Fw: real-world economics review - issue no. 66

 

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Subject: real-world economics review - issue no. 66

real-world economics review - issue no. 66   real-world economics review - Subscribers: 23,924       Subscribe here      Blog      ISSN 1755-9472  - A journal of the World Economics Association (WEA) 12,557 members, join here  - Sister open access journals: Economic Thought and World Economic Review  - back issues at www.paecon.net recent issues: 65 64 63 62 61 60 59 58 57 56  Issue no. 66, 13 January 2014    http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue66/whole66.pdf    You can download the whole issue as a pdf document by clicking here    In this issue: Secular stagnation and endogenous money Steve Keen        download pdf        2           Micro versus Macro      Lars Pålsson Syll        download pdf        12    On facts and values: a critique of the fact value dichotomy  Joseph Noko          download pdf        30 Modern Money Theory and New Currency Theory: A comparative discussion  Joseph Huber        download pdf            38 Fama-Shiller, the Prize Committee and the "Efficient Markets Hypothesis"  Bernard Guerrien and Ozgur Gun        download pdf        58       How capitalists learned to stop worrying and love the crisis  Shimshon Bichler and Jonathan Nitzan        download pdf        65 Two approaches to global competition: A historical review  M. Shabid Alam        download pdf        74 Dimensions of real-world competition – a critical realist perspective  Hubert Buch-Hansen        download pdf        80 Information economics as mainstream economics and the limits of reform  Jamie Morgan and Brendan Sheehan        download pdf        95 The À capability matrix: GDP and the economics of human development  Jorge Buzaglo           downloiad pdf        109 Open access vs. academic power  C P Chandrasekhar        download pdf        127 Interview with Edward Fullbrook on New Paradigm Economics vs. Old Paradigm Economics        download pdf        131 Book review of  The Great Eurozone Disaster: From Crisis to Global New Deal       download pdf        144 Comment: Romar Correa on  "A Copernican Turn in Banking Union", by Thomas Mayer        download pdf        147 Editorial Board, Submissions, past contributors, and etc.        149   Instant comments – You may post comments on papers in this issue on the Real-World Economics Review Blog, [http://rwer.wordpress.com/]. from the Blog:  Is bitcoin ´money´? The Post Keynesian view   -   Individual rationality is the wrong starting point   -     Summary of the Great Transformation by Polanyi   -   Economics textbooks – how to get away with scientific fraud   -   Two American epochs (charts)   -    Deutsche bank: fifteen shades of fraud   -   "Such an economy kills"   -   Reflections on the "Inside Job"   -   Mathematical modelling in economics   -   Interest rates in The Netherlands (1590-2012) and the UK (1703-1912)   -   Handbag economics: The ideology of austerity  -  Economists and astronomers: Why are the former lost in space? Online contents page for this issue is here   Online contents page for this issue is here

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Fwd: China’s debt

Chinese debt

The great hole of China

Its debt will not drag down the world economy, but it risks zombifying the country's financial system

Oct 18th 2014 

• 

OF THE many things that are worrying investors around the world, from tumbling oil prices to the spectre of recession and deflation in Europe, one of the most important, and least understood, is China's debt. For the past few years China has been on a borrowing binge. Its total debt—the sum of government, corporate and household borrowings—has soared by 100% of GDP since 2008, and is now 250% of GDP; a little less than wealthy nations, but far higher than any other emerging market (see article).

Since most financial crashes are preceded by a frantic rise in borrowing—think of Japan in the early 1990s, South Korea and other emerging economies in the late 1990s, and America and Britain in 2008—it seems reasonable to worry that China could be heading for a crash. All the more so because the nominal growth rate, the sum of real output and inflation, has tumbled, from an average of 15% a year in the 2000s to 8.5% now, and looks likely to fall further as inflation hit a five-year low of 1.6% in September. Slower nominal growth constrains the ability of debtors to pay their bills, making a debt crisis more likely.

Reasonable, but wrong. China has a big debt problem. But it is unlikely to cause a sudden crisis or blow up the world economy. That is because China, unlike most other countries, controls its banks and has the means to bail them out. Instead, the biggest risk is complacency: that China's officials do too little to clean up the financial system, weighing down its economy for years with zombie firms and unpayable loans.

