Excelente, como sempre, Roubini apresenta uma análise que esta longe de ser exagerada. É interessante notar que as economias com pior performance são aquelas que dependem fortemente das exportações. Alias, as demissões na Embraer, é uma boa indicação do que se pode esperar de empresas brasileiras que produzem, basicamente, para o mercado externo. Para algumas é possível redirecionar o que antes era exportado para o mercado interno, o que naturalmente depende de como vai estar a economia brasileira nos próximos meses.Já para aquelas que não podem contar com esta opção, o futuro não é nada roseo....
It is now clear that this is the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and the worst economic crisis in the last 60 years. While we are already in a severe and protracted U-shaped recession (as the deluded hope of a short and shallow V-shaped contraction has now evaporated) there is now a rising risk that this crisis will turn into an uglier multi-year L-shaped Japanese style stag-deflation (a deadly combination of stagnation, recession and deflation). The latest data on Q4 2008 GDP growth (at an annual rate) around the world are even worse than the first estimate for the US (-3.8%): -6.0% for the Eurozone; -8% for Germany; -12% for Japan; -16% for Singapore; -20% for Korea. The global economy is now literally in free fall as the contraction of consumption, capital spending, residential investment, production, employment, exports and imports is accelerating rather than decelerating.
To avoid this L-shaped near-depression a strong, aggressive, coherent and credible combination of monetary easing (traditional and unorthodox), fiscal stimulus, proper clean-up of the financial system and reduction of the debt burden of insolvent private agents (households and non-financial companies) is necessary in the US and other economies.
Unfortunately, the Eurozone is well behind the US in its policy efforts as: a) the ECB is behind the curve in cutting policy rates and creating non-traditional facilities to deal with the liquidity and credit crunch; b) the fiscal stimulus is too modest as those who can afford it (Germany) are lukewarm about it and those who need it the most (Spain, Portugal, Greece, Italy) can least afford it as they already have large budget deficits; c) there is lack of cross-border burden sharing of the fiscal costs of bailing out financial institutions.
The U.S. has done more (with its aggressive monetary easing and large fiscal stimulus putting it ahead) but two key elements are key to avoid a near-depression and still seriously missing: a proper clean-up of the banking system that may require a proper triage between solvent and insolvent banks and the nationalization of many banks, even some of the largest ones; and a more aggressive and across-the-board reduction unsustainable debt burden of millions of insolvent households (i.e. principal reduction of the face value of the mortgages, not just mortgage payments relief).
Moreover, in many countries the banks may be too-big-to-fail but also too- big-to-save, as the fiscal/financial resources of the sovereign may not be large enough to rescue such large insolvencies in the financial system.
Traditionally only emerging markets suffered – and still suffer - from such a problem. But now such sovereign risk – as measured by the sovereign spread - is also rising in many European economies whose banks may be larger than the ability of the sovereign to rescue them: Iceland, Greece, Spain, Italy, Belgium, Switzerland and, some suggest, even the UK.
The process of socializing the private losses from this crisis has already moved many of the liabilities of the private sector onto the books of the sovereign: banks, other financial institutions and, soon enough possibly, households and some important non-financial corporate companies.
At some point a sovereign [bank] may crack, in which case the ability of governments to credibly commit to act as a backstop for the financial system – including deposit guarantees – could come unglued.Thus, the L-shaped near-depression scenario is still quite possible – I assign to it a 30% probability - unless appropriate and aggressive policy action is undertaken by the US and other economies.This severe economic and financial crisis is now also leading to a severe backlash against financial globalization, free trade and the free markets economic model.But, to paraphrase Churchill, capitalist market economies open to trade and financial flows may be the worst economic regime, apart from the alternative, as non-market economy models have failed.However, while this crisis does not imply the end of market economy capitalism it has shown the failure of a particular model of capitalism: the laissez faire unregulated (or aggressively deregulated) wild-west model of free market capitalism with lack of prudential regulation and supervision of financial markets and with the lack of proper provision of public goods by governments.
It is the failures of ideas such as the “efficient market hypothesis” that deluded itself about the absence of market failures such as asset bubbles; the “rational expectations” paradigm that clashes with the insights of behavioral economics and finance; the “self-regulation of markets and institutions” that clashes with the classical agency problems in corporate governance that are themselves exacerbated in financial companies by the greater degree of asymmetric information -how can a chief executive or a board monitor the risk-taking of thousands of separate profit-and-loss accounts? Then there are the distortions of compensation paid to bankers and traders.
This crisis also shows the failure of ideas such as the one that securitization reduces systemic risk rather than actually increase it; that risk can properly priced when the opacity and lack of transparency of financial firms and new instruments leads to unpriceable uncertainty rather than priceable risk.
It is clear that the Anglo-Saxon model of supervision and regulation of the financial system has failed. It relied on self-regulation that, in effect, meant no regulation; on market discipline that does not exist when there is euphoria and irrational exuberance; on internal risk management models that fail because – as a former chief executive of Citi put it – when the music is playing you gotta stand up and dance.
Furthermore, the self-regulation approach created rating agencies that had massive conflicts of interest and a supervisory system dependent on principles rather than rules. This light-touch regulation in effect became regulation of the softest-touch.
Thus, all the pillars of Basel II have already failed even before being implemented. Since the pendulum had swung too much in the direction of self-regulation and the principles-based approach, we now need more binding rules on liquidity, capital, leverage, transparency, compensation and so on.
But the design of the new system should be robust enough to counter three types of problems with rules: A tendency toward ‘regulatory arbitrage’ should be borne in mind, as bankers can find creative ways to bypass rules faster than regulators can improve them. Then there is ‘jurisdictional arbitrage’ as financial activity may move to more lax jurisdictions. And finally, ‘regulatory capture’ as regulators and supervisors are often captured - via revolving doors and other mechanisms - by the financial industry. So the new rules will have to be incentive compatible, i.e. robust enough to overcome to these regulatory failures.
Correction: The text above said "At some point a sovereign bank may crack"; I meant "At some point a sovereign may crack". Apologies for the confusion due to my typo.
Fonte:Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor
