Friday, November 29, 2013

EL LADINO GLOBAL IX


Ya está el tiro. Vayan a su casa de apuestas más cercana, weno pronósticos deportivos, pues. "Your favorite forecaster" tiene al próximo campeón del pámbol nacional. ¿Cuál equipo? Hay que demostrar que se es recíproco en el amor, ¿no?, 'tonz les voy a dar la clave. La vuelta olímpica en "topless" nos la va a brindar de manera altruista, la emula (soulmate del emulo, of course) de Caroline* Kennedy, perdón, Jackie Kennedy. ¿Doble o nada? ¿Quién da más?








¡Como México no hay dos! Este debe ser de los pocos países en los que uno puede "cashear" ad infinitum a partir de un logro o dos, no más. Y nada epítomiza (espero que ustedes no hayan salido, como mis colegas, corriendo tras el diccionario más cercano) tanto esta condición como el "Risitas Lili Ledy", que le sacateó al Reto IQ; terminando con otra familia real de petatiux, a la que le dimos la welta con todo y su "full expertise" en informática, o el writer wannabe, que apenas y puede hilar dos frases coherentes al hablar.

"Hay tipos que se montan a un... ladrillo y se marean" -en una entrevista nos recordó un intelectual, de polémica carrera política, al principio del sexenio anterior. He's back in our land. El año pasado apenas resurgiendo, en parte gracias a la balona ("si no creyera en lo que creo..."; ¿porqué habría de lapidar yo?) que le hicimos los (otrora) tercermundistas, creo yo; el arquetipo del flemático (*btw, como el inmenso Cortázar, en otra relajada plática, en alguna ocasión señaló: "me fascina el ácido humor de esa sociedad...", pero después en mi estancia yo noté que, 'los ladinos' de siempre lo han aprovechado recientemente para desactivar su utilidad como herramienta para afrontar este perro mundo e intentar cambiar esta cruda realidad), me confesó: "yo nunca lo pedí, Marco; nunca pensé llegar hasta aquí" (eso incluye el circo -así lo bautizó él, no yo- de la ceremonia inaugural); para matizar y ahondarlo este año en la meritita tierra del ahijado del Mossad: "mi abuelo fue minero, mi padre estuvo en la 2da. Guerra Mundial, fue ademásprisionero, logró escapar y casarse otra vez; de toda mi familia yo fui el primero en llegar a la universidad". The same old story of overcoming a troubled childhood to succeed in life (whatever that means), huh?







Refiriéndose a uno de esos inmensos poetas que perciben el mundo de manera diferente, cuenta -más o menos así- Chavela Vargas: "Fingía no saber qué estaba pasando, se dejaba llevar pero, hasta el desenlace sabía de antemano él". En una de las ediciones de "Los Presidentes" de Scherer se describe (de memoria también, porque yo tengo otra versión en la que ya no aparece tal) la siguiente anécdota de Daniel "El Travieso" (áquel que siempre anheló ser titular del ejecutivo, según el texto en cuestión): "...al periodista le solicitó unos minutos un norteamericano. Esperó a que se acomodara, y en el momento oportuno, Don Daniel sacó de su bolsillo y desdobló un pasquín al tiempo en que le soltó: 'this is coming from your office, right?'...". Después del "pitazo" de uno de mis colegas, me lancé a visitar el cubículo del viejito again. Regularmente no sucede así, por lo que me sorprendió encontrar a un par de chavillas (weno, ya no tan nenitas, I must say). Gentilmente me invitaron a una mesa de discusión sobre temas ambientales, campo en el que al parecer andan muy moviditas las dos. Después de escuchar sus inquietudes, las despido con un: "ya saben, atención con el mercado de créditos de carbono, porque esa burbuja no va a tardar demasiado en explotar, ¿eh?". Unos cuantos días más tarde me entero que "el candil de la calle" (a) México, se convierte en vanguardia mundial al inaugurar el (de forma voluntaria, sí, sí, cómo no) intercambio de estos "instrumentos bursátiles". ¡Cheetos, queso! Imagínense, la insoportable levedad del asunto, cuando el "chairman" de nuestro stock exchange es uno de los muchos engendros del chupacabras, quienes estelarizaron un pleito de comadres, tan subido de tono, que hasta las medias salieron rasgadas, ver para creer, comp@s. Nevermind, we predicted just that since 2010ish (I rather bet it was since 2008), and repeated over and over to the youngsters in UNAM and beyond. Well, while we were busy finishing all this year's pending cases, they have baked another perfect constitutional amendment, lidereados por el saco de plomo (a) cangrejito playero (btw, qué fácil se puede perder el... sentido del humor, cuando se trata de pesos y centavos -rather us dollars, I would say-, ¿verdad?; creo que de pronto escuchó una voz no tan interior que le sugirió: "stop the 'danm' bull s-h-i-t, and just 'speed it up'"). A propósito, rásquenle compadres, que algo todavía queda: ¿qué tal el agua, buddies? En lo que respecta a México: Is This It? Well, sólo nos queda honrar a quienes veneramos (en el sentido terrenal, y que los libros de historia nacional desdeñan, porque su descomunal peso específico no pueden soportar), porque somos parte del raquítico porcentaje de "indie observers" que continuamos vaticinando que, debido a las ocultas condiciones de su economía real, 'the falling empire' no está pa' dominar ni a los 'miaus' de su backyard. Si ustedes aguantan el 2014 apelmazados con sus servilletas, we certainly will survive, brodys. Al tiempo.




