity would essentially hollow out the powers of national democracies. Sacrificing national self-rule on the altar of the euro is inherently objectionable – and would invite a nationalist backlash across Europe. This “cure” for the ills of the euro would be worse than the disease.

Since the long-term alternatives to the break-up of the eurozone lack credibility, it is necessary to think about how to manage such an event – rather than simply dismissing it as too dangerous to contemplate.

Unfortunately, the break-up plans that Europeans are already drawing up behind closed doors are too limited.

They envisage a Greek exit, followed by a determined effort to throw up a firewall that prevents other countries being sucked into the crisis. This has unfortunate echoes of the past two years, during which the EU has consistently tried and failed to confine the crisis to Greece.

In fact, the exit of Greece would unleash contagion, by making it clear that membership of the euro need not be permanent. Markets would inevitably round on the next vulnerable countries.

Allowing the fate of the euro to be driven by a succession of market panics would be the worst possible way of breaking up the single currency. It would involve the loss of billions of euros of public money as the EU burnt through its firewall. The political and economic turmoil that followed would cause public panic and discredit the politicians in charge.

It would be infinitely preferable if EU leaders were to make a rational assessment of which countries are willing and able to stay in the euro – and announce plans to work on an amicable and orderly divorce between the stayers and the goers. Only by acting in this way might they finally achieve their oft-stated goal of “getting ahead of events”. Almost all euro-users adopted the currency without a referendum, and they could leave the same way.

It is true that even a “velvet divorce” for the eurozone would involve enormous dangers. But at least it would offer a believable exit from the present maze. As a (very) German proverb puts it – “Better an end with horror, than a horror without end.”

O fim do euro

Meu novo artigo para o OrdemLivre.org: “The european single currency is bound to fail, economically, politically, and indeed socially, though the timing, occasion, and full consequences are all necessarily still unclear.” (Margaret Thatcher)

Democracy and the Euro

Editorial do WSJ

One way to look at this week's events in Greece is as George Papandreou's revenge. As Prime Minister last November, he proposed that Greeks vote on whether they could live with the conditions the EU and IMF were imposing in return for a bailout. The idea sent markets into a tizzy, Mr. Papandreou lost his job, and the referendum never occurred.

But Greek voters are having their say anyway. On Tuesday Greek President Karolos Papoulias called a new election for next month, after no party could put together a majority following this month's splintered election.

The far-left Syriza coalition, which finished second in the voting, is rejecting the bailout terms and demanding an end to fiscal restraint and economic reform. Presumably the Greeks will now have a no-holds-barred debate about the consequences of their policy choices, including possible ouster from the euro zone.

The rest of Europe may find this inconvenient, but this strikes us as progress and in any event was inevitable. That was the wisdom behind Mr. Papandreou's stillborn idea. Like every other country in the EU, Greece is still a democracy. Greek voters reserve the right to say no to Brussels, or even to elect those willing to abrogate agreements made in their names by former governments.

For decades, the European conceit has been that voters would gladly cede their national right to democratic accountability in return for Continental peace and prosperity. This worked as long as there was prosperity. But now that pan-European governance includes painful policy choices imposed from afar, the national publics want their franchise to mean something.

Angela Merkel may want to enshrine fiscal rectitude for all time in a fiscal pact. The German Chancellor may even be right as a policy matter to want to do that given that her taxpayers will otherwise have to pay. But the fatal flaw in her vision is that she can't control the course of democratic events outside Germany's borders. All the more so when she has become arguably the main issue in Greek politics, complete with demagogic posters of her in Nazi garb.

In a sense the Greeks are using their elections as a way to renegotiate the terms of their most recent €130 billion bailout by the rest of Europe. They assume that if they refuse to go along, the Germans and the European Central Bank will give in and ease the terms of fiscal retrenchment and reform.

The belief, at least on the Greek left, is that the country will be able both to stay in the euro and keep its generous welfare state, albeit with some mild adjustment. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras is even proposing to hire 100,000 more public employees.

European leaders will be doing everyone a favor if they make clear that there is no such easy way out. If Greeks want to continue being rescued by the rest of Europe, they must meet European terms. If Greeks can't manage that, then Athens will get no more bailout cash and will have to find the money to pay its own bills.

