BBCMundo.com: Hachazo a bonos en AIG

** Hachazo a bonos en AIG **
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Tensiones transatlánticas en vísperas del G20

- Nota publica de GEAB N°33 (17 de marzo de 2009) -

Para el LEAP/E2020, las alternativas que se les presentan a los dirigentes del G20 en la reunión de Londres del próximo 2 de Abril son dos: reconstruir un nuevo sistema monetario internacional que permita un nuevo juego global que integre equitativamente a todos los principales agentes mundiales y reduzca la crisis a una duración de tres a cinco años; o bien intentar prolongar el sistema actual sumergiendo al mundo a partir de fines de 2009 en una trágica crisis de más de una década.

En la presente edición del GEAB, describimos los futuros dos grandes lineamientos factibles hasta el próximo verano boreal. Superado este período, nuestro equipo considera, que la opción « crisis corta » habrá desaparecido y que el mundo se encaminará hacia la fase de desarticulación geopolítica mundial de la crisis (1), y a una profunda crisis por más de una década.

Por otra parte, frente a la emergencia, el LEAP/E2020 publicará mundialmente el próximo 24 de Marzo una carta abierta a los dirigentes del G20, modesta contribución de nuestro equipo para intentar evitar una larga y trágica crisis.

La situación es especialmente preocupante, ya que están surgiendo tensiones en vísperas de la Cumbre, del 2 de abril, que ve la aparición de amenazas escasamente veladas por parte de algunos dirigentes del G20 y operaciones de manipulación de la opinión pública por otros.

Volveremos más detalladamente sobre estos elementos en el GEAB N° 33, en el cual por otro lado el equipo del LEAP/E2020 ha decidido entregarse a un ejercicio útil para todos (incluido Estados Unidos de donde proceden más del 20% de los lectores del LEAP/E2020) a los que exaspera la ilusión alimentada por los principales medias occidentales sobre el estado del pilar estadounidense de nuestro sistema actual: anticipar el estado socioeconómico de Estados Unidos dentro de un año, en la Primavera de 2010. Las grandes tendencias nos parecen que están lo suficientemente firmes como para que tal anticipación tenga sentido. Por supuesto, haremos un ejercicio similar para la Unión Europea, la Federación Rusa y China en los próximos números del GEAB.

Gráfico sintético de la evolución de la sensación de inquietud colectiva en Estados Unidos (en azul: sensación de riesgo de una grave crisis; en verde: sensación de poder adquisitivo; en rosa: inquietud respecto al empleo) - Fuente : Chart of D

En aras de fiabilidad de la información, el equipo del LEAP/E2020, que desde diciembre de 2007, en el GEAB N°20, había advertido sobre riesgo inmobiliario en Europa Central y Oriental, decidió analizar en este comunicado público del GEAB N° 33 la veracidad de la llamada « bomba bancaria de Europa Oriental » que inundó los medios de comunicación desde hace casi un mes.

Si este tema nos parece pertinente es porque representa, a nuestro modo de ver, una tentativa deliberada por parte de Wall Street y de la City (2) de hacer creer en una fractura de la UE e instalar la idea de un gran riesgo « mortal » en la Eurozona, al difundir permanentemente falsa información sobre el « riesgo bancario proveniente de Europa Orienta » con la intención, al mismo tiempo, de estigmatizar a la Eurozona como « timorata » ante las medidas « voluntariosas » estadounidenses o británicas. También, uno de los objetivos es intentar desviar la atención internacional del agravamiento de los problemas financieros en Nueva York y Londres, al mismo tiempo busca debilitar la posición europea en vísperas de la Cumbre del G20.

La idea es brillante: se retoma un tema ya muy conocido por la opinión pública, asegurando así una adhesión fácil al nuevo contenido; se incluyen una o dos analogías sorprendentes para asegurar una amplia acogida en los medias y en Internet (clickear « crisis bancaria en Europa del este » en Google, el resultado es elocuente); luego se utiliza la colaboración de algunas personas y organizaciones relacionadas e influyentes disponibles para una mentira suplementaria. ¡Con tal cóctel, es también posible hacer creer por algún tiempo que la guerra en Irak es un éxito, que la crisis de los subprime no afectará al ámbito financiero, que la crisis financiera no afectará la economía real, que verdaderamente la crisis no es grave, y que si es grave, todo está realmente bajo control!

Entonces en lo que nos concierne aquí, el tema ya muy conocido, es la « separación entre la « Vieja Europa » y la « Nueva Europa ", entre una Europa rica y egoísta y una Europa pobre y llena de esperanza. Desde Rumsfeld para Irak al Reino Unido para el ensanche, es un latiguillo que se nos repite ininterrumpidamente desde hace diez años por todos los medias anglosajones y de confianza y que en particular ciertos medias británicos lo han hecho una especialidad (3).

Las analogías aquí son dos: Europa Oriental, representa « la crisis de los subprime de la UE » (dando por sobreentendido que cada uno tiene forzosamente una crisis de subprime local (4)); y que una crisis en Europa Oriental tendrá el mismo efecto terrible que la Crisis asiática de 1997, seguramente porque todo eso pasa en el Este (5)).

Las conexiones disponibles son numerosas. Antes que nada, se localiza una agencia de calificación, en este caso Moodys (6), quien como sus congéneres, está por un lado al servicio integral de Wall Street, y por otra parte es incapaz de ver un elefante en un pasillo (sólo fallaron con las subprimes, los CDS, Bear Stearn, Lehman Brothers, AIG,…). Pero, misteriosamente, la prensa financiera continúa difundiendo sus opiniones, aplicando seguramente el principio tan humanitario consistente en esperar que algún día el simple azar estadístico los haga evaluar algo correctamente. En nuestro caso, el eco fue unánime: Moodys había identificado bien de antemano una enorme « bomba » tapada en el patio de la Eurozona (pues bien aquí se trata del Euro)…, que sin duda devastará el sistema financiero europeo.

Luego, para dar credibilidad, se utiliza algunos medias profundamente anti-Euro (como el Telegraph por ejemplo, que por otra parte produce muy buenos análisis sobre la crisis, pero la caída de la Libra Esterlina y la economía británica tiende hoy a cegarlo en lo concerniente a la Eurozona y difunde una información que luego se suprime (ya que es inexacta) para darle el gusto de lo prohibido, del secreto (7) que revelaría un « tsunami financiero » mundial en preparación, en particular, a causa de los compromisos de los bancos de la Vieja Europa con el sector financiero de la Nueva Europa (8). Se menea todo eso cada día vía los principales medias financieros estadounidenses y británicos, sabiendo que los otros los seguirán por hábito. Con la UE es mucho fácil porque necesita siempre un largo tiempo para comprender y todavía más tiempo para reaccionar, con la inevitable discordia que permite hacer repercutir la manipulación. Esta vez, fue el Primer Ministro de Hungría, Ferenc Gyurcsany, quien desempeña el papel de « pobre nuevo mártir ». Recordemos, los húngaros están tratando en vano de deshacerse de él desde que admitió involuntariamente hace 2 años haber mentido a su pueblo para hacerse reelegir, confirmando de paso que había endeudado a su país más allá de todo límite razonable. Y fue él quien anunció las cifras de un delirante plan para rescatar el sistema financiero en Europa Oriental, poniendo de nuevo en una posición de « malos » o « inconscientes » a los viejos europeos. El rechazo de este último es puesto en relieve por todos los medios de prensa británicos y estadounidenses (incluidos los principales periódicos de referencia como el Financial Times o el International Herald Tribune), concluyendo, por supuesto, con el inevitable fracaso de la solidaridad europea... al mismo tiempo que minimizan (o incluso a veces olvidan) el hecho de que fueron los polacos y los checos los más virulentos contra los requisitos aberrantes del Primer Ministro húngaro (9). El intento de debilitar a la Eurozona y la UE por el Este podría continuar. Es preciso esperar las declaraciones reiteradas de los dirigentes de la Eurozona, el anuncio de un plan de respaldo financiero sustancial (en relación con los riesgos reales) y los enérgicos comunicados de los dirigentes políticos y banqueros centrales de la región, a fin de que la operación comience perder parte de su fuerza. Pero aún no ha desaparecido, ya que el paralelo se mantiene en los medios de comunicación mencionados entre la crisis de las subprime y crisis inmobiliaria en Europa Oriental; como si Hungría equivaliera a California, o Letonia a Florida.

Aquí está bien el meollo del problema: la dimensión tiene importancia en materia económica y financiera. No es la cola lo que mueva al perro como, evidentemente, algunos quisieran hacernos creer.