Mission impossible? 


Can financial prudence go too far?

"When developing countries get into the balance of payment crisis, as they often do, signing an agreement with the IMF is crucial. The money that the IMF itself lends is only a minor part of the story, for the IMF does not have much money of its own. More important is the agreement itself. It is seen as a guarantee that the country will mend its "profligate" ways to adopt a set of good policies that will ensure its future ability to repay its debts. Only when such agreement is made to other potential lenders -the World Bank, rich country governments and private sector lenders- agree to continue their supplies of finance to the country concerned. The agreement with the IMF involves accepting conditions on a wide range of economic policies from trade liberalization to the adoption of new company law. But the most important and feared of IMF conditions concern macroeconomic policies.







"Macroeconomic policies -monetary policy and fiscal policy- are intended to change the behaviour of the whole economy (as distinct from the sum total of the behaviours of the individual economic actors that make it up). The counter-intuitive idea that the whole economy may behave differently from the sum total of its parts comes from the famous Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes. Keynes argued that what is rational for individual actors may not be rational for the entire economy... Keynes argued, the government, whose job is to manage the whole economy, cannot simply use scaled-up versions of the action plans that are rational for individual economic agents. It should always deliberately do the opposite of what other economic actors do. In an economic downturn, therefore, it should increase its spending to counter the tendency of the private sector firms and workers to reduce their spending. In an economic upturn, it should reduce its expenditure and increase taxes, so that it can prevent demand from outstripping supply.

"...since the rise of neo-liberalism, and its 'monetarist' approach to macroeconomics, in the 1980s, the focus of macroeconomic policies has radically changed. The 'monetarists' are called as such because they believe that prices rise when too much money is chasing after a given quantity of goods and services. They also argue that the price stability (i.e., keeping inflation low) is the foundation of prosperity and, therefore, that monetary discipline (that is required for price stability) should be the paramount goal of macroeconomic policy.







'Mugger, armed robber and hit man'

"Neo-liberals see inflation as public enemy number one... They believe that the lower the rate of inflation is, the better it is.Ideally, they want zero inflation. At most, they would accept a very low single-digit rate of inflation..."

"...it is argued that inflation is a form of stealth tax that unjustly robs people of their hard-earned income. The late Milton Friedman, the guru of monetarism, argued that 'inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation'.

"Neo-liberals argue that inflation is bad for economic growth as well. Most of them would hold that the lower a country's rate of inflation, the higher its economic growth is likely to be. The thinking behind this is as follows: investment is essential for growth; investors do not like uncertainty; so we must keep the economy stable, which means keeping prices flat; thus low inflation is a prerequisite of investment and growth. This argument has had a particularly strong appeal in those Latin American countries, where memories of disastrous hyperinflation in the 1980s combined with the collapse in economic growth were strong (especially Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Nicaragua and Peru).







"Neo-liberals economists argue that two things are essential in achieving low inflation. First, there should be monetary discipline -the central bank should not increase the money supply over and above what is absolutely necessary to support real growth in the economy. Second, there should be financial prudence- no government should live beyond its means.

"... Stanley Fischer argues: 'A central bank given multiple and general goals may choose among them and will certainly be subject to political pressures to shift among its goals depending on the state of the electoral cycle'. The best way to prevent this from happening is to 'protect'the central bank from politicians (who do not understand economics very well and, more importantly, have short-time horizons) by making it 'politically independent'.

"In addition to monetary discipline, neo-liberals have traditionally emphasized the importance of government prudence -unless the government lives with its means, the resulting budget deficits would cause inflation by creating more demands than the economy can meet... an increasing emphasis has been put on the 'prudential regulations' of the banks and other financial-sector firms. the most important among these is the so-called capital adequacy ratio for banks, recommended by the BIS (Bank for International Settlements), the club of central banks based in the Swiss city of Bassel.







"Inflation is bad for growth -this has become one of the most widely accepted economic nostrums of our age.

"During the 1960s and the 1970s, Brazil's average inflation rate was 42% a year. Despite this, Brazil was one of the fastest growing economies in the world for those two decades -its per capita income grew at 4.5% a year during this period. In contrast, between 1996 and 2005, during which time Brazil embraced the neo-liberal orthodoxy, especially in relation to macroeconomic policy, its inflation rate averaged a much lower 7.1% a year. But during this period, per capita income in Brazil grew at only 1.3% a year.