And if Athens fails to do so, then default and ouster from the euro zone are likely, with all of the predictably terrible consequences for Greek living standards following the return of the drachma and devaluation. Instead of staying as part of modern Europe, Greece will slide toward a Third World future.

European leaders need to deliver this message not as a threat, but as the reality of what Greeks are risking if they reject reform. At least this is a choice Greeks will be making for themselves. The lesson will not be lost on voters elsewhere in the euro zone.

Europe's leaders can't repeal democracy on the Continent, and therefore they can't ask countries in the euro zone for more than their politicians can deliver or their populations can take. This means admitting that the bailout model that Europe adopted for Greece two years ago has failed and is increasing political polarization across Europe, and not only in Greece.

The euro zone was conceived as a currency union among countries adhering to certain basic fiscal rules. Had it stuck to that vision in this crisis—rather than turn it into a fiscal or debt union—and let Greece face the consequences of its economic mismanagement from the beginning, Greece might have defaulted and stayed within the euro.

Now so much damage has been done that it's hard to see such an outcome. Trying to turn the euro into a larger political union has put the entire euro zone in jeopardy.

O naufrágio da Europa

João Pereira Coutinho, Folha de SP

1. François HOLLANDE ganha as presidenciais francesas e a Europa, ou uma parte dela, respira de alívio: agora, finalmente, será possível abandonar a austeridade e abraçar o crescimento econômico.

O próprio Hollande foi alimentando as expectativas: com ele, a disciplina orçamental imposta pelos alemães aos restantes países da União Europeia seria "renegociada"; a economia francesa iria promover políticas de crescimento econômico a curto prazo; e o Estado social seria preservado, e até reforçado, com mais funcionários públicos, a diminuição da idade da reforma (dos 62 para os 60 anos) e subsídios de todo tipo (para famílias, jovens, empresas etc.).

Infelizmente, faltou a pergunta sacramental: e quem paga todos esses delírios?

Mistério. Verdade que "monsieur" Hollande, para sustentar algumas das suas propostas, acredita que a Europa será capaz de emitir "eurobonds" para financiar grandes projetos industriais ou de infraestruturas; ou até de alterar os estatutos do Banco Central Europeu para que a instituição passe a financiar diretamente os Estados.

O que Hollande desconhece, ou propositadamente ignorou, é que nada disso depende da sua exclusiva vontade. E a Alemanha, que tem a chave do cofre, opõe-se frontalmente às ambições do novo presidente francês. Por questões de princípio, interesse econômico -e eleições em 2013.

Ou muito me engano, ou as expectativas geradas por François Hollande só vão durar até as eleições legislativas de junho. Depois, será a ressaca da realidade.

2. Alguns amigos que trabalham na União Europeia não gostam das minhas posições eurocéticas. A União Europeia é sagrada, o euro, idem, as "políticas de austeridade" impostas pela Alemanha, ibidem.

E eu não passo de um dinossauro, amarrado a noções anacrônicas de "soberania nacional" que não têm mais lugar no mundo globalizado onde vivemos.

Defendo-me como posso. Digo que nada tenho contra a União Europeia. Pelo contrário: reconheço o seu papel como garantia de paz e prosperidade na Europa.

Mas reconhecer isso não me obriga a reconhecer o resto. O euro, por exemplo, foi um erro político grave -e a sua manutenção a qualquer preço, um erro político ainda maior.

Não é possível que uma moeda comum possa servir a países com estruturas econômicas tão distintas. A União Europeia não é uma federação de Estados. É apenas uma coleção de tribos com histórias, vícios e virtudes dissonantes.

O euro, que supostamente acabaria por aproximar as nações do continente, apenas revelou o fosso inultrapassável que existe entre países excedentários (Alemanha) e deficitários (Grécia ou Portugal).

De resto, e sobre as "políticas de austeridade", não me oponho a elas -em teoria: é importante que os Estados tenham controle nos gastos e moderação nos seus níveis de endividamento. A festa do euro, que possibilitou dinheiro fácil a juros baixos, não podia continuar.

O problema é que não é possível realizar ajustamentos brutais nas economias endividadas do continente quando esses países perderam soberania monetária. A austeridade só alimenta ciclos recessivos sem fim que, por sua vez, exigem novas medidas de austeridade.

