Transición Estructural .NET

Dedico éste hilo, no apto para los que creen que el euro es un destino divino que sólo en un apocalipsis inimaginable podría romperse, a las opiniones propias y ajenas sobre el destino de la unión monetaria. El monumental fracaso europeo del siglo 21.

Empecemos por Soros:

The Tragedy of the European Union and How to Resolve It
Es largo, solo pego el párrafo en el que explica de que va el artículo:

Whether Germany decides to lead or leave [the eurozone], either alternative would be better than to persist on the current course. The difficulty is in convincing Germany that its current policies are leading to a prolonged depression, political and social conflicts, and an eventual breakup not only of the euro but also of the European Union. How to persuade Germany to choose between either accepting the responsibilities and liabilities that a benevolent hegemon should be willing to incur or leaving the euro in the hands of debtor countries that would be much better off on their own? That is the question I shall try to answer

Lo más interesante es lo que dice como salir de esta:

The Way Out

Germany must decide whether to become a benevolent hegemon or leave the euro. The first alternative would be by far the best. What would that entail? Simply put, it would require two new objectives that are at variance with current policies:

1. Establishing a more or less level playing field between debtor and creditor countries, which would mean that they would be able to refinance their government debt on more or less equal terms.

2. Aiming at nominal growth of up to 5 percent so that Europe can grow its way out of its excessive debt burden. This will necessitate a higher level of inflation than the Bundesbank is likely to countenance. It may also require a treaty change and a change in the German constitution.

Both these objectives are attainable, but only after considerable progress toward a political union. The political decisions taken in the next year or so will determine the future of the European Union. The steps taken by the ECB on September 6 could be a prelude to the creation of a two-tier Europe; alternatively they could lead to the formation of a closer political union in which Germany accepts the obligations that its leadership position brings with it.

A two-tier eurozone would eventually destroy the European Union because the disenfranchised would sooner or later withdraw from it. If a political union is not attainable the next best thing would be an orderly separation between creditor and debtor countries. If the members of the euro cannot live together without pushing their union into a lasting depression, they would be better off separating by mutual consent.

In an amicable breakup of the euro it matters a great deal which party leaves, because all the accumulated debts are denominated in a common currency. If a debtor country leaves, its debt increases in value in line with the depreciation of its currency. The country concerned could become competitive; but it would be forced to default on its debt and that would cause incalculable financial disruptions. The common market and the European Union may be able to cope with the default of a small country such as Greece, especially when it is so widely anticipated, but it could not survive the departure of a larger country like Spain or Italy. Even a Greek default may prove fatal. It would encourage capital flight and embolden financial markets to mount bear raids against other countries, so the euro may well break up as the Exchange Rate Mechanism did in 1992.

By contrast, if Germany were to exit and leave the common currency in the hands of the debtor countries, the euro would fall and the accumulated debt would depreciate in line with the currency. Practically all the currently intractable problems would dissolve. The debtor countries would regain competitiveness; their debt would diminish in real terms and, with the ECB in their control, the threat of default would evaporate. Without Germany, the euro area would have no difficulty in carrying out the U-turn for which it would otherwise need Chancellor Merkel’s consent.

To be specific, the shrunken euro area could establish its own fiscal authority and implement its own Debt Reduction Fund along the lines I shall describe below. Indeed, the shrunken euro area could go much further and convert the entire debt of member countires into eurobonds, not only the excess over 60 percent of GDP. When the exchange rate on the shrunken euro stabilized, risk premiums on eurobonds would fall to levels comparable to those attached to bonds issued in other freely floating currencies, such as the British pound or Japanese yen. This may sound unbelievable; but that is only because the misconceptions that have caused the crisis are so widely believed. It may come as a surprise, but the eurozone, even without Germany, would score better on standard indicators of fiscal solvency than Britain, Japan, or the US.3

A German exit would be a disruptive but manageable onetime event, instead of the chaotic and protracted domino effect of one debtor country after another being forced out of the euro by speculation and capital flight. There would be no valid lawsuits from aggrieved bond holders. Even the real estate problems would become more manageable. With a significant exchange rate differential, Germans would be flocking to buy Spanish and Irish real estate. After the initial disruptions the euro area would swing from depression to growth.

The common market would survive but the relative position of Germany and other creditor countries that may leave the euro would swing from the winning to the losing side. They would encounter stiff competition in their home markets from the euro area and while they may not lose their export markets, these would become less lucrative. They would also suffer financial losses on their ownership of assets denominated in the euro as well as on their claims within the TARGET2 clearing system. The extent of the losses would depend on the extent of the euro’s depreciation.4

Thus they would have a vital interest in keeping the depreciation within bounds. Of course there would be many transitional difficulties, but the eventual result would be the fulfillment of Keynes’s aspiration for a currency system in which the creditors and debtors would both have a vital interest in maintaining stability.

After the initial shock, Europe would escape from the deflationary debt trap in which it is currently caught; the global economy in general and Europe in particular would recover and Germany, after it has adjusted to its losses, could resume its position as a leading producer and exporter of high-value-added products. Germany would benefit from the overall improvement. Nevertheless the immediate financial losses and the reversal of its relative position within the common market would be so large that it would be unrealistic to expect Germany to leave the euro voluntarily. The push would have to come from the outside.

