La unificación de Europa (Y que va a pasar con España)

[Currobena]

Adjunto artículo de Edward Hugh sobre la situación de la economía finlandesa y su evolución como posible precursor de varios países de Europa:

Is Finland Really A Closet Member Of The Eurozone Periphery?
by Edward Hugh

At a time when many eyes look hopefully towards the ECB for the kind of action which may prove to be the salvation of the much beleagured Eurozone other, more critical, ones are casting themselves back over the recent track record of the institution itself, and asking what, if any, responsibility the Frankfurt-based bankers have for having allowed Euro Area government finances to fall into the sorry state they are now in.

Lessons From Japan?

No idle question this, since it harks back to the time when a good deal of attention was focused on the Bank of Japan, and how much responsibility policymakers there had for the deflation trap into which the country’s economy eventually fell. Now according to a very influential paper published by the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve System back in 2002 (Preventing Deflation: Lessons from Japan’s Experience in the 1990s, by Alan Ahearne and colleagues) the most important concern raised by Japanese policy during the country’s first “lost decade” was not that policymakers did not predict the oncoming deflationary slump –that in itself was not especially surprising, after all, neither did the majority of analysts and  forecasters – but that they did not take out sufficient insurance against downside risks through a continuous precautionary loosening of monetary policy. Simulations carried out at the time using the FRB/Global model lead the authors to the conclusion  that, had the BOJ lowered short-term interest rates by a further 200 basis points at any point between 1991 and early-1995, at least the first bout of deflation could have been avoided.  (On the other hand the model indicated that loosening after the second quarter of 1995 would have been too late to avoid deflation, as by that time inflation had already fallen below zero.)

Well, that was 2002, and who else apart from myself and a few other policy wonks with good memories now remembers the once renowned Ahearne et al paper? The Japan lesson was “learnt”, and then conveniently forgotten it seems. Now, of course, the Euro Area is not actually caught in Japan style deflation, but this isn’t over yet, and we don’t know how the story is going to end. What we do know is that the region is once more falling back into recession, while the economy has been submitted to a triphasic cocktail of fiscal austerity, monetary tightening and regulatory pressure for bank recapitalisation. And, of course, with a massive public and private overhang, a credit crunch that is tightening by the day and a backdrop of rapidly ageing populations the deficiency in domestic demand the region is suffering from looks even more visible to the naked eye than that famous hole which appeared in the side of the Titanic must have been after its unfortunate contact with the iceberg. Which is only another way of saying that the deflation risk is a real and ever present one, and a bit of downside insurance would have been a good thing. Prescient even.

Using The Ejector Seat Without A Parachute

Just to ask the question whether policymakers got their ”mix” right here seems like some kind of sick joke in bad taste. Virtually no insurance was taken out against possible downside risks to the price level (inflation was consistently seen as being a much more pressing problem), even if (going by the PMI output prices, see chart below) price pressures seem to have been on a downward path since early 2011. In any event, what inflation there was in the Eurozone was mainly the by-product of imported commodity prices or the knock-on impact of VAT increases, and in no case could it be seen as the result of domestic demand “overheating” which is really what monetary policy is equipped to deal with.
 

So the much discussed ECB “exit strategy” seems to have been applied far too early and far too systematically. In both the case of extraordinary liquidity measures, and in the case of interest rate policy, Mario Draghi has had to put the motor into reverse gear, and emphatically so. Not that this outcome was that hard to see at the time, as I expained in a post on the CNBC blog back in March (Chronicle of a Policy Error Foretold).

Crunch, Crunch, Something Funny Is Going On Here!

The parallel with Japan in fact extends beyond simple interest rate policy. Issues associated with the capitalisation of the banking system also have a certain parallel, as can be seen in the chart below (which comes from a Richard Koo presentation). Fiscal and monetary measures taken following the outbreak of the crisis worked initially, but since the core of the problem was not addressed keeping all the zombie loans going soon gave the banks funding problems which lead to a second credit crunch.

The interesting point here is that this process seems to be now being repeated in the Eurozone, as a second credit crunch firmly starts to set in. If you look at the chart below (which comes from a report by Unicredit), then you will see that the credit standards applied by banks (as extrapolated from the ECB monthly survey) have been tightening for some months now (and are obviously continuing to do so, hence the recent batch of liquidity measures. As Marco Valli (who wrote the Unicredit report) also points out, these lending conditions move in tandem with the PMIs (red line) which means that as they banks steadily close the lending spiggot activity in the real economy slows correspondingly.

Spread Them Wide

So obviously the ECB has been doing quite a bit wrong since the time of those wonderful “how we saved the world from disaster” speeches, leading to an evident waning of confidence in the institution. How much waning? Well that is currently the source of some debate. One line of reasoning, perhaps best personified by nobel economist Paul Krugman, has been arguing that the key turning point in the whole Euro debt crisis came last March, with the ECB decision to raise interest rates. His evidence, echoing that offered by Rebecca Wilder, comes from an examination of  the divergence between the Finish and Swedish 10 year bond yields, which started to drift apart around April.

As Krugman says: “What happened then? Ah, yes — the ECB started raising rates. And…..that’s precisely when euro bond spreads began their upward march, culminating in the current crisis”.