Half of China's debt is owed by companies, and most of that, in turn, is owed by state-owned enterprises and property developers. As the economy slows and housing prices fall, many of these loans will prove unpayable. Banks report that bad loans are just 1% of their assets and their auditors insist that the banks are not lying, but investors price banks' shares as if the true level is closer to 10%.

Even if a huge swathe of loans go bad, the consequence is unlikely to be a Lehman-style financial collapse. For that, thank the Chinese regime's vice-like grip on its financial system. Most lending is by state-controlled banks, much of it to state-owned companies. If it faced an economy-wide credit crunch, the government would (as it has in the past) simply order banks to lend more. At the same time the country's vast foreign-exchange reserves mean China need not worry about a sudden drying up of foreign capital, the main cause of many other emerging-economy crises.

This combination of control and buffers gives China the time and headroom needed to tackle its debt problem. Unfortunately, it has also bred complacency. After all, officials began to talk about tackling debt in 2010. They have taken a few baby steps towards cleaning things up: a new budget law, taking effect next year, gives central authorities more power to oversee local governments borrowings. But, in practice, too many officials are content to see bad loans rolled over; too many prefer bail-outs to defaults. Earlier this year, amid much hoopla, Chaori Solar was the first Chinese company to default on a bond. This month its creditors were bailed out.

The long night of the living debt

This process—extending credit to failing and inefficient firms—creates a slow-burn debt crisis, marked by opacity and a misallocation of capital. Japan provides a depressing precedent. It failed to clean up after its asset bubble burst in the early 1990s, preferring to pretend that firms could pay their debts and banks were solvent. The result was zombie firms, ghostly banks and years of stagnation and deflation.

Beijing's officials vow they will not repeat Japan's malaise. To do that they must hold their nerve and let firms fail: a culture of bankruptcy should replace the lifelines and "evergreening" of useless loans. As long as investors think the state will cover their losses, they will plough money into dodgy schemes—and the problem will grow. Not only will that be a huge waste of money; even mighty China cannot cover losses for ever.

Anticorrida bancaria en USA

Cuando ocurre una corrida bancarios, los  clientes de un banco hacen cola para convertir sus depósitos en moneda estatal , pero  ahora ocurre lo in verso en Estados Unidos porque los bancos de USA no saben que hacer con la enorme cantidad de dinero que reciben de los inversionistas. Aunque no hay nombre para denonomianr al curisos fenómeno, el comenatrista que adjunto lo llama una caorrida banacaria aal reveés, una anti-corrida bancaria. La locura se extiende .....

A Problem for US Banks: A Reverse Run

Published: Thursday, 18 Aug 2011 | 2:30 PM ET

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By: John Carney
Senior Editor, CNBC.com

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Banks in the U.S. are experiencing a very strange problem.

There's a bank run underway...but in reverse.

All the major U.S. banks are seeing an influx of deposits. Reserve levels at the Federal Reserve  are climbing to astronomical levels.

Balance sheets are expanding as never before.

Imagine that this is that scene from "It's A Wonderful Life," but played in rewind. The depositors are rushing in with their money, nearly toppling George Bailey as they try to get their money in the bank.

When the U.S. dollar reserve in the Fed accounts of European banks decline, it necessarily means that the dollar reserves of the U.S. banks are increasing. As a result of various transactions, the Fed is moving money across the digital spreadsheet from European banks to U.S. banks.

This sounds like a good problem to have...but it isn't.

Remember, a deposit at the bank creates a liability for the bank.

Banks must pay the FDIC fees equal to around 10 basis points, or about 0.1 percent, for their total liabilities. So the influx in deposits are costing the banks money. What's more, banks begin to press up against regulatory limits on leverage as the deposits grow.

There isn't much the banks can do with the hot money flowing in. They cannot commit the funds to longer-term loans, because it could come out of the banks as quickly as it can come in. Short-term and safe assets—such as a Treasury bond maturing in one month—pay less than nothing.

Banks can keep the money on reserve at the Fed, where they will earn 25 basis points, or 0.25 percent. They'll earn some money on the 10-point spread, but not much.

