Política y Economía

Va para dos décadas que tengo una suscripción personal trianual a The Economist. La suscripción en papel me permite mirar la revista varias veces cada semana. Esperando a mi hijo en el salón de té para no fumadores (Dio mío, ¿en qué me he convertido?) o en una terraza de la playa (me gusta el agua pero no la arena). La suscripción en papel incluye una suscripción virtual.
Mis secciones favoritas son:
1. Books and Arts. Nunca se me ocurriría por mi propia iniciativa pensar en los temas o leer a los autores que se mencionan en esta sección.
2. Science and Technology. Son capaces de explicar las cosas más innovadoras y complicadas. Es una gran ventaja para estar un poco al día.
3. Face value. La vida y milagros de los grandes empresarios y emprendedores. No suelo encontrar a este tipo de gente en mi entorno.
4. Leaders. La opinión de The Economist sobre los temas de actualidad.
5. Europe. Suele analizar los problemas económicos españoles con un par de años de ventaja sobre la prensa progubernamental española.
6. Economic Focus.


He dejado para el final la sección obvia. Esta sección busca un tema económico actual y explica la investigación académica más reciente sobre él. El subrayado es muy importante. No dice lo que opina un determinado líder sobre el tema sino lo que dicen los que han estudiado el tema usando el conocimiento previo y métodos de análisis ampliamente aceptados y contrastados. Este enfoque no elimina las controversias o las dudas pero las limita enormemente. Centra la discusión en supuestos simplificadores, bondades del método de análisis o en las zonas grises sin investigar.

Esta semana nos ha regalado un análisis del papel que juega la política en la implementación de medidas económicas necesarias y útiles a la vez. Estos son mis comentarios previos:
1. Me ha recordado la gran diferencia entre la teoría y la práctica. En el artículo se menciona una medida sugerida por académicos que sería ilegal bajo la ley de bancarrota americana. La medida pasaría por el proceloso proceso de un cambio previo en la ley.
2. Me ha tranquilizado. La dificultad de implementar reformas no es un problema exclusivamente español. El problema “cañí” es convencer al gobierno que de ésta no sale sin hacerlo.
3. Me ha inquietado. Las reformas tienen una venta política más sencilla si no es transparente (sus consecuencias no son evidentes) o si parece que vienen impuestas por fuerzas externas (FMI, UE, etc). Este último tema lo menciona Krugman en un libro divulgativo de hace diez años (Vendiendo prosperidad). Al parecer ciertos valores de los parámetros macroeconómicos son convenientes pero no estrictamente necesarios para la unión monetaria. Sin embargo, algunos países usaron la presencia de esos requisitos en la unión monetaria para implantarlos. Antes las críticas siempre podían decir que era un requisito “europeo”.


The curse of politics
Apr 16th 2009
From The Economist print edition

Financial crises can drag on because efficient remedies are politically unpalatable