This idea that it has been ECB policy rate decisions which lie to some extent behind the growing financial turmoil which surrounds the Euro is really quite widepread. FT Alphaville’s Izabella Kaminska, for example,  runs a similar argument vis-avis French spread problems and the ECB’s second rate hike in July. As she says ”it’s clear that something influential happened in July. Something which not only destabilised the balancing system but tipped France, in particular, into the red. Could it have been the ECB’s July 7 rate hike to 1.5 per cent?”

Dutch Disease

While I fully agree with both authors that the application of the ECB crisis exit strategy has done a lot to undermine confidence in the idea that policymakers at the bank were really on top of the problems, I am not that convinced that it has been this stratgey in particular which has fuelled the ongoing crisis (heaven forbid, there are really no shortage of candidates here). One of the reasons I am not convinced by the Krugman case is that the Finnish spread itself has been detaching from other core Euro Area spreads, and this is a little difficult to explain simply by referring to ECB policy decisions.

If we look at the chart below, which was prepared by Marcel Bross at Commerzbank, we can see that the Finnish 10 year spread with the Dutch 10 year bond has been widening since early summer. (The black line shows the spread between the Finnish 10 year bond yield (RFGB) and the Dutch one (DSL) – the yellow lines shows the 5 year spread, which has performed rather differently).

Whatever Happened To My Current Account Surplus?

Now rather than the Swedish yield (Sweden remember is not in the Euro, and thus benefits from safe haven status, in that people can buy Swedish government bonds as a hedge against Euro Area break up), what is more interesting is to examine why Finnish yields might have been rising in relation to Dutch (and, of course, German ones). Does anyone have an explanation for this? I think I might have one. The principal exhibit is this.

The point is that Finland has steadily moved from having a goods trade surplus to having a deficit, and the situation has been deteriorating continuously since the start of the global crisis. Even the much renowned current account surplus has been steadily disappearing in recent years.

What Goes Down Doesn’t Necessarily Come Back Up Again

The interesting point is that while exports fell sharply (as they did in say Germany) during the recession, they didn’t recover again afterwards.

In part this could be a question of the product mix they were relying on (and difficulaties in the land of Nokia), but having said that we couldn’t be facing another one of those good old Euro periphery competitiveness issues, could we?

Strange how as the Finnish real effective exchange rate has drifted away from the German one, and now the Finnish 10 year bond yield is doing the very same thing. I wonder if there is a connection?

In fact Finland up to the onset of the crisis had a pretty competitive export driven economy. Then came the great recession, and peak to trough Finnish GDP was down by almost 10%. However, even after the onset of the recovery Finnish  GDP was still nearly 3% below the pre-crisis high at the end of Q3 2011, and now, evidently, as recession starts to fall over Europe output is falling back again.

Growth in Finland resumed in Q1 2010, but the economy has already started to show signs of slowing again, with annual growth falling from 5.4% in Q4 2010 to 2.7% in Q3 2011.

We Couldn’t Have Another One Of Those Credit Driven Housing And Consumer Booms On Our Hands, Could We?

Another part of the picture is the way in which – in contrast to exports – household consumption recovered quite strongly in Finland. Not only did consumption recover, but at the end of Q2 it was 1.5% above the pre crisis high.

So the question is why did this happen? In some ways Finland could be thought of as the good student, steadily correcting one of those horrid imbalances which so worry everyone. But how did it do this? Well ECB interest rates and a house price boom certainly form part of the picture. The low interest rate environment generated in the wake of the global financial crisis has meant that those developed economies which did not experience a major housing boom-bust during the first decade of this century and still have housing market momentum have been running an elevated risk of experiencing one.

In particular the situation in three Scandinavian countries – Norway, Sweden and Finland – has attracted a lot of attention. In each case there was a minor house price correction around the time of Lehman Brothers, following which prices continued on their earlier upward path. And the comparison between the way industrial output failed to recover, while construction output really took off is another warning signal.

Finnish house prices have effectively been rising in real terms since the slump of the early 1990s. They fell back slightly during the crisis, but supported by ultra low interest rates from the ECB – some 95% of Finnish mortgage loans are variable – they soon resumed their upward path. In fact Finland is one of the few examples of a Eurozone country where the monetary stimulus may have actually worked. Let’s just hope they won’t live to regret it.

Anyway, one day or another some sort of correction was inevitable, as even the most reluctant of students among us must surely now have learnt that property prices do not continue to rise forever. To my eyes it seems that that fated day may finally have arrived in Finland in June this year.

Confidence data certainly reinforce this impression.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy!

But why worry, since as I said above, surely this is all part of that very much needed Euro Area rebalancing process? Finland has been running a property boom, but the population is not heavily indebted. Private sector debt is not especially high by some Southern European standards, and government debt is still low (and indeed under 60% of GDP), while the fiscal deficit has not breached the EU 3% limit.

So things are not too bad, unless…. unless you take seriously my ageing populations, export dependency hypothesis, in which case the recent loss of competitiveness is about to pose serious problems. The country is now the fifth oldest on the planet – after Japan, Germany, Italy and Austria – with a median age of 42.5.