Some banks, such as Bank of America [BAC  Loading...      ()   ], have actively been trying to shrink their balance sheets in order to comply with stricter capital and leverage rules. The growth of their deposit base does not help—and may even undermine this effort at the margin.

Some banks are actually doing the running. Bank of New York Mellon [BK Loading...      ()   ] recently began charging customers with large cash deposits.

"It used to be that banks barred the door to prevent a run of cash out. Now they'd love to bar the door to prevent the run of cash in," one banking source told me.

Questions? Comments? Email us at NetNet@cnbc.com

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R

Who Wins and Who Loses

A Short History of Bubblenomics

By MIKE WHITNEY
Assets bubbles require massive amounts of leverage. But too much leverage can destabilize the system, so it needs to be regulated. But Wall Street doesn't like restrictions on leverage because it can make more money by borrowing like crazy, inflating a ginormous bubble, skimming off the profits, and cashing in before the crash. So, the Fed ignores Wall Street's "gearing" operations and pretends not to see what's going on. It becomes a bubble "enabler" by lowering interest rates, easing credit and waving-off tighter regulations. It's all part of the game. The Fed works to help its core constituents while everyone else is put at risk.
But there's another reason for bubbles, too. Stagnation is a chronic problem in mature capitalist economies. As businesses become more efficient in their various widget-making operations, demand for their products drops off making it harder for owners to find profitable outlets for investment. And when investment starts to flag, then grip of economic inertia begins to tighten. As author Robert Skidelsky says, "investment fills the gap between production and consumption", so when investment hits a speed-bump, spending starts to wither and the economy slows to a crawl.
The Fed's remedy: Zero rates, easy money and more bubbles; Professor Bernanke's one-size-fits-all, magic elixir for sclerotic economies. In other words, the emerging stock and commodities bubbles are not a sign that the Fed is flubbing the policy. Bubbles are the policy, and have been for a very long time. Bernanke is no fool. He knows that each business cycle is weaker than the last, creating fewer jobs, more slack in the economy, and more anemic growth. His job is to endlessly tweak the process in order to maintain profitability for the people at the top of the economic foodchain, his real bosses.
Here's a clip from an interview with history professor Robert Brenner who sums it up perfectly:
Robert Brenner:

"... Economic forecasters have underestimated how bad the current crisis is because they have over-estimated the strength of the real economy and failed to take into account the extent of its dependence upon a buildup of debt that relied on asset price bubbles. In the U.S., during the recent business cycle of the years 2001-2007, GDP growth was by far the slowest of the postwar epoch. There was no increase in private sector employment. The increase in plants and equipment was about a third of the previous, a postwar low. Real wages were basically flat. There was no increase in median family income for the first time since World War II. Economic growth was driven entirely by personal consumption and residential investment, made possible by easy credit and rising house prices. Economic performance was weak, even despite the enormous stimulus from the housing bubble and the Bush administration's huge federal deficits. Housing by itself accounted for almost one-third of the growth of GDP and close to half of the increase in employment in the years 2001-2005. It was, therefore, to be expected that when the housing bubble burst, consumption and residential investment would fall, and the economy would plunge." ("Overproduction not Financial Collapse is the Heart of the Crisis", Robert P. Brenner speaks with Jeong Seong-jin, Asia Pacific Journal)

Sound familiar? Flat wages, weak demand, slow growth and more and more debt? All signs of an aging, hobbled system that's slipping inexorably into stagnation. This is why the Fed adopted its present policy of bubblemaking, because the only way to avoid stagnation is by increasing the debt-load. Authors John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff traced the origins of the policy back to the 1970s. They revealed what their findings in an article in The Monthly Review titled "Financial Implosion and Stagnation". Here's an excerpt:

