Crise Global 70

Deixarmo-nos de fantasias



O PIB do planeta, em paridade do poder de compra, andará à volta de 69 biliões de dólares. O PIB do planeta representa assim qualquer coisa como 4,6 vezes o PIB da União Europeia (UE27) e 4,9 o PIB dos EUA. Europa e Estados Unidos somam pois 42% do PIB global. É por conseguinte ilusório pensar que uma qualquer solução para o colapso económico-financeiro, social e ambiental em curso possa vir dos emergentes BRIC (Brasil, Rússia, Índia e China), os quais, no seu conjunto, pesam menos do que o PIB europeu, representando ainda pouco mais de 13% do PIB global.

A grande crise que actualmente nos aflige foi criada pelo Capitalismo americano e europeu, continua a residir sobretudo nos Estados Unidos da América e na União Europeia, e não terá solução se esta parte minoritária da humanidade continuar adormecida por ideais irrealistas cada vez mais letais, e não se libertar da gigantesca burocracia cortesã que tem vindo a transformar as democracias ocidentais em meras máquinas de ilusões e efeitos especiais.

A exposição global do mercado de derivados (por cima e por baixo da mesa) ronda os 1400 biliões de dólares, ou seja, 20 vezes o PIB mundial, 93 vezes o PIB da UE27 e 98 vezes o PIB americano! Os activos financeiros globais, por sua vez, e apesar de uma tesourada de 50 biliões de dólares ao longo de 2008 (cerca de um ano de PIB mundial), ainda deve somar qualquer coisa como 160 biliões de dólares, isto é, 2,3 vezes o valor de toda a produção mundial de bens serviços ao longo de um ano. Por fim, a dívida externa mundial, pública e privada, é de 54,6 biliões de dólares, aproximando-se tragicamente do valor do PIB global.

Em Portugal, e contrariando uma vez mais os malabarismos linguísticos dos nossos fracos videntes economistas, sublinho pela milésima vez que a dívida externa portuguesa, pública e privada, que superava em 2007 os 461 mil milhões de dólares, representa praticamente o dobro do PIB nacional, estimado para 2008, em 237,3 mil milhões de dólares.

É neste quadro, provavelmente único na história económica da humanidade, que os discursos alegres do nosso Pinóquio primo-ministerial soam a marketing de feira.

Como já escrevi, vou votar no Bloco de Esquerda, para derrotar o PS sequestrado pela tríade de Macau, e vou lutar ao lado do PS, com Helena Roseta e uma data de independentes preocupados, para evitar o regresso a Lisboa de uma nódoa chamada Pedro Santana Lopes.

Quem não conseguir digerir o indigesto Louçã, nem o esclerótico PCP, deve votar noutro partido minoritário qualquer. Até no PP de Paulo Portas! O importante mesmo é derrotar o Bloco Central. Tal como no Japão hoje, chegou a hora de desfazer a rocha de lapas sem vergonha em que se transformou a democracia portuguesa.

Manuela Ferreira Leite ganhará as próximas Legislativas com uma margem provavelmente surpreendente. Tal vitória será, como toda a gente sabe, essencial para provocar a necessária reforma do actual regime partidário. O resto não passa de conversa inócua.


REFERÊNCIAS

Antes de ler estas notas, e para esclarecimento das diferenças de designação dos números acima de 1 milhão, ler este post oportuno.

1. PIB mundial (PPP); PIB mundial (nominal). Dívida mundial (CIA World Fact Book).
   
   
2. Global Exposure in Financial Derivatives Surpasses One Quadrillion Dollars (Update) July 21, 2009, 3:32PM
   
   When I posted the lowest responsibly sourced figure for global exposure in financial derivatives, $592 trillion, published May 19, 2009 by the Bank of International Settlements, all sorts of hoodoo apologists for Obama, Geithner, Summers, and Goldman Sachs crawled out the woodwork to claim that this figure is ridiculously exaggerated, there's really nothing to worry about, it's just a few bucks, and so on.
   
   All the same hoodoos unfailingly claimed that it's stupid to consider worst-case scenarios when you calculate risk, because...
   
   They have learned absolutely nothing from the ongoing financial meltdown which annihilated some of the oldest and largest investment banks in the world, and plunged the global economy into an almost vertical downturn.
   
   So, since even the lowest reasonable figure for global exposure in financial derivatives attracts so much obfuscation and denial, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb, and offer up a much larger and probably more accurate estimate, which also includes the huge market in off-the-books derivatives, instead of only considering the OTC market upon which the previous calculation by the Bank of International Settlements was based, and that estimate is...
   