Si bien, desde Diciembre de 2007, cuando nuestros « actuales expertos en crisis de Europa Oriental » no tenían la más mínima idea del problema, el LEAP/E2020 había subrayado el importante riesgo inmobiliario que pesaba sobre los países europeos afectados (Letonia, Hungría, Rumania,...) y, por supuesto, sus acreedores (Alemania, Austria, Suiza, en particular), era obvio para nosotros que se trataba de un problema limitado a los países mencionados. Estos operadores y estos los países tienen muchos problemas por delante, pero no son peores que los problemas del sistema financiero mundial, y de ninguna manera como los problemas financieros de Nueva York, Londres o Suiza. Recordemos que el banco austríaco Raiffeisen el más citado como un « detonador » de esta « bomba de Europa Oriental », obtuvo un beneficio del 17% en 2008, un rendimiento que supera las expectativas de la mayoría de los bancos estadounidenses o británicos, como acertadamente lo señaló William Gamble, uno de los pocos analistas que se ha interesado en la realidad de la situación (10).

PIB de la Unión Europea, de la Eurozona y de los Estado-miembros - Fuente: Eurostat, 2008

Para aquéllos que conocen mal la geografía de la UE, el título « Hungría en bancarrota » o « Letonia en bancarrota » puede parecerles de hecho comparable a « California en bancarrota ». Para los que pierden su trabajo a causa de estas quiebras, es un problema idéntico, en efecto; pero en término de la gravedad impacto, no hay ninguna relación entre los dos. California, duramente golpeada por la crisis de las subprimes, es el estado más poblado y más rico de Estados Unidos en cambio Letonia es un país pobre con una población menor al 1% de la UE, (contra el 12% de la población de EEUU en el caso de California (11)). El PIB de Hungría representa apenas el 1,1% del PIB de la Eurozona (para Letonia esta cifra es del 0,2%) (12): o sea una proporción comparable a la de Oklahoma (el 1% del PIB de EEUU (13)), no al de Florida. Se está lejos de una Europa Oriental portadora de una crisis de las subprime en Europa. El conjunto de los nuevos Estados miembros pesan menos del 10% del PIB de la UE (y, entre ellos, los más ricos o los mayores como la República Checa o Polonia apenas están afectados). La suma en juego, para el sistema financiero europeo, se sitúa en el peor de los casos alrededor de 100 millones EUR (130 millones de USD) (14), es una cantidad muy pequeña de todo el sistema financiero de la UE (15). Por en otra parte, la UE encabeza un consorcio que ya inyecta cerca de 25 Mil millones de EUR (el 20% de un escenario más grave) para estabilizar la situación (16) incluida la reciente baja del franco suizo, que todavía disminuye la gravedad.

Et, last but not least, en Europa Oriental, los nuevos inmuebles mantendrán un valor importante, aunque menor que en 2007/2008, pues, después de 50 años de comunismo, hay déficit de inmuebles modernos. En cambio en Estados Unidos, con las casas construidas durante el auge inmobiliario de estos últimos años sobran las construcciones, con una calidad muy variable y están ya en tren de degradarse en los estados más afectados. En tales casos es una verdadera destrucción de riqueza para propietarios, la economía, los acreedores y los bancos.

La complejidad de esta crisis impone estar muy atentos para identificar las tendencias y los factores que son realmente portadores de graves peligros, para no dejarse engañar por los rumores o las falsas informaciones.

Esperamos que esta explicación no sólo desvíe el golpe de la mentira orquestada en torno a la llamada « bomba financiera » de Europa Oriental (17), y sirva como un ejemplo para permitir a cada uno « atravesar las apariencias » y buscar « detrás del espejo » de los medios de comunicación financieros dominantes los elementos fácticos que les permitan, por sí mismos, hacerse de una idea precisa.

Si la Cumbre del G20 de Londres no logra evitar la entrada a la fase de desarticulación geopolítica mundial, estas operaciones de manipulación y desestabilización aumentarán, cada bloque tratará de desacreditar a su oponente, como en todo juego de suma cero (18): lo que uno pierde, lo gana el otro.

---------
Notas:

(1) Ver GEAB N°32

(2) Retransmitidas por todo los medias y expertos financieros de estas dos plazas cuya la mayoría no tenía idea del problema inmobiliario/financiero de ciertos países de Europa Oriental cuando el LEAP/E2020 lo analizaba en diciembre de 2007.

(3) No sorprende que Marketwatch recoja en un artículo sobre la cuestión las acusaciones a propósito del Banco Central checo. Fuente: Marketwatch, 09/03/2009.

(4) Lo que sin embargo es falso. Ningún otro país, a parte de Estados Unidos y el Reino Unido conoce tal convergencia de factores catastróficos.

(5) Mientras los países de Europa central y oriental afectados (Hungría, países bálticos, Bulgaria, Rumania) son totalmente marginales en la economía mundial, los países de Asia del Sureste eran actores claves de la globalización de los años 1990.

(6) Fuente : Reuters, 17/02/2009

(7) Lo que hace que incluso los sitios alertados duden sobre la actitud a asumir frente a esta « información », manteniendo pues la credibilidad de la « información » , como, por ejemplo, es el caso de Gary North, el 19/02/2009, en el sitio LewRockwell.com.

(8) Fuente : Telegraph, 15/02/2009

(9) Fuente: EasyBourse, 01/03/2009

(10) SeekingAlpha, 26/02/2009

(11) Fuente : Statistiques 2007, US Census Bureau.

(12) Fuente : Statistiques 2008, Eurostat. Los países bálticos son « protegidos » por los países escandinavos, en particular por Suecia que tiene gran cuidado en evitar una espiral incontralabe en la región. Fuente: International Herald Tribune, 12/03/2009

(13) Fuente : Statistiques 2008, Bureau of Economic Analysis, US Department of Commerce.

(14) Fuente: Baltic Course, 05/03/2009

(15) Y ridículo respecto a los cientos de miles de millones que no paran de inyectar en sus bancos repetidamente los gobiernos estadounidenses y británico.

(16) Fuente: Banque Européenne d'Investissement, 27/02/2009

(17) Y no nos detendremos aquí sobre la amalgama hecha con Ucrania, amalgama a cual Nouriel Roubini, sin embargo generalmente más prudente, ha prestado igualmente su apoyo – fuente : Forbes, 26/02/2009), quien no pertenece no sólo al UE, sino en más es un peón de Washington y Londres desde la « revolución anaranjada ». El actual hundimiento de Ucrania, si puede generar problema a la UE como cualquier factor de inestabilidad en sus fronteras, ilustra sobre todo el « colapso del Muro del Dolar " en detrimento de las posiciones estadounidenses pues es Rusia que recobrará su influencia. En el momento que Wall Street y la City, los grandes bancos se desmoronan o son nacionalizados, es asistido verdaderamente con esta manipulación para esconder el bosque estadounidense-británico por el árbol europeo oriental. Unos se han dejado ciertamente tomar con toda honestidad porque por otra parte la historia era tan creíble: " si no e vero, e bello ", como dicen a los italianos.

(18) En lo que se convertirá el mundo a partir del fin 2009 si no se inicia un nuevo juego durante el próximo verano boreal.

Mercredi 18 Mars 2009

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La compra mamut no es lo mismo que la compra de un mamut

REVIEW & OUTLOOK MARCH 20, 2009 Secretary of the Fed In case there was any residual doubt, the Bernanke Fed threw itself all in this week to unlock financial markets and spur the economy. With its announced plan to make a mammoth purchase of Treasury securities, the Fed essentially said that the considerable risks of future inflation and permanent damage to the Fed's political independence are details that can be put off, or cleaned up, at a later date. Whatever else people will say about his chairmanship, Ben Bernanke does not want deflation or Depression on his resume. It's important to understand the historic nature of what the Fed is doing. In buying $300 billion worth of long-end Treasurys, it is directly monetizing U.S. government debt. This is what the Federal Reserve did during World War II to finance U.S. government borrowing, before the Fed broke the pattern in a very public spat with the Truman Administration during the Korean War. Now the Bernanke Fed is once again making itself a debt agent of the Treasury, using its balance sheet to finance Congressional spending. Corbis William McChesney Martin Jr. It is also monetizing U.S. debt indirectly with the huge expansion of its direct purchase program of mortgage-backed securities (MBS). It was $500 billion, and now it will add $750 billion more "this year." Foreign governments have been getting out of Fannie and Freddie MBSs in recent months and going into Treasurys. Thus the Fed is essentially substituting as these foreign governments finance U.S. debt by buying presumably safer Treasurys. The purpose of these actions is to keep rates low on both Treasurys and MBSs, and to keep the cost of funds low for banks and especially for home buyers. It worked on Tuesday; long bond and mortgage rates fell. The case for doing all this is that the Fed needs to supply dollars at a time when money velocity is low and the world demand for dollars is high amid the global recession. As long as the world keeps demanding dollars, the Fed can get away with this extraordinary credit creation. That said, bear in mind that the Fed's balance sheet has more than doubled since September -- to $1.9 trillion from $900 billion. These latest commitments mean it may more than double again, close to $4 trillion. That would be about 30% of GDP, up from about 7%. The market reaction clearly showed the implied risks, with gold leaping and the dollar taking a dive the past two days. As the economy improves, and thus as the velocity of money increases, the risk of inflation will soar. Mr. Bernanke says the Fed can remove the money fast, but central bankers always say that and rarely do. The Fed statement isn't reassuring on that point. It says, "the Committee sees some risk that inflation could persist for a time below rates that best foster economic growth and price stability in the longer term." The Fed seems to be saying it wants a little inflation, which we know from history can easily become a big inflation or another asset bubble. The last time the Fed cut rates to very low levels to fight "deflation," we ended up with the housing bubble and mortgage mania. The other great, and less appreciated, danger is political. The Bernanke Fed has now dropped even the pretense of independence and has made itself an agent of the Treasury, which means of politicians. With its many new credit facilities -- the TALF and the others -- it is making credit allocation decisions across the economy. If a business borrower qualifies for one of these facilities, it gets cheaper money. If it doesn't, it's out of luck. Thus the scramble by so many nonbanks to become bank holding companies, so they can tap the Fed's well of cheap credit. The question is how the Fed will withdraw from all of this unchartered territory now that it has moved into it. How will it wean companies off easy credit, especially since some companies may need it to survive? What happens when Members of Congress lobby the Fed to keep credit loose for auto loans to help Detroit, or credit cards to help Amex? House Speaker Pelosi yesterday gave a taste, saying the AIG bailout was the Fed's idea "without any prior notification to us." Mr. Bernanke, meet your new partners. Above all, the Treasury and Congress won't be happy if the Fed decides to stop buying Treasurys and the result is a big increase in government borrowing costs. This was the source of the dispute between the Federal Reserve and the Truman Treasury. The Fed wanted to raise rates amid rising inflation, while the Truman Treasury wanted cheap financing for Korea and its domestic priorities. The Fed prevailed in the famous "Accord" of 1951, thanks to a young assistant secretary of the Treasury named William McChesney Martin. He would go on to become Fed Chairman and create the modern era of Fed independence. The U.S. and the Fed are going to need another Martin, sooner rather than later. Please add your comments to the Opinion Journal forum. Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Copyright ©2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

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USA; Plan Galbraith

El Plan Galbraith para salvar a Estados Unidos (¿y a México?)

Alfredo Jalife-Rahme

El connotado economista James Galbraith (JG) nos envió el video de su ponencia ante el Congreso de Estados Unidos (EU) sobre el rescate bancario hasta ahora fallido.

JG ha ascendido por méritos propios, pese a ser hijo de uno de los más célebres economistas del mundo: el canadiense-estadunidense John Kenneth Galbraith, uno de cuyos mejores libros de su obra pletórica es El gran crac de 1929.

El pasado 26 de febrero expuso sus trascendentales consejos al Comité de Servicios Financieros de la Cámara, en el contexto de la Conducta de la Política Monetaria. Sus sugerencias fueron de corte rooseveltiano, en oposición a los fundamentalistas monetaristas: el secretario del Tesoro, Timothy Geithner, quien cumple los designios de la insolvente Goldman Sachs, y del gobernador de la Reserva Federal, Ben Shalom Bernanke, alias Helicóptero, quien prometió imprimir los billetes necesarios para luego lanzarlos desde los cielos.

Fustigó que el pronóstico de base de la enmienda de recuperación está fundado en un supuesto mecánico y sustentado en relaciones estadísticas entre variables no financieras. Esta crítica es demoledora en términos profesionales y significa que se fundó en pura quimera. El resultado: la cantidad asignada fue muy pequeña.

Imprecó a Bernanke, quien actúa con fe ciega, por haber asegurado en Londres el pasado enero que la economía global se recuperará cuando nunca dijo lo que verdaderamente sabe.

Asevero que la política monetaria tiene poco poder para restablecer el crecimiento en una fase de depresión. Los problemas económicos rebasan el aspecto de la liquidez per se, por lo que el plan bancario de rescate de Geithner no funcionará: remover los malos activos de las hojas de contabilidad de los bancos constituye un ejercicio costoso de futilidad.

Lo que quizá ignore nuestro amigo JG es que es más fácil convencer a un esquizofrénico que a un monetarista neoliberal quien se cree imbuido de inmanencia teológica que le confirió el inexistente Dios mercado.

No existe razón alguna, prosigue JG, para creer que el flujo de préstamos será restablecido ni que los bancos, que hace mucho abandonaron prácticas prudentes y ordinarias de empréstitos, van de alguna manera a regresar a ellas después de haber sido castigados. Los banqueros no cambiarán su conducta. Es cierto porque, además de teólogos desacralizados, son adictos a las apuestas especulativas: ¿Por qué van a cambiar su conducta si sus pérdidas son efectivamente garantizadas por la Secretaría del Tesoro?

Lamenta que la Secretaría del Tesoro no conseguirá sus objetivos, mientras los riesgos desencadenarán la inflación y obstruirán el crecimiento.

El Tesoro ha garantizado los malos activos a tasas arriba del valor del mercado, lo que equivale a una transferencia a quienes poseen estos activos y preserva la riqueza de los de adentro del banco y de los inversionistas financieros, mientras falla en prevenir el colapso de la riqueza de casi todos los demás. Desmonta que el crédito no es un flujo, sino un contrato, por lo que de nada sirve rellenar a los bancos con dinero. Lo peor del plan de la Secretaría del Tesoro es que tendrá un efecto perverso en la distribución de la riqueza y agrega que difícilmente el público de EU lo tolerará por mucho tiempo.

A propósito, Zbigniew Brzezinski, asesor del ex presidente Carter y ahora muy cercano a Obama, advirtió sobre revueltas sociales en EU si la economía seguía su espiral descendente (Press Tv, 21/2/09).

Ben Helicóptero Bernanke, presidente de la Reserva Federal estadunidense, a finales de febrero en el CapitolioFoto Reuters

A juicio de JG, la alternativa viable consiste en colocar a los grandes bancos en suspensión de pagos, asegurar sus depósitos, sustituir a su gerencia, realizar una auditoría limpia (¡súper sic!), y aislar los malos activos.

Para que la economía siga funcionando se debe crear un banco público (¡súper sic!) que proporcione suficientes préstamos a los negocios pequeños, medianos y grandes. Recordó que tal fue la función de la Corporación de Reconstrucción Financiera durante la Depresión.

Reclamó un incremento permanente –y no la reducción equivocada y peligrosa– en los beneficios del Seguro Social para compensar las pérdidas que sufre la población de la tercera edad, así como la disminución en la edad de elegibilidad del Seguro Médico.

Urgió una moratoria integral de los nuevos embargos de las casas adeudadas y la transferencia de todo el portafolio de hipotecas a una entidad similar a la Corporación de Préstamos a los Propietarios de las Casas, como en la Depresión, que distinguiría entre los deudores honestos y fraudulentos y que clasifique a los propietarios legítimos y maneje o disponga las propiedades del restante. Mientras, toda la gente gozará del derecho presuntivo de permanecer en sus hogares.

Solicitó la creación de un fondo de infraestructura nacional, como instalación permanente (sic) que pueda proveer fondos a los estados, localidades y regiones, independientemente de las condiciones del mercado, que sirva como fuente de estandarización y que provea una medida de vigilancia.

Nick Baumann (NB), en Mother Jones (27/2/09), sintetiza lo que JG planteó: Obama no está haciendo lo suficiente para resolver la crisis financiera.