"It was the reality of economic stagnation beginning in the 1970s, as heterodox economists Riccardo Bellofiore and Joseph Halevi have recently emphasized, that led to the emergence of "the new financialized capitalist regime," a kind of "paradoxical financial Keynesianism" whereby demand in the economy was stimulated primarily "thanks to asset-bubbles." Moreover, it was the leading role of the United States in generating such bubbles—despite (and also because of) the weakening of capital accumulation proper—together with the dollar's reserve currency status, that made U.S. monopoly-finance capital the "catalyst of world effective demand," beginning in the 1980s. But such a financialized growth pattern was unable to produce rapid economic advance for any length of time, and was unsustainable, leading to bigger bubbles that periodically burst, bringing stagnation more and more to the surface.
A key element in explaining this whole dynamic is to be found in the falling ratio of wages and salaries as a percentage of national income in the United States. Stagnation in the 1970s led capital to launch an accelerated class war against workers to raise profits by pushing labor costs down. The result was decades of increasing inequality." ("Financial Implosion and Stagnation", John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff, Monthly Review)

Foster and Magdoff do a fine job of explaining how the system has been rejiggered to overcome stagnation. Financial assets provide a place where surplus capital can go and grow via paper profits. But this type of investment does not add to productive capacity or real wealth; it merely enlarges the amount of money capital while creating the means for transferring wealth from one class to another. And that's the point. Every burst bubble thrusts middle class households further and further into the red, while bank moguls and Wall Street tycoons get even richer. It is all by design, nothing is left to chance.
It might surprise you to know that the Fed has become so skilled at bubble-making, that the condition of the underlying economy doesn't really matter any more. By fixing interest rates below the rate of inflation and attaching a liquidity-tailpipe to the stock market (QE2), the Fed has been able engineer a boom in equities, while the so-called "real" economy languishes in a near-Depression. In fact, consumer credit is actually shrinking (excluding student loans) while margin debt (the amount that speculators borrow to buy stocks) continues to soar. This is an astonishing development. The Fed has created a bifurcated market where bankers and hedge fund managers are able to rake in billions off their gaming operations while 300 million working Americans remain mired in debt.
But there are a few drawbacks to the Fed's policy. After all, one can only hollow out the economy for so long before the society begins to unravel. But, unfortunately, widening inequality and destitution don't show up in GDP, which continues to balloon even while working people slip further into debt. What's missing in the GDP-readings is the fact that we are getting poorer as a nation and weaker as an economic force in the world. Here's how Rob Arnott of Research Affiliates summed it up in an article in Fortune magazine:

"We are, in a word, considerably poorer than we imagine – something politicians of all stripes should, but probably won't, consider as they grapple with our massive deficit. GDP that stems from new debt — mainly deficit spending — is phony: it is debt-financed consumption, not prosperity," Arnott writes. "Net of deficit spending, our prosperity is nearly unchanged from 1998, 13 years ago."...
"Instead of the financial world being the lubricant for business, they are out there manufacturing products with no utility whatsoever except for generating fees," he said. "Somebody's got to do something about Wall Street. It is destroying the country." ("Lost decade? We've already had one, Fortune)

The growth we see in rising GDP is mainly "attributable to debt-financed spending, rather than real wealth creation." Indeed, Bernanke is merely leveraging his way out of a Depression. But the calamitous downstream effects of the policy are obvious; the middle class is being decimated, the dollar is getting hammered, and the productive sectors of the economy are being cannibalized. These are the failures of bubblemaking, a theory whose sole purpose is to further enrich a tiny segment of the population that's already as rich as Croesus.
But the Fed is not the worst offender in this regard. The real problem is the banks.
The Fed can induce spending by lowering interest rates, easing credit or buying bonds, but the banks do the heavy lifting. That's where the zillions in leverage are created via off-balance sheets operations, repo transactions and derivatives contracts. These asset-pumping operations remain largely concealed from the public, so no one really knows what's going on. That's why the connection between money supply and financial asset prices is so tenuous and misleading, because the banks create money that doesn't appear in the data. That's what off-balance sheets operations are all about. They generate unknown amounts of credit which stimulates activity, but remains invisible. The printing presses have essentially been handed over to private industry. Here's how it all works according to Independent Strategy's David Roche