A Grécia é o melhor exemplo dessa armadilha: depois de dois pacotes de resgate e de um calote negociado da dívida, o país está na mesma: quebrado. E, sem surpresa, com partidos extremistas a crescerem no Parlamento e nas ruas.

3. França, Grécia, Holanda em breve: a grande novidade nos ciclos eleitorais da Europa está no regresso dos extremismos.

No primeiro turno das presidenciais francesas, a extrema-direita da Frente Nacional obteve 17,8% dos votos; Marine Le Pen promete agora repetir o resultado nas legislativas de junho.

Na Grécia, a esquerda radical ficou em segundo lugar -e um partido abertamente neonazista elegeu duas dúzias de deputados. E, na Holanda, a extrema-direita derrubou o governo duas semanas atrás.

Qualquer pessoa que tenha uma noção da história reconhece o que se está a passar: com economia moribunda e desemprego massivo, a Europa regressa à década de 1930.

Os meus amigos euroentusiastas assobiam para o lado e fingem que não se passa nada. Essa atitude também faz parte do "déjà-vu".

Europe's Phony Growth Debate

Editorial do WSJ

Growth or austerity? That's the choice facing Europe these days—or so the Keynesian consensus keeps saying. According to this view, which has dominated world economic councils since the 2008 crisis began, "growth" is mainly a function of government spending.

Spend more and you're for growth, even if a country raises taxes to pay for the spending. But dare to cut spending as the Germans suggest, and you're for austerity and thus opposed to growth.

This is a nonsense debate that misconstrues the real sources of economic prosperity and helps explain Europe's current mess. The real debate ought to be over which policies best produce growth.

In the 1980s, the world learned (or so we thought) that the way out of the malaise of the 1970s were reforms that encourage private investment and risk-taking, labor mobility and flexibility, an end to price controls, tax rates that encouraged capital formation, and what the World Bank now broadly calls "the ease of doing business." Amid this crisis, Europe has tried everything except these policies.

If Reagan or Margaret Thatcher are too déclassé for Europeans to invoke, how about Germany? Throughout the 1990s and the first years of the last decade, Germany was Europe's hobbled giant, with consistently subpar growth rates and unemployment that in 2005 hit 11.3%, nearly at the top of the OECD chart.

Then-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, a Social Democrat, surprised the world, to say nothing of his own voters, by pushing through the labor-market reforms that paved the way for the current relative prosperity. The changes cut welfare benefits and gave employers more flexibility in reaching agreement with their employees on working time and pay.

The Schröder government, and later the coalition under Angela Merkel, also cut federal corporate income taxes to 15% from 45% in 1998. Include state taxes, and the effective corporate rate today is close to 30%, down from 50% or more in the 1990s. These reforms made Germany more competitive, attracted investment and jobs, and paved the way for the country's economic resurgence and an unemployment rate currently at 5.7%.

Mrs. Merkel's government did the world an additional favor in 2009, amid the financial crisis, by rejecting calls from the International Monetary Fund, then British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, President Obama, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and the same dominant Keynesian consensus to join the global spending party.

"They've already pumped endless amounts of money into the economy," said German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble in 2010 about U.S. policy. "The results are dismal." (See our March 12, 2009 editorial, "Old Europe Is Right on Stimulus.")

Germany's resurgence might have been even stronger if Mrs. Merkel and her coalition partners hadn't reneged on their tax-cutting campaign promises and raised VAT and other taxes in a bid to stay close to budget balance. Still, Europe is lucky that its largest economy remains strong and creditworthy.

Yet now Mrs. Merkel is widely berated for avoiding the policy errors that led to the debt crisis and for having the nerve to encourage other countries to emulate the reforms that worked in Germany. The Keynesians will never forgive the Germans for being right.

Another European spending spree is unsustainable in any case. As the nearby chart shows, debt levels have climbed dramatically across the developed world since the crisis began in 2008, and that debt and the current dreary recovery (or double-dip recessions) are all there is to show for the great Keynesian spending blowout.

Now bond yields are ticking back up in the euro zone's periphery economies, European stock indexes are stumbling, and much of the Continent is in recession. Adam Smith's bond vigilantes are telling European governments that without reforms that reduce spending and encourage more growth in the private economy, their countries are increasingly risky bets. As the smarter Germans understand, the bond markets may be the only lobby for genuine pro-growth reform that exists in most of Europe.