By contrast, Germany would fare much better if it chooses to behave as a benevolent hegemon and Europe would be spared the upheaval the German withdrawal from the euro would cause. But the path to achieving the dual objectives of a more-or-less level playing field and an effective growth policy would be much more tortuous. I will sketch it out here.


The first step would be to establish a European Fiscal Authority (EFA) that would be authorized to make important economic decisions on behalf of member states. This is the missing ingredient that is needed to make the euro a full-fledged currency with a genuine lender of last resort. The fiscal authority acting in partnership with the central bank could do what the ECB cannot do on its own. The mandate of the ECB is to maintain the stability of the currency; it is expressly prohibited from financing government deficits. But there is nothing prohibiting the member states from establishing a fiscal authority. It is Germany’s fear of becoming the deep pocket for Europe that stands in the way.

Given the magnitude of Europe’s problems, this is understandable; but it does not justify a permanent division of the euro area into debtors and creditors. The creditors’ interests could and should be protected by giving them veto power over decisions that would affect them disproportionately. That is already recognized in the voting system of the ESM, which requires an 85 percent majority to make important decisions. This feature ought to be incorporated into a new EFA. But when member states contribute proportionately, for instance by providing a certain percentage of their VAT, a simple majority should be sufficient.

The EFA would automatically take charge of the EFSF and the ESM. The great advantage of having an EFA is that it would be able to make decisions on a day-to-day basis, like the ECB. Another advantage of the EFA is that it would reestablish the proper distinction between fiscal and monetary responsibilities. For instance, the EFA ought to take the solvency risk on all government bonds purchased by the ECB. There would then be no grounds for objecting to unlimited open-market operations by the ECB. (The ECB may decide to do this on its own on September 6, but only after strenuous objections by the Bundesbank.) Importantly, the EFA would find it much easier than it would be for the ECB to offer public-sector participation in reorganizing the Greek debt. The EFA could express willingness to convert all Greek bonds held by the public sector into zero-coupon bonds starting to mature ten years out, provided Greece reached a primary surplus of, say, 2 percent. This would create a light at the end of the tunnel that could be helpful to Greece even at this late stage.

The second step would be to use the EFA to establish a more level playing field than the ECB will be able to offer on its own on September 6. I have proposed that the EFA should establish a Debt Reduction Fund—a modified form of the European Debt Redemption Pact proposed by Chancellor Merkel’s own Council of Economic Advisers and endorsed by the Social Democrats and Greens. The Debt Reduction Fund would acquire national debts in excess of 60 percent of GDP on condition that the countries concerned undertook structural reforms approved by the EFA. The debt would not be canceled but held by the fund. If a debtor country fails to abide by the conditions to which it has agreed the fund would impose an appropriate penalty. As required by the Fiscal Compact, the debtor country would be required to reduce its excess debt by 5 percent a year after a moratorium of five years. That is why Europe must aim at nominal growth of up to 5 percent.

The Debt Reduction Fund would finance its bond purchases either through the ECB or by issuing Debt Reduction Bills—a joint obligation of the member countries—and passing on the benefit of cheap financing to the countries concerned. Either way the cost to the debtor country would be reduced to 1 percent or less. The bills would be assigned a zero-risk weighting by the authorities and treated as the highest-quality collateral for repurchase agreements (repos) used in operations at the ECB. The banking system has an urgent need for such a risk-free liquid asset. Banks were holding more than €700 billion of surplus liquidity at the ECB, earning 0.25 percent interest at the time that I proposed this scheme. Since then the ECB reduced the interest rate paid on deposits further, to zero. This assures a large and ready market for the bills at less than 1 percent. By contrast, the plan announced by the ECB on September 6 is unlikely to reduce the cost of financing much below 3 percent.

The scheme I proposed was rejected out of hand by the Germans on the grounds that it did not conform to the requirements of the German constitutional court. In my opinion their objection was groundless because the constitutional court ruled against commitments that are unlimited in time and size, while the Debt Reduction Bills would be limited in both directions. If Germany wanted to behave as a benign hegemon it could easily approve such a plan. It could be introduced without any treaty change. Eventually the Debt Reduction Bills could provide a bridge to the introduction of eurobonds. That would make the level playing field permanent.

That leaves the second objective: an effective growth policy aiming at nominal growth of up to 5 percent. That is needed to enable the heavily indebted countries to meet the requirements of the Fiscal Compact without falling into a deflationary debt trap. There is no way this objective can be achieved as long as Germany abides by the Bundesbank’s asymmetric interpretation of monetary stability. Germany would have to accept inflation in excess of 2 percent for a limited period of time if it wants to stay in the euro without destroying the European Union.

Greed is the Beginning of Everything
 
Gunter Gluecklich / DER SPIEGEL
In a SPIEGEL interview, Czech economist Tomas Sedlacek discusses morality in the current crisis and why he believes an economic policy that only pursues growth will always lead to debt. Those who don't know how to handle it, he argues, end up in a medieval debtor's prison, as the Greeks are experiencing today. 