"The reason for the exponential growth in credit, but not in broad money, was simply that banks didn't keep their loans on their books any more – and only loans on bank balance sheets get counted as money. Now, as soon as banks made a loan, they "securitized" it and moved it off their balance sheet.
There were two ways of doing this. One was to sell the securitized loan as a bond. The other was "synthetic" securitization: for example, using derivatives to get rid of the default risk (with credit default swaps) and lock in the interest rate due on the loan (with interest-rate swaps). Both forms of securitization meant that the lending bank was free to make new loans without using up any of its lending capacity once its existing loans had been "securitized."
So, to redefine liquidity under what I call New Monetarism, one must add, to the traditional definition of broad money, all the credit being created and moved off banks' balance sheets and onto the balance sheets of nonbank financial intermediaries. This new form of liquidity changed the very nature of the credit beast. What now determined credit growth was risk appetite: the readiness of companies and individuals to run their businesses with higher levels of debt." ("The Global Money Machine", David Roche, Wall Street Journal)

The Fed is not the main culprit in this new paradigm where banks and shadow banks stealthily add to the money supply without any oversight. The problem is the lack of regulation. There needs to be strictly enforced guidelines on the amount of leverage a bank can use and--more importantly--any financial institution that acts like a bank must be regulated like a bank. (Dodd-Frank reforms don't fix this problem.)
The present system is doomed because it depends on the willingness of bankers to behave ethically when all the incentives are pulling them in the opposite direction. The rewards for gouging the public are just too great to resist. All one has to do is lend tons of money to people who can't repay the debt, sell those same loans to investors looking for higher yield, skim-off the profits in stock options and bonuses, and find a safe place when the bubble bursts. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The IMF released a report last week that confirms this basic theory. The report aptly titled "A Fistful of Dollars" shows how the worst offenders deployed their lobbyists to ease regulations in order to legalize the type of sleight-of-hand that triggered the crash. Here's an excerpt:

"We find that lobbying was associated with more risk-taking during 2000-07 and with worse outcomes in 2008. In particular, lenders lobbying more intensively on issues related to mortgage lending and securitization (i) originated mortgages with higher loan-to-income ratios, (ii) securitized a faster growing proportion of their loans, and (iii) had faster growing originations of mortgages. Moreover, delinquency rates in 2008 were higher in areas where lobbying lenders' mortgage lending grew faster. These lenders also experienced negative abnormal stock returns during the rescue of Bear Stearns and the collapse of Lehman Brothers, but positive abnormal returns when the bailout was announced. Finally, we find a higher bailout probability for lobbying lenders. These findings suggest that lending by politically active lenders played a role in accumulation of risks and thus contributed to the financial crisis......
CONCLUSION
.....We carefully construct a database at the lender level combining information on loan characteristics and lobbying expenditures on laws and regulations related to mortgage lending and securitization. We show that lenders that lobby more intensively on these specific issues engaged in riskier lending practices ex ante, suffered from worse outcomes ex post, and benefited more from the bailout program."
("A Fistful of Dollars: Lobbying and the Financial Crisis", Deniz Igan, Prachi Mishra, and Thierry Tressel, Research Department, IMF

There it is in black and white. The bankers gamed the system and raked in trillions, all according to plan. Not surprisingly, they used their political clout to create a safety net for themselves (TARP) when the bubble burst, while everyone else watched as their retirement savings and home equity went up in smoke.
There's no disputing that massive leverage played a critical role in the crash of '08. Nor is there any doubt that hawking mortgage-backed securities (MBS) and other garbage assets (CDOs, ABS) to credulous investors was the main vehicle for executing the heist. So, why hasn't the Fed acknowledged its mistakes and stepped up its supervision of the banks? Is Bernanke so "captured" by Wall Street that he'd rather see another meltdown than take steps to reign in leverage? That seems to be the case.
Here's how Bernanke responded to Keith Ellison, when the congressman explicitly warned Bernanke of "excessive leverage" that had reached "stratospheric levels" putting the entire system in danger.
Bernanke: "The Board's authority and flexibility in establishing capital requirements, including leverage requirements, have been key to the Board's ability to require additional capital where needed based on a banking organization's risk profile...
We note that in other contexts, statutorily prescribed minimum leverage ratios have not necessarily served prudential regulators of financial institutions well." ("Excessive Leverage Helped Cause the Great Depression and the Current Crisis ... And Government Responds by Encouraging MORE Leverage", Washington's blog)
"Minimum leverage ratios" will not make the system safer and more stable?!? You gotta be kidding me?
This is Bernanke's way of saying that he understands the risks, but plans to do nothing.
But, why?
Because Bernanke's job is to assure that Wall Street's massive looting operation continues apace. That's Job#1. And, while "systemic instability" may be a concern, it's largely irrelevant. Maintaining profitability for uber-rich speculators takes precedent over everything else. That's the way Bubblenomics is designed to work.

