CAMBRIDGE – Este año ha comenzado con una impresión de optimismo prudente para la economía mundial. Europa se ha salvado después de haber estado al borde del abismo. Los Estados Unidos no han caído por el precipicio fiscal. El Japón está actuando para cambiar su estrategia económica y China parece estar volviendo a encarrilarse.
Además, los índices de los mercados financieros de los EE.UU. están cercanos a los niveles anteriores a la crisis y el de la inestabilidad prevista es el más bajo de los últimos años. Las más importantes instituciones financieras están mejor capitalizadas de lo que lo habían estado en mucho tiempo. Se han reparado los balances y muchos agentes económicos nadan en efectivo. Si bien 2013 no será un año extraordinario, puede que se lo considere el primer año del período posterior a la crisis.
Desde luego, las circunstancias políticas siguen siendo difíciles casi por doquier. Los EE.UU. afrontarán tres nuevos obstáculos fiscales –falta de autoridad legal para pagar la deuda, falta de presupuesto de funcionamiento para el Gobierno federal y la temida perspectiva de un embargo– antes del final de marzo. En Italia y Alemania van a celebrarse elecciones decisivas. El nuevo Gobierno de China llega al poder entre niveles sin precedentes de preocupación del público por la corrupción y el enriquecimiento indebido de funcionarios públicos. Y no está claro que la fragmentada política del Japón permita una gobernación estable en los próximos años.
Pero existe la perspectiva de un círculo virtuoso en el que la mejora económica propicie una política menos hosca, lo que, a su vez, reduciría la incertidumbre e impulsaría aún más la recuperación. Al menos hasta ahora, los peores temores sobre las consecuencias políticas adversas de los deficientes resultados económicos no se han materializado... ni siquiera en Grecia. Así, pues, supongo que, si no ocurre nada tremendamente negativo, la política no desbaratará la economía mundial.
Lamentablemente, muchas otras cosas negativas podrían ocurrir. En particular, si bien cada una de las regiones más importantes de la economía mundial tiene una estrategia de crecimiento verosímil, todas ellas podrían no cuadrar. Prácticamente, la única afirmación en la que los economistas internacionales conviene es en la de que la suma de todos los balances comerciales debe ser igual a cero y, como corolario, todo elemento de crecimiento impulsado por las exportaciones de que disfruten los países debe quedar compensado en algún punto del sistema con un crecimiento de la producción inferior al crecimiento de la demanda. Así, pues, un importante problema actual es el de que en todo el mundo parece haber mucha más planificación para el crecimiento impulsado por la exportación que aceptación de una competitividad reducida y aumento de las importaciones.
Al comienzo de 2010, el Presidente de los EE.UU., Barack Obama, fijó el ambicioso objetivo de duplicar las exportaciones del país desde entonces hasta el final de 2014. En un momento en que ha transcurrido un poco más de la mitad de ese período de cinco años, los EE.UU. van bastante bien encaminados para lograrlo, lo que quiere decir que el aumento de las exportaciones supera el de las importaciones o el crecimiento de la economía mundial.
En Europa, la única forma como los países de la periferia que se encuentran en una situación financiera difícil pueden reducir su deuda es la de obtener superávits comerciales. En vista de que Alemania no está dispuesta a reducir su competitividad más allá de ciertos límites y el Banco Central Europeo ha dado repetidas señales de que la política monetaria seguirá siendo sumamente flexible, también en esa región el objetivo parece ser el crecimiento impulsado por las exportaciones.
Y en Asia el Primer Ministro del nuevo Gobierno del Japón, Shinzo Abe, ya ha reducido el valor del yen y ha mantenido las perspectivas exportadoras al situar en el centro de su programa la reflación mediante la relajación monetaria, mientras que las estadísticas más recientes de China indican un crecimiento de las exportaciones mucho mayor de lo previsto.
Así, pues, ¿de dónde saldrán el resto de las importaciones necesarias para apoyar toda esas exportaciones suplementarias? Tal vez unos precios más débiles de los productos básicos brinden un margen para otras importaciones y las posiciones comerciales de sus productores pasarán a caracterizarse por unos superávits menores, pero en una economía mundial muy boyante unos precios inferiores de los productos básicos no estarían en consonancia con las tónicas del pasado.