 
In his bestseller "Economics of Good and Evil," first published in the Czech Republic in 2009, 35-year-old academic and political advisor Tomáš Sedláček defied the boundaries and stereotypes of his profession by exposing the roots of the economy in the cultural history of mankind.

From 2001 to 2003, Sedláček was an economic advisor to then Czech President Vaclav Havel, who valued his "new view on the problems of the contemporary world, one unburdened by four decades of the totalitarian Communist regime." Until 2006, Sedláček advised the Czech finance minister in a dispute over the consolidation of the budget, as well as the reform of the country's tax, pension and healthcare systems.
In the introduction to Sedláček's book, Havel wrote that most politicians "consciously or unconsciously accept and spread the Marxist thesis of the economic base and the spiritual superstructure." Sedláček, however, turns this hierarchy on its head on his philosophical journey through cultural and economic history. For him, all of economics ultimately revolves around the question of how we ought to live. The Yale Economic Review described him as one of the promising "five hot minds in economics."

Today, Sedláček is the chief macroeconomic strategist at the major Czech bank SOB, a member of the National Economic Council and a lecturer at Charles University in Prague. The German edition of his book was on the SPIEGEL bestseller list for weeks after it was published in February. The book was turned into a very successful play in Prague, which translates the author's parables and arguments into dialogue and engages the audience. An English translation of the book was published by Oxford University Press in July.

SPIEGEL: Mr. Sedláček, in Oliver Stone's 1987 film "Wall Street," the fictional tycoon Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, pronounces the provocative motto of neoliberalism: "Greed is Good." Has the crisis in financial capitalism reduced greed to what it was once before, one of the seven deadly sins?
Sedláček: Gekko succeeds with his greed, but then he falls victim to it. Mankind's oldest stories tell us that greed is always Janus-faced. It is an engine of progress, but it's also the cause of our collapse. Being constantly dissatisfied and always wanting more seems to be an innate natural phenomenon, forming the heart of our civilization. The original sin of the first human couple in the Garden of Eden was the result of greed.

SPIEGEL: Not of temptation and curiosity?

Sedláček: Desire and curiosity are sisters. The snake merely awakened a desire in Eve that was already dormant inside of her. According to Genesis, the forbidden tree was a feast for the eyes.

SPIEGEL: Just like the suggestive images of modern advertising.

Sedláček: Eve and Adam grab the opportunity and eat the fruit. The original sin has the character of excessive, unnecessary consumption. It is not of a sexual nature. A desire for something she doesn't need is awakened in Eve. The living conditions in paradise were complete, and yet everything God had given the two wasn't enough. In this sense, greed isn't just at the birthplace of theoretical economics, but also at the beginning of our history. Greed is the beginning of everything.

SPIEGEL: So evil is the result of insatiability?

Sedláček: The demands of people are a curse of the gods. In Greek mythology, the story of Pandora, the first woman, who opens her jar out of curiosity, thereby releasing poverty, hunger and disease into the world, tells the same story as the Bible. In Babylonian culture, the Gilgamesh epic shows how desire rips man out of the harmony of nature.

SPIEGEL: Does the human species define itself by its existential dissatisfaction?

Sedláček: The saturation point, like the end of history, is never achieved. Consumption works like a drug. Enough is always just beyond the horizon. The Marxist philosopher Slavoj Žižek put it this way: "Desire's raison d'être is not to realize its goal, to find full satisfaction, but to reproduce itself as desire."

SPIEGEL: Which is why life is ultimately a Sisyphean task?

Sedláček: The economics of equilibrium are doomed to failure. Eve's desire -- in economic terms, her demand -- will never subside. And Adams's offer to toil by the sweat of his brow will never be enough. In the film "Fight Club," based on the novel by Chuck Palahniuk, the protagonist Tyler Durden says to his nameless friend, who despises his profession in the auto industry: We work at jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. That is the expulsion from Paradise, transferred to the modern age.

SPIEGEL: And yet man always comes back to the dream of escaping the treadmill and finding the harmony of equilibrium. The memory of the paradise we have lost isn't extinguished.

Sedláček: Progress or satisfaction, that's the anthropological dilemma of the human condition. You can't have both. People are riding a dangerous animal. There seem to be two ways to reduce the discrepancy between desire and satisfaction, demand and supply. One can expand the supply of goods and the purchasing power needed to acquire them. That's the hedonistic program, which we have chosen since the days of the Greeks and Romans, but which threatens to fall apart in the debt crisis. The monetization of our society has strengthened the illusion that all the things we desire are within our reach.

SPIEGEL: In contrast, saving, rigorism and moderation are now the words of the day.

Sedláček: That's precisely the opposite program: that of the ancient Stoics. Demand is to be reduced so that it corresponds to supply. The Stoics had to spend their entire lives learning to limit their needs. Diogenes in the barrel was convinced that the less he had, the freer he was.

SPIEGEL: Except that he would hardly be an accepted role model today.

Sedláček: That was probably never the case, but his philosophical message is certainly modern. Diogenes is the prototype of the critique of civilization and technology.