   $1.4 quadrillion.
   
   That's more than one million piles of money, with a billion dollars in each pile. — in TPM.
   
   
3. Global Financial Assets Lost $50 Trillion Last Year, ADB Says
   
   March 9 (Bloomberg) -- The value of global financial assets including stocks, bonds and currencies probably fell by more than $50 trillion in 2008, equivalent to a year of world gross domestic product, according to an Asian Development Bank report.
   
   
4. Can China Save the World? By Bill Powell Monday, Aug. 10, 2009 (Time).
   
   Beijing never signed on to what became known in the late 1990s as the Washington Consensus on global economic policy, which called for free trade, privatization, light-touch regulation, prudent fiscal policies and — at least as many interpreted the consensus — free capital flows.
   
   
5. A Tale of Two Depressions By Barry Eichengreen and Kevin H. O’Rourke (Voxeau).
   4 June 2009
   
   ... The Great Depression was a global phenomenon. Even if it originated, in some sense, in the US, it was transmitted internationally by trade flows, capital flows and commodity prices. That said, different countries were affected differently. The US is not representative of their experiences.
   
   Our Great Recession is every bit as global, earlier hopes for decoupling in Asia and Europe notwithstanding. Increasingly there is awareness that events have taken an even uglier turn outside the US, with even larger falls in manufacturing production, exports and equity prices.
   
   ... To summarise: the world is currently undergoing an economic shock every bit as big as the Great Depression shock of 1929-30. Looking just at the US leads one to overlook how alarming the current situation is even in comparison with 1929-30.
   
   The good news, of course, is that the policy response is very different. The question now is whether that policy response will work.
   
   
6. Why this new crisis needs a new paradigm of economic thought
   Keiichiro Kobayashi (Voxeau). 24 August 2009
   
   The policies being debated in the US and Europe today are almost identical to those that played out in Japan a decade or so ago. Japan experienced the collapse of its colossal property bubble in 1990 and then a series of crises as major banks and securities companies were overwhelmed by rapidly rising non-performing debts. The conventional wisdom among economists and politicians throughout the 1990s was that massive public expenditure and extraordinary monetary easing would give the necessary boost to market sentiments and prompt an economic recovery. Public opinion in the US and Europe today seems to be the same.
   
   And indeed, throughout the 1990s, Japan did introduce major public works projects and tax cuts, yet the economy failed to stabilise, asset prices continued to fall, and the volume of non-performing debts continued to climb. Far from being dispelled, the sense of insecurity that had permeated the markets actually increased throughout the 1990s, ultimately leading to the collapse of several major financial institutions in 1997 and sparking an outbreak of panic.
   ...
   Mainstream opinion in the US and other countries today appears to be similar to the thinking that dominated Japan during the 1990s. The general public, for the most part, have not bought into the theory that stabilising the financial system through means such as temporarily nationalising banks and rehabilitating debt-ridden borrowers is a necessary prerequisite for achieving an economic recovery. In a VoxEU column published on 1 April, I emphasised that there is a danger in expecting too much from fiscal policy. Rehabilitating the US financial system through the disposal of non-performing assets is essential for a global economic recovery. Princeton University Professor Paul Krugman commented on my column at his New York Times blog, claiming that the belief that stabilising the financial system is a necessary precondition for economic recovery is questionable. He said that if bank reform were the major factor in Japan’s economic recovery, capital investment should have increased, yet the Japanese data shows no increase in capital investment during the recovery period. My response is that stabilising the financial system alleviated the funding constraints that were making it difficult for companies to meet their working capital needs. As several recent studies show (see, for example, Chari, Kehoe and McGrattan 2007), loosening financial constraints on working capital causes productivity to rise and enables an increase in output and employment, but it does not necessarily result in higher capital investment. There is no contradiction between the Japanese data showing non-increasing capital investment and the hypothesis that stabilising the financial system was a factor behind Japan's economic recovery.
   
   
7. "Portugal é um grande caso BPN" (Medina Carreira no Negócios da Semana)
   
   Em 2007, quando houve ainda crescimento económico, ficou-se a saber, através de dados do Banco de Portugal, que esse crescimento se ficou a dever ao maior empréstico que Portugal fez nos últimos anos. Em 2007, foram emprestados 22 mil milhões de euros. Foi essa verba que gerou o aumento do crescimento do PIB em 2007.
   
   — Ver vídeo SIC no topo deste texto.
   

OAM 617 31-08-2009 20:17