Other than an inflation that will create new problems and bring its own crisis, economic growth is the only way out of Europe's debt morass. But it has to be private growth driven by reforms in taxes, labor markets, regulation, pensions and more.

Europe's voters have already swept several governments from office, and they seem ready to sweep out more. But what really needs to be swept away is the dominant and debilitating consensus that government spending can conjure prosperity.

A euro parable: the couple with a joint account

Kenneth Rogoff, Financial Times

Perhaps the following parable is not entirely fair to the euro, but nevertheless the parallels seem striking.

Consider a young couple who is contemplating marriage, but unsure whether to take the big step. So instead they decide to test things out by opening a joint bank account. At first things go remarkably smoothly. Heady with success, they get the inspiration of extending the arrangement to her brother and his sister. Not only do they hope to show their siblings how well they can cooperate, but with four people, the total size of the account reaches the critical threshold needed to receive exorbitant privileges normally accorded to the bank’s larger customers.

Thanks to a cleverly designed constraint to limit imbalances between each sibling’s contributions and withdrawals, the innovative experiment continues to flourish. There is no real enforcement mechanism, but the two sets of siblings are determined to make the arrangement succeed. Forced to interact routinely, the couple and their siblings start becoming closer. They even start having dinners together on a routine basis.

Eventually, the quartet decides that dinners will be even more fun, and the bank will give them an even better deal, if they expand the arrangement. So the siblings persuade a few cousins to join. Pretty soon, their phones are ringing off the hook with family members they have not seen in years. Cousin Kendra, a marginally employed chef with precarious finances, is nevertheless welcomed in hopes she will employ her culinary skills to enrich group meals.

Life is not without its problems. Everyone is irritated at first cousin Nigel, who lives just across the river yet insists on managing his own finances. He is still invited to meals, though his cooking skills are hardly up to Cousin Kendra’s. She, in turn, exhibits little enthusiasm for balancing her chequebook, and the bank sends ever more frequent warnings that her overdrafts would have to be covered by the others. Shortly after joining, a couple other cousins have taken advantage of their new prime customer bank status to buy extravagant apartments with jumbo loans at far lower interest rates than they were ever afforded in the past.

The whole complex scheme seems to survive against all odds until one day things suddenly start to collapse. Despite informal personal imbalance limits, several cousins significantly overdraw their accounts. Others fall behind on mortgage repayments. Panicked, the founding siblings ask themselves whether it might be best simply to kick out the group’s worst behaving members. Unfortunately, the bank informs them this will be very difficult to do without first closing the entire account, wreaking havoc with everyone's finances.

Desperate, the family brings in a well-regarded outside financial advisor. She comes up with the seemingly brilliant idea of a joint credit card, with payments guaranteed unconditionally by all, including the wealthiest cousins. This would allow the impecunious members to pay off bad cheques and mortgages, effectively borrowing against the resources of the others. And it wouldn’t be a gift, the advisor promised. Borrowers would pledge to skip meals. Any savings on ingredients would be used to make loan repayments. This works for a while until cousin Kendra starts to look pale from her diet. She begins missing work and the imbalance between her occasional deposits and frequent withdrawals gets worse. The richest cousins soon find they have to mortgage their houses in order to pledge enough cash to the bank to prevent an immediate collapse.

Of course, this grand experiment ends catastrophically. I will have to leave the reader in suspense as to whether the couple gets married. No doubt, in the film version of this parable, the studio would tape alternate endings and test which one sample audiences liked best.

Perhaps the parable overstates the risks fully independent countries face when sharing the same currency, but then again, maybe not by so much.

Economists have long understood that significant labour mobility is not nearly enough, A sustainable currency union requires other country-like features including a centralised fiscal authority that has as at least as much power to collect taxes as the constituent states. A central financial regulator is also essential, at least absent an adequate global regulator. And the centre cannot be endowed with so much power without the legitimacy that can only come from political union. Currency union without political union is an unstable halfway house.

This is not to say that a future United States of Europe, or part of Europe, needs to take any particular narrowly defined form. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for marriages or currency unions, although a loose bond that is easily broken is obviously not enough.

The real lesson of the euro’s grand experiment is that, given the weak state of global governance, the optimal single currency area is probably still a country, at least when two or more large countries are involved. A pre-nuptial joint bank account is a very unstable route to marriage.