__._,_.___

The Catalysts Start to Catalyze

by John Rubino on June 15, 2011

For a couple of years now it's been clear that the world was about to fall apart, with the only question being which local failure turns out to be the catalyst for a systemic breakdown. So many things were on the verge of blowing up…yet none of them did. The world's governments have engaged in a heroic period of "extend and pretend" that has kept the system together longer than seemed possible.

But now the game seems to be ending. It's still not clear which bomb will go off first, but a bunch of fuses have gotten very short indeed. Here's a survey of old crises that are finally coming to a head:

California and Illinois
These two U.S. states are bankrupt by any reasonable definition, but are somehow managing to pay most of their bills. Their political classes are dominated by public sector unions, so neither has tried the tough medicine of places like Wisconsin or New Jersey. Instead, they've used a combination of much higher taxes (Illinois) and accounting gimmicks as a means to much higher taxes (California) to delay the inevitable reckoning.
Both are reaping what they've sown. Illinois, after raising corporate and income taxes, now faces an exodus of businesses to more friendly climes like Indiana and Texas. The governor is doling out tax breaks to keep major employers, a practice that 1) sends those new taxes right back out the door and 2) leads every other company to demand the same treatment. Latest on the list is the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, the state's biggest financial institution. No end in sight but bankruptcy.
California desperately wants to raise taxes but can't get an increase through the legislature. Thanks to a recently passed referendum, lawmakers don't get paid unless they produce a budget, so they'll do so pretty soon. But without more tax revenues it will fill the gaping deficit with gimmicks like delayed payments. No one will be fooled. The only question now is whether there's room in Texas for all the California companies that will soon be leaving. Again, no end in sight but bankruptcy. Short munis and pretty much anything dependent on consumer spending, since the resulting public sector layoffs will devastate demand for cars and other luxuries.
The Middle East
As country after country blows up, the U.S. finds itself sucked into increasing numbers of "humanitarian" military operations that are, of course, really about protecting the flow of oil. It won't work. An oil crisis of some sort is coming. Buy energy stocks, from oil to clean tech, short everything else.
The U.S. budget
With America borrowing, in effect, its entire military budget from China, unemployment headed back to double digits even by Washington's fraudulent accounting, and neither party willing to really address the military/entitlements complex, the debt will keep piling up until it can't. The rating agencies are now, belatedly, threatening the US AAA rating, the loss of which would either drive interest rates back to their historical average of 5%-6% (sending interest costs out of control) or force the Fed to start buying all the bonds issued by Treasury (sending the money supply out of control). Result: imminent currency crisis. Buy gold and silver, short Treasuries.
Housing
After seeming to stabilize for a few months, housing is tanking again. Sales and prices are down, underwater mortgages are surging, home builder confidence is at new lows, and poor innocent Bank of America is stuck with trillions of bad paper that it's not accounting for. As home prices accelerate to the downside, look for huge bank write-downs, massive stock volatility, and maybe another bailout. Short anything in the financial sector.
Europe
Ah, the euro. Greece is imploding…riots in the street, the government is falling, and the Bundesbank and ECB can't agree on how to handle the coming default. This one is coming to a head very soon, to be followed by the other PIIGS countries — assuming there's still a Eurozone to try to save. Short the European banks with the most Greek paper, load up on precious metals.
Does it matter which blows up first?
Not any more. They're all so close that just their prospect is enough to send capital running for cover. It's a nasty year no matter what. But then comes the next stimulus plan, which complicates the whole "short the world" thesis. The markets have been consistently fooled by this kind of thing, and there's no reason to believe that QE3 won't ignite another rally in risk assets. So monitor those shorts and be ready to close them out when CNBC starts hinting at a big pending announcement from Bernanke or Geithner. Shift the proceeds into precious metals, which will absolutely rocket when the next wave of fake liquidity hits the market.