NB resalta que JG compara la presente crisis de EU con el gran crac de 1929, y que el gobierno no está tomando las medidas adecuadas para contrarrestarlo. Refiere que JG señaló seis problemas significativos:

1. La Casa Blanca ha sido muy optimista; 2. "los orígenes de la crisis subyacen en el desmoronamiento del sistema bancario y financiero, como consecuencia de la ruptura en la regulación de las hipotecas, de los seguros y los credit default swaps (derivados de crédito que protegen contra la falta de pagos, CDS, por sus siglas en inglés). Los CDS, como nos anticipamos, son unos vulgares instrumentos financieros especulativos del casino neoliberal global. Tal mezcla financiera explosiva no había sido vista en nuestras vidas, advirtió JG; 3. colocar a los grandes bancos en suspensión de pagos y crear la Corporación de Reconstrucción Financiera; 4. el Seguro Social y el Medicare no están causando nuestros problemas; 5. la crisis inmobiliaria, y 6. la administración Obama deberá pensar a largo plazo, en especial sobre la infraestructura, la energía y el dólar.

JG aconsejó reducir la importación del crudo y conservar la energía. Sobre el dólar aduce que la crisis mundial reveló la fuerza relativa del dólar y la debilidad estructural del euro y de otras importantes divisas, pero previno que la inestabilidad de las divisas mundiales puede producir una espiral acumulativa de un colapso (¡súper sic!) económico global, situación para la que no estamos bien preparados, por lo que sugirió mayor atención a la arquitectura financiera, con el fin de lograr una expansión fiscal coordinada, sin dejar de admitir la seria posibilidad de una crisis mucho mayor.

El gobierno calderonista panista y el Congreso mexicano disponen ya de un mapa de ruta para salvar también a México atado al Titanic neoliberal de EU: el Plan Galbraith.

the [El]

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China; NUEVA MONEDA RESERVA

China apoya discutir rol del dólar como reserva: fuente rusa

jueves 19 de marzo de 2009 14:59 GYT

Por Gleb Bryanski

MOSCU (Reuters) - China y otras naciones emergentes respaldaron el llamado de Rusia para una discusión sobre cómo reemplazar al dólar como la principal divisa de reserva en el mundo, dijo el jueves una alta fuente del Gobierno ruso.

Rusia ha propuesto la creación de una nueva divisa de reserva, que sea emitida por las instituciones internacionales, entre otras de las medidas que propondrá a la cumbre del G20 y que fueron divulgadas el lunes.

Los pedidos para reconsiderar el estatus del dólar como la única moneda de referencia llegan en medio de las preocupaciones respecto a su valor a largo plazo, luego de que la Reserva Federal estadounidense anunciará el miércoles que inyectará más de un billón de dólares de nuevo efectivo en la golpeada economía.

Rusia se reunió con representantes de China, India y Brasil de cara a la reunión de ministros de finanzas del G20 del fin de semana pasado, en momentos en que las potencias emergentes buscan aumentar su influencia en la toma de decisiones mundiales. Su primer comunicado conjunto no mencionó una nueva divisa pero la fuente dijo que el tema fue discutido.

"Ellos (China) no presentaron formalmente su posición para la cumbre del G20, pero extraoficialmente difundieron un documento en relación con las mismas ideas (la necesidad de una nueva moneda)", dijo la fuente a Reuters, que habló bajo la condición de anonimato.

Según la fuente, el documento chino prevía que a los Derechos Especiales de Giro (DEGs) del FMI se les asigne inicialmente un rol de moneda de compensación en algunas transacciones y después, gradualmente, se convertirían en la principal divisa mundial. "Ellos dijeron que el rol de la divisa de reserva se le debería dar a los DEG".

Un panel de expertos de las Naciones Unidas también está estudiando el uso ampliado de los DEG, creados originalmente por el FMI en 1969, pero que ahora son usados principalmente como una unidad contable por organizaciones similares como una nueva divisa de reserva en lugar del dólar.

El especialista en divisas Avinash Persaud, miembro del panel de la ONU, dijo a Reuters que la propuesta era crear algo similar al ECU, antigua unidad monetaria europea.

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Banco Mundial: COMERCIO YPROTECCIONISMO

Preocupante aumento de las medidas proteccionistas desde el inicio de la crisis financiera
En un estudio se señala que 17 miembros del G-20 han implementado medidas de restricción del comercio
CIUDAD DE WASHINGTON, 17 de marzo de 2009. En una nueva investigación del Banco Mundial se señala que, desde noviembre de 2008, cuando los líderes del Grupo de los Veinte (G-20) suscribieron un acuerdo mediante el cual se comprometían a evitar medidas proteccionistas, varios países, entre ellos 17 miembros del G-20, han adoptado 47 medidas que restringen el comercio a expensas de otros países. De acuerdo con la lista de seguimiento de las medidas comerciales y relacionadas con el comercio, elaborada por el Banco Mundial, los funcionarios han propuesto o adoptado unas 78 medidas comerciales desde el inicio de la crisis financiera. De ese total, 66 medidas entrañaban restricciones al comercio. Finalmente, entraron en vigor 47 medidas de restricción del comercio y, si bien es probable que sus efectos sean insignificantes en comparación con el tamaño de los mercados no afectados, también es cierto que tienen un marcado impacto negativo en los exportadores que quedaron fuera de los mercados. "Los líderes no deben escuchar el canto de las sirenas que los impulsa a aplicar medidas proteccionistas, ya sea en el comercio, en los paquetes de reactivación económica o las operaciones de rescate", señaló el presidente del Grupo del Banco Mundial, Robert B. Zoellick. "El aislamiento económico puede generar una espiral de acontecimientos negativos como los que ocurrieron en los años treinta, que profundizaron la gravedad de una situación que, de por si, ya era mala". El Banco Mundial advierte que el costo de la falta de acción en el marco del Programa de Doha está aumentado. Hasta la fecha, en la mayoría de los países no se han aumentado los aranceles hasta los niveles consolidados y tampoco se ha aprovechado plenamente el margen de maniobra con respecto a las subvenciones agrícolas. Empero, a medida que la recesión se profundice, muchos países podrían verse tentados a hacerlo. Esta amenaza subraya la importancia de avanzar rápidamente para concluir la Ronda de Doha. En el estudio se sugiere que el G-20, por su parte, podría adoptar medidas adicionales orientadas a fortalecer el frágil consenso contra la profundización del proteccionismo. Por ejemplo, los países del G-20 podrían: Poner empeño en incrementar la transparencia y, con ese fin, comprometerse a presentar a la Organización Mundial del Comercio (OMC) informes trimestrales sobre nuevas restricciones al comercio y subvenciones industriales y agrícolas, así como un análisis obligatorio del impacto de la restricción del comercio en el empleo (pues ello brindaría nuevas oportunidades para el análisis técnico y el debate político en los propios países); Promover un aumento de la ayuda para el comercio destinada a los países de ingreso bajo, y Aprovechar la oportunidad de respaldar el comercio mundial en momentos en que ese apoyo es de vital importancia, así como realizar progresos en la Ronda de Doha a nivel técnico, aun mientras las negociaciones formales estén suspendidas. Información adicional En el estudio del Banco Mundial se señala que, si bien es probable que, por ahora, los efectos de estas medidas proteccionistas sean insignificantes en comparación con el tamaño de los mercados no afectados, también es cierto que tienen una gran importancia para los exportadores que han quedado fuera de los mercados protegidos. Los aumentos de los aranceles representan escasamente un tercio de estas medidas y la mitad en el caso de los países en desarrollo. Por ejemplo, Rusia aumentó los aranceles sobre automóviles usados y Ecuador hizo lo propio respecto de 600 productos. Las medidas no arancelarias incluyen políticas tales como la exigencia de licencias no automáticas para la importación de autopartes, textiles, televisores, juguetes, calzado y productos de cuero en Argentina, o la decisión de Indonesia de permitir el ingreso de cinco categorías de productos (prendas de vestir, calzado, juguetes, productos electrónicos, alimentos y bebidas) únicamente a través de cinco puertos y aeropuertos. Para reducir el ingreso de importaciones, en algunos países se han endurecido las normas, según se indica en el estudio del Banco Mundial. China, por ejemplo, prohibió las importaciones de carne de cerdo irlandesa y rechazó el ingreso de chocolates belgas, coñac italiano, salsas británicas, huevos holandeses y productos lácteos españoles, mientras que India prohibió las importaciones de juguetes chinos. Las subvenciones a la exportación son especialmente nocivas porque contravienen el proyecto de modalidades de Doha. La Unión Europea anunció nuevas subvenciones a las exportaciones de manteca, queso y leche en polvo. Utilizando un método menos explícito, tanto China como India han aumentado el monto que se reembolsa a los exportadores a través del sistema de reintegro de derechos y, si bien el componente de subvención es tema de debate, el momento elegido para aplicar estas medidas plantea dudas. Las subvenciones propuestas para la industria automotriz han proliferado —en total, ascienden a unos US$48.000 millones a nivel mundial—, principalmente (US$42.700 millones) en los países de ingreso alto. Además de la subvención directa por valor de US$17.400 millones proporcionada por Estados Unidos a sus tres empresas nacionales, Canadá, Francia, Alemania, Reino Unido, China, Argentina, Brasil, Suecia e Italia también han proporcionado subvenciones directas o indirectas, sin incluir el apoyo proporcionado por Australia a sus concesionarios de automóviles ni el apoyo de Corea del Sur y Portugal a sus proveedores de componentes. Dado que la industria sufre las consecuencias de un exceso de capacidad, estas subvenciones obstaculizan la salida y retrasan el ajuste. Peor aún, las subvenciones pueden estar vinculadas a imposiciones que obligan a las empresas a preservar el empleo interno, incluso a costas de cerrar plantas externas más eficientes situadas en países en desarrollo. Por otra parte, para evitar que esto suceda, los gobiernos han tenido que adoptar medidas para responder a las políticas de los países vecinos, como Canadá, por ejemplo, que otorgó subvenciones equivalentes a las que Estados Unidos proporcionó a las empresas automotrices de Detroit, para asegurarse de que las fábricas estadounidenses no cierren sus plantas en Canadá. En el estudio se señalan varios factores que claramente han atenuado las presiones proteccionistas, y se marcan las diferencias entre esta contracción de la economía mundial y las presiones de los años treinta. Los países son mucho más interdependientes a través de las cadenas de suministro, los insumos importados e inclusive los servicios. Actualmente, los intereses de exportación superan ampliamente a las industrias que sólo producen productos que compiten con las importaciones. Las empresas que producen para el mercado interno dependen en mayor grado de insumos importados y las cadenas de producción vinculan a los mercados mundiales a través de una red de intercambio de partes y componentes. El promedio simple de la participación del comercio en el producto interno bruto (PIB) asciende actualmente al 96%, en comparación con el 55% en 1970, y el intercambio de partes y componentes —un indicador de las cadenas de suministro— ha superado el doble en cuanto proporción del comercio total. Por otra parte, los sucesivos acuerdos en el seno del Acuerdo General sobre Aranceles Aduaneros y Comercio (GATT) y la OMC han incrementado marcadamente la estabilidad legal de las relaciones comerciales. A raíz de esta gran diferencia en la política económica actual, algunas de las restricciones propuestas fueron rechazadas o no se sancionaron. En Brasil, por ejemplo, la burocracia intentó imponer licencias generalizadas y controles a las importaciones semejantes a los aplicados en los años setenta, pero la medida fue dejada sin efecto de inmediato debido a la firme oposición del sector privado. En forma similar, todo parece indicar que se han evitado las formas más nocivas de la disposición en materia de "compre productos estadounidenses". Asimismo, de los 77 cambios propuestos y aplicados en relación con la política comercial, unos 10 entrañaron medidas en pro de una mayor liberalización, en su mayoría relacionadas con acuerdos de libre comercio. Para más información sobre el informe, consulte el documento: Elisa Gamberoni y Richard Newfarmer, "Trade Protection: Incipient but Worrisome Trends" (Protección al comercio: Tendencias incipientes pero preocupantes), Trade Notes, Departamento de Comercio Internacional del Banco Mundial. Estudio del Banco Nundial muestra el aumento del proteccionismo. Estudio completo descargarlo en: http://siteresources.worldbank.org/NEWS/Resources/Trade_Note_37.pdf