"If you are not entirely persuaded by the Brazilian case -understandable, given that hyperinflation went side by side with low growth in the 1980s and the early 1990s -how about this? During its 'miracle' years, when its economy was growing at 7% a year in per capita terms, Korea had rate inflation rates close to 20%-17.4% in the 1960s and 19.8% in the 1970s. These were rates high than those found in several Latin American countries, and totally contrary to the cultural stereotypes of the hyper-saving prudent East Asian versus fun-loving, profligate Latinos. In the 1960s, Korea's inflation rates 'was much higher' than that of five Latin American countries (Venezuela, Bolivia, Mexico, Peru and Colombia) and not much lower than that infamous 'rebel teenager' Argentina. In the 1970s, the Korean inflation rate was higher than that found in Venezuela, Ecuador and Mexico, and much lower than that of Colombia and Bolivia. Are you still convinced that inflation is incompatible with economic success?

"... there is a big logical jump between acknowledging the destructive nature of hyperinflation and arguing that the lower the rate of inflation, the better... even many neo-liberal economists admit that, below 10%, inflation does not seem to have any adverse affect on economic growth.

"... a tough control on inflation is a two-edged sword for workers -it protects their existing incomes better, but it reduces their future incomes. It is only the pensioners and others (including significantly, the financial industry) whose incomes derive from financial assets with fixed returns for whom lower inflation is a pure blessing. Since they are outside the labor market, tough macroeconomic policies that lower inflation, cannot adversely affect their future employment opportunities and wages, while the incomes they already have are better protected.


The price of price stability

"In most countries, firms outside the financial sector make a 3-7% profit. Therefore, if real interest is above that level, it makes more sense for potential investors to put their money in the bank, or buy bonds, rather than invest it in a productive firm. Also taking into account all the trouble involved in managing productive enterprises -labour problems, problems with delivery of parts, trouble with payments by costumers, etc.- the threshold rate may be even lower. Given that firms in developing countries have little capital accumulated internally, making borrowing more difficult means that firms cannot invest much. This results in low investment, which, in turn, means low growth and scarce jobs. This is what happened in Brazil, South Africa and numerous other developing countries when they followed the Bad Samaritans' advice and pursued a very low rate of inflation.

"... the rich Bad Samaritan countries, which are so keen to preach to developing countries the importance of high real interest rates as a key to monetary discipline, themselves have resorted to lax monetary policies when they have needed to generate income and jobs.

"Monetary policy that is too tight lowers investment. Lower investment slown down growth and job creation... (that) is a disaster for developing countries that desperately need more income and jobs and often are trying to deal with a high degree of income inequality without resorting to a large-scale redistribution programme that, anyway, may create more problems than it solves.

When prudence isn't prudent

"Emphasis on fiscal prudence has been a central theme in the neoliberal macroeconomics promoted by the Bad Samaritans. They argue that government should not live beyond its means and must always balance its budget. Deficit spending, they argue, only leads to inflation and undermines economic stability, which, in turn, reduces growth and diminishes the living standards of people on fixed income.

"... The government budget may have to be balanced but this needs to be achieved over a business cycle, rather than every year. This year is an extremely artificial unit of time in economic terms, and there is nothing sacred about it... As Keynes central message had it, what is important is that, over the business cycle, the government acts as a counterweight to the behaviour of the private sector, engages in deficit spending during economic downturns and generates a budget surplus during economic upturns.

"...the IMF is obsessed with developing country governments balancing the books every year, regardless of business cycles or longer-term development strategy. So it imposes budget balancing conditions, or even the requirement to run a surplus on countries in macroeconomic crisis that could actually benefit from deficit spending by the government.






"... the rich Bad Samaritans countries would never do what they tell to the poor countries to do. Instead they would cut interest rates and increase government deficit spending in order to boost demand.

"... a big increase in government spending during an economic downturn makes it more likely that the spending goes into ill-prepared projects. On the other hand, making large cuts in government spending during an economic upturn is difficult due to political resistance.

Keynesianism for the rich, monetarism for the poor

"Gore Vidal, the american writer, once famously described the American system as 'free entreprise for the poor and socialism for the rich'. Macroeconomic policy on the global scale is a bit like that. It is Keynesianism for the rich countries and monetarism for the poor.

"When the rich countries get into recession they usually relax monetary policy and increase budget deficits. When the same thing happens in developing countries, the Bad Samaritans, through the IMF, force them to raise interest rates to absurd levels and balance their budgets, or even generate budget surplus -even if these actions treble unemployment and spark riots in the street.





"Ironically, when the citizen of developing countries voluntarily tighten their belts, they are derided for not understanding basic Keynesian economics.

"The Bad Samaritans have imposed macroeconomic policies on developing countries that seriously hamper their ability to invest, grow and create jobs in the long run. The categorical -and simplistic- denunciation of 'living beyond one's means' has made it impossible for them to 'borrow to invest' in order to accelerate economic growth. If we categorically denounce people for living beyond their means, we should, among other things, condemn youg people for borrowing to invest in their career development on their children's education. This cannot be right. Living beyond one's means may or may not be right; it all depends on the stage of the development that the country is in and the use ti which the borrowed money is put."







http://marcosalas.blogspot.mx/2013/11/el-ladino-global-ix.html