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Economics

Селективная советизация американского капитализма

Dec 31, 2021 Amar Bhidé

МЕДФОРД, МАССАЧУСЕТС – Сравнение сегодняшних капиталистических экономик с коммунистическим блоком прошлых лет может показаться маловероятным. Что может быть общего между свободным рынком и централизованным планированием в советском стиле? Фактически, это сравнение все чаще дает полезное представление о том, что стало с победившей стороной после окончания Холодной войны.

Рассмотрим “мягкие бюджетные ограничения”, которыми пользовались социалистические государственные предприятия (ГП), и которые оказались одной из основных причин краха экономики советского блока. Аналогичные финансовые условия становятся все более распространенными в капиталистической Америке.

Согласно известному утверждению знаменитого венгерского марксиста-отступника Яноша Корнаи, госпредприятия могут игнорировать убытки и предпочтения потребителей, потому что они всегда могут рассчитывать на то, что государство сможет удержать их на плаву. Тезис Корнаи был популярен среди китайских реформаторов 1980-х годов: стремясь сделать госпредприятия более восприимчивыми к рынку, они “ужесточили” бюджетные ограничения компаний. С другой стороны, капиталистическая Америка, похоже, идет по тому же ошибочному пути, что и советские экономики. Несмотря на то, что отправная точка другая, результат один и тот же. Бюджетные ограничения смягчаются, а капитал все больше направляется в пользу модных фантазеров и комбинаторов с хорошими связями.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 6 Comments on this article

Ken MacNeal Jan 6, 2022

What we have is the 'Wealth Effect" run wild. The Fed since 2012 under Bernanke announced they would pursue the Wealth Effect to stimulate the economy because fiscal spending wasn't coming from a deadlocked government. Economists believe 3% of extra wealth is spent in the real economy.
To push up Wealth, Central Bankers have kept interest rates artificially low to increase the value of two key assets, the stock market and house prices. This was a subtle force until the last three years when first in January 2019, the Fed abruptly changed their 'normalizing' interest rates policy (Anti-Wealth Effect) after the stock market fell sharply in the last quarter of 2018. Then secondly, the huge Fed liquidity over the Covid crisis has shot up stock and home prices. Download the Wealth USA data from the Fed and see from the pre-pandemic start of 2020 to mid-2021, a 16 trillion or 28% jump in stock and home wealth of the top 50% of households during an economic crisis. We have seen three back to back years of 20% plus gains in the stock market averages far outstripping profit gains of the corporations. This mostly free money from the Fed offsets the inflation of living costs for home and stock owners but inflationary consequences of this extreme policy is a burden for non-asset owners and their hopes of owning a home fade. Wealth disparity has taken a big leap that is now obvious and many experts warn could be socially destabilizing.
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Per Kurowski Jan 5, 2022

Veiled communism in action:
The difference between the interests the government would pay on its debts, in absence of QEs and decreed lower bank capital requirements, and the low interest rate it currently pays is, de facto, a camouflaged tax.
https://perkurowski.blogspot.com/2019/09/financial-communism.html
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Mad Sarmatian Jan 1, 2022

It is strange to blame the "state" for our finance-driven economy, as if the President is huddled in a secret room with all of Congress forming secret economic law. No, that is flagrant ideology being paraded around here like it describes some fact that everyone already knows to be true. In the real world the finalization of the economy was a slow, deliberate policy written by the lobbyists of private interests, aided by their allies who, taking advantage of the "revolving doors" between industries and government positions in regulating those industries, helped deregulate the financial sector, and write law on their behalf--bills now commonly even being written by the lobbyists themselves.

It is the industry that controls writes the laws, the industry that regulates itself, and the industry that is the cornerstone, not the state.

Another way to look at it is the only to alleviate these morbid symptoms (so to speak) you describe, is through the state. Law is the only recourse, and the only way to get the state to enact laws that rein in such over-financialization of the economy is to elect politicians who are willing to do so. And until that happens things will remain exactly as is, even if the economy tanks.
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vic lai Jan 1, 2022

In Minsky's view, capital development of the economy can be "ill done" in two main ways : the "Smithian way" and the "Keynesian way."
The first refers to "misallocation" : the wrong investments are financed by the financial system.
The second refers to an insufficiency of (real) investment, which leads to a level of aggregate demand that is too low to promote high employment and a healthily growing economy.
After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis (GFC) :
in socialist China : it's mainly been ill-done Smithian capital development;
in capitalist America : it's mainly been ill-done Keynesian capital development.
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The insufficiency of capital investment in the real economy of America after the GFC comes mainly from 2 areas :
(i) After the GFC, many American commercial banks have become risk-averse (think Lehman Brothers), and so they have created fewer new credits to their own economy than pre-GFC.
(ii) Misguided by the mistaken mainstream economics, the American government has not been deficit-spending big enough in the past 14 years (until recently).
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Mirek Fatyga Jan 1, 2022

it is the end point of Reagan/Thatcher revolution. Beating up labor to increase profits while at the same time trying to maintain consumer markets by replacing income with debt can have only one result: exponential growth of debt once the debt fills the economy. I personally think that we are at the "point Great Depression" with a twist. Central banks are now knee deep in the muddy, trying to create credit at ever more furious rate. The real danger is the great reckoning: a combination of a depression and the collapse of money.

The above is combined with a pressure on scarce resources due to the world population growth, which is actually a real constraint, independent of money manipulation. This one can't be fixed overnight.

Fasten your seatbelts. History does not repeat but she does rhyme. And we got them nukes this time around.
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