EconoCitizen: avril 2012

lundi 30 avril 2012

Pourquoi l'austérité seule est une erreur

- Euro Austerity, Continued (P Krugman, The conscience of a Liberal).
(Dans le même sens, le très respecté Martin Wolf, http://blogs.ft.com/martin-wolf-exchange/2012/04/27/the-impact-of-fiscal-austerity-in-the-eurozone/#ixzz1tXvWXKIr)

"In all, there is no evidence here that large fiscal contractions bring benefits to confidence and growth that offset the direct effects of the contractions. They bring exactly what one would expect: small contractions bring recessions and big contractions bring depressions.
Moreover, the cumulative performance of eurozone economies between 2008 and 2012 is poor. Only six economies are forecast to grow at all: Austria; Belgium; France; Germany; Malta; and the Slovak Republic
Finally, since a large number of countries are expected to tighten their fiscal positions substantially in coming years, their economies are likely to contract. How long the political glue will hold in these circumstances is a really interesting question."

- The New Voodoo (P Krugman, The conscience of a Liberal) : "there is now overwhelming evidence (pdf) that contractionary fiscal policy is contractionary; not least from the results of austerity in Europe:

- Cameron’s Remarkable Achievement (P Krugman, The conscience of a Liberal). "When David Cameron became PM, and announced his austerity plans — buying completely into both the confidence fairy and the invisible bond vigilantes — many were the hosannas, from both sides of the Atlantic (...)

Now Britain is officially in double-dip recession, and has achieved the remarkable feat of doing worse this time around than it did in the 1930s.
Britain is also unique in having chosen the Big Wrong freely, facing neither pressure from bond markets nor conditions imposed by Berlin and Frankfurt."

- The Unbearable Slowness of Internal Devaluation (P Krugman, The conscience of a Liberal)

"For the uninitiated, internal devaluation means getting your wages and other costs to a competitive position, not by devaluing your currency, because you don’t have one, but by reducing wages relative to those of your trading partners. This is essential in the crisis countries, which all saw much more rapid inflation than the rest of Europe during the good years, and now need to reverse the process. When the euro was being created, the claim was that reforms would produce “flexible” labor markets, a k a markets in which wages could easily fall as well as rise. (...)
What we see is that even in Ireland, which has made the most progress, wages have fallen only slightly. Since wages have risen in the rest of the euro area (that’s the bar labeled EA17), the actual internal devaluation is bigger — about 5 1/2 percent in Ireland’s case — but still only a fraction of what’s needed.
Oh, and Germany — which should be experiencing substantial internal revaluation, a rise in its relative costs — hasn’t.
You can argue that adjustment is happening here, but it’s painfully slow — and not remotely fast enough to avert catastrophe on the current course."

Revue de presse de la semaine (30/04/2012)

- HSBC confirme la suppression de milliers d'emplois au Royaume-Uni (Le Monde)

- Vieillissement : cerveau et sexe ne s'usent... que si on ne s'en sert pas (Le Monde)

- "Porno pour maman" : eBooks et Internet font le succès de l'érotisme soft (Le Monde)

- Barclays présente ses excuses aux actionnaires (Le Monde)

- La crise espagnole donne le vertige à l'Europe (Le Monde)

- L'Espagne aux abois, les Européens chicanent (Le Monde)

- Sarkozy : «Je sens monter une mobilisation jamais vue» (Le Parisien). Le programme et plus.

- Pour les économistes l’immigration n’est pas un problème (Telos)

- People Are Finally Figuring Out: Austerity is Stupid (The Big Picture)

- Jean Nouvel construira une tour à Paris (deux en fait) (Grand Paris.blog.libération)

- C'est une Espagne plus compétitive qui entre en récession... (La Tribune)

- Le trading à haute fréquence menacé de limitation de vitesse (La Tribune)

- Euro Austerity, Continued (P Krugman, blog)

- Where The Productivity Went (P Krugman, blog)

- Very Serious Bots (P Krugman, blog). Sur l'éditorial de The Economist contre Hollande
- Crise islandaise : l'ex-premier ministre n'est pas sanctionné (Le Figaro)
- Aux Pays-Bas, la rigueur ne passe plus (Le Figaro)

- Russie : Le FMI sonne l'alarme sur l'éclatement de la bulle du crédit (La Tribune)

- Discontents: In Nothing We Trust (The Big Picture)
- Fastest Growing & Dying US Industries (The Big Picture)
- Backlash against eurozone austerity (FT)

- Europe’s sets course for perpetual recession (Macro business)

- Europe’s Austerity Backlash Gathers Steam in Merkel Test (Bloomberg)

- Jérôme Cahuzac : « Nous débrancherons la garantie implicite de l'Etat sur les activités spéculatives des banques » (La Tribune)

- Le FMI presse les banques européennes d'assainir leurs bilans, mais pas trop vite (Le Monde)

- Lynn Parramore: Capitalism’s Dirty Secret: Corporations Don’t Create Jobs, They Destroy Them (Naked Capitalism)

jeudi 19 avril 2012

Espagne - le cri d'alarme de Krugman

Insane in Spain

"What happened to Spain was a housing bubble — fueled, to an important degree, by lending from German banks — that burst, taking the economy down with it. Now the country has 23.6 percent unemployment, 50.5 percent among the young.
And the policy response is supposed to be even more austerity, with the European Central Bank, natch, obsessing over inflation — and officials claiming that the incredibly foolish rate hike last year was actually something to be proud of.
I’m really starting to think that we’re heading for a crackup of the whole system."