This level of ageing is normally associated with low or volatile growth (think Germany and Japan), heavy export dependence, or both. The country has an ageing and declining workforce, and this, as the EU Commission noted in its most recent country forecast looks set to further take its toll on competitiveness and growth.

    “The Finnish labour market is confronted with a notable demographic shock. Due to the retirement of a large baby-boom generation, the working-age population is projected to decline by over 5% of the current labour force by the end of the decade…(hence)…. taking account of the weakening of the growth potential of the Finnish economy due to its declining working-age population, the recovery will be more subdued than in previous recovery cycles….”

Conclusion: the country’s debt dynamics are far from unsustainable at this point, but given the weakening in the country’s export performance and the steady unwinding of the housing boom we can now anticipate I would expect growth to be weaker than either the EU or the IMF are currently anticipating, and pressure on the country to increase fiscal spending to maintain expectations to rise, with the implication that pressure on the Finnish spread over 10 year German bunds will continue, as the country risks drifting off from being part of the core towards the growing periphery, at least in the eyes of investors. So finally, coming back to the ECB and movements in the policy rate, it could well be the case that perceptions about rising future interest rates played their part in encouraging individuals not to leverage their balance sheets further thus weakening the housing boom, but my feeling is that in  the Finnish case the catalyst for the coming property implosion may not have been the recent 50 bps interest rate rises from the ECB, but rather the ongoing impact of the sovereign debt crisis on confidence, subsequently reinforced by the inbound shock from the recessionary wave now steadily sweeping Europe.

En resumen, Finlandia ha  pasado de exportador neto a estar en déficit de balanza de pagos, como los países del Sur de Europa. Con el agravante de que tiene la quinta población más envejecida de la Unión Europea, lo que hace que sea más difícil reanudar la senda del crecimiento económico.

Por último, los tipos de interés bajos impuestos por el BCE han estimulado aún más el crecimiento ya existente de los precios inmobiliarios, creando el potencial para una mini-burbuja inmobiliaria.

Adjunto enlace (y recomiendo leer el artículo original con las gráficas):

http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/is-finland-really-a-closet-member-of-the-eurozone-periphery/

[Starkiller]

Por cierto, que yo he entrado al hilo para poner otra cosa (aunque lo pondré en el hilo de demografía también). Muy recomendable a todos los niveles la película "Children Of Men", y con esto de los british revueltos cobra unos significados mucho más poderosos.

Peliculón, tanto en trama como en técnica.

Quien no lo haya visto, que lo haga YA. a ser posible en VO.

Por lo demás, estoy divirtiéndome muchísimo viendo a UK revolverse. No se lo esperaban.

No hay peor situación que ejercer su fuerza, y ser derrotado. HAce un mes, nadie dudaba de la influencia casi absoluta de UK en la política de lña UE. A dái de hoy, dicha influencia se ha derrumbado.

[Republik]

Adjunto artículo de Edward Hugh sobre la situación de la economía finlandesa y su evolución como posible precursor de varios países de Europa:

Is Finland Really A Closet Member Of The Eurozone Periphery?
by Edward Hugh

At a time when many eyes look hopefully towards the ECB for the kind of action which may prove to be the salvation of the much beleagured Eurozone other, more critical, ones are casting themselves back over the recent track record of the institution itself, and asking what, if any, responsibility the Frankfurt-based bankers have for having allowed Euro Area government finances to fall into the sorry state they are now in.

Lessons From Japan?

No idle question this, since it harks back to the time when a good deal of attention was focused on the Bank of Japan, and how much responsibility policymakers there had for the deflation trap into which the country’s economy eventually fell. Now according to a very influential paper published by the Board of Governors of the US Federal Reserve System back in 2002 (Preventing Deflation: Lessons from Japan’s Experience in the 1990s, by Alan Ahearne and colleagues) the most important concern raised by Japanese policy during the country’s first “lost decade” was not that policymakers did not predict the oncoming deflationary slump –that in itself was not especially surprising, after all, neither did the majority of analysts and  forecasters – but that they did not take out sufficient insurance against downside risks through a continuous precautionary loosening of monetary policy. Simulations carried out at the time using the FRB/Global model lead the authors to the conclusion  that, had the BOJ lowered short-term interest rates by a further 200 basis points at any point between 1991 and early-1995, at least the first bout of deflation could have been avoided.  (On the other hand the model indicated that loosening after the second quarter of 1995 would have been too late to avoid deflation, as by that time inflation had already fallen below zero.)

Well, that was 2002, and who else apart from myself and a few other policy wonks with good memories now remembers the once renowned Ahearne et al paper? The Japan lesson was “learnt”, and then conveniently forgotten it seems. Now, of course, the Euro Area is not actually caught in Japan style deflation, but this isn’t over yet, and we don’t know how the story is going to end. What we do know is that the region is once more falling back into recession, while the economy has been submitted to a triphasic cocktail of fiscal austerity, monetary tightening and regulatory pressure for bank recapitalisation. And, of course, with a massive public and private overhang, a credit crunch that is tightening by the day and a backdrop of rapidly ageing populations the deficiency in domestic demand the region is suffering from looks even more visible to the naked eye than that famous hole which appeared in the side of the Titanic must have been after its unfortunate contact with the iceberg. Which is only another way of saying that the deflation risk is a real and ever present one, and a bit of downside insurance would have been a good thing. Prescient even.