The writer is professor of economics at Harvard University and co-author of “This Time is Different”

Fronteiras fechadas

Rodrigo Constantino

Deu no Der Spiegel: A Vote of No Confidence in Europe

Diz um trecho da matéria:

Germany and France are serious this time. During next week's meeting of European Union interior ministers, the two countries plan to start a discussion about reintroducing national border controls within the Schengen zone. According to the German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung, German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich and his French counterpart, Claude Guéant, have formulated a letter to their colleagues in which they call for governments to once again be allowed to control their borders as "an ultima ratio" -- that is, measure of last resort -- "and for a limited period of time." They reportedly go on to recommend 30-days for the period.


Como tenho repetido ad nauseam, a tentativa de forçar um casamento sem afinidades culturais na zona do euro vai acabar produzindo uma separação litigiosa. No afã de selar a paz imposta de cima para baixo pela moeda comum, a elite europeia acabou parindo enormes desequilíbrios econômicos, e agora demandam uma união fiscal na marra, à revelia dos alemães (que pagariam o grosso da conta).

Uma moeda comum depende de alguns fatores para funcionar, como realidades econômicas não tão díspares e mobilidade de mão de obra. Quando os paulistas pagam via transferência federal para os maranhenses, isso é tolerado em nome da "cultura nacional" ou, no limite, há um êxodo de nordestinos para o sudeste, como ocorreu no passado. O mesmo se dá dentro dos Estados Unidos. Na China e na Rússia o fenômeno não ocorre livremente porque o estado autoritário controla a migração, exigindo passaportes mesmo dentro das fronteiras.

Mas e quando os gregos precisam migrar para a Alemanha? Não só a língua é totalmente diferente, como a cultura e o sentimento patriótico são distantes. Acaba que este pilar crucial da união monetária fica faltando. Os gregos - e portugueses, e espanhóis, e italianos - não são livres de fato para migrar para a Alemanha, ajudando a equilibrar as respectivas economias. Ao mesmo tempo, os alemães não aceitam transferir recursos, o que seria equivalente do ponto de vista econômico. Resta, então, fechar as fronteiras e criar ainda mais desequilíbrios entre suas economias. O euro vai ficando cada vez mais insustentável desta forma.

Soros e o Bundesbank

Rodrigo Constantino

George Soros, o bilionário especulador, filantropo e defensor do esquerdista Barack Obama, escreveu um artigo no Financial Times em que ataca a postura do Bundesbank. Segundo Soros, o tradicional banco central alemão, orgulho do povo germânico por seu rigor na defesa do valor da moeda, tem representado um entrave para as verdadeiras "soluções" à crise europeia.

E quais seriam estas soluções? Reformas trabalhistas nos países periféricos, que perderam competitividade ao longo dos últimos anos frente ao colosso alemão? Redução da burocracia e dos gastos públicos? Desarmar a armadilha do "welfare state" que engessou suas economias? Nada disso. Para Soros, a solução é usar o BCE para imprimir papel-moeda de forma ilimitada e indefinida. Ele explica:

The Bundesbank has seen the danger. It is now campaigning against the indefinite expansion of the money supply, and it has started taking measures to limit the losses it would sustain in a break-up. This is creating a self-fulfilling prophecy: once the Bundesbank starts guarding against a break-up, everybody will have to do the same. Markets are beginning to reflect this.

Quanto ao risco de profecia autorealizável, eu concordo que existe. Mas é preciso destacar que ele existe porque os fundamentos são frágeis e os pilares que sustentam este casamento forçado são de areia! Ignorar as verdadeiras causas do problema e focar no sintoma é a forma garantida de postergar o estouro da crise, porém amplificando a catástrofe depois.

O que Soros gostaria de ver é um caminho mais rápido na direção de uma união fiscal. Em outras palavras, o BCE ganharia tempo injetando liquidez de forma alucinada enquanto os alemães aceitariam transferir recursos para os gregos, portugueses, espanhóis e italianos. Falta só combinar com os alemães! Estes precisam encarar todos como igualmente "europeus", e não membros de uma cultura totalmente diferente, com línguas absolutamente díspares e um estilo de vida não condizente com a produtividade de seu trabalho. Pelo voto fica difícil sair um acordo desses...