Avec un développement supplémentaire dans sa colonne dans le NYT : Europe’s Economic Suicide (à lire impérativement)
* l'Espagne : "In a way, it doesn’t really matter how Spain got to this point — but for what it’s worth, the Spanish story bears no resemblance to the morality tales so popular among European officials, especially in Germany. Spain wasn’t fiscally profligate — on the eve of the crisis it had low debt and a budget surplus. Unfortunately, it also had an enormous housing bubble, a bubble made possible in large part by huge loans from German banks to their Spanish counterparts. When the bubble burst, the Spanish economy was left high and dry; Spain’s fiscal problems are a consequence of its depression, not its cause."

* l'austérité : "Nonetheless, the prescription coming from Berlin and Frankfurt is, you guessed it, even more fiscal austerity. This is, not to mince words, just insane. [je souligne] (...) such programs push depressed economies even deeper into depression"

* quelles solutions, hormis une sortie de l'euro ? "So if European leaders really wanted to save the euro they would be looking for an alternative course. And the shape of such an alternative is actually fairly clear. The Continent needs more expansionary monetary policies, in the form of a willingness — an announced willingness — on the part of the European Central Bank to accept somewhat higher inflation; it needs more expansionary fiscal policies, in the form of budgets in Germany that offset austerity in Spain and other troubled nations around the Continent’s periphery, rather than reinforcing it. Even with such policies, the peripheral nations would face years of hard times. But at least there would be some hope of recovery.

What we’re actually seeing, however, is complete inflexibility."

Quelques extraits de l'interview de Georges Soros dans le monde :

" Etes-vous inquiet de la situation actuelle de la zone euro ?
Je crains que la politique des dirigeants actuels ne mène à un désastre. L'euro menace de détruire l'Union européenne et avec les meilleures intentions, les dirigeants sont en train de mener l'Europe à sa perte en essayant de préserver et d'imposer des règles inappropriées. Et ceux qui jugent la situation intolérable sont désormais tentés par une positon antieuropéenne.
(...)
Pourquoi les dirigeants européens n'agissent-ils pas ?
Le problème est en Allemagne, car l'opinion publique fait confiance à la Bundesbank. Cette dernière représente un des plus grands succès du pays, elle lui a permis d'avoir une monnaie forte. La Bundesbank domine la politique européenne, mais elle mène une action bonne pour l'Allemagne, pas pour l'Europe. Car l'Allemagne est un pays florissant, il bénéficie de la crise de l'euro, du taux de change bas de l'euro par rapport à la force de son économie, et de taux d'intérêt très bas pour financer sa dette.
Ce n'est pas une raison pour ne pas regarder certains problèmes en face, pour trouver des excuses à la Grèce, pour ne pas mener en France des réformes structurelles comme celles ayant été prises par le passé en Allemagne. Ces réformes ne sont cependant pas suffisantes. L'Allemagne les a introduites quand le reste de l'Europe était dans un cycle de croissance, tandis que les autres pays européens les mènent dans une conjoncture mondiale déprimée."

Barry Ritholtz on Causes of the Financial Crisis

Barry Ritholz, dans The Browser, à propos du livre The Big Short by Michael Lewis

"All this goes back to the Fed taking the rates to such crazy low levels, that every bond manager had to scramble [for yield]. Most foundations and charities and pension funds and large trusts – especially the not-for-profit entities – as long as they give away 5% of their assets every year, they are completely tax free, and oversight is de minimis. Five per cent doesn’t sound like a big number. Typically, over long periods of time, the market returns are anywhere between 6-10% if you include dividends, and over a similar period of time bonds give you between 4-7%. What took place after the 2001 crash is that first you had markets down a ridiculous amount every year, and secondly Greenspan took rates so low that the 10-year [US Treasury bond] followed. If equity returns are negative, and bonds below 5%, how is a foundation or trust going to make 5%? If you were smart, you’d say, “We made so much money in 1998-2000, we don’t have to take any additional risk. We’ll just give away the 5% out of those profits and not worry about it.” But that’s not how human beings operate. Instead, they panicked. “We’re not going to make 5%! We’re going to have dip into the corpus of the trust or foundation!” And every bond manager got a phone call. “Hey dude, go and get me more than 5% and if you can’t do that, I’ll fire you and get someone else.” So along comes this product from Wall Street, securitised subprime mortgages. It’s triple-A rated, just like Uncle Sam, but yielding much more. You could get your 5-6%. So everybody piled into that product. They sold out. The more they sold out, the more Wall Street went to these non-bank lenders, mostly located in California, and said, “We need more subprime loans to securitise, and by the way if you do this many we’ll give you this much of a bonus.” That’s how you ended up with these mortgage companies giving loans to people who could barely fog a mirror.
My favourite example was the two grape-pickers in California, who each made $14,000 a year and qualified for a $750,000 mortgage. If they took 100% of their salary and used it to pay the mortgage, they would still default. Also, by the way, these 30-year mortgages were sold with a 90-day warranty. You can buy a toaster that has a longer warranty than a 30-year mortgage! Your obligation, when finding a borrower, is “Just don’t default these first three months. Whatever you do after that is not my concern.”