__._,_.___

__,_._,___

Sobre la burbuja inmobiliaria

¿Y ahora quién le pone el cascabel al gato?


\"Desde un punto de vista económico, una burbuja es un proceso de fuertes subidas
en el precio de un activo que genera expectativas de futuras subidas
adicionales, las cuales no están exentas de riesgo. Un proceso así rápidamente
atrae a los especuladores que buscan obtener grandes beneficios en muy poco
tiempo, lo cual infla más la burbuja. Obviamente uno de los principales riesgos
radica en la posibilidad de que se pinche la misma y se produzca un derrumbe de
precios, lo cual suele ocurrir cuando se hace insostenible cualquier lógica de
explicación económica y los especuladores salen rápidamente del mercado,
derrumbando el artificial exceso de demanda que ayudaron a crear y produciendo
una sobreoferta en el mercado.


En un mercado normal, se supone que el precio de cualquier bien, en un
determinado momento, es el reflejo del equilibrio alcanzado entre su oferta y
demanda en el corto plazo; no obstante, la evolución de dicho precio en el
tiempo refleja la evolución de la escasez relativa de dicho bien, de las
diferencias entre la evolución de su oferta y su demanda en el largo plazo. Si
su demanda crece más rápido que su oferta, el precio de dicho bien tenderá a
subir en el tiempo, pero si ocurre lo contrario, el precio debería tender a bajar.


En muchos mercados la interacción entre productores (oferta) y consumidores
(demanda) se da a través de intermediarios. Cuando alguién quiere comprar un
tomate para hacer una ensalada, no suele ir al campo a comprarle el tomate al
agricultor, sino que se dirije a uno de los intermediarios que están más a su
alcance, a un supermercado o a la tienda de la esquina. En cualquier caso, si el
precio del tomate viene subiendo, y se espera que lo siga haciendo, es natural
que las consumidores (y los intermediarios) traten de aumentar su demanda para
acumular inventarios con precios que, aunque sean mayores que los pasados, se
espera sean menores que los futuros. No obstante, este proceso tiene un límite:
la perecibilidad misma de los tomates, su costo de almacenaje y la evidente
sobreoferta que pronto habrá en las nuevas cosechas, dados los mayores precios
observados. Todas estas circunstancias hacen que no hayan grandes posibilidades
de crear burbujas en el mercado de tomates.


En cambio, el mercado inmobiliario no tiene esas limitantes: los inmuebles
normalmente no se pudren, su almacenaje y acaparamiento en lugar de costos puede
proporcionar ingresos mediante su alquiler, y la producción de inmuebles nuevos
no es tan elástica, básicamente por la limitada capacidad para producir suelo
(terreno) nuevo. Así, cuando el precio de los inmuebles empieza a subir, y se
alientan las expectativas de que esa dinámica se mantendrá, es fácil que la
demanda se vaya multiplicando a medida que ella misma vaya contribuyendo en
forma agregada a validar sus propias expectativas. No obstante, el problema se
centra en las externalidades que esta dinámica generará sobre toda la economía
en general, especialmente cuando la burbuja finalmente se pinche...\"


http://renzojimenez.blogspot.com/2010/11/burbuja-inmobiliaria-y-ahora-quien-le.html

BUBBLE: NOUVELLE BULLE?

http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2009/12/09/les-marches-financiers-sont-en-train-de-recreer-une-nouvelle-bulle_1278110_3234.html#ens_id=1216746

USA: RIESGOS POSTCRISIS.ARBE

http://elcomercio.pe/impresa/notas/eeuu-representa-riesgo-recuperacion-mundial/20091124/372925

banco mundial: crisis e inflacion amenazan la reprise

http://www.lavanguardia.es/economia/noticias/20091113/53823641201/zoellick-alerta-de-que-la-inflacion-y-la-burbuja-financiera-amenazan-la-salida-de-la-crisis-economic.html