Tal vez las economías en ascenso con unas perspectivas mejores atraigan mayores corrientes de capitales, que financiarían unos déficits comerciales mayores al adquirirse directa o indirectamente bienes de capital, pero, ¿será suficiente para compensar todo lo que está sucediendo en las economías mayores? Es muy probable que algunos aspirantes a campeones de la exportación resulten decepcionados al no materializar los previstos aumentos de competitividad.
Ésa es la razón por la que las opiniones serenas sobre los efectos de la austeridad basadas en la experiencia histórica son erróneas. Un solo país o región que se consolide o se desapalanque en una economía mundial próspera puede abrigar la esperanza de que sus menores tipos de interés se plasmen en una divisa más débil y en una situación comercial mejor, pero la mayoría de las economías más importantes no puede abrigar dicha esperanza en una economía mundial en apuros. La austeridad de cada uno de los países impone costos exteriores al reducir la demanda de los productos de otros países. En ese sentido, tiene cierta concomitancia con las políticas de empobrecimiento del vecino, que se puede intensificar, si la expansión monetaria contrarresta la austeridad.
Lo que eso entraña para las autoridades queda claro. Más que casi en cualquier momento de los últimos años, la coordinación internacional a fin de evitar una austeridad excesiva será esencial para el éxito económico mundial. En 2013, la tarea fundamental del G-20 y del Fondo Monetario Internacional debería ser la de velar por que las estrategias nacionales sean no sólo localmente prudentes, sino también mundialmente coherentes. De lo contrario, la ecuación del crecimiento mundial podría no cuadrar.
Traducido del inglés por Carlos Manzano.
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Ray Tapajna @tapsearcher
First of all free trade is not trade as historically practiced and defined. Today it is based on moving production from place to place for the sake of cheaper labor. It has separated production from investment. The value of labor and workers has been degraded and deflated with this value being a better money standard than paper money created out of nothing. The real commodities being traded are workers who are put on a global trading block to compete with each other for the same jobs down to wage slave and even child labor. With more than a billion people in the world who are ready to work for practically nothing, it is a race to the bottom. Real trade is based on people who have money to trade. It is not something that can happen any other way. See http://tapsearch.com/tapartnews
Kathy Holland
Competitiveness is the American game. Unfortunately, this competitiveness has evolved in rather sinister ways. It will be a welcome period of "growing up" once these particular players reach that stage of "disappointment".
Enrique Woll Battistini
November 15, 2011
At the Brink of Recovery or Conflagration: The World at a Tipping Point
© Enrique Woll Battistini 2011
The world the baby boomer generation’s grandparents knew as children has been obliterated by a century of recurring monstrous wars, concurrent with exponentially increasing revolutionary scientific and technological discoveries and inventions, and massive economic, social, political, and legal changes which for many signify development. These changes have occurred in a stark and pervasive moral and ethical vacuum, in the context of unconscionable, unsustainable, and monotonically increasing welfare disparities between the rich and the poor. The world as we know it now is at the historical fork between the threshold of recovery and the brink of a new conflagration, indeed at a very promising and very threatening tipping point, and begging for drastic global financial, economic, and social redress, which only the most comprehensive multilateral and national governance reforms that would redefine the social contracts in the East and the West, the North and the South, and between them, could satisfy. Some of the more evident issues in need of holistic attention are the following.