Using The Ejector Seat Without A Parachute

Just to ask the question whether policymakers got their ”mix” right here seems like some kind of sick joke in bad taste. Virtually no insurance was taken out against possible downside risks to the price level (inflation was consistently seen as being a much more pressing problem), even if (going by the PMI output prices, see chart below) price pressures seem to have been on a downward path since early 2011. In any event, what inflation there was in the Eurozone was mainly the by-product of imported commodity prices or the knock-on impact of VAT increases, and in no case could it be seen as the result of domestic demand “overheating” which is really what monetary policy is equipped to deal with.
 

So the much discussed ECB “exit strategy” seems to have been applied far too early and far too systematically. In both the case of extraordinary liquidity measures, and in the case of interest rate policy, Mario Draghi has had to put the motor into reverse gear, and emphatically so. Not that this outcome was that hard to see at the time, as I expained in a post on the CNBC blog back in March (Chronicle of a Policy Error Foretold).

Crunch, Crunch, Something Funny Is Going On Here!

The parallel with Japan in fact extends beyond simple interest rate policy. Issues associated with the capitalisation of the banking system also have a certain parallel, as can be seen in the chart below (which comes from a Richard Koo presentation). Fiscal and monetary measures taken following the outbreak of the crisis worked initially, but since the core of the problem was not addressed keeping all the zombie loans going soon gave the banks funding problems which lead to a second credit crunch.

The interesting point here is that this process seems to be now being repeated in the Eurozone, as a second credit crunch firmly starts to set in. If you look at the chart below (which comes from a report by Unicredit), then you will see that the credit standards applied by banks (as extrapolated from the ECB monthly survey) have been tightening for some months now (and are obviously continuing to do so, hence the recent batch of liquidity measures. As Marco Valli (who wrote the Unicredit report) also points out, these lending conditions move in tandem with the PMIs (red line) which means that as they banks steadily close the lending spiggot activity in the real economy slows correspondingly.

Spread Them Wide

So obviously the ECB has been doing quite a bit wrong since the time of those wonderful “how we saved the world from disaster” speeches, leading to an evident waning of confidence in the institution. How much waning? Well that is currently the source of some debate. One line of reasoning, perhaps best personified by nobel economist Paul Krugman, has been arguing that the key turning point in the whole Euro debt crisis came last March, with the ECB decision to raise interest rates. His evidence, echoing that offered by Rebecca Wilder, comes from an examination of  the divergence between the Finish and Swedish 10 year bond yields, which started to drift apart around April.

As Krugman says: “What happened then? Ah, yes — the ECB started raising rates. And…..that’s precisely when euro bond spreads began their upward march, culminating in the current crisis”.

This idea that it has been ECB policy rate decisions which lie to some extent behind the growing financial turmoil which surrounds the Euro is really quite widepread. FT Alphaville’s Izabella Kaminska, for example,  runs a similar argument vis-avis French spread problems and the ECB’s second rate hike in July. As she says ”it’s clear that something influential happened in July. Something which not only destabilised the balancing system but tipped France, in particular, into the red. Could it have been the ECB’s July 7 rate hike to 1.5 per cent?”

Dutch Disease

While I fully agree with both authors that the application of the ECB crisis exit strategy has done a lot to undermine confidence in the idea that policymakers at the bank were really on top of the problems, I am not that convinced that it has been this stratgey in particular which has fuelled the ongoing crisis (heaven forbid, there are really no shortage of candidates here). One of the reasons I am not convinced by the Krugman case is that the Finnish spread itself has been detaching from other core Euro Area spreads, and this is a little difficult to explain simply by referring to ECB policy decisions.

If we look at the chart below, which was prepared by Marcel Bross at Commerzbank, we can see that the Finnish 10 year spread with the Dutch 10 year bond has been widening since early summer. (The black line shows the spread between the Finnish 10 year bond yield (RFGB) and the Dutch one (DSL) – the yellow lines shows the 5 year spread, which has performed rather differently).

Whatever Happened To My Current Account Surplus?

Now rather than the Swedish yield (Sweden remember is not in the Euro, and thus benefits from safe haven status, in that people can buy Swedish government bonds as a hedge against Euro Area break up), what is more interesting is to examine why Finnish yields might have been rising in relation to Dutch (and, of course, German ones). Does anyone have an explanation for this? I think I might have one. The principal exhibit is this.

The point is that Finland has steadily moved from having a goods trade surplus to having a deficit, and the situation has been deteriorating continuously since the start of the global crisis. Even the much renowned current account surplus has been steadily disappearing in recent years.

What Goes Down Doesn’t Necessarily Come Back Up Again

The interesting point is that while exports fell sharply (as they did in say Germany) during the recession, they didn’t recover again afterwards.

In part this could be a question of the product mix they were relying on (and difficulaties in the land of Nokia), but having said that we couldn’t be facing another one of those good old Euro periphery competitiveness issues, could we?