AS THEIR banking crisis approaches Japanese proportions, Americans can take comfort from the fact that their political culture is more capable of finding a solution. Or can they? Today’s anti-banker backlash bears a striking resemblance to the voter outrage that stymied efforts to fix Japan’s banking system in the 1990s. Indeed, an enduring lesson of financial crises is how political constraints interfere with economically efficient solutions.
For example, America’s Treasury and the Federal Reserve began examining options to use public money to buy up illiquid mortgage assets and to inject capital into financial institutions shortly after rescuing Bear Stearns, a failing investment bank, in March 2008. But it was another six months before they acted on those plans. “There was no way we could go to Congress without the American people understanding we faced a crisis,” says Henry Paulson, the treasury secretary at the time.
Sure enough, not until the failure of Lehman Brothers sparked a global panic in September did Mr Paulson and Ben Bernanke, the Fed chairman, ask Congress to authorise an outlay of $700 billion to support the system. Some say Mr Paulson should have tried harder to acquire the funds before the Lehman crisis. Perhaps, but it is doubtful he would have succeeded. “Even at the height of the crisis, [that] proved almost too hard to do,” he notes.
Phillip Swagel, an economist who will join Georgetown University this autumn, writes in a review* of his experience as an aide to Mr Paulson from December 2006 to January 2009 that market participants and academic economists often proposed solutions that glossed over real-world political and legal obstacles. Some academics argued bank creditors should be forced to swap their debt for equity, for example. But Mr Swagel notes that is not legally possible without a change in the bankruptcy code, a tortuous political process. Similarly, to reduce housing foreclosures the Treasury and Congress focused on reducing interest rates for struggling homeowners, even though this would be less effective than subsidising write-downs of mortgage principal. But politicians and voters would have seen that as an unacceptable bail-out of some undeserving homeowners.
Economists have long studied how institutional constraints interfere with efficient economic choices, such as when special interests erect barriers to entry in product markets. Such constraints have received relatively little attention in the burgeoning literature on financial crises. Yet a closer examination shows that many of the same political obstacles crop up from one crisis to the next. Japan’s Ministry of Finance first sought private-sector solutions to its banking crisis so as not to arouse voter anger by using taxpayers’ money. When those solutions failed, the government proposed in 1995 spending a mere ¥685 billion ($7 billion) to take over the problem loans of seven jusen, or mortgage-finance companies. The backlash was intense. Opposition parties called for the finance minister’s resignation and staged a sit-in at parliament. In one poll, 87% of voters disapproved. The measure eventually passed, but the experience was so searing that it discouraged the government from tackling the banks’ much bigger bad loans until 1997.
In spite of these difficulties, some governments do negotiate the political shoals. South Korea is often praised for the speed and forcefulness with which it took over failing banks and bought up bad loans following its financial crisis in 1997-98. But the South Korean government was able to deflect public anger by arguing that it was being forced to take these steps by the IMF, which to this day most Koreans blame for the crisis.
Sweden took over two banks and issued a blanket guarantee of bank liabilities in the early 1990s even though the governing coalition did not have a majority in parliament. Bo Lundgren, the finance minister at the time, says Swedish voters would have rejected the bail-out had it been put to a referendum. But the government first ensured it had the support of the opposition party (from whom it had inherited the crisis) and then obtained authority from parliament for unlimited funds, so it did not have to return for more money later.

This time it’s not different
A blank cheque would greatly suit Barack Obama, who gave warning on April 14th that American banks may “require substantial additional resources”. Mr Obama has pencilled in another $750 billion of potential stabilisation funds in his 2010 budget but unlocking extra money will be extremely tricky. Despite commanding majorities in Congress and high personal-approval ratings, he must overcome solid opposition from voters jaded by revelations of bankers’ excess.
That may well mean violating certain economic principles. Economists generally prefer transparent to hidden subsidies. But Mr Swagel says that the Treasury came to realise that underpricing insurance for bank assets roused less political opposition than overpaying for assets precisely because the insurance is less transparent. The Treasury is also relying on the Fed to finance illiquid assets by printing money because that requires no congressional approval (even if it compromises the Fed’s independence).
The other temptation is to couple assistance for bankers with a hefty dose of punishment to sate the public’s hunger for justice. Sweden sued the boards of the two banks it nationalised. Several executives agreed to repay their “golden-handshake” severances to avoid prosecution. Mr Obama promised that if banks need more aid, “we will hold accountable those responsible.” The risk, of course, is that pandering to voters’ anger only inflames them further, and makes it even harder to put money into the banking system as need arises.


* “The Financial Crisis: An Inside View” by Phillip Swagel, presented at the Brookings Papers on Economic Activity conference, April 2009

Economics focus (Nearly) nothing to fear but fear itself

Jan 29th 2009 From The Economist print edition

Bloomberg News

Olivier Blanchard is the IMF’s chief economist

In a guest article, Olivier Blanchard says that policymakers should focus on reducing uncertainty