E Soros sabe disso. Ele sabe também que o Bundesbank, pilar de austeridade monetária na história da Alemanha, jamais aceitaria a rota inflacionária como saída para a crise. Por isso ele defende simplesmente a "morte" do Bundesbank:

The Bundesbank will never accept these proposals, but the European authorities ought to take them seriously. The future of Europe is a political issue: it is beyond the Bundesbank’s competence to decide.

Entenderam? O euro, um projeto político, precisa ser salvo a despeito dos enormes problemas que causou. E, para tanto, faz-se necessário enterrar de vez o Bundesbank e partir para uma união fiscal. Era exatamente esta a intenção da elite europeia, especialmente a francesa, quando o projeto foi concebido! Enterrar o Bundesbank e o marco alemão, sintoma da força relativa deste país, e impor a criação dos Estados Unidos da Europa, comandados por Bruxelas e com influência francesa desproporcional ao seu poderio econômico.

Em um artigo para O GLOBO, eu expliquei melhor estas intenções na origem do euro:

O projeto que criou a moeda comum partiu das elites europeias, incluindo socialistas franceses que sonhavam com um meio para recuperar seu prestígio e influência. O principal objetivo era político: domar a Alemanha recém-unificada. A ortodoxia de seu banco central (Bundesbank) e as reformas conhecidas como “ordoliberalismo” transformaram o país em uma potência na região. A valorização do marco frente às demais moedas era uma constante humilhação para todos.

Se dependesse de gente como George Soros, os socialistas franceses teriam aquilo tão sonhado, qual seja, um banco central dócil e subserviente aos interesses políticos de curto prazo. A moeda comum acabaria representando, na prática, a socialização imposta na região. Mas para ter maior integração comercial, liberdade econômica e paz, não é preciso ter uma mesma moeda, tampouco um poder centralizado em Bruxelas. No afã de buscar esta união forçada, acredito que essa turma vai acabar com o oposto daquilo que deseja: a desintegração da zona do euro. O tempo dirá...

Tensão social na Grécia aumenta

Rodrigo Constantino

Deu no Financial Times: Pre-election threat to stability in Greece

The credibility of Greece’s political class has sunk so low that both main parties of the centre right and centre left have faced problems finding suitable candidates to stand for election early next month.

Politicians are widely denounced as “thieves and traitors”, reflecting a populist view that their corrupt practices while in government were responsible for triggering Greece’s financial collapse.

One veteran political organiser for New Democracy, the conservative frontrunner, said: “The pool of potential candidates [for both main parties] has shrunk, especially in the provinces … Both respected professionals and prominent local government officials have been turning down offers.”

“There are fewer people than usual aspiring to run,” said a senior member of Pasok, the Panhellenic Socialist Movement that is in coalition with the centre-right under Lucas Papademos, the technocrat prime minister.

Campaigning has already started for an election expected to take place on May 6, even though the date will not be officially announced until midweek after parliament has approved another package of structural measures.

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Comentário: Tenho dito e repito que o euro é um projeto político, idealizado pela elite europeia, mais especificamente francesa, que tenta forçar um casamento entre culturas bem diferentes. Agora que a conta da farra chegou, com juros e correção monetária, o clima está péssimo. Os gregos não querem fazer os dolorosos ajustes necessários. A Alemanha, por meio dos burocratas de Bruxelas, tenta impor uma agenda de mais austeridade. Só tem um problema: combinar com os gregos! A democracia pode sobreviver ao projeto centralizador de poder em Bruxelas? Ou o elo fraco joga a toalha e vota sua saída da moeda comum? O tempo dirá. Particularmente, acho pouco provável este casório forçado durar muito mais tempo. O pior é que a fase de uma possível separação amigável pode ter ficado para trás.

Europe has yet to make Europeans

By Gideon Rachman, Financial Times

“We have made Italy, now we must make Italians.” So said Massimo d’Azeglio, an Italian intellectual, just after his country’s unification in 1861. The current generation of EU politicians face a modern version of the d’Azeglio dilemma: They have made a European Union, now they must make Europeans.

The construction of a group identity typically takes generations. But Europe’s politicians no longer have the luxury of time. Unless they can persuade the 500m or so citizens of the EU to feel more attachment to Europe and less to their nations, they may be unable to take the necessary steps to save the euro.