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La Conferencia de Londres de 1933 y lo ocurrió depsue.

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: bruno seminario <lbseminario@gmail.com>
Date: 2009/3/21
Subject: Macroperu La Conferencia de Londres de 1933 y lo ocurrió depsue.
To: macroperu@yahoogroups.com, Macroperu <macroperu@googlegroups.com>

H. G. Wells

The Shape of Things to Come

Book the Second

The Days After Tomorrow: The Age of Frustration

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La pròxima semana se reunen en Londres los representantes de las principales economias del modo. Muchos ecuentran una gran similitud entre la confrencia de 1933 y la actaul. Les envio estea excelnte descripciòn de H.G. Wells sobre el tema .

1. The London Conference: the Crowning Failure of the Old Governments; The Spread of Dictatorships and Fascisms

In the preceding chapters we have explained how the old order of the nineteenth century, the Capitalist System as it was called, came to disaster in the second and third decades of the twentieth century because of the disproportionate development of its industrial production, the unsoundness and vulnerability of its monetary nexus, and its political inadaptability. It had no inherent power of recovery, and there was no idea of a new order, sufficiently developed, to replace it. Necessarily therefore the tale of disaster went on.

The only mechanisms in existence for collective action, and that only in disconnected spurts, were the various sovereign governments. Most of these at the outset of the war were either parliamentary monarchies or parliamentary republics. The parliaments were elected upon a very preposterous system by the bulk or all of the population. The age was called the Age of Democracy. Democracy did not mean then what it means now, an equal opportunity for every human being according to his ability and the faculty to which he belongs, to serve and have a voice in collective affairs. Nor did it mean the fraternal equality of a small community. It expressed a political fiction of a very extraordinary kind: that every subject of the contemporary state was equally capable of making whatever collective decisions had to be made.

The great republics of a remoter antiquity, the Carthaginian, the Athenian, the Roman, for example, were all essentially aristocratic. Democratic republics, that is to say republics in which every man was supposed to share equally in the government, in the rare instances when they occurred at all before the end of the eighteenth century, were, like, Uri, Unterwalden or Andorra, small and poor and perched in inaccessible places. The world at large knew nothing of them. Their affairs were equally small and well within the scope of a common citizen's understanding.

Then with the Era of European Predominance came a turning-point in human affairs, that outbreak of books and discussion in the fifteenth century, a period of great animation and confusion when the destructive criticism of faiths and loyalties got loose. The release of new economic forces strained the old feudal order to breaking. Exploration and merchandising, new financial conditions, industrial development, created new types of men, uncertain of their powers, needing and demanding free play. They did not know clearly what they wanted; they did not know clearly how they differed from the men of the old order, nor had they any conception that such a structural reform of human relations as Plato had already pictured nearly two thousand years before them. His plan for a devoted and trained order of rulers was unknown to them, though More had tried to revive it. They were simply responding to the facts about them. They chafed under an hereditary aristocracy, and they distrusted an absolute king.

Essentially the movement that evolved the phraseology of nineteenth-century democracy was a revolt against "birth" and "privilege", against the monopolization of direction and advantages by restricted and generally hereditary classes in accordance with definitely established dogmas. Because this revolt was the revolt of a very miscellaneous number of energetic and resentful individuals not definitely organized, mentally or socially, it came about that at a quite early stage of the new movement it took the form of an assertion of the equal political rights of all men.

It was not that these sixteenth and seventeenth-century Radicals were for government by the general mass; it was that they were antagonistic to established classes and rulers. They constituted a vigorous insurgent minority rousing, so far as it could, and trailing after it the apathetic majority of submissive mankind. That was always the character of these democratic movements of the Age of European Predominance. The multitude was supposed to be demanding and deciding — and all the time it was being pushed or led. The individuality of the popular "leaders" of those centuries stands out far more vividly than the kings and ecclesiastics of the period. Only one or two such hereditary monarchs as William Prince of Orange, or Frederick the Great of Prussia, figure as conspicuously on the record as — to cite a miscellany of new types — Cromwell, Voltaire, Mirabeau, Washington, Gladstone, Robespierre, Bonaparte or Marx.

Later on (in England, America, Scandinavia, Germany, Finland, e.g.) in just the same way a minority of dissatisfied and aggressive women struggling for a rôle in affairs inflicted the vote upon the indifferent majority of women. But their achievement ended with that. Outside that sexual vindication, women at that time had little to contribute to the solution of the world's problems, and as a matter of fact they contributed nothing.

Research in social psychology is still only beginning to unravel the obscure processes by which faith in "democracy" became for the better part of a century the ruling cant of practically all America and the greater part of Europe. There was often a profound internal disingenuousness even in those who were known as "Thinkers" in that age. They were afraid in their hearts of stark realities; they tried instinctively to adapt even their heresies to what seemed to them invincibly established prejudices. Their primary conception of democracy was of some far-away simple little republic of stout upstanding men, all similar, all practically equal in fortune and power, managing the affairs of the canton in a folk-meeting, by frank speech and acclamation. All the old-world democracies, up to and including the Republic of Rome, were ruled, in theory at least, by such meetings of all the citizens. The people, it was imagined, watched, listened, spoke, and wisdom ensued.