Strange how as the Finnish real effective exchange rate has drifted away from the German one, and now the Finnish 10 year bond yield is doing the very same thing. I wonder if there is a connection?

In fact Finland up to the onset of the crisis had a pretty competitive export driven economy. Then came the great recession, and peak to trough Finnish GDP was down by almost 10%. However, even after the onset of the recovery Finnish  GDP was still nearly 3% below the pre-crisis high at the end of Q3 2011, and now, evidently, as recession starts to fall over Europe output is falling back again.

Growth in Finland resumed in Q1 2010, but the economy has already started to show signs of slowing again, with annual growth falling from 5.4% in Q4 2010 to 2.7% in Q3 2011.

We Couldn’t Have Another One Of Those Credit Driven Housing And Consumer Booms On Our Hands, Could We?

Another part of the picture is the way in which – in contrast to exports – household consumption recovered quite strongly in Finland. Not only did consumption recover, but at the end of Q2 it was 1.5% above the pre crisis high.

So the question is why did this happen? In some ways Finland could be thought of as the good student, steadily correcting one of those horrid imbalances which so worry everyone. But how did it do this? Well ECB interest rates and a house price boom certainly form part of the picture. The low interest rate environment generated in the wake of the global financial crisis has meant that those developed economies which did not experience a major housing boom-bust during the first decade of this century and still have housing market momentum have been running an elevated risk of experiencing one.

In particular the situation in three Scandinavian countries – Norway, Sweden and Finland – has attracted a lot of attention. In each case there was a minor house price correction around the time of Lehman Brothers, following which prices continued on their earlier upward path. And the comparison between the way industrial output failed to recover, while construction output really took off is another warning signal.

Finnish house prices have effectively been rising in real terms since the slump of the early 1990s. They fell back slightly during the crisis, but supported by ultra low interest rates from the ECB – some 95% of Finnish mortgage loans are variable – they soon resumed their upward path. In fact Finland is one of the few examples of a Eurozone country where the monetary stimulus may have actually worked. Let’s just hope they won’t live to regret it.

Anyway, one day or another some sort of correction was inevitable, as even the most reluctant of students among us must surely now have learnt that property prices do not continue to rise forever. To my eyes it seems that that fated day may finally have arrived in Finland in June this year.

Confidence data certainly reinforce this impression.

Don’t Worry, Be Happy!

But why worry, since as I said above, surely this is all part of that very much needed Euro Area rebalancing process? Finland has been running a property boom, but the population is not heavily indebted. Private sector debt is not especially high by some Southern European standards, and government debt is still low (and indeed under 60% of GDP), while the fiscal deficit has not breached the EU 3% limit.

So things are not too bad, unless…. unless you take seriously my ageing populations, export dependency hypothesis, in which case the recent loss of competitiveness is about to pose serious problems. The country is now the fifth oldest on the planet – after Japan, Germany, Italy and Austria – with a median age of 42.5.

This level of ageing is normally associated with low or volatile growth (think Germany and Japan), heavy export dependence, or both. The country has an ageing and declining workforce, and this, as the EU Commission noted in its most recent country forecast looks set to further take its toll on competitiveness and growth.

    “The Finnish labour market is confronted with a notable demographic shock. Due to the retirement of a large baby-boom generation, the working-age population is projected to decline by over 5% of the current labour force by the end of the decade…(hence)…. taking account of the weakening of the growth potential of the Finnish economy due to its declining working-age population, the recovery will be more subdued than in previous recovery cycles….”

Conclusion: the country’s debt dynamics are far from unsustainable at this point, but given the weakening in the country’s export performance and the steady unwinding of the housing boom we can now anticipate I would expect growth to be weaker than either the EU or the IMF are currently anticipating, and pressure on the country to increase fiscal spending to maintain expectations to rise, with the implication that pressure on the Finnish spread over 10 year German bunds will continue, as the country risks drifting off from being part of the core towards the growing periphery, at least in the eyes of investors. So finally, coming back to the ECB and movements in the policy rate, it could well be the case that perceptions about rising future interest rates played their part in encouraging individuals not to leverage their balance sheets further thus weakening the housing boom, but my feeling is that in  the Finnish case the catalyst for the coming property implosion may not have been the recent 50 bps interest rate rises from the ECB, but rather the ongoing impact of the sovereign debt crisis on confidence, subsequently reinforced by the inbound shock from the recessionary wave now steadily sweeping Europe.

En resumen, Finlandia ha  pasado de exportador neto a estar en déficit de balanza de pagos, como los países del Sur de Europa. Con el agravante de que tiene la quinta población más envejecida de la Unión Europea, lo que hace que sea más difícil reanudar la senda del crecimiento económico.

Por último, los tipos de interés bajos impuestos por el BCE han estimulado aún más el crecimiento ya existente de los precios inmobiliarios, creando el potencial para una mini-burbuja inmobiliaria.