The failure of post World War II governance paradigms
It appears that the world has reached a point where the paradigms of national and supranational government in the fields of finance, industry and commerce, justice, and security, at both levels, established at the end of World War II through global institutions such as the United Nations, the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, have on the one hand reached a certain level of philosophical irrelevance, and on the other, a level of practical incompetence, a la Peter Drucker. In this situation would also fall, under their own weight, sooner rather than later, the old British Commonwealth of Nations, the Organization of American States, the Commonwealth of Independent States created by the Russian Federation after the Soviet Union's demise, with its recent Eurasian Economic Community, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, currently without any counterweight, and even the European Union, preceded by its Euro Zone and nascent fiscal union, and the probably hundreds of dependent organizations, treaties, and multinational projects. This will be so, of course, if the pernicious global socio-economic disorder, a historical ball and chain legacy that is being dragged about in this new century, and millennium, to common loss, and which is now focused on by new global protest organizations such as Avaaz.com and Los Indignados, and Occupy Wall Street, in a climate of neglected global warming and pollution, is sufficient indication of the incompetence of these mammoth and very expensive governance organizations to solve the serious problems facing humanity at large. This global disorder, which at the end of last century and the millennium operated somewhat below the radar of the great majority, which still accepted with some hope each day as it came, suddenly became visible, to all, as of the abominable event of September 11, 2001, and the resulting advent of new, frightful, and costly wars in the Middle and Near East, always fratricidal, and increased terrorism, and is frontally contravening the ambitious objectives of the fight against poverty of the United Nations for this new Millennium. This world disorder has been widening at an accelerated pace since the Lehman Brothers bust in 2008, with the recent repeated threats of insolvency by the U.S. Government, because of the blind political and fiscal disagreements between Democrats and Republicans, with the 2011 Arab Spring of unpredictable consequences, which may well be worse than terrible, and with the near term threat of chained bankruptcies in European Union countries. No one is exempt from this without large, and in some cases enormous, sacrifices. There remains, then, only the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, whose high principles and achievements deserve generalized attention, as an ideological and practical resource, and forum, for the democratic reformulation of the purpose of the current supranational and national entities, and their reorganization, or for the design and development of better institutions to replace them. The much-quoted New World Order, candy bait that led the G8 to the wars against Afghanistan, and Iraq, by the nose, is now, clearly, the manifest of the New World Disorder.
The definition of a nation in the wider global context
Whether or not a Global Financial Authority that would, for instance, constitute a World Central Bank having as voting members the two hundred or so existing National Central Banks, or simply regulate them, is on the horizon, and it very well might, no nation can today afford to define itself, its citizens, and it objectives within the sphere of its current or even future domestic concerns and interests, and must do so in the wider global context, as is very obvious to all. This is especially true of the USA, the sole remaining superpower, the lone leader of the West, if not the world, especially in the context of domestic and foreign poverty, whose resolution is mutually dependent, and without which real and meaningful long term world peace based on justice, and not arms, will never be had. This happy ending, I fear, will not happen spontaneously as a result of economic and social growth, and will require Global Private-Public Partnerships for Development, with Multilateral participation. But Government plans for domestic action of any kind, moreover against domestic poverty, and Government plans in the multilateral context for hemispherically articulated action against poverty in the Americas, or worldwide, if ever really considered, are hindered and defeated by commonplace political realities in the USA, such as those which beleaguer President Obama. Given the paradoxical reality that warring is a known quantity, ever present in the American folklore, and a recurring phenomenon in practice, whereas large scale Private-Public Partnerships for Development, and peace, are simply not, I believe that movements such as the Ninety-Nine Percent Declaration should take into account the wider global economic and social protest context. This threatening groundswell, which must be addressed, is exemplified by the “Los Indignados” of Spain, begun on May 15, that has spread not only to the USA, in the form of Occupy Wall Street, begun on September 17, but to the UK, is being amplified by other movements, in the First World, in the context of the European crisis, and is widening its reach to very many other countries in it and in the Second, Third, and Fourth Worlds, echoing the current global revolution begun earlier this year in the Arab Spring.
The XXI century tax reform
This topic is of obvious world importance in this century of growing confrontations between the rich and the poor, in which general social peace will be attained only if we can fast establish a privately led Private Public global articulated system for sustainable development: That is, a system for comprehensive, fair, and environment friendly development. It is also fitting to note that the development and dissemination of an effective proposal for such a system would necessarily require and include a proposal for a complementary major global tax reform through which the public sector could perhaps make its greatest contributions to development in the XXI century.
Taxes should not be an instrument of envy, of punishment, or of forced economic or social leveling of the peoples. Most persons, no doubt, would agree with this. But taxes should also not be used by the State as instruments of manipulation, nor of indirect management or prosecution of the national economic activities, because the health of the economy should result, primarily, from the activities of the private sector. Rather, the State can and should preserve the health of the economy, at the macro level, essentially through the Central Bank, and by means of the Treasury. These institutions must act with independence, and coherence, within the general and specific regulatory frameworks applicable to the activities of the public and private sectors. The former, by controlling inflation by means of variations in the discount rate, and performing purchase and sale operations of Treasury Bonds in the open market, and the latter, by complementing, exceptionally, the funding of the comprehensive State budget by responsibly incurring debt, issuing and retiring its Bonds as may be appropriate.