The extension of this ideal to the large communities of the new world that was replacing the feudal order, involved such manifest difficulties and even such absurdities that mysticism was inevitable if the people was still to be supposed the sovereign of the community. But there was so strong and widespread a dread that if this supposition was not maintained privilege, restriction, tyranny would come back that the mystical interpretation was boldly adopted. At any cost those old inequalities must not return, said the adventurers of the dawning capitalist age, and, flying from one subjugation, they hurried on to another.

They found the doctrine of man's natural virtue as expounded by Rousseau extraordinarily helpful and effective. The common man, when he is not beguiled by Priest or King, is always right. The Common People became therefore a mystical sympathetic being, essentially a God, whose altar was the hustings and whose oracle the ballot box. A little slow and lumpish was this God of the Age of European Predominance, but, though his mills ground slowly, men were assured that they ground with ultimate exactitude. And meanwhile business could be carried on. You could fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, said Abraham Lincoln, but you could not fool all the people all the time. Yet for such crucial purposes as bringing about a war or exploiting an economic situation, this was manifestly a quite disastrous degree of foolability.

And the situation naturally evolved a Press of the very highest fooling capacity.

This belatedly inevitable Divinity proved now to be altogether too slow-witted for the urgent political and economic riddles, with ruin and death at hand, which pressed upon our race as the twentieth century unfolded. The experience of the futile Disarmament and Economic Conferences of 1932 and 1933, the massive resistance in every national legislature to any but the most narrow egotism in foreign policy, the inability of the world as a whole to establish any unanimity of action in face of swift economic collapse, revealed the final bankruptcy of Parliamentary Democracy.

The inability of the world's nominal rulers to shake off their lifelong habit of speaking to, or at, a vaguely conceived crowd of prejudiced voters, and their invincible repugnance from clear statement, frustrated every effort towards realism. They recoiled from any suggestion of definitive or novel action on the plea that their function was purely representative. Behind them all the reader feels the sprawling uneasy presence of that poor invertebrate mass deity of theirs, the Voter, easily roused to panic and frantic action against novel, bold or radical measures, very amenable to patriotic claptrap, very easily scared and maddened into war, and just as easily baffled to distrust and impotence by delays, side issues, and attacks on the personalities of decisive people he might otherwise have trusted. An entirely irresponsible Press, mercenary or partisan, played upon his baser emotions, which were so easy to play upon, and made no appeal whatever to his intelligence or his conscience.

The Voter, the Mass, which was neither educated nor led, the Voter without any sincere organizations of leadership anywhere, is the basal explanation of the impotence of those culminating conferences. The World Economic Conference in London was by far the more significant of the two. Armament and disarmament are symptoms and superficial, but economic life is fundamental. This London gathering has been made the subject of a thousand studies by our social psychologists. Many of its contradictions still perplex us profoundly. The men who assembled had just as good brains as anyone to-day, and, as an exhaustive analysis by Moreton Canby of the various projects advanced at the Conference proves, they had a substantial understanding of the needs of the world situation, yet collectively, and because of their haunting paralysing sense of the Mass and Press behind them and of their incalculable impulses and resentments, they achieved an effect of fatuity far beyond the pompous blunderings of Versailles.

Primarily the London Conference was a belated effort to repair the vast omissions of that earlier gathering, to supplement the well-meaning political patchwork of Wilson by some readjustment of the monetary and economic dislocations he had been too limited to foresee or too weak to avoid. Wraithlike conceptions of some vague monetary League of Nations at Bâle, and some Tariff Council and Assembly, drifted through the mists of the opening meeting. And History, with its disposition to inexact repetition made one of the principal figures of this second world assembly also a President of the United States, belonging also to the Democratic Party and according to the ritual of that Party invoking the name of Jefferson as the Communists invoked the name of Marx or the Moslim, Mahomet. This was Roosevelt II. He leaves a less vivid impression than his predecessor because he did not impend for so long upon the European scene. But for some months at least before and after his election as American President and the holding of the London Conference there was again a whispering hope in the world that a real "Man" had arisen, who would see simply and clearly, who would speak plainly to all mankind and liberate the world from the dire obsessions and ineptitudes under which it suffered and to which it seemed magically enslaved. But the one thing he failed to do was to speak plainly.

Drawing wisdom from Wilson's personal failure, he did not come to London and expose himself and his conversation to too close a scrutiny. He preferred to deal with the fluctuating crises in London from his yacht, Amberjack II, in Nantucket Harbour, through intermittent messages and through more or less completely authorized intermediaries. Amberjack II has become almost as significant a ship in the history of human affairs as the Ford Peace Ship. Significant equally in its intentions and in its inadequacies.

Everywhere as the Conference drew near men were enquiring about this possible new leader for them. "Is this at last the Messiah we seek, or shall we look for another?" Every bookshop in Europe proffered his newly published book of utterances, Looking Forward, to gauge what manner of mind they had to deal with. It proved rather disconcerting reading for their anxious minds. Plainly the man was firm, honest and amiable, as the frontispiece portrait with its clear frank eyes and large resolute face showed, but the text of the book was a politician's text, saturated indeed with good will, seasoned with much vague modernity, but vague and wanting in intellectual grip. "He's good," they said, "but is this good enough?"

Nevertheless hope fought a stout fight. There was no other personality visible who even promised to exorcize the spell that lay upon the economic life of the race. It was Roosevelt's Conference or nothing. And in spite of that disappointing book there remained some sound reasons for hope. In particular the President, it was asserted, had a "Brain Trust". A number of indisputably able and modern-minded men were his associates, such men as Professors Tugwell, Moley and Dickinson, men whose later work played a significant part in that reconstruction of legal and political method which was America's particular contribution to Modern State ideas. This "last hope of mankind", it was credibly reported, called these intimates by their Christian names and they called him "Guv'nor." He was said to have the modesty and greatness to defer to their studied and matured opinions. Observers, still hopeful, felt that if he listened to these advisors things might not go so badly after all. He was at any rate one point better than the European politicians and heads of States who listened only to bankers and big-business men.

But was he listening? Did he grasp the threefold nature of the problem in hand? He understood, it seemed, the need for monetary inflation to reduce the burthen of debt and over-capitalization; he was apparently alive to the need for a progressive expansion of public employment; and so far he was sound. Unless, which is not quite clear, he wavered between "public" and "publicly assisted", which was quite another matter. But was he sound upon the necessity that these measures should be world-wide or practically world-wide? He made some unexpected changes of attitude in these respects. Were these changes inconstancies or were they tactical manoeuvres veiling a profoundly consistent and resolute purpose? Was it wise to be tactical when all the world was in need of plain speech and simple directive ideas? His treatment took on a disconcertingly various quality. He listened, it seemed, to his advisors; but was he not also listening to everybody? He was flirting with bimetallism. No medicine, it seemed, was to be spared.

The Conference opened with a stout determination to be brilliant and eventful; the hotels were full, the streets beflagged, the programme of entertainments was admirable, and even the English weather seemed to make an effort. The opening addresses by the King of England and his Prime Minister Ramsay MacDonald make very curious reading to-day. They express an acute recognition of the crucial condition of human affairs. They state in so many words that the failure of the Conference will precipitate world disaster. They insist upon the necessity for world cooperation, for monetary simplification and a resumption of employment; and in all that we admit they had the truth of the matter. But they make not the faintest intimation of how these desirable ends are to be obtained. They made gestures that are incomprehensible to us unless they had an inkling of the primary elements of the situation. And then immediately they turned away to other things. That mixture of resolve and failure to attack is what perplexes us most. If they saw the main essentials of the situation they certainly did not see them as a connected whole; they did not see any line of world action before them.

Cordell Hull, the chief of the United States delegation, was equally large and fine. The grave and splendid words — shot with piety in the best American tradition — that he inscribed upon the roll of history were as follows: "Selfishness must be banished. If — which God forbid! — any nation should wreck this Conference, with the notion that its local interests might profit, that nation would merit the execration of mankind."