Adjunto enlace (y recomiendo leer el artículo original con las gráficas):

http://fistfulofeuros.net/afoe/is-finland-really-a-closet-member-of-the-eurozone-periphery/

Hay un "conundrum" cuya solución no acabo de ver , para esos países "ahorro-exportadores netos", y es que suelen ser ahorradores por viejos (los viejos son más renuentes al riesgo y más acumuladores), y exportadores netos en parte también por la dinámica demográfica (los viejos, de nuevo,son poco consumidores relativamente, y su elevada tasa de ahorro acaba generando alta inversión doméstica aparte de en muchos casos exportación de capitales), con lo cual su aparentemente envidiable posición ya no lo es tanto vista de cerca, y además exige la contraparte jovenzuela y dispendiosa que haga cuadrar la locomotora exportadora. Peor se ponen las cosas si uno es un país pequeño y muy abierto que depende altamente de un par de exportaciones, una con alta competencia asiática y dependiende del diseño y tendencias mundiales, la otra una commodity que fluctúa con el peculiar ciclo de esos bienes.


Una salida puede ser "exportar ancianos" de modo que los cuidados los realicen personas de bajo salario en países de la misma área económica (el viejo sueño de hacer de España la Florida europea, visto que para California no damos el tipo), otra una robotización de esos cuidados en suelo patrio cuyo coste sea bajo, pues si se quiere mantener indefinidamente la posición neta en números negros es forzoso contener el consumo de capital a que tienden, cuando envejecen mucho, tanto los individuos "sueltos" como agregados en forma de sociedades. La primera es la óptima para la eurozona, eso sí, sobre todo para España como potencial receptora de esas personas.

[WhereIsMyCheese]

Mientras tanto, los anglos histéricos profetizando catástrofes

http://www.eleconomista.es/economia/noticias/3612672/12/11/El-alcalde-Londres-insta-a-abandonar-los-esfuerzos-histericos-de-salvar-la-eurozona.html

El alcalde de Londres, Boris Johnson, ha dicho que los líderes europeos deberían abandonar los esfuerzos "histéricos" para salvar la eurozona y admitir que algunos países tienen que abandonar la moneda única.

En una entrevista en la cadena pública BBC, el político conservador señaló que está convencido que de aquí a un año algunos países van a quedar fuera y "todos sabemos quien son los candidatos".

En este sentido, Johnson se lamentó de que los líderes europeos muestren tanto rechazo a ello y no sean capaces de buscar una solución, y lo achacó a que "se ha invertido demasiado ego político en el éxito del proyecto del euro".

En este sentido, el político conservador alertó de que si se sigue con los intentos "histéricos" de mantener la moneda única como está, "lo que se va a conseguir es que especialmente las economías periféricas van a crecer poco y nunca se va a conseguir devolver la confianza sobre la eurozona"

El alcalde de Londres fue uno de los mayores defensores del rechazo del Reino Unido a formar parte del nuevo tratado de la Unión Europea y de la celebración de un referéndum sobre la permanencia de su país en el mercado único.

Sobre ello explicó hoy que de momento no ve razones para celebrar la consulta, ya que al no estar dentro del nuevo tratado, el Reino Unido no sufre el riesgo de perder poder frente a Bruselas.

Realmente ésta carga de caballería del alcalde de Londres supone toda una respuesta histérica ante lo sucedido ésta semana pasada.  Consciente de lo mal que les ha salido la jugada de Cameron, están como "motos", muy preocupados, angustiados, e histéricos, aullando por todos los Mass Mierda del Reino Hundido, ante nuevos hechos muy significativos (que no pueden impedir):

a)  Los esfuerzos "históricos" para salvar la eurozona, por parte de todos los líderes europeos, que han significado una mayor unión y un paso adelante significativo en la construcción de una única Europa (ellos, los ingleses, han perdido poder e influencia en el mundo y en Europa, por lo que han dejado de ser los líderes de antaño).

b)   Está convencido que de aquí a un año algunos países van a quedar fuera de la eurozona y ya todos sabemos en Europa quien es el candidato que ha sido expulsado:  el Reino Hundido.  Adiós a la carretera amarilla del Mago de Oz, la Sede central de la Banca Europea abandonará Londres para tener su sede en otra capital europea.  Ya se lo están disputando Berlín, París, etc.  El Reino Hundido pierde negocio e ingresos.  Londres pierde mucho más (gastos en alojamientos, comidas, recepción de transferencias, impuestos, etc).

c)   Todos los líderes europeos (26 paises) han mostrado rechazo frontal, directo, expreso al Reino Hundido.  Se han enfrentado a los anglosajones, les han perdido el "miedo" y les han expulsado.

d)   Si Europa persiste con sus intentos históricos sobre el euro, al final, lo van a conseguir.  Es lo que temen los british. Algo que aumentará la ruina del Reino Hundido y de la libra esterlina, por descontado, que ya está quebrado y que verá perder unos ingresos sustanciosos, con los que contaba desde hace décadas.

e)    El temor a la celebración del (tan demagógicamente utilizado) referendum por la Propaganda Anglo y los dirigentes políticos british es tremebundo.  ¿Por qué ahora, que lo tienen a huevo para ganarlo?  Sencillo, porque lo ganarían, pero es que...   ahora dependen de la decisiones económicas que tome Europa y visto que han perdido y han sido expulsados, éstos hechos no han significado al mismo tiempo la desaparición de sus intereses, ni un cambio de sus negocios, por lo que no quieren cerrar definitivamente la puerta, ni complicar aún más, la posibilidad de nuevos acuerdos y tratados con Europa, claro está, ya desde el exterior.

