terça-feira, 31 de janeiro de 2012

Continuam as nuvens negras

No FT o título é "Portuguese debt looms over Europe" e subtitulo "EU leaders may have to tackle problem in weeks not months".
No WSJ, o título é ainda pior: "Lisbon Losing Control of Financial Destiny":
  • The market has made up its mind on Portugal. Like Greece last year, five-year bond yields are north of 20%, a deep recession is coming and a clear financing gap lurks in 2013: The Portuguese bailout program pencils in €9.3 billion ($12.3 billion) of bond sales for that year.
  • The immediate catalyst for the Portuguese bond implosion was Standard & Poor's downgrade to "junk." Even though Moody's and Fitch already rated Portugal similarly, this has still caused index-tracking funds to sell. It also raised the already-high bar for returning to market.
O artigo tem um erro que pode ser relevante para os próximos acontecimentos: diz que 90% do parlamento aprovou o orçamento de 2012.

segunda-feira, 30 de janeiro de 2012

As nuvens estão a ficar ainda mais negras

Enquanto que os juros da divida portuguesa atingiam máximos históricos e começava mais uma cimeira em Bruxelas, é preocupante que no live blog do FT sobre a crise da eurozona, Portugal seja várias vezes citado pela negativa, e inclusivé sejam extensamente transcritas partes da análise da Capital Economics (bolds da transcrição original pelo FT):
  • Although the government in Portugal is not as indebted as it is in Greece, we think it is also likely to default before too long. Portugal’s existing bail-out package should ensure that is fully funded until the end of 2012. But with the 10-year government bond yield now above 16 per cent, it may have to seek a second rescue deal well before that deadline expires. With little chance of the debt burden being eased by strong growth – we expect GDP to contract sharply this year and next as fiscal austerity bites – a debt restructuring may be a quid pro quo for further official sector support.
  • Alternatively, EU policymakers may decide that Portugal needs more aid, but that it does not need a debt restructuring. In this case, though, Portugal may still decide to default of its own accord if the conditions attached to a second bail-out are too onerous.
  • What’s more, we also think uncompetitive Portugal (with a large current account deficit) may choose to leave EMU [European monetary union, otherwise known as the euro] at some point in 2013. Indeed, this outcome now forms part of our central scenario, in which we expect Greece to be first to leave EMU this year.
No WSJ o tom é semelhante:
  • Portugal where solvency, rather than merely liquidity, is seen by many to be at issue.


Krugman ao Le Monde


Entrevista de Krugman ao Le Monde:
  • L'inflation n'est pas le problème, c'est la solution.
  • Pour restaurer la compétitivité en Europe, il faudrait que, disons d'ici les cinq prochaines années, les salaires baissent, dans les pays européens moins compétitifs, de 20 % par rapport à l'Allemagne. Avec un peu d'inflation, cet ajustement est plus facile à réaliser (en laissant filer les prix sans faire grimper les salaires en conséquence).
  • L'Allemagne croit que la rectitude et la discipline budgétaires sont la solution. Elle a tort. Leur histoire les pousse à proposer un mauvais remède. Les Allemands étaient en mauvaise posture à la fin des années 1990. Alors ils regardent ce qu'ils ont fait, comment ils sont parvenus à redresser leur économie et transformer des déficits en excédents commerciaux. Ils pensent appliquer leurs solutions à la zone euro. Mais, si tel était le cas, il faudrait trouver une autre planète pour exporter les produits de l'Europe !

domingo, 29 de janeiro de 2012

Expectativas sobre a crise do euro

Artigo do The Economist online sobre a esperança, ou não, de uma solução para a crise do euro:
  • The main business of the summit will be to push ahead with the “fiscal compact”. This requires the signatories to adopt balanced-budget rules. “They are going to sign a treaty that makes Keynesianism illegal,” comments one diplomat.
  • It would help if Europe were more productive. But this is the second area of concern. Having almost closed the productivity gap with America in the mid-1990s, Europe is again being left behind. This trend is most alarming in southern Europe, where productivity has actually dropped. A simple explanation is that Mediterranean countries enjoyed easy “catch-up” growth by importing technology. New growth needs the harder graft of innovation and enterprise. Southern economies with cumbersome regulation, poor administration, overreliance on tiny family businesses and an over-protected labour force are bad at this. Fixing that will be the work of a generation, not a summit.
(itálicos da nossa responsabilidade)

sábado, 28 de janeiro de 2012

Aqui há gato escondido ...