SPIEGEL: A preacher of the limits of growth, which the Club of Rome also tried to establish, albeit unsuccessfully, in 1972.

Sedláček: The equation "more is better" doesn't add up anymore. This makes Diogenes a contemporary. The moment in which we realize that science and technology are ambivalent marks the end of modernity. After all, the Club of Rome was concerned with responsibility for the future of mankind.

SPIEGEL: It's easy to increase consumption, but decreasing it is much more difficult to do. Doesn't the uneven distribution of wealth also propel the wheel of desire, based on the motto that I want what others have?

Sedláček: Yes, the social ladder becomes sticky on the way down. The view of economists is that each individual seeks to maximize his benefit. The only problem with this is that we cannot precisely define what the optimal benefit is for us. We don't know what we want. That's why we need comparisons, examples and suggestion. Try imagining an object of your desire, a beautiful woman, for example. It doesn't work as an abstract idea, because the imagined image in your head is volatile. You need a photo, a description, a model. Someone has to tell you what you think is so great that you find it irresistible -- society, neighbors and colleagues, but also the advertising and entertainment industry, ads, films and books. All desires that exceed our basic biological needs are determined by culture. We want to live as if we were actors portraying ourselves.

SPIEGEL: The debts of Western countries haven't grown in the last 30 or 40 years as a result of need, but of abundance.

Sedláček: Aristotle, the philosopher of the golden mean, viewed excess as man's greatest weakness. He believed that one could only avoid excess through moderation.

SPIEGEL: Sure, but what's the right measure? Economists preach growth as the sole remedy. Is economic activity like riding a bike -- if you don't pedal you'll fall over?

Sedláček: I believe that the economy is more like walking: You can stand still without falling over. This reflects the idea of a Sabbath economy. God rested on the seventh day, after he had created the world, not because he was tired, but because he felt that what he had created was good. According to biblical custom, the fields were to be left fallow once every seven years, and debts were forgiven after 49 years. There's a saying that the good is the enemy of the better. It's correct the other way around: The best -- or chasing it -- is the worst enemy of the good.

Part 2: 'Marx Probably Wouldn't Recognize Need for a Revolution Today'

SPIEGEL: Communism, under which your generation grew up, didn't achieve this form of self-sufficiency in half a century.

Sedláček: Because it wasn't viable. In truth, it isn't communism but capitalism that drives the permanent revolution. It drives people to work harder and harder, because it presents them with the very credible possibility of success. Communism could never do that. Karl Marx thought and wrote in the world of Oliver Twist. If he were alive today, he would probably not recognize the need for a revolution.

SPIEGEL: So in our part of the world, we all essentially live in societies shaped by social democratic ideas?

Sedláček: We are clearly not communists by nature, but we are definitely communitarians. Only a truly egomaniacal person can live happily in a society in which he is the only rich one. Man has a need for fairness and, therefore, for a fair distribution of wealth.

SPIEGEL: So greed and empathy offset each other as balanced forces?

Sedláček: Yes. In his "Theory of Moral Sentiments," Adam Smith, the founder of modern economics, defines sympathy as the basis of morality and as the driving force of human activity. The suffering of one person also affects someone else.

SPIEGEL: But Smith is more famous for his most important work, "The Wealth of Nations," in which he questions the effects of human self-interest and the "invisible hand" of the market.

Sedláček: Self-interest guides human behavior, but Smith knew that man cannot be explained by the egoistical principal alone. He clearly distanced himself from his contemporary Bernard Mandeville and his theory that private vices generate public advantages, and that the general welfare stems from the self-interest of the individual. Contrary to his effective history, I believe that Smith's legacy consists in the incorporation of moral questions into economics -- in fact, that they are precisely what constitute its core. For modern economists, on the other hand, the question of good and evil is practically heretical.

SPIEGEL: If the invisible hand of the market alone were capable of transforming self-interest into the common good, we wouldn't need government regulation at all.

Sedláček: When self-interest exceeds certain limits, it threatens the market economy. A functioning society rests on three columns: morality or decency, competition and regulation, or basic government conditions. The weaker morality is, the stronger the state must intervene. The Eastern European countries, which depended entirely on deregulation to create markets after the fall of communism, learned this lesson after painful experiences. A society that focuses on egoism without morality descends into anarchy.

SPIEGEL: The laissez-fair ideologists and the Tea Party movement in the United States still want to keep the government out of things.

Sedláček: The interdependence between capital and the state became obvious during the crisis. The financial system would have collapsed without government help, and then the governments would have been finished. Regulation may be a loaded concept, so let's talk about coordination instead. But you need two players. You can't play tennis alone.

SPIEGEL: Does this interplay between the market and the state shape the field of social morality?

Sedláček: The most positive, descriptive economic models have approached the question of how the market economy functions with complicated mathematical models for decades, but they are simply wrong or pointless at best. The real question should be: Is the economy working the way we want it to?

SPIEGEL: But it isn't up to economists to set ethical standards.

Sedláček: Yes, it is. Ethics forms the core of economics. It leads straight to the question of the good and right way of living, or Aristotle's concept of eudemonia. For him, maximizing benefit without maximizing good would have been pointless. A market economy without morality is a zombie system: The robots function perfectly, but in the end they leave behind a trail of devastation. We have to return to our origins and talk about the soul of the economy.