Again Daladier, the French Prime Minister, opened with extremely broad and sane admissions. He insisted strongly on a necessity which the two opening English speeches had minimized, the necessity, the urgent necessity, for a progressive development of great public works throughout the world to absorb the unemployed and restore consumption. The Americans in the second week seemed to be coming in line with that. But after this much of lucidity the Conference fell away to minor issues. Apparently it could not keep at so high a level of reality. The pressure of the Mass and the Press behind each delegate began to tell upon him. The national representatives began to insist with increasing explicitness that national interests must not be sacrificed to the general good, and in a little time it became doubtful if there could be such a thing as the general good. The World Economic Conference became by imperceptible transitions a World Economic Conflict just as the League of Nations had become a diplomatic bargain mart. All the fine preluding of the first séances withered to fruitlessness because the mind of the world had still to realize the immense moral and educational effort demanded by those triple conditions that were dawning upon its apprehension, and because it was still unwilling to accept the immense political pooling they indicated. The amount of self-abnegation involved was an insurmountable psychological barrier in the way of the representatives present. It would have meant a sacrifice of the very conditions that had made them. How could men appointed as national representatives accept a pooling of national interests? They were indeed fully prepared to revolutionize the world situation and change gathering misery to hope, plenty and order, but only on the impossible condition that they were not to change themselves and that nothing essential to their importance changed. The leading ideas of the Conference were cloudily true, but the disintegrative forces of personal, party and national egotism were too strong for them.

It is a very curious thing that the representatives of Soviet Russia did nothing to enlighten the obscurity of the world riddle. It is still argued by many writers that the Bolshevik régime was the direct precursor of our Modern World-State as it exists to-day. But there was no direct continuity. The Modern State arose indeed out of the same social imperatives and the same constructive impulses that begot Marxism and Leninism, but as an independent, maturer, and sounder revolutionary conception. The Soviet system certainly anticipated many of the features of our present order in its profession of internationalism, in its very real socialism, and particularly in the presence of a devoted controlling organization, the Communist Party, which foreshadowed our Modern State Fellowship. But there was always a wide divergence in Russia between theory and practice, and Litvinoff, who spoke on behalf of that first great experiment in planning, was too preoccupied with various particular points at issue between his country and the western world, trading embargoes and difficulties of credit, for example, to use the occasion as he might have done, for a world-wide appeal. He did nothing to apply the guiding principles of Communism to the world situation. Here was a supreme need for planning, but he said nothing for a Five Year or Ten Year Plan for all the world. Here was a situation asking plainly for collective employment, and he did not even press the inevitability of world-socialism. Apparently he had forgotten the world considered as a whole as completely as any of the capitalist delegates. He was thinking of Russia versus the other States of the world as simply as if he were an ordinary capitalist patriot.

The claims of the other delegations were even more shortsighted and uninspired. Since there was a time-limit set to their speeches, they compressed their assertions of general humanitarian benevolence to a phrase or so and then came to business. Only Senator Connolly, from the Irish Free State, protested against the blinkered outlooks of his fellow speakers and pleaded for a consideration of "every possible theory, however unorthodox." But his own speech propounded no substantial constructive ideas. He was too obsessed by an embargo that England had put upon Irish exports, and to that he settled down. . . .

The whole idea of the Modern World-State, Moreton Canby insists, is to be traced, albeit in a warped and sterilized form, alike in the expressed idea-systems of the Americans, the British, the French and the Russians at the Conference. In the American statements it is wrapped about and hidden by individualist phrases and precautions, in the British it is overlaid by imperialist assumptions, in the Russian it is made unpalatable by the false psychology and harsh jargon of Marxism. In the first the business man refuses to change and get out of the way, in the second the imperialist administrator, and in the third the doctrinaire party man. Athwart every assertion of general principles drive the misty emotions of patriotism, party and personal association. Yet for all that it is indisputable that the Modern World-State was definitely adumbrated at London in 1933. Like a ghost out of the future its presence was felt by nearly everyone, though the worst phases of the Age of Frustration had still to come, though generations of suffering had still to lapse, before it could appear as the living reality of human political life.

The ghost, says Canby, did not materialise because there was no material. Every large country in the world was feeling its way towards the essentials of a permanently progressive world-state but none was yet within reach even of its partial and local realisation. Roosevelt II and his eleventh hour effort to reconstruct America, he finds particularly interesting. The President was clearly aware of the need to relieve debt by inflation, but he was unable to check the dissipation of the liberated energy in speculation. He was dealing with men, trained and saturated in the tradition of poker, to whom a solemn cunning had become a second nature, and he was asking them (with occasional fierce threats) to display an open-faced helpfulness. He had no proper civil service available to control large public works; it was impossible to change the American technicians at one blow from quasi-financial operators to a candid, devoted public salariat. So he tried to induce profiteers to forego profits and organise their industries on altruistic lines by dire threats of socialisation which he had no managing class to enforce. And he was as ignorant of British or European mentality and as little able to get to an understanding with it as Wilson had been before him. It was a mutual misunderstanding, but his manners were self-righteous and provocative. He began to scold long before the Conference was over. By 1935 everyone was pointing to a sort of contrasted parallelism between America and Russia. Each was manifestly struggling towards a more scientifically organised state, and each was finding the same difficulty in reconciling productive efficiency in the general interest with primarily political control. Technician and politician had still to be assimilated one to the other. Each great dictatorship was at war with the speculator and the profiteer. Each professed a faint hope of cosmopolitan cooperation and then concentrated practically and urgently upon the establishment of an internal prosperity. But they started towards that common objective from opposite poles of productive efficiency and social assumption. Roosevelt started from the standpoint of democratic individualism and Stalin from that of Marxist communism. The British system and the other intermediate countries of the world struggled to be conservative in the chaos of financial collapse. No solvent had yet been devised to synthesise the good will in the world.

The London Conference rose to no such dramatic climax as the signing of the Peace Treaty at Versailles. It rose to nothing. It began at its highest point and steadily declined. If Versailles produced a monster, London produced nothing at all. Never did so valiant a beginning peter out so completely.

There are abundant intimations in the Press of the time (see Habwright's The Sense of Catastrophe in the Nineteen Thirties, a summary of quotations in the Historical Documents Series 173,192) of a realization that the political and economic morale of that age was played out, and that almost any casual selection of men would have been at least as adequate as this gathering of old-world political personages to face the vast impending disasters before our race. For at any rate these men had already been tried and tested and found wanting. Mr. Ramsay MacDonald indeed, the British premier, the fine flower and summary of professional politics, rolled his r's and his eyes over the Conference and seemed still to be hoping that some favourable accident out of the void might save him and his like from the damning dissection of history. For a time, in the opening glow of the assembly, with the clicking photographers recording every studied gesture, with the attentive microphones spreading out and pickling for ever his fine voice and his rich accent, with bustling secretaries in sedulous attendance, with the well-trained gravity of the delegates and particularly the well-matured high seriousness of those adepts in public appearance, the Americans, to sustain him, this last sublimation of democratic statesmanship may really have believed that some kind of favourable incantation was in progress under his direction. He must have felt that or he could not have remained there talking. Incantations had made him. By the sheer use of voice and gesture he had clambered from extreme obscurity to world prominence. If he did not believe in incantation there was nothing left for him to believe in. He must have clung to that persuasion to the end. But if that was his state of mind at the time, it could hardly have survived the comments and criticisms of the next few months. Surely then he had some sleepless nights in which even his private incantations failed.

The World Economic Conference lost its brilliance in a week or so. The City, which had been so flushed with hope that for a time its price lists, all pluses, looked like war-time cemeteries, relapsed into depression. The World Slump did not wait for the Conference to disperse before it resumed. At the outset London had been all blown up and distended by bright anticipations, so that it was like one of those little squeaking bladders children play with, and like one of those bladders, so soon as the blowing ceased, it shrank and shrivelled and ended in a dying wail of despair.

As Habwright puts it, by July 1933 intelligent men and women everywhere were saying two things. Of the assembled rulers and delegates they were saying: "These people can do nothing for us. They do worse than nothing. They intensify the disaster." And in the second place it was demanded with a sort of astonishment: "Why have historians, sociologists and economists nothing to tell us now? There may indeed be some excuse for the failure of politicians under democratic conditions. But have our universities been doing nothing about it? Is there indeed no science of these things? Is there no knowledge? Has history learnt nothing of causes, and is there no analysis of the social processes that are destroying us?"

To which the professors, greatly preoccupied at that particular date in marking honours papers in history and social and political science, made no audible reply.

Before the end of the thirties it was plain to all the world that a world-wide social catastrophe was now inevitably in progress, that the sanest thing left for intelligent men to do was to set about upon some sort of Noah's Ark to salvage whatever was salvageable of civilization, so that there should be a new beginning after the rising deluge of misfortune had spent itself. A few prescient spirits had been saying as much for some years, but now this idea of salvage spread like an epidemic. It prepared the way for the Modern State Movement on which our present order rests. At the time, however, the general pessimism was little mitigated by any real hope of recovery. One writer, quoted by Habwright, compared man to a domesticated ape, "which has had the intelligence and ability to drag its straw mattress up to the fire when it is cold, but has had neither the wit nor the foresight to escape the consequent blaze". Habwright's brief summary of the financial operations that went on as the sense of catastrophe grew justifies that grim image very completely.