Thus, taxes should not only be the source of State funding, in order that it may fulfill its constitutional ends, but must also be its source par excellence, almost exclusive. In addition, the constitutional ends of the State and its consequent activities must constantly aim at the direct search for tangible citizen welfare through the provision of services within its exclusive competence, in the areas of Environment Food and Health Security, Energy Education and Comprehensive Development Security, Social and Internal Security, and National Defense Security, drastically limiting the supplementation of State tax revenues through indebtedness, or complementary activities, or entrepreneurial ventures, particularly those in which it would compete with the private sector, something with which the great majorities would also agree. Moreover, when State interventions in private sector activities are socially necessary, accepted, and extant, they must not be conducted by the State as entrepreneur, as stated, save in rare exceptions, and must always be done directly, through the comprehensive State budget, targeting the pertinent strategic sectors and actors, without neglecting the most impoverished social strata, and without resorting to special tax regimes.
Now therefore, having linked the tax issue with the constitutional ends of the State, in its natural context, which is the comprehensive State budget, the heart of the State fiscal system, and a fundamental instrument of governance, it should be noted that the State fiscal system in the XXI century must gather certain essential characteristics for the State to be able to comply in the most effective and efficient manner with its central objective, the direct search for tangible citizen welfare:
1. Conceptual simplicity
2. Administrative simplicity
3. Fiscal divorce
4. Absolute transparency
The indicated conceptual and administrative simplicity requirements would demand the existence of a single tax, or unique tax, which would be a unique consumption tax, or UCT, applicable exclusively at the consumer product level without exception, and would have a flat fixed rate, say of less than 20%. That is, the UCT would be applicable to the goods and services produced wholly or partially in the country, for direct personal consumption, acquired by natural persons, or by legal entities, regardless of the purposes or uses intended or given, including as inputs, or for resale, or for export. This tax would be paid by the natural persons and legal entities at the time of purchase, in a similar manner to the current payment of the general sales tax, IGV, segregating its amount, in the invoice, from the total price of goods and services concerned, with the natural persons or legal entities selling, that would collect it, regardless of their nature or size, incurring the obligation of immediate payment to the Tax Authority, as allowed by the information and communication technologies in existence at the time.
The conceptual and administrative simplicity required would also demand, as already stated, the absence of special tax regimes, that is, the absence of tax credits of any kind, or deductions, or exemptions, or reductions, or fragmentations, or waivers, or any distinction in the tax rules applicable to different legal entities or different natural persons, or between these categories. Thus, having only the UCT, there would be no taxes on income, or property, or inheritance, for example, and it would per force have to be collected and administered at the central level by the Tax Authority and the Treasury, respectively. The required fiscal divorce within the State would consist of and require the total and irreversible separation and independence of the category of revenues from the category of expenditures in the comprehensive State budget, that is, of UCT collections from the category of uses or applications of funds to public expense and to public investment, without exception, beyond the correspondence that they must keep to maintain a reasonable fiscal balance and the national debt from Treasury bond issues at a minimum level, and under control. Therefore, the comprehensive State budget must consider and include a National Prosperity Reserve Fund (NPRF) which would allow for the growth of public spending and investment in line with the historical growth of the national GDP in times of Economic Recession, and even of Economic Depression, that is, that would enable the State to perform compensatory counter-cyclical economic stimuli whenever convenient.
Furthermore, in the absence of the referred traditional instruments of manipulation through taxes, in order for the State to be able to comply fully with its primary purpose, which would be the direct search for the tangible citizen welfare, as pointed out, there would per force be cases of socially necessary and accepted State interventions in private sector activities, that it would not perform as an entrepreneur, but rather would be made directly, targeting the pertinent strategic sectors and actors, without forgetting the most impoverished population strata, by means of nonrefundable contributions, or of loans, or of complementary capital stock, by the Treasury according to the referred comprehensive budget. These interventions by the State in the activities of the private sector, through the Treasury, would be subject to private and public oversight, to satisfy the requirement of absolute transparency, by publishing the details of each case in the corresponding Web page, as part of the fiscal accountability of the nation.
This new instrument of economic stimulus, and of social justice, would eliminate the deceptions and errors to which the more complex elements of the current tax system are subject, by individuals and legal entities, as well as the armies of private sector lawyers constantly confronted with the armies of public sector lawyers that produce a zero-sum economic result. In addition, this instrument would simplify the State function, allowing its reorganization, reform, and consequent reduction and public savings, and would eliminate tens of thousands of lawsuits of all types related to tax issues and the consequent futile efforts of and at the Judiciary to make or undo justice, resulting in savings and increased productivity in the private sector.