SPIEGEL: Such quasi-religious impulses must be quite foreign to both your fellow economists and the politicians you have advised.

Sedláček: The belief in progress is an eschatology used in the secular realm. There is no such thing as value-free economics. To claim that economics is value-free is a value judgment in itself -- an ideological position. Every purchase decision is also a moral decision.

SPIEGEL: So economics is a cultural phenomenon, not mathematics?

Sedláček: Numbers alone are meaningless. Here's a simple example: How high was the rate of inflation in Germany in February? This leads us directly to the next question: What does this mean? Is it good or bad? The truth lies within its context, which is shaped by cultural, ethical and social factors, and it cannot be portrayed by a formula relating to the money supply.

SPIEGEL: Economics can't answer questions about the meaning of life. That would be absurd. And it gets dangerous when politicians attempt to do so.

Sedláček: Questions of meaning only thrust themselves upon us when meaning has been lost. Modern economists behave as absurdly as the people in Douglas Adams' novel "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy." The supercomputer Deep Thought is supposed to answer fundamental questions about life, the universe and everything else. It computes and computes, and then it spits out the final answer to the ultimate question: a number, 42.

SPIEGEL: And what's your answer, if not to the ultimate question, but to the crisis and debt trap?

Sedláček: Let me answer that with a question: Is a greedy life a good life? Is that what we want? The answer is self-evident. I'm sticking with Aristotle. Economics ought to be the science of happiness. And according to Aristotle, a happy life is a satisfied life.

SPIEGEL: Forgive me, but that sounds both banal and naïve. Aren't you worried that your fellow economists will deride you as a moralizer?

Sedláček: The attention that my theories attract suggests the opposite. I believe that politicians, especially the pragmatists, have understood this. Of course, it's difficult to convince them that painful reforms are necessary, especially in good times, and that something is wrong with the system, even though the gross domestic product is still growing.

SPIEGEL: So we need the crisis to come out of it strengthened, as they say?

Sedláček: Times of crisis are good for asking the right questions. We have to abandon the obsession with growth in economics. We have to get out of the manic-depressive cycle within which our economic everyday reality operates. And to do so, we have to pay more attention to the manic than the depressive phase, and we have to change the general goal of economic policy. Instead of maximizing the gross domestic product, the goal should be to minimize debt.

SPIEGEL: How is the one thing supposed to work without the other?

Sedláček: In a free-market democracy, politicians should be deprived of the right and the authority to incur debt, just as they have already lost the right to print money.

SPIEGEL: But the temptation to pay for government debts by printing money still exists.

Sedláček: I propose a new stability pact: In any given year, growth and the budget deficit together cannot exceed 3 percent of GDP.

SPIEGEL: Meaning that the budget has to be balanced at 3-percent growth, while new borrowing has to increase to 3 percent at zero growth?

Sedláček: Exactly, and surpluses have to be set aside in boom years. Let's remember the biblical parable of the seven fat and seven thin cows, and the advice Joseph gave to the pharaoh. An economic policy that only pursues growth will always lead to debt. And debt is a dangerous journey through time, while interest is a sinister weapon. Those who don't know how to handle it end up in a medieval debtors' prison, as the Greeks are experiencing today. The next crisis could be deadly.

SPIEGEL: You support an existential view of economics, a sort of meta-economics. How does it feel to be a philosopher among bankers?

Sedláček: Like a colorful bird, but not without respect. People listen to me. I appeal to something in the public consciousness. Our time lacks moderation. We have to try to achieve more self-control. The English poet John Milton put it brilliantly: "He who reigns within himself and rules passions, desires and fears is more than a king."

SPIEGEL: Mr. Sedláček, we thank you for this interview.

Un alemán obsesionado con los equilibrios presupuestarios esntrevista a Sedlácek, economista filósofo checo que está harto de la obsesión con el perpetuo crecimiento.

Las mejores aportaciones son las que se refieren a la obsesión por los números y el PIB, y el abandono de la empatía  y valores distintos al monetario. Lástima que el entrevistador no quiso que concretara sobre el endeudamiento del estado cuando la economía está deprimida y hay altas tasas de pobreza. ¿Puede el estado endeudarse para aplicar valores humanos sobre los que Sedlácek pontifica o la deuda es simplemente "mala por naturaleza"?

Germany Fails To Meet Its Own Austerity Goals

As she travels from one European Union summit to the next, Angela Merkel's constant mantra in recent months has been austerity, austerity, austerity. But apparently the German chancellor hasn't been quite as strict when it comes to her own country's budget.

SPIEGEL reports this week that the German government didn't reach even half of its planned savings in the federal budget. Only 42 percent of the spending cuts named by Merkel's coalition government, comprised of the conservative Christian Democrats and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party, were actually not implemented.

Calculations made by the influential Cologne Institute for Economic Research indicate that only €4.7 billion ($6.16 billion) of the €11.2 billion in austerity measures stipulated by the savings package actually took shape in 2011.