Most analysts reckon that, to survive, the euro will have to be backed by a much bigger European federal budget, common debt (eurobonds) and a more powerful central government. These things do not have to emerge immediately, but the direction of travel needs to be established soon. However, the popular backing for such steps is nowhere to be seen. German taxpayers balk at the idea of larger transfers of money to southern Europe. Greek and Spanish voters do not seem remotely ready to see their countries’ budgets made in Brussels. The European identity needed to make “Europe” work is not strong enough. But without it the EU looks like a building with shallow foundations, trying to withstand a political and economic earthquake.

The difficulty of “making Italians” is a cautionary tale for those who now have to struggle to “make Europeans”. More than 150 years after unification, the Northern League, a powerful opposition party, campaigns to turn Italy into a much looser federation, or even to break the country up.

The League’s leader, Umberto Bossi, was forced to resign last week but the tensions on which his party thrives remain. Southern Italy is still much poorer than the north. Some argue that its relative stagnation is partly a result of being stuck in a currency union with the more productive north. Meanwhile many northern taxpayers deeply resent the transfers of tax money to the south and lambast the region’s corruption.

Like Italy, Europe suffers from a north-south divide, with mutual resentments growing between the citizens of a more prosperous north and an economically struggling south. Somehow, politicians have to persuade both sides to overcome their differences, by thinking of themselves as Europeans.

But “making Europeans” will be much tougher than making Italians: the process of identity formation must take place across a huge territory with entrenched differences of language and culture.

All nation-builders have known that a shared national narrative and a common language are essential building blocks for the creation of a nation. Control of the education system is essential. In 1861, just one in 40 Italians actually spoke Italian. That was rectified through the schools. But today education remains firmly in the hands of the EU’s 27 nations. There is no common school curriculum inside the EU – far less instruction in a common language.

After a recent EU summit that saw the adoption of German-inspired fiscal rules, Volker Kauder, the parliamentary group leader for Chancellor Angela Merkel’s Christian Democrats, exulted: “Now Europe is speaking German”. But that is not true, literally or metaphorically. It is far too soon to proclaim that Germany’s economic “stability culture” has been internalised by southern Europe. And teaching of the German language has actually been on the slide in much of Europe – although demand for German lessons is reportedly picking up in southern Europe, as the unemployed contemplate emigration.

If Europe genuinely wanted all its citizens to be taught in a common language, the obvious candidate would be English. But proposing that English should be made the language of instruction in French schools would simply be a new and amusing way of committing political suicide.

Some pundits nonetheless thought they had spotted hopeful signs of the formation of a pan-European identity in the current French presidential election, when it was announced that Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, would campaign alongside Nicolas Sarkozy. But the idea was swiftly dropped, along with President Sarkozy’s early campaign theme that he would import a successful German model to France.

The barnstorming Le Bourget speech that launched the campaign of François Hollande, Mr Sarkozy’s chief rival, is full of references to great figures from French history – from Clemenceau to Camus. It is these cultural roots that give the speech its colour, its passion and its sense of history. The EU barely features.

In fact, as the French election has proceeded, so the debate has become more nationalistic. The authorities in Brussels, who are convinced that Europe must press ahead with deeper integration have instead had to listen to Mr Hollande promising to “renegotiate” the EU’s new fiscal pact and Mr Sarkozy threatening to pull France out of its agreement on border-free travel. Elections in Greece next month are also likely to see a sharp increase in nationalist rhetoric – particularly after the recent shocking suicide of a pensioner, who killed himself in front of parliament and left a note accusing Greek politicians of being traitors who had sold the country out to foreigners.

Group identities can be forged in moments of crisis and war. But, far from “making Europeans”, this current crisis is encouraging the citizens of the European Union to fall back on older, more deeply-rooted, national identities.

Comentário: Como já disse outras vezes, o euro foi um projeto concebido pela elite europeia, um ícone daquilo que Hayek chamou de "arrogância fatal". Foi um projeto político antes de econômico. A ideia era unir à força povos com culturas bem diferentes. A criação dos Estados Unidos da Europa era a meta ambiciosa daquela turma, incluindo socialistas franceses. Ocorre que faltou combinar com os alemães e gregos que eles, a partir de então, seriam um único povo. As línguas são diferentes, não há ampla mobilidade de mão de obra, ao contrário do que acontece nos EUA, e as culturas são bem distintas. Não se muda pilares tão estruturais por decreto estatal. Ao tentarem impor um casamento sem "amor" genuíno, os burocratas europeus vão acabar criando uma separação litigiosa. A sobrevivência do euro está longe de garantida.