Durante a semana multiplicaram-se as referências aos prémios internacionais de jovens cientistas portuguesas. Tudo bem, mas ...
1. Mas é estranho que as noticias falem só de cientistas nas áreas das ciencias médicas e biológicas, embora com títulos altamente generalistas (do género "Os melhores da ciência em Portugal").
2. Mas todos esses prémios foram baseados em candidaturas apresentadas pelos próprios ao prémio - uma amostra por natureza altamente enviesada. Não deixa de ter algum significado o facto de serem escolhidos entre os que se candidataram. Mas uma avaliação completa da situação implicaria conhecer os perfis dos outros candidatos, e não candidatos nacionais.
3. Mas de forma alguma será legitimo inferir a partir disso sobre a posição desses jovens no cenário nacional - muitos outros, tão bons ou melhores, não se terão candidatado a esses tais prémios
4. Mas é estranho a insistencia com que jovens cientistas da Fundação Champalimaud e do Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciencia parecem motivados para concorrer a prémios deste tipo, e serem premiados.
5. Mas é estranha a sensação de cuidada campanha de relações públicas que parece estar associada a toda esta vaga de noticias.
6. Mas é estranho que sejam falados, mas pouco divulgados, os problemas financeiros com que se  as instituições referidas parecem debater-se
7. Mas é também estranho que ao mesmo tempo circulem noticias (ou boatos?) segundo as quais o governo pretende favorecer essas instituições na distribuição dos financiamentos de I&D, para ajudar a tapar os buracos financeiros aí existentes.
Simples coincidencias, ou gato escondido com o rabo de fora?

Capitalismo

Martin Wolf no FT, sobre a crise do capitalismo (Seven ways to fix the system's flaws):
  • Capitalism has always changed. That is its genius. Today’s shocks make the case for reform urgent.
  • The core institution of contemporary capitalism is the limited liability corporation. It is a brilliant social invention. But it has inherent failings, the most important of which are that companies are not effectively owned. That makes them vulnerable to looting.
  • The corporation is the best institution we know of for running large, complex and dynamic businesses.
  • A crisis, it has been said, “is a terrible thing to waste”. Capitalism has always changed. It needs to change right now if it is to survive and thrive. We need to find specific practical reforms within capitalism and to review the framework within which it operates.
  • But capitalism must still be capitalism. It is highly imperfect. Yet so are we. It is still a uniquely flexible, responsive and innovative economic system. It may be “in crisis” right now. But it is still among humanity’s most brilliant inventions. It is the basis for the prosperity that so many now enjoy and far more aspire to. It is transforming the lives of billions of people. Let us strive to make it better.

Retornos crescentes e monopólios

Uma consequencia dos "increasing returns", tipico da economia das ideias e de alguns mercados de tecnologias da informação e de bens imateriais, é que "winner takes all" - ou seja, a criação, no limite, de monopólios.
Os caso da Microsoft e da Google são exemplares, como em tempos foi a IBM. Problemas com as autoridades de regulação e com as leis anti-trust são depois quase inevitaveis.
Ou seja, os maravilhosos atributos dos retornos crescentes das ideias parecem condenar-nos a monopólios porventura anti-competitivos a longo prazo.

Em primeira ou segunda mão?

Artigo no Wired sobre How Sharing Disrupts Media:
Facebook and Google have become two of the biggest media companies in the world in extremely short amounts of time, precisely because they don’t have much interest in owning any content. Rupert Murdoch looks at Google and sees a pirate because he does everything: he both creates content (think 20th Century Fox), and also distributes it (think Sky TV). It’s a world of iron-clad contracts and tight control. While the social, digital world is one where the biggest media companies have a much lighter touch, and where the content creators with the broadest reach will be the ones who care the least about protecting their copyrights.
I suspect that we’re only in the very early days of seeing how this is going to disrupt just about every media organization built on the idea of hosting a website and selling ads, including highly socially-attuned ones like the Huffington Post. HuffPo is built on the idea that when stories are shared on Twitter or Facebook, that will drive traffic back to huffingtonpost.com, where it can then monetize that traffic by selling it to advertisers. But in future, the most viral stories are going to have a life of their own, being shared across many different platforms and being read by people who will never visit the original site on which they were published.