CRISES feed uncertainty. And uncertainty affects behaviour, which feeds the crisis. Were a magic wand to remove uncertainty, the next few quarters would still be tough (some of the damage cannot be undone), but the crisis would largely go away.
From the Vix index of stockmarket volatility (see chart), to the dispersion of growth forecasts, even to the frequency of the word “uncertain” in the press, all the indicators of uncertainty are at or near all-time highs. What is at work is not only objective, but also subjective uncertainty, or what economists, following Chicago economist Frank Knight’s early 20th-century work, call “Knightian uncertainty”. Objective uncertainty is about what Donald Rumsfeld (in a different context) referred to as the “known unknowns”. Subjective uncertainty is about the “unknown unknowns”. When, as today, the unknown unknowns dominate, and the economic environment is so complex as to appear nearly incomprehensible, the result is extreme prudence, if not outright paralysis, on the part of investors, consumers and firms. And this behaviour, in turn, feeds the crisis.
It affects portfolio decisions. It has led to a dramatic shift away from risky assets to riskless assets, or at least assets perceived as riskless. It sometimes looks as if investors around the world only want to hold American Treasury bills. Why? At the start was the realisation that many of the new complex assets were in fact much riskier than they had seemed. This realisation has now morphed into a general worry about nearly all risky assets, and about the balance-sheets of the institutions that hold them. “Better safe than sorry” is the motto. Unfortunately, while the motto may make sense for individual investors, it is having catastrophic macroeconomic consequences for the world. It is triggering enormous spreads on risky assets, a credit crunch in advanced economies, and major capital outflows from emerging countries.
It affects consumption and investment decisions, and is largely behind the dramatic collapse in demand we have observed over the last three months. Sure, consumers have lost a good part of their wealth, and this is reason enough for them to retrench. But there is more at work. If you think that another Depression might be around the corner, better to be careful and save more. Better to wait and see how things turn out. Buying a new house, a new car or a new laptop can surely be delayed a few months. The same goes for firms: given the uncertainty, why build a new plant or introduce a new product now? Better to pause until the smoke clears. This is perfectly understandable behaviour on the part of consumers and firms—but behaviour which has led to a collapse of demand, a collapse of output and the deep recession we are now in.
So what are policymakers to do? First and foremost, reduce uncertainty. Do so by removing tail risks, and the perception of tail risks. On the portfolio side, establish a price, or at least a floor on the price, of the troubled assets. Ring-fence them or take them off bank balance-sheets. On the consumption side, commit to do whatever it will take to avoid a Depression, from fiscal stimulus to quantitative easing. Commit to do more in the future if necessary. Above all, adopt clear policies and act decisively. Do too much rather than too little. Delays in financial packages have cost a lot already. Further rounds of debate will stoke uncertainty and make things worse.
Second, undo the effects of uncertainty on the portfolio side, and help recycle the funds towards risky assets. The standard advice here is to return the private financial sector to health through recapitalisation. That is absolutely right, but easier said than done. And, while damage is slowly repaired, it makes sense for states to recycle part of the funds themselves. To caricature: if the world loves American Treasury bills but the funds would be more useful elsewhere, then the government should issue the bills, and use the proceeds to channel the funds where they are needed. It should buy some of the riskier assets, and return some of these funds back to emerging-market countries to offset capital outflows. This is indeed close to what America’s Federal Reserve is now doing with quantitative easing at home and swap lines to foreign central banks. The only difference is that the Fed issues money rather than treasury bills in exchange for its purchases. It would make more sense for the Treasury to be involved, and to separate more clearly the role of fiscal and monetary policy, but, in the current state of play, this is a minor wrinkle. Either will do.
Retail therapy
Third, undo the effects of the wait-and-see attitudes of consumers and firms on the demand side. Get them to spend more, and have the state do some of the spending itself. Offer incentives to buy now rather than later; for example, temporary subsidies to consumers who turn in a clunker and buy a new car, a measure adopted in France. Increase spending on public infrastructure, a central component of President Barack Obama’s programme. Both types of measures are indeed present in the fiscal programmes more and more countries are putting in place. If tailored and communicated well, these programmes cannot only stimulate and replace private demand, but also convince consumers and firms that they are not in for another Depression. This will ensure that they stop waiting and start spending again.
Coherent financial, fiscal and monetary measures are all needed. All three will have direct effects on demand. But, as importantly, they will help reduce uncertainty, lower risk spreads, and get consumers and firms spending again. If policymakers act decisively, private demand will recover sooner rather than later. And, within a year or less, we can be on the path to recovery.
For a discussion of this article, see

http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/

Una historia que me ha impresionado

Javi anda un tanto enredado con el tema de la creatividad. Leyendo una de mis revistas preferidas he encontrado una historia bastante impresionante que se relaciona con las preocupaciones de Javi. Sin embargo, la especialización termina apareciendo antes de que la historia concluya.