The government is also falling behind on its targets for this year. Of the originally planned €19.1 billion in savings, less than half has been implemented. For the coming year, the concrete measures that have been agreed on so far cover just one-third of the announced amount of savings. Merkel's cabinet is hoping to agree to the basic foundations of the 2013 federal budget in March.

Embarrassing Lapse

This lapse is particularly embarrassing for the German government because the news comes just after 25 European Union member states agreed in early March to an international fiscal pact obliging them to adhere to greater fiscal discipline. The pact also calls for the creation of balanced budget initiatives modelled on Germany's debt brake legislation that would be enforced by the EU's court, the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg.

The aim of the pact is to make EU countries maintain binding austerity measures that leaders hope will contain the debt crisis and prevent countries like Greece from being able to pile up massive debts again. "It is a milestone in the history of the European Union," Merkel said at the signing of the pact.

Under Germany's balanced budget legislation, the federal government and the German states have set upper ceilings for new borrowing. The fundamental goal is to eliminate all borrowing by 2020. The German states will be strictly forbidden from new borrowing starting that year, and the federal government will only be able to borrow up to 0.35 percent annual economic output a year, or about €9 billion.

Deutschland predica con el ejemplo. Es lógico. Lo ilógico sería que se creyeran su propia retórica.

No sé si este sitio es el más adecuado, pero abro un hilo para los que quieran sugerir modificaciones y adiciones al hilo de los enlaces de interés.

A mi ritmo, lo iré actualizando.

Saludos,

M.

Primer problema. Como he bloqueado el hilo tampoco lo puedo modificar. Para meter cambios tendría que eliminar el hilo y sustituirlo por la versión modificada. ¿Alguna sugerencia para hacerlo mejor?

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    MINISTERIO DE FOMENTO, PRECIO DE VIVIENDA, PRECIO Y TRANSAC. DE SUELO
      KYERO.COM (Portal inglés)
ÍNDICES DE ALQUILER DE VIVIENDA:
    ENALQUILER.COM Basado en oferta
    IDEALISTA (sala de prensa, informes trimestrales) Basado en oferta
    INDICE DE ALQUILER DEL INE (Web de selección de datos) Basado en demanda
ÍNDICES DE PRECIOS DE VIVIENDAS DE OTROS PAÍSES:
    CASE-SHILLER (S&P, EEUU)
    NATIONWIDE (RU)
    HALIFAX (RU)

MERCADOS
AIAF (Renta fija española)
BBC Market data
BLOOMBERG
CBOT (Chicago Board of Trade)
    Agricultural products
    Energy products
    Metals products
EXPANSIÓN Materias primas
INVERTIA (Cotizaciones en español)
MARKETWATCH (EEUU, la web del WSJ para mercados)

MOVIMIENTOS SOCIALES:
DEMOCRACIA REAL YA
FORUM SOCIAL MUNDIAL
MOVIMIENTO 15M
OCCUPY WALL STREET
OCCUPY LONDON

     

WEBS FORANEAS:


ECONOMÍA

MEDIOS DE COMUNICACION: especializados o sus secciones económicas

Presseurop (Web de acceso a publicaciones de prensa escrita de toda la UE).
BBC Business/Economía (RU, Inglés y español)
CAIXIN ONLINE (China, en inglés)
DER SPIEGEL (ALE, alemán e inglés, a la izda del Frankfurter)
FINANCIAL TIMES (RU, Inglés. Lo mejor de lo mejor de lo mejor)
FRANKFURTER ALLGEMEINE (ALE, sólo en alemán. A la dcha del Spiegel)
LEAP-GEAB (FRA, Boletín mensual especializado, la versión en español es de traductora online)
LE FIGARO (FRA, sólo en francés, a la dcha de Le Monde)
LE MONDE economie (FRA, Francés, a la izda de Le Figaro)
THE ECONOMIST
THE GUARDIAN business (RU, Inglés, a la izda del Telegraph)
THE NEW YORK TIMES Business (EEUU, Ultra-neutral
THE TELEGRAPH finance (RU, Inglés, la casa del inefable Ambrosio E.P., a la dcha del Guardian)
THE WALL STREET JOURNAL (Economía desde el punto de vista de Goldman Sachs y asociados)
THE WASHINGTON POST Business (Algo a la derecha del Ultracentro)


BLOGS:

A FISTFUL OF EUROS
CALCULATED RISK
CHINA FINANCIAL MARKETS
ECONBROWSER
EU VOX
FT ALPHAVILLE
MACROBUSINESS (Australia, muchos datos sobre china)
PROJECT SYNDICATE
NAKED CAPITALISM
THE BIG PICTURE
THE OIL DRUM ¡Petróleooooo!


