De regreso a casa

Apr 27, 2012 Howard Davies

PARÍS – Los responsables del diseño de políticas globales se congratulan frecuentemente de haber evitado los errores de política de los años treinta durante la crisis financiera que empezó en 2008. Encabezados por el presidente de la Reserva Federal estadounidense, Ben Bernanke, historiador económico de la Gran Depresión, recordaron las ideas de John Maynard Keynes y flexibilizaron la política fiscal y monetaria para evitar lo peor. Todavía seguimos lidiando con las consecuencias presupuestales, en especial en Europa, pero la verdad es que el mundo no se acabó en 2008.

El endurecimiento de la política monetaria no fue el único gran error de los años treinta, también el regreso al proteccionismo, simbolizado por el aumento de los aranceles a través de la Ley Smoot-Hawley a principios de esa década. Los historiadores continúan debatiendo la importancia de la Ley Smoot-Hawley en sí, pero la subsiguiente guerra de aranceles sin duda perjudicó el crecimiento económico y comercial, empeorando más la situación.

Los estadistas de ahora dicen que también evitaron el error del proteccionismo, pero, ¿es cierto? Ciertamente no espero que estalle una guerra de aranceles en el corto plazo, pero hay indicadores peligrosos de problemas comerciales por venir.

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Zsolt Hermann May 3, 2012

I fully share Mr. Davies's concerns about protectionism and isolating policies, as there multiple signs of closing down on the financial and on the political arena as well.
Especially as some major players are preparing for elections, almost all of them chose the populist and misguided approach of only concentrating on the "local front", "closing borders", promising "tougher approach" to "opponents, "tougher foreign policy", some countries clamp down on energy companies previously run by international cooperation, some countries openly oppose any relation to the EU, or want to get out of it and so on.
Unfortunately none of the present active leaders have the necessary vision and bravery to rise above the usual reflex, instinctive reaction, and possibly they do not have the space to maneuver in the present structure to explain the public how much we are locked into this new global and integral world system, where each and every element is fully dependent on the other, thus instead of isolation, disconnection and protectionism only further integration can solve our problems.
We have more and more evidence of this integral system, and its fundamental laws by several respected, and objective publications, as well as by the daily events of the deepening and unsolvable global crisis.
Europe provides us with the best example, even the leaders feel that breaking up the Eurozone or the Union is the wrong decision, but they do not have the strength or belief to push for deeper integration that could truly save the cooperation.
We need the widest possible educational approach to explain people the nature of our global system, and how much we need each other to succeed, how much only mutually working together are we capable of building a sustainable future.
The public is ready for it since in truth we already live a physically, virtually interconnected, border-less life, as soon as the top players and the mass media gives up their own personal, selfish agendas and come to the table, we can start building our new system adapted to the 21st century.
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Danny Cooper Apr 29, 2012

In order to return Europe to adequate levels of growth new aggregate demand needs to be created. Therefore stimulus need to be created which will bypass the banking system and the credit markets which are stagnant. A solution to this is to modify the central bank so that it conducts monetary policy directly with the public not just the banking system. Heres a more detailed explanation of how this can be implemented: internationalmonetary.wordpress.com
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Josué Machaca Apr 27, 2012

Es muy interesante esto de las finanzas, Howard Davies es un maestro, pero tengo una duda, ¿qué consecuencias precisas traen las finanzas nacionales?
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Thomas Jestin Apr 27, 2012

Let's remember that tariff wars in the 1930s played a very minor role in the economic turmoil of the time.

As William Bernstein wrote in his brillant book "A Spendid Exchange" : "Between 1929 and 1932, real GDP fell by 17% worlwide, and by 26% in the USA, but most economic historians now believe that only a minuscule part of that huge loss of both world GDP and the USA's GDP can be ascribed to the tariff wars."

"A back-of-the-enveloppe calculation show that this must have been true. At time of Smoot-Halley's passage, trade volume accounted for only 9% of world economic output. Had all international trade been eliminated, and had no domestic use of the previously exported goods been found, world GDP would have fallen by the same amount, 9%. Beteen 1930 and 1933, worldwide trade volume fell off by one-third to one-half. Depending on how the falloff is measured, this computes to 3 to 5% of world GDP, and these losses were partially made up by more expensive domestic goods. Thus the damage done could not possibly have exceeded 1 or 2% of world GDP - nowehere near the 17% falloff seen during the Great Depression."

"Even more impressively, the nations most dependent on trade did not suffer the most damage. For example, in Holland, trade accounted for 17% of GDP and yet its economy contracted by only 8% in those years. By contrast, trade constituted less tan 4% of the US' GDP, yet its economy contracted by 26% during the Depression. The inescapable conclusion : contrary to public perception, Smoot-Hawley did not cause, or even significantly deepen, the Great Depression."

"Recently, economic historians have calculated that the tariff wars of the 1930s caused less than half of the falloff in world trade, the rest being due to the Great Depression itself, which decreased demand for trade products."
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