The conviction that Parliamentary Democracy had come to an end spread everywhere in that decade. Already in the period between the vacillation in international affairs after Versailles and the warfare of the Forties, men had been going about discussing and scheming and plotting for some form of government that should be at least decisive. And now their efforts took on a new urgency. There was a world-wide hysteria to change governments and officials.

At its first onset this craving for decisiveness had produced some extremely crude results. An epidemic of tawdry "dictatorships" had run over Europe from Poland to Spain immediately after the war. For the most part these adventures followed the pattern of the pronunciamentos of the small South American republics, and were too incidental and inconsequent for the student of general history to be troubled about them now. But there followed a world-wide development of directive or would-be directive political associations which foreshadowed very plainly the organization of the Modern State Fellowship upon which our present world order rests.

The Fascist dictatorship of Mussolini in Italy had something in it of a more enduring type than most of the other supersessions of parliamentary methods. It rose not as a personal usurpation but as the expression of an organization with a purpose and a sort of doctrine of its own. The intellectual content of Fascism was limited, nationalist and romantic; its methods, especially in its opening phase, were violent and dreadful; but at least it insisted upon discipline and public service for its members. It appeared as a counter movement to a chaotic labour communism, but its support of the still-surviving monarchy and the Church was qualified by a considerable boldness in handling education and private property for the public benefit. Fascism indeed was not an altogether bad thing; it was a bad good thing; and Mussolini has left his mark on history.

In Russia something still more thorough and broader came into operation after 1917. This was the Communist Party. It was the invention of Lenin; he continued to modify and adapt its organization and doctrine until his untimely death in 1924. While he lived Russia's experiment really seemed to be leading the world in its flight towards a new order from the futile negations and paralysis of Parliamentary government. It is still profoundly interesting to note the modernity of many aspects of the early Bolshevik régime.

This modernity achieved under the stress of urgent necessities and Lenin's guidance was attained in spite of many grave difficulties created by the Marxist tradition. Marx, who was a man of what the psychologists of the middle twenty-first century used to call "blinkered originality", never saw through the democratic sentimentalities of the period in which he lived. There had been a tendency to exclude the privileged classes from the True Democracy of Common Men even at the dawn of the modern democratic idea, and he and his followers intensified and stereotyped this tendency in their own particular version of deified democracy, the Proletariat. The Proletariat was just Pure Masses, and mystical beyond measure.

But at the outset the actual Russian revolution was under the control of the intensely practical and intensely middle-class Lenin, and he took care that the great social reconstruction he had in mind was equally secured against the risk of paralysis through mass inertia and the risk of overthrow through mass panic. His ostensibly "democratic" government of Soviets, the Soviet pyramid, was built up on a hierarchic scheme that brought the administration face to face only with seasoned representatives who had been filtered through an ascendant series of bodies. Moreover, he established a very complete control of education and the Press, to keep the thought of the nominally sovereign masses upon the right lines. And to animate and control the whole machine he had his invention of the Communist Party.

This Communist Party, like the Italian Fascisti, owes its general conception to that germinal idea of the Modern State, the Guardians in Plato's Republic. For if anyone is to be called the Father of the Modern State it is Plato. The Members of the Communist Party were extremely like those Guardians. As early as 1900 critics of democratic institutions were discussing the possibility of creating a cult primarily devoted to social and political service, self-appointed, self-trained and self-disciplined. The English-speaking Socialist movement was debating projects of that kind in 1909-10 (see Fabian News in Historical Documents for those years), but it needed the dangers and stresses of the postwar European situation to produce types of workers and young people sufficiently detached, desperate and numerous, to unite effectively into a permanent revolutionary control.

From its beginnings the Communist Party, though it was not divided into "faculties" and remained political rather than technical in spirit, resembled our own Modern State Fellowship in its insistence upon continuous learning and training throughout life, upon free criticism within the limits of the party, upon accessibility (under due limitations) to all who wished to serve in it, and upon the right to resignation from its privileges and severities of all who wished to return to comparative irresponsibility. But the conditions which created the Russian Communist Party made it inevitably Marxist, and even after a thorough Leninization, Communism, that characteristic final product of middle-nineteenth-century radicalism, still retained many of its old sentimentalities, reverting indeed more and more towards them after Lenin's death and the rule of the devoted but unoriginal, suspicious and overbearing Stalin.

There was a heavy load of democratic and equalitarian cant upon the back of the Russian system, just as there was a burthen of patriotic and religious cant upon the Italian Fascist. Even the United States Constitution did not profess democratic equality and insist upon the inspired wisdom of the untutored more obstinately than the new Russian régime. Although hardly any of the ruling group of Russians were of peasant or working-class origin — there were far more politicians from that social level in the public life of Western Europe and America — there was a universal pretence of commonness about them all. They spat, they went unshaved and collarless. They pretended to be indifferent to bourgeois comfort. It was ordained that at the phrase "Class-War" every knee should bow. When the Communist leaders quarrelled among themselves, "bourgeois" or "petty bourgeois" was the favourite term of abuse, none the less deadly because it was almost invariably true. Long years were to pass before any movement whatever in the direction of the Modern State System was quite free from this heritage of cant.

One unfortunate aspect of this entanglement of the new experiment in Russia with the social envies and hatreds of the old order was its inability to assimilate competent technicians, organizers and educators into its direction. In its attempt to modernize, it refused the assistance of just the most characteristically modern types in the community. But since these types had a special education and knew things not generally known, it was difficult to accord them proletarian standing. In Russia therefore, as in America, the politician with his eloquence and his necessary and habitual disingenuousness still intervened and obstructed, if he did not actually bar, the way to a scientific development of a new economic and social order.

Manifestly Stalin learnt much from his difficulties with the Five Year Plan of the evil of subordinating technical to political ability, and a speech of his upon the Old and New Technical Intelligentzia made in June 1931 (Historical Documents Series, Stalinism, XM 327,705) is a very frank admission of the primary necessity in the modern community of the "non-party" man of science and of special knowledge. Unhappily the hand of the party politician in Russia was strengthened by the untrammelled activities of those strange protectors of Marxist authority the Checka, which became later the G.P.U. So from 1928, the date of the First Five Year Plan, in spite of a great driving-force of enthusiastic devotion, Russia went clumsily, heavily and pretentiously — a politician's dictatorship, propaganding rather than performing, disappointing her well-wishers abroad and thwarting the best intelligences she produced. When her plans went wrong through her lack of precise material foresight, she accused, and imprisoned or shot, engineers and suchlike technical workers.

A further bad result of this ineradicable democratic taint of the Soviet system was the widening estrangement of the Russian process from Western creative effort. Instead of being allies they became opponents. As the challenge of social disintegration became more urgent in the Atlantic countries, it became plainer and plainer that such hope as there was for the salvaging of a reconstructed civilization from a welter of disaster lay in the coordinate effort of intelligent, able and energetic individuals of every nation, race, type and class. A revolution was certainly needed, but not a revolution according to the time-worn formula of street battles and barricades, not a class war. A revolution in the very character of revolutions had to occur. There was no need for insurrectionary revolution any longer, since now the system was destroying itself. The phase for boldly constructive revolution had arrived, and at every point where constructive effort was made the nagging antagonism of the Class War fanatic appeared, to impede and divide. (See, for example, Upton Sinclair on this conflict, in The Way Out, 1933, in the series of reprints under his name, Historical Documents Series, History of Opinion.)

The waste of creative energy was enormous, not only in Russia but all over the world. Multitudes of young men and women in every civilized community, the living hope of the race, dissipated their generous youth and vigour in bitter conflicts upon a purely doctrinaire issue. The poison of nationalism was abroad to complicate their reactions. Many turned against progress altogether and sought to thrust the world back to some imaginary lost age of virtue. So they became Ku Klux Klansmen, Nationalists, Nazis. All felt the natural youthful impulse towards large, effective, vehement action. All meant well. They were one in spirit though they suffered from a confusion of tongues. The idea of the Modern State could not for a long time make itself clear to their imaginations largely because the conspicuous self-contradictions of Russia stood in the way.

Russia seemed to lead, it sought to lead in its acts and deeds, and it lied. Meanwhile, surviving very largely because of this distraction of creative forces, the elderly methods of Parliamentary Democracy and the elderly Nationalist Diplomacy remained in possession of the greater part of the Western World, and the social collapse it was powerless to arrest continued.

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