Generations lost

«(…)Japan’s 20-year battle with stagnation is a warning to the West. The country failed to purge its banks swiftly and relied on Keynesian fiscal projects to prime pump the economy each time growth stalled. The result was a string of false dawns, with public debt ratcheting ever upwards. The Bank of Japan dabbled with quantitative easing, but too little and too late. The bonds were purchased from a moribund banking system, a recipe for failure since this has little effect on the M3 money supply. “Japan was never early enough or ambitious enough in its use of monetary stimulus,” said Jamie Dannhauser from Lombard Street Research.(…) For Japan, the lost decades are tunning into a lost century.»

Berndadette Segol claims about youth unemployment in Europe that passing on risks and costs to customers in green economy would improve social justice and save the lost generation.

Jim Manzi suggests ironically that social science has been quite successful at demonstrating the failures of social engineering. The golden age of government-funded social-policy experiments was the late 1960s into the early 1980s. What good social science has revealed—that parents matter, genes matter, race matters, sex matters, and IQ matters — is the opposite of what the vast majority of social scientists wanted to discover.

Sei o que fizeste no Verão passado

Em Setembro de 1914 em Marne o Marechal Foch afirmou algo do género “Estou cercado. A situação é excelente. Ataco!”

«The government files from the founding phase of the monetary union reveal that this construct cannot function. The message the documents convey is that political opportunism will ultimately prevail. A monetary union amounts to more than shifting several billion euros back and forth. It is also a community of fate. Shared money requires shared policy and, in the end, shared institutions.

The euro is now in its 14th year, and after two years of ongoing crisis, there is a growing realization in Berlin and other capitals that the status quo cannot continue. All reform efforts still resemble small steps to nowhere, and yet politicians are beginning to think in terms of broader categories as they cope with the crisis. The new fiscal pact is not providing a quick solution yet, and as a result European politicians are developing new visions while old taboos are falling.»

Is This the End of ‘One Europe’?

Angela Merkel seems like a woman who’s just entered an arranged marriage.

 «(…) Merkel promised to receive François Hollande “with open arms” and said French-German cooperation was “essential for Europe”. But it is likely that her sentiments would have sounded more heartfelt and convincing if she had been congratulating Nicolas Sarkozy. Essentially, the message was this: Things will be ok. The German Chancellor has set out her conditions to the French President-elect, ruling out any renegotiation of the European fiscal pact and any initiatives that will lead to “deficit growth“.

She’s a feisty lady!

Zangam-se as comadres

E quem se fecunda é o mexilhão. No Natal passado Christine Lagarde, a senhora à frente do FMI ofereceu uma prenda à Angela Merkel, com griffe, a chanceler alemã devolveu-lhe a simpatia com um CD da Orquestra Filarmónica de Berlin. – isto é coisa para enxonfrar uma gaija.

«(…)in the wake of two years of intense involvement in the struggle to overcome the crisis in Europe, the IMF has begun to openly express its discontent.(…)Perhaps more importantly, the IMF is increasingly uncomfortable with the role that has been attributed to it in the “troika” formed with the ECB and the European Commission. In the eurozone, the organisation, which is used to a high degree of autonomy, has become a “second tier partner”. The Europeans in the troika, who are extremely strict in their approach, mainly take their orders from Germany. In the event of a divergence of opinion, the IMF is often the only member of the troika to argue in support of Greece. » – Ó ‘prela a pôr-se ao fresco. :)

Prepara-se uma saída à francesa!

PPP – Punição, Pagamento, Prevenção

A 28 de Junho de 1919, o ministro alemão dos Negócios Estrangeiros Brockdorff-Rantzau entrou no Salão dos Espelhos do Palácio de Versailles para assinar o Tratado de Paz com a França, Inglaterra e  Estados Unidos da América. O acordo final acabou por ser mais duro do que a delegação havia imaginado. O primeiro-ministro francês Clemenceau impô-lo baseado na premissa: «a Alemanha era a única responsável pela Guerra», o tratado de paz plasmou no papel os princípio “Punição-Pagamento-Prevenção “.

A responsabilidade exclusiva da Alemanha foi o aspecto mais debatido pela sociedade alemã. Em Inglaterra Keynes mostrou-se desapontado e avisou para o perigo que o pacto implicava, a prevalência do realismo e do cinismo sobre solidariedade moral e por consequência económica. Dum lado e de outro, as certezas baseadas na incapacidade da interpretação de responsabilidades, dependeram não só de factores internos mas também de contradições externas.

«Scotch Whisky can be taken at the strength and in volume best suited to the individual constitution, the time and the climate.» Sábias palavras

“Vender” Europa

Anda o ministro Gaspar de pdf munido a tentar mudar a impressão que lá fora têm de nós. A rapaziada lá fora ainda não está completamente convencida. O pior, é se paga para ver.

«(…)Germany and its debt brake are currently in the middle of a major fiscal policy experiment and the outcome is far from certain. The successes noted for the time being are mainly due to an economic recovery and the technically successful manipulation of figures by the federal government, but the real test lies ahead. It was obviously a serious mistake to accept a debt brake so similar to the German model so quickly at the European level. Given these basic errors, which are hard to reverse, and faced with the difficulties and problems of the German example in specifically reshaping the German debt brake, European fiscal policy should instead go its own way and investigate thoroughly all the ways in which it can be reshaped.» Sobre regras de ouro ficamos conversados!?

O italiano Mario Monti anda pelo mundo a dizer que a culpa da crise é da Alemanha e da França, que a Espanha e a Holanda vão rebentar com a Europa e que na Itália está tudo bem. Sério, não é!? Ou como mesmo ele metaforizou “O ladrão de carros que antigamente roubava 3 carros por dia e agora rouba apenas, passou a ser mais sério?”. Não se esperaria melhor do reitor da Universidade de Bocconi.

Growsterity

«Mr. Katainen, the 40-year-old leader of one of the euro area’s last remaining triple-A-rated countries, spoke more optimistically in his public comments of “growsterity,” a form of austerity that allows for some targeted measures to encourage growth, like Finland’s decision to grant tax relief for research spending by companies despite sharp budget cuts elsewhere.

“It’s clear that if you cut expenditures and raise taxes, it will weaken the growth in the short term,” he conceded. “But at the same time it will strengthen the credibility of the country. And once you earn back the credibility, the growth will follow, as we have seen in Ireland, for instance, or in Latvia, especially.”»

(…)“I have no money,” he said. “I don’t even put out bottled water for my guests. I just fill a pitcher from the tap and pour.”