Gilbert Kaplan Desperately seeking Mahler
Nov 27th 2008 From The Economist print edition

He conducts just one symphony, Mahler’s second. But Gilbert Kaplan has radically changed the way Mahler is perceived, both by audiences and other musicians
Tanja Niemann
ONE April Saturday in 1965, an economist at the American Stock Exchange was taken by a friend to an orchestral rehearsal at Carnegie Hall. He watched impassively as Leopold Stokowski, the aged Hollywood maestro who conducted “Fantasia”, stop-started Gustav Mahler’s Symphony No.2 in C minor all afternoon. The economist thought little of it until later that night, when, sleeplessly, he tossed and turned, haunted by the music he had heard. Next morning he bought a ticket and at the concert “just found myself sobbing, absolutely hysterical”.
The young man was about to launch a publishing business and, with it, to define an occupation. With $100,000 borrowed from Gerald Bronfman, a whisky magnate, and $50,000 from banks, friends and his own savings, Gilbert Kaplan, 24 years old, founded Institutional Investor, a monthly magazine that brought together bankers, analysts and money managers. It quickly became an essential means of communication for financiers, attracting 150,000 subscribers in 140 countries. Before the 1960s were over Mr Kaplan was a millionaire and on first-name terms with finance ministers and international bankers.
But Mahler’s symphony would not let him rest. Over the next few years he attended every performance within reach, met his future wife in the adjacent seat at London’s Royal Festival Hall and, as the obsession intensified, took 18 months off work to study the score and discuss it with such leading interpreters as Leonard Bernstein, Sir Georg Solti and Leonard Slatkin. In September 1982, after an International Monetary Fund summit, he put his reputation on the line by conducting the American Symphony Orchestra in a private performance for financiers and politicians at the Lincoln Centre. A former British prime minister, Sir Edward Heath, himself a spare-time conductor, called it “a very remarkable feat”, but that was, if anything, an understatement.
Mahler’s second symphony, known as the “Resurrection” for its rousing choral climax and theological theme, is one of the trickiest works in the repertory, a 90- minute epic involving a huge orchestra, chorus, two vocal soloists and an invisible offstage group of brass and percussion that seldom come in on cue. Discussing the purpose of life on earth, its unwieldiness regularly defeats the best efforts of famous maestros. For a rank amateur to accomplish a performance without breaking down in the vast finale was tantamount to a musical revolution. Privately Mr Kaplan now admits that if the musicians had failed to respond to his beat or the music fell apart (as it sometimes does in the best of hands), his fallback plan was to turn around to the audience and announce: “Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served.”
His feat, discreet though it was, reverberated throughout the music world. Over the following years Mr Kaplan was invited to conduct flagship ensembles at La Scala in Milan, in Munich and Vienna, to open the prestigious Salzburg festival and to give the work its Chinese premiere in Beijing. His recording, made in Cardiff in 1985, has outsold Bernstein, Pierre Boulez, Claudio Abbado and all other contenders. On December 8th his odyssey reaches an emotional apotheosis when he conducts the work with the New York Philharmonic at the Lincoln Centre’s Avery Fisher Hall 100 years to the night after the composer, with the same orchestra, gave the piece its American premiere.
Pleasing as this symmetry will be to the now-retired publisher, the results of his presumption are far-reaching. Mr Kaplan is acknowledged as the leading technical authority on Mahler’s second symphony, consulted by many professional maestros on matters of detail. He was the first to import television screens and cameras to communicate with the offstage band, a device now in common use.
He owns the composer’s manuscript, acquiring it in 1984 from a Dutch foundation, publishing it in facsimile and obliging Vienna’s Universal Edition to print a corrected new score which is faithful to Mahler’s final amendments. The Vienna Philharmonic gave its first note-perfect performance under Mr Kaplan’s baton and he experienced his deepest satisfaction when the horn section, struggling in a recording session to accommodate the changes, played one passage 11 times in their earnestness to get it right.
Mr Kaplan’s involvement with the second symphony has made it probably the most talked-about of Mahler’s works, diverting public attention away from the morbidity of his last great pieces. The long-standing image of Mahler as a composer of doom has been set aside, in part through Mr Kaplan’s advocacy.
That an unskilled dreamer could teach professionals how to bring off a masterpiece is a fantasy that many share but few presume to achieve. Mr Kaplan, after his first performance, said: “I had a feeling that people in the audience were urging me to fulfil my dream. They were up with me on the podium that night, playing baseball for the Yankees, writing the book they never wrote or getting the girl they never got.”
His has been a triumph of ambition over intractable matter, a fulfilment of Mahler’s faith in Arthur Schopenhauer’s idea that the human will can overcome any force on earth. Or, in more contemporary Obamist rhetoric, Yes We Can.

Artículo original.