There is no Spanish siesta for the eurozone

By Wolfgang Münchau, Financial Times

The markets have concluded that the eurozone crisis has ended. Several politicians said that they, too, believed that the worst was over. Complacency is back. I recall similar utterances in the past. Whenever there is some technical progress – an umbrella, a liquidity injection, a successful debt swap – optimism returns.

If you think the European Central Bank’s policies have “bought time”, you should ask yourself: time for what? Greece’s debt situation is as unsustainable as ever; so is Portugal’s; so is the European banking sector’s and so is Spain’s. Even if the ECB were to provide unlimited cheap finance for the rest of the decade, it would not be enough.

In Spain, most of the toxic debt is held in the private sector. The debt level of the private sector, namely households and non-financial corporations, was 227.3 per cent of gross domestic product at the end of 2010, according to Eurostat. Last year’s data are not out yet, but the number will be down only a little. One of the areas where adjustment is happening is in the housing market. The best index for Spain is the new series by the National Institute of Statistics, which shows the overall index for house prices fell by 11.2 per cent last year alone, but was only down 21.7 per cent from the peak in the third quarter of 2007. We should remember the Spanish bubble was much more extreme than others, but prices have only come down by around a fifth. In the Madrid region the movements have been more vigorous, with a peak-to-trough fall of 29.5 per cent.

On my estimates, Spain’s house price adjustment is still less than halfway complete. In real terms, the US housing boom has been almost completely cancelled out. The graphs of historic bubbles, if expressed in real prices, have nice bell-shaped curves. This makes sense, since domestic property is an unproductive real asset. In Spain, as elsewhere, it would be reasonable to assume real prices will eventually fall to where they were in the mid-to-late 1990s.

The Spanish government has forced the savings banks to write down €50bn in their property portfolios this year. This will only be a small part of what will ultimately be needed if the housing market falls as I expect it will. Official estimates assume mild price falls and a quick rebound in the economy. Both assumptions are delusional. How can the Spanish economy rebound if the private and the public sectors are deleveraging at the same time, and are likely to do so for many years?

The deleveraging of the public sector will be vicious. The deficit was 8.5 per cent of GDP last year. This was a big overshoot, but the reason was not fiscal indiscipline. It was necessary to avoid a bigger slump. The recently-revised target is 5.3 per cent for this year and 3 per cent next year. So the total public sector adjustment needed under the European deficit rules is an incredible 5.5 per cent over two years – this, in the middle of a recession. If you look at the extent of total deleveraging that lies ahead, in both private and public sectors, the question is not whether the Spanish economy rebounds in 2012 or 2013, but whether it can rebound at all before the end of this decade.

The typical European response to the last statement would be to say that economic reforms will increase confidence and produce growth. The optimists point to Italy, where the appointment of Mario Monti as prime minister has led to a seemingly virtuous circle of reforms and lower market interest rates. The main reform in both countries has been a moderate relaxing in labour laws. While that is probably necessary, I would be surprised if this has a material impact on long-term growth rates. Large parts of the labour market literature would have to be rewritten if it were the case.

For Spain, the right adjustment policy would be a programme to force the private sector to deleverage, over three to five years, supported by consistently robust public sector deficits, and yes, accompanied by economic reforms as well. The moment to address the public sector deficit is after the private sector deleveraging is complete. Such a policy would not only smooth the adjustment. It would accelerate it.

But a combination of ultra-lax monetary policies and fiscal retrenchment will delay the unavoidable adjustment. Spain remains stuck in a worsening debt trap, out of which default will be the only escape. If it pursued the agreed policies, it would end up where Greece, Portugal and Ireland are – under a rescue umbrella. This is the most likely scenario for Spain.

In November, I said European leaders had only 10 days to save the euro. My diagnosis then and now is that they have flunked it. The ECB’s policies have not bought time. They have slowed down the political processes and the economic adjustment needed to resolve the crisis. The worst, I fear, still lies ahead.