Sigue el show, las declaraciones, las grandilocuentes palabras para consumo interno de las poblaciones nacionales y demás propagan y parafernalia. 

Pero nada cambia el hecho significativo:  patada en el culo al Reino Hundido, que ha sido expulsada de Europa.  Ni siquiera influirá, desde dentro, en la toma de las decisiones que más le afectan a su economía. 

No se esperaban la reacción de toda Europa que, paradójicamente, gracias al veto inglés se ha unido.  No imaginaban que les saliera tan mal la jugada. 

Ahora les toca deshacer el entuerto, je, je, je   y no es moco de pavo con una Alemania y una Francia hasta los mismísimos huitos de la propaganda anglosajona para esconder su ruina y sus miserias económicas.  Son las cosas de la historia.  Alemanes y franceses plantándoles cara, habiéndoles perdido el miedo y dándoles caña...  Cameron no es Churchill.  Tampoco es Thatcher, los tiempos han cambiado.  Les toca tragar un poco de su propia medicina.
_____________

Un saludo a todos y gracias por sus aportaciones.

Te he dado un thnks, por que no me permite más el cacharro este.

Cuanta razón! esto mismo he pensado muchas veces, estos ingleses (que no británicos) son el perro del hortelano, y esta vez, como ya están muy fichados, se van a tener que tragar la mier_a, pero como son ladinos en todo, no dan la cara y no plantean la salida de la UE, están esperando a ver el rumbo para no perderse nada.

Ay, Pérfida Albión...!!!

[Dan]

No me resisto a poner esto, aunque muchos ya lo conoceréis, de Mapping stereotypes de Yanko Tsvetkov:

http://alphadesigner.com/project-mapping-stereotypes.html

[dmar]

Aquí dejo un borrador del nuevo tratado de la UE,

http://db.tt/S2hmcXr0%20

via The Economist.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/charlemagne/2011/12/euro-zones-treaties?fsrc=scn/tw/te/bl/thatclevermrlegal

Según el articulista:

First, the aim is to make it harder for politicians to meddle with proposals by the European Commission to place countries under the "excessive deficit procedure", under which they can face sanctions if they run annual deficits higher than 3% of GDP. Under current rules, this requires approval by a qualified (weighted) majority vote (QMV) of member states. The treaty seeks to change this vote to a "reverse QMV" procedure, whereby the proposals are accepted unless a qualified majority of ministers vote against it. How to change this without changing the existing EU treaty? Well, under the terms of the intergovernmental treaty, the minister would agree to behave as if the reverse QMV rule existed. In other words, it is a gentleman's agreement without real enforcement provisions.

Esta interpretación del Art. 7 es un poco descorazonadora: no existirá un mecanismo real para obligar a respetar el deficit.  Patada adelante hasta que algún país poderoso pretenda saltárselo.

[Pensativo]

Bueno, pues ya tenemos menestro anglófilo en exteriores.

Entrevista a José Manuel García-Margallo

Gobernanza Económica	Small | Large

Vuelve a haber tracas en la fiesta.......

[sid00]

Añado uno más:

García-Margallo ofrece un análisis y fórmulas sobre la crisis europea

García-Margallo ofrece un análisis y fórmulas sobre la crisis europea

Desde luego se ha aprendido un discurso y no se mueve de ahí, creo que se retrata bastante bien.

[pringaete]

Si cumple la mitad de la mitad de mitad de lo que dice en el primer vídeo, firmo ahora mismo. Vamos, que me parece forero y todo

Está hablando de un edificio de nueva planta ¿transición estructural?

Está puteando a los seres de luz cuando se saltan las reglas.

Y cuando descarta los tigres vegetarianos a mi me suena a unidad fiscal.

Tampoco lo veo tan anglófilo, dice que hay que controlar a las agencias por ser yankis.

En fin, que no es lo peor que nos podría haber tocado en la tómbola de Marihuano.

[Pagador de facturas ajenas]

Si cumple la mitad de la mitad de mitad de lo que dice en el primer vídeo, firmo ahora mismo. Vamos, que me parece forero y todo

Está hablando de un edificio de nueva planta ¿transición estructural?

Está puteando a los seres de luz cuando se saltan las reglas.

Y cuando descarta los tigres vegetarianos a mi me suena a unidad fiscal.

Tampoco lo veo tan anglófilo, dice que hay que controlar a las agencias por ser yankis.

En fin, que no es lo peor que nos podría haber tocado en la tómbola de Marihuano.

Despues de ver el primer video en su totalidad si que cambia la cosa un poco, habra que ver que postura toma ante su nuevo cometido.
Tenemos un nuevo gabinete de ministros muy CPM, menudo sarampion nos espera

[Decreasing Management]

Una intuición que me ha venido a bote pronto:

Es posible que Rajoy sospeche que los dos bloques enfrentados, anglosfera y eurocore están auscultando el nuevo gobierno e intentando poner a sus peones en el. La lealtad de España es necesaria para el plan EU porque nuestro simpa podría ser colosal.

