sábado, 11 de outubro de 2008

US price deflation on the way

John Muellbauer, Professor de Economia em Oxford, apresenta uma análise muito interessante da atual situação econômica, com implicações nada agradáveis para a economia brasileira.

“We are now on the cusp of the most significant tuning point for inflation in the last 20 years so that the many of the standard models are likely to go badly wrong. The economics of this are straightforward: global output is probably falling faster than at any rate since the war, except perhaps for 1974-5. Under these circumstances, large excess capacity develops and commodity prices fall.

Some still believe that emerging markets will provide a stabilising influence on the world economy, but in fact the opposite is true. Countries such as China are highly geared to exports and above all investment, which there exceeds consumer spending. Apart from infrastructure and investment in health care and education, investment is geared to growth, so if growth falls from 11 percent to 5 percent, the reduction in investment is likely to be dramatic and more than the percentage reduction in US consumer spending. As over-capacity develops, investment in goods production may fall even further, with serious implications for GDP. It seems unlikely that governments in emerging markets can compensate swiftly enough to boost domestic consumption. Hence the demand for commodities which have been driven by emerging market growth will fall sharply.

Eventually however, lower commodity prices and lower inflation act like a huge tax cut for households and will allow interest rates to fall further, and therefore stabilise economic activity”

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