INSTITUCIONALES Y ASOCIACIONES:
Bank Of International Settlements:
    Banking statistics
    Derivatives statistics
    Securities statistics
EUROSTAT: Labour statistics, National Accounts
BCE, ESTADÍSTICAS EUROZONA
OFICINA DE ESTADÍSTICAS DE ALEMANIA
OFICINA DE ESTADÍSTICAS DE FRANCIA
OFICINA DE ESTADÍSTICAS DE GRECIA
OFICINA DE ESTADÍSTICAS DE IRLANDA
OFICINA DE ESTADÍSTICAS DE ITALIA
OFICINA DE ESTADÍSTICAS DE PORTUGAL
OFICINA DE ESTADÏSTICAS DEL REINO UNIDO
ACEA, estadísticas mensuales (Asociación europea de fabricantes de automóviles)
EUROBAROMETER
EEUU:
   BLS (Unemployment claims, )
   EIA (Crude Oil Production)
   ISM: PMI Global Manufacturing y PMI Global, ISM-non manufacturing (USA),  ISM-manufacturing (USA)
    US DEBT CLOCK (Para ver como aumenta la deuda de EEUU en relación con otros datos)
    US-FED: FOMC Meetings and Minutes, FRED Economic data St Louis (Reserva Federal)
    US-SEC La "CNMV" de EEUU.
    OCCUPY THE SEC (Unos cracks que proponen mejorar la regulación financiera)
BofE Statistics
FMI: previsiones económicas, informes económicos, análisis etc.
OCDE Statistics Amplísima base de datos económicos y sociales.

En pocas cosas estoy de acuerdo con Rajoy, en algunas más con el Tito Ambrosio, pero no tanto. Sin embargo, me parece de lo más oportuno que Rajoy haga frente a Merkozy respecto al ajuste fiscal de España (en mi opinión, nunca será suficiente la oposición es más aun hay que expandir el gasto y el déficit lo que sea necesario para empezar a reducir significativamente el desempleo).

El Tito Ambrosio valora mucho todo lo que debilite a la UE, y se posiciona con Rajoy en un colorista artículo del Telegraph online que se apoya con una imagen de Charlton Heston dando vida al Cid. Estoy de acuerdo con su argumento de que lo que menos necesita España con su alta tasa de desempleo es recortar gasto público. Ambrose, refiere también opiniones de comentaristas españoles que van en un rumbo nacionalista antimerkeliano. No se lo pierdan:

Spain's sovereign thunderclap and the end of Merkel's Europe
(seguir el enlace).

Pese al toque colorista-nacionalista que Evans-Pritchard usa en su artículo como gancho, la polémica que hay detrás es mucho más profunda y toca desde el caracter antidemocrático que está tomando la UE a la estructura del poder, independientemente de la ideología.

Lo abro en tema aparte porque creo que esto dará juego.

Saludos

Southern European Money Migrating North to Safety

Recomiendo leerlo enterito en su sitio. Destaco lo siguiente:

Particularly concerning is the fact that Italy and Spain began seeing significant capital flight in the middle of 2011. It is a tendency that continued through the end of the year despite the fact that the ECB provided European banks with massive amounts of liquidity -- a step the ECB repeated on Wednesday, to the tune of €529.5 billion. But despite the first liquidity injection, deficits in Italy and Spain grew by about €40 billion each. "The flight has become stronger," Karpowitz notes. The capital flows indicate that investors do not believe that the bailout packages will have their desired effect.

No se si lo habíais visitado alguna vez pero es uno de los mejores blogs económicos para leer y el mejor sobre China.

Parece ser que el gobierno chino lo ha censurado tras el último "post" que, por fortuna, puede leerse en el blog de Mish:

China Financial Markets: When Will China Emerge From the Global Crisis?

En éste artículo Pettis se hace eco de algunas voces (chinas) críticas con el "stablishment" chino, especialmente por la falta de progreso real de las condiciones de vida de la inmensa mayoría de los chinos que se contrapone al fuerte crecimiento económico.

Es llamativo que google ha quitado el blog de su motor de búsqueda. Pa que se fíen ustedes de google.

Estaremos atentos.

Dice el tito Oli (fuente: Financial Times) que están a puntito de llegar a un acuerdo con los acreedores privados para el tipo de interés a aplicar a la deuda griega a largo plazo a fin de que la deuda sea pagable.

Greek debt talks edge closer to deal

Olli Rehn, European commissioner responsible for economic and monetary affairs, said on Friday that talks with representatives of holders of some €200bn of Greek bonds were close to a deal.

Y al mismo tiempo la tita Merkel dice que...(mismo enlace del FT)

Greece would have to spell out “its additional obligations” before any deal could be done.

(Grecia tendrá que aclarar como cumplirá con las cargas adicionales (que conlleva el acuerdo).

Greece’s coalition government still has to sign up to harsh new austerity measures under a new medium-term fiscal programme

Como hasta ahora había funcionado tan bien la austeridad...

Y se ha colado por ahí un papelito (nuevo enlace del FT) según el cual los alemanes empujan para que devolver la deuda sea la prioridad nº1 de Grecia por encima de cualquier otra cosa como su gasto sanitario, educación o lo que sea y que el gobierno actual firme una ley al respecto...

Eufemísticamente RTVE dice que Alemania pide un "mayor control y dirección" de la UE sobre Grecia.

¿Alemania se está pasando al Nazismo financiero? Yo diría que si.

La aujteridad  hace que la economía se "expanda hacia dentro" gracias a la confianza. Según datos preliminares la economíua del RU se contrajo un -0,8% en el último trimestre de 2011. Esteeeee... peor de lo ejperado.