Con esto, sería necesario poner el CNI a manos de una persona de total confianza, Soraya, en lo que interpreto como una leve desconfianza al ministro de defensa.

También sería necesario poner al mando de la economía a alguien de total confianza, en última instancia el propio Rajoy, que es lo que ha hecho.

Sospecho que no tiene claras lealtades en su propio entorno y que sabe que no sólo nosotros nos jugamos mucho sino también otras potencias.

En fin, lamento emitir una hipótesis no falsable, pero la comparto con ustedes a ver que les parece. Para eso esta el foro.

[fff]

Pues es muy listo este señor... básicamente razona que tenemos que ser pobres porque unos señores han hecho las cosas mal y no han salido bien...
Mi pregunta seria, la crisis la van a pagar los que mas tienen? Nooo, la crisis estrangulará a la clase media convirtiendola en clase pobre.
Responsabilidad al que decia que "España va bien". Si iba tan bien, como podemos estar tan mal ahora? Rsponsabilidad a los legisladores que han permitido unas reglas del juego para enriquecerse solamente ellos. Responsabilidad a todos los que han sobornado por activa y pasiva, han montado sociedades que no pagan un euro, han evadido fiscalmente hasta su abuela, han defraudado en una palabra...

Señores, esto sólo lo arregla la cuchilla de nuestros vecinos, que hace 222 años empezó a ajustar cuentas... y hay mucho trabajo.

[jespas]

Hoy felicitandonos por tlf las navidades con unos catalanes, ( muy bien situados) me comentan que la presión que están ejerciendo los políticos, echando las culpas de todos sus males a Madrid es tremenda y esto unido a un comentario, en el que se  decia que el ataque a Campechano 1º, podría venir de la oligarquía catalana; me hace pensar en la posibilidad, de que la oligarquía catalana viendo el proceso de unificación  de EU la velocidad que está cogiendo, están queriendo desligarse a la desesperada del resto de España, para no entrar en el mismo paquete e intentatar colarle el rollito terruñístico a EU y continuar con sus privilegios oligárquicos y redes clientelares lo más intactas posible.

[wanderer]

Me ha parecido interesante este artículo de Timothy Garton Ash en El País (parece que empiezan a entender que fuera de EU hace mucho frío, y que pasarían a ser el Reino Hundido con todas sus consecuencias):

http://www.elpais.com/articulo/opinion/Deben/separarse/Reino/Unido/UE/elpepiopi/20111224elpepiopi_4/Tes

[Decreasing Management]

Para los que sigan este hilo pero no vigilen todo el foro, seguro que les interesa este otro:

http://www.transicionestructural.net/the-big-picture/bombazo-china-y-japon-acuerdan-comerciar-directamente-entre-sus-dos-divisas/

Una vez más decir que el LEAP es una cosa impresionante, cito el del 17 de noviembre que ya tratamos aquí:

(que está aquí http://www.leap2020.eu/Crisis-sistemica-global-30-000-millardos-de-USD-de-activos-fantasmas-desapareceran-a-principios-de-2013-La-crisis-entra_a8164.html )

Lo vuelvo a sacar para ir viendo lo que va acertando.


Sobre el Reino Unido (esto está dicho antes de la eurocumbre)

El Reino Unido está, sencilla y definitivamente « fuera » de las reuniones de Eurolandia (13). Y otros países miembros de la Unión, externos a la Eurozona, se han reagrupado nuevamente detrás de Eurolandia negándose a sostener la proposición británica de un derecho a veto de los 27 sobre las decisiones de Eurolandia. La deriva del Reino Unido experimenta, así, un aceleramiento ilustrado por el aumento de las tentativas de los euro-escépticos británicos (que son generalmente soldados de infantería de la City (14)) para intentar reducir tan pronto como sea posible el máximo de lazos con la Europa continental (15). Lejos de ser una prueba del éxito de su política, es al contrario una confesión del fracaso completo (16): después de veinte años de continuos esfuerzos, no pudieron romper el proceso de integración europea, éste recomienza mejor bajo la presión de la crisis. Ellos tratan de « soltar las amarras » por temor (fundado, por otra parte (17)) de ver al Reino Unido diluirse en Eurolandia a fines de esta década (18).

Sobre USA y su deuda:

 A este paso, para tratar de diluir la información negativa para Estados Unidos, es muy probable que haya una tentativa de volver a lanzar la crisis de la deuda pública hacia la Eurozona (29) bajando la calificación de Francia para debilitar el Fondo Europeo de Estabilización Financiera (30).

Todo esto presagia un fin de año muy animado para los mercados financieros y monetarios que conllevará conmociones violentas en los sistemas bancarios occidentales y para todos los poseedores de Bonos del Tesoro estadounidenses. Pero más allá del fracaso de la « supercomisión » en reducir el déficit federal, es toda la pirámide de la deuda estadounidense la que va a ser auscultada nuevamente, en un contexto de recesión mundial y, por supuesto, Estados Unidos con: caída de los ingresos fiscales, continuación del aumento de la cantidad de parados y en particular de quienes que ha dejado de recibir una compensación (31), prosecución de la caída de los precios de los bienes inmuebles…