A fiscal system of this kind, under equal internal and external economic environments, in comparison with the current, traditional system, would not only facilitate but would encourage the establishment of a socially acceptable minimum standard of living for the most impoverished, by aiming to achieve, for the poorest population strata that would together generate 1% of the national GDP, a monotonically increasing average per capita GDP relative to the national per capita GDP, over time, and with national per capita GDP growth, as an objective, and realistic, economic and social inclusion index, according to the economic possibilities of the nation. Given time, this fiscal system would, at the micro level, achieve this goal and the wider national objective of economic and social inclusion, by allowing the financing of all manner of regular and emergency social support programs, including a program of supplementary liquid income, and their monitoring in a scheme of comprehensive zero-based State budgeting by results, with the necessary transparency to effectively combat corruption in the public and private sectors. Crucially, a fiscal system of this type would enable the citizen determination, in a democratic and direct manner, of the percentage share of the various categories of expense and investment in the comprehensive State budgets, at least for the aforementioned broad categories of Environment Food and Health Security, Energy Education and Comprehensive Development Security, Social and Internal Security, and National Defense Security.
***
Enrique Woll Battistini
Undoubtedly sustained global trade deficits incurred by any nation will eventually lead it to international trade cessation, economic breakdown, and bankruptcy, and possibly to national and international political imbalances paving the way to war. Sustained long term bilateral international trade surpluses for given nations impinging, or expected to impinge, on struggling nations may lead either of them to war, even sooner, especially, perhaps, the latter. The history of the 20th century, I think, is recent proof of this. But it seems clear to me that the zero-sum game of unbalanced international bilateral trade, or of global trade (which is always balanced), does not imply zero growth for the economies of the nations involved or for the world economy, even if all trade deficits were perpetually debt-financed, short of very significant wars perhaps. I don't think these views would quarrel with those of Dr. Lawrence H. Summers, as I understand them. Moreover, I agree with his view that "More than at almost any time in recent years, international coordination to avoid excessive austerity will be essential for global economic success. Ensuring that national strategies are not just locally prudent, but also globally consistent should be the central task for the G-20 and the International Monetary Fund in 2013. Otherwise, the global growth equation may not add up", but with the variant that it would not add up to its optimal value, only. In my view, again, the best way to ensure the sought after local prudence and global consistency of national strategies for global economic success is as follows:
http://enriquewoll.wordpress.com/category/what-about-the-poor/a-partnership-for-development-with-the-united-states-of-america/
Val Samonis @semi_online
Definitely, there is a beggar-thy-neighbor feeling to this stage in the global financial crisis but I think that the next stage featuring competitive devaluations (currency wars) will beggar the neighbors much more; a backhand repetition of the Great Depression 1?
Robert Wolff
Dr. Summers is expressing the fear that failure to achieve trade balance in the midst of international competition will destabilize the national economy and lead to international political instability.
Larry's statement that,"Virtually the only proposition on which international economists agree is that the sum of all trade balances must equal zero" is the ultimate sarcasm (since it cannot mathematically be other).
The US grew at 2% in 2012 and corporate profits were 12% - a disparity that put Americans another 10% of their GDP into debt.
Wishful thinking and more meetings with officials with other countries will not resolve the national dilemma.
pingfan hong
The world will add up, and always adds up, as global imports must be equal to exports, ex post, if not ex ante as policymakers planed. Every country tries improve its international competitiveness may not a bad thing. As all countries are not competing for exporting the same thing, but different things according to their comparative advantages, the improvement in each country's competitiveness (lowering the costs of its exports) can lead to a higher share of tradable goods in each country while at the same increase the total trade of the world, a welfare gain for every one.
Tsuda Shoken @nextbaron_
Dear Sir,
There is no concern of global natural environment. This is very big problem. The world that we can't live freely and enjoy the Sun shine well is coming soon. How to live with less materials and make economy better are important issues especially in developed countries.
Tom Shillock
"Balance sheets have been repaired..."
See Richard Koo's response to that:
http://www.businessinsider.com/richard-koo-deleveraging-isnt-over-2013-1
Thomas Lesinski
ECB policy is not accommodating at all if you judge it by the results:
http://marketmonetarist.com/2012/05/14/failed-monetary-policy-the-one-graph-version/