Gross Domestic Product Preliminary Estimate - Q4 2011

Propongo un hilo para seguimiento de éste impoltante sector económico.

Lo inauguro con información sobre las entradas de pedidos industriales...

en España, en noviembre de 2011, entramos en territorio negativo.

Si se elimina el efecto calendario, es decir, la diferencia en el número de días hábiles que
presenta un mes en los distintos años, la variación interanual del IEP en el mes de
noviembre es del –0,5%, un punto y medio inferior a la registrada en octubre. 

En Alemania también:
(http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/EN/Content/Statistics/TimeSeries/EconomicIndicators/OrdersRecieved/Content100/kae211bild5,property=image.png)
(http://www.destatis.de/jetspeed/portal/cms/Sites/destatis/Internet/Symbole/kona__legende5__e,property=image.png)
Por algún motivo las gráficas no se ven pero los datos ajustados de Alemania indican que los pedidos alcanzaron un máximo en 2011 (por debajo de los máximos anteriores a la crisis) y que a finales de 2011 los pedidos, corregidos por estacionalidad y tal volvieron a caer.

"INE" germano

Por el contrario el sector mostró una mejoría en EEUU a finales de 2011. ¿Será duradera?

El impacto de la crisis global ha sido especialmente fuerte en España donde en proporción se han destruido más empleos (relativamente hablando) que en cualquier otro país de la OCDE. No es raro que España fuera uno de los  primeros paises en ver la organización espontánea y duradera de un movimiento de protesta.

The Real News Network reconoce la influencia y el consejo de "DRY" en "OCCUPPY"

Spain's "Indignados" and the Globalization of Dissent

El tipo que habla es realmente bueno. Sus claves:

1) Tener paciencia, no creer que vas a cambiar el mundo en un día.
2) No formar grupúsculos, dar importancia a lo que une DRY
3) Fomentar el espíritu crítico

Hace poco leí en un blog inglés este símil que me pareció muy bueno. La banca tradicionalmente se dedicaba a la tediosa pero necesaria tarea de utilizar los depósitos de la clientela para dar crédito a particulares y empresas "engrasando" la economía. Durante el boom de crédito la banca se ha dedicado a engordar a costa del resto de la economía como el huevo que el cuco deja en los nidos de otros pájaros y que suele eclosionar antes que los residentes a los que, en la mayoría de los casos, expulsa a golpes de ala.

¿Es eso cierto en el caso de España? ¿Es la banca española el cuco en el nido de la economía nacional? Para responder esa pregunta he comparado algunas series de datos que se obtienen del Banco de España y de la Contabilidad Nacional Trimestral (INE). Concretamente, he comparado la Renta nacional neta  con el Margen bruto de la banca española. Lamentablemente sólo tengo datos desde el 2000, pero podemos contar una película interesante con respecto al boom. Si expresamos el margen bruto de la banca como un % de la renta nacional obtenemos la siguiente gráfica.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Entre el 2000 y 2004 el margen bruto de la banca era de un 5,6% respecto a la renta nacional con un corto lapso en el que alcanzó un 6,2% durante la burbuja.com. Entre 2005 y 2007, coincidiendo con la fase final de la burbuja de crédito e inmobiliaria los bancos fueron haciéndose con una parte creciente del pastel hasta alcanzar un 7,5% de la renta nacional a mediados de 2008 merced al "hinchamiento de balances" observado en mayor o menor medida en los balances de todos los bancos y cajas. Tras el estallido de la crisis podemos distinguir dos periodos. Entre el tercer trimestre de 2008 y el primero de 2010 el margen bancario se mantuvo e incluso aumentó hasta el 7,8% gracias a las facilidades del BCE, pero a partir de junio de 2010 el margen bruto de los bancos se deteriora sensiblemente indicando entre otras cosas que hacen menos negocio y que cada vez les cuesta más financiarse. El último dato del que dispongo corresponde al tercer trimestre de 2011 (6,4%) pero la caída está siendo vertiginosa y veremos donde está el suelo (y cuanto money vamos a poner los españoles para mantener ese suelo aparte de lo que ya se ha puesto).

La banca, el cuco en el nido, "necesita" parasitar al resto de la sociedad y lo que antes tomaba de sus clientes lo tomará ahora de los impuestos de todos. No en vano, para tratar de compensar la caída del margen de intereses y de negocio durante 2011 se han lanzado a una escalada de tarifas/comisiones sin parangón. En la siguiente gráfica se muestra la variación interanual en los costes promedios de dos servicios bancarios (mantenimiento de cuenta corriente y administración de recibos) según la web de clientes bancarios del BdE.



Uploaded with ImageShack.us
No está nada mal ese incremento del 22% en las comisiones de mantenimiento de cuentas corrientes. Bien es cierto que es un promedio y hay bancos y bancos, pero no creo que se pueda creer que este repentino aumento de costes se deba a alguna mejora notoria de los servicios.

Deducimos que la banca está tratando de resolver sus problemas de financiación empeorando la relación calidad/precio de sus servicios, y sobre todo...

... esperando con los brazos abiertos a la teta semi-seca de mamá Estado.