O espião espiado e o modelo vestido de acordo com o políticamente correto

Há algo de muito caricato nesta história do ex-espião que agora se sente melindrado por ser espiado!
O homem parece ser o paradigma do que pior existe na política atual.
Faz lembrar a (aliás, magnifica) publicidade da Regisconta há décadas atrás: o fabuloso homem da Regisconta.
O fabuloso homem da politica actual tem um modelo: fato escuro, camisa branca e gravata vermelha ou azul, monocor fundamental. Está tudo dito.
Lembram-se das regras de apresentação do IBMer do anos 60 ou 70? A atual geração da política parece ter-se inspirado aí, adotando um modelo de vestuário "políticamente correto".

sexta-feira, 27 de janeiro de 2012

A bola de neve começou a rolar outra vez?

Péssimas noticias no WSJ: a bola de neve parece começar a rolar...
Como é evidente, mostra as implicações sistémicas da situação do euro, e a inutilidade politica das politicas baseadas na ideia do "mostrar que somos capazes de nos portar bem e impor austeridade". E como o recentemente anunciado "ponto de viragem" da crise da dívida portuguesa (pelo ministro das finanças) provavelmente é "só fumaça", e pode mesmo vir a ser exactamente o contrário. Esperemos que não.
Borrowing costs for Portugal pushed to euro-era highs for the second consecutive day Friday, while the cost of insuring that debt also hit fresh records, as market participants increasingly considered what a Greek restructuring deal could mean for those holding Portuguese debt.
"Portugal is taking the hit because it's seen by investors as the country most likely to take a debt haircut after Greece," said Alessandro Giansanti, rates strategist at ING. "From an analysis of the cash bond prices, it appears that the market is implying a 40% face value haircut (for Portugal)."
Analysts at Evolution Securities pointed to a paper published by the German Kiel Institute for the World Economy on Greece, Portugal and Spain. "Unsurprisingly, it sees the situation in Greece as far worse than in the others, but also had great concerns over debt sustainability in Portugal, saying bondholders may have to face haircuts of up to 50%," said analysts Elisabeth Afseth and Brian Barry in a note.

No mesmo dia, no WSJ um artigo sobre a abertura do Guimaraes2012.

quarta-feira, 25 de janeiro de 2012

Austeridade: maratona versus sprint

Texto do The Economist relata que um estudo do IMF encontrou que os spreads estariam altamente influenciados pelas perpectivas de curto prazo, e indiferentes ás de longo prazo - exactamente ao contrário do que seria de esperar. Isto com base numa análise crosscountries, não ao longo do tempo. Trata-se de algo eventualmente circunstancial dos tempos correntes, mas que, a confirmar-se, tem grandes implicações sobre as politicas correntes.
A ser assim as políticas de Merckel e do governo português estão em total contradição com o que seria preciso nesta altura.
Austerity, the IMF has found, could be making Europe’s crisis worse, rather than better.
Cut the deficit too aggressively, and the negative impact on growth and the rise in the cost of debt service from higher spreads could result in a higher, not lower, debt-to-GDP ratio.
“Decreasing debt is a marathon, not a sprint,” observed Olivier Blanchard, the fund’s chief economist. “Going too fast will kill growth.”

segunda-feira, 23 de janeiro de 2012

IMF: alarme sobre a Europa e implicações

Sem outras soluções, Itália e Espanha entrarão em crise e não poderem financiar-se, e a Europa não terá recursos para o fazer - provocando recessão em grande escala. Lagardere recorda a grande depressão.
Artigo de topo no WSJ online.

"It is about avoiding a 1930s moment, in which inaction, insularity, and rigid ideology combine to cause a collapse in global demand," IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde said in prepared remarks before the German Council of Foreign Affairs in Berlin. "A moment, ultimately, leading to a downward spiral that could engulf the entire world," she said. 

Ms. Lagarde said unless euro-zone leaders urgently build a bigger emergency bailout fund, two of the euro zone's largest economies, Italy and Spain, risked insolvency as the cost of financing their debt spikes upward. Economists said failures in the two economies could spark a global financial and economic meltdown, and IMF staff are urging Europe to at least double the size of their firewall to around €1 trillion.
Insolvency in those two nations "would have disastrous implications for systemic stability," she said.



Situação portuguesa

Preocupante artigo do correspondente do WSJ em Lisboa, falando na previsivel impossibilidade de Portugal regressar aos mercados como previsto - o plano assumia crescimento mais forte e mais rápido do que pode acontecer.
Citação de Teixeira dos Santos: sem solução do problema europeu, nada disto valerá a pena.