Fwd: World Economics Association - Newsletter, Volume 5, Issue 2

World Economics Association - Newsletter, Volume 5, Issue 2 Newsletter, Volume 5, Issue 2 download the whole issue  http://www.worldeconomicsassociation.org/files/Issue5-2.pdf or individual articles   Who are our allies?     2      Peter Swann Economics as superstructure     3      Norbert Häring Deregulation, governability and peace     5      Maria Alejandra Madi Pluralism Now—petition by French economists     6 Are economists superior to other social scientists?     7      Grazia Ietto-Gillies WEA Conference: Ideas towards a new international financial architecture?     8 Hunger as the Primary Economic Problem     10      Asad Zaman Review: of Economics: A primer for India     11      Stuart Birks and Srikanta Chatterjee Interview on neo-structuralism     12      Esteban Pérez Caldentey, Miguel Torres and Romain ZivyCall Call for applications: Capitalism and Environmental Reporting     13 Reteaching Economics: Boom Bust Boom     14      Ioana Negru and Robert Jump

renuncia al fmi (tomado de Rouillon)

Departamento Europa


Washington DC

18 de junio 2012

Al Dr. Shaalan, Decano del Comité Ejecutivo del FMI,

Me dirijo hoy por última vez al Comité Ejecutivo porque abandono el FMI.

En primer lugar quiero expresar formalmente mi más profundo agradecimiento a las autoridades de Suecia, Israel y Dinamarca, con las que he trabajado en el último período, así como con todas con las que he trabajado con anterioridad, por su extraordinaría generosidad conmigo.

Asimismo, quiero aprovechar esta oportunidad para explicar porque me voy.

Después de veinte años de servicio, me avergüenza toda relación con el FMI.

No solo por su incompetencia ante la crisis global, expuesta solo parcialmente por el informe de la OIA, así como por el informe TSR en relación con el seguimiento previo a la crisis de la zona euro. Sino sobretodo porque los problemas sustanciales de estas crisis, como los de otras, fueron identificados mucho antes de que se produjeran, pero fueron negados en el FMI. Dados los largos períodos de gestación y la lentitud en el proceso de toma de decisiones internacionales para hacer frente a estos desafíos globales, era esencial advertir a tiempo y de manera sistemática y continuada sobre estos peligros. En este sentido, el fracaso del FMI a la hora de hacerlo supone un fracaso de primer orden, incluso si esas advertencias no hubieran sido tenidas en cuenta. Las consecuencias implícitas suponen sufrimientos para muchos (y lo peor aún esta por venir) incluyendo Grecia, que la segunda divisa de reserva global esté al borde del precipicio, y que durante los últimos dos años el FMI haya fracasado a la hora de seguir y jugado un papel meramente reactivo en los esfuerzos desesperados para salvar al euro en última instancia.

Es más, los factores probables que han causado estos fallos en la tarea de vigilancia del FMI (rechazo al riesgo analítico, prioridades bilaterales y prejuicios europeos) se están reforzando a pesar de las iniciativas para corregirlos. Ello es especialmente evidente por lo que se refiere al nombramiento de los Directores Gerentes, que durante la última década han sido todos desastrosos a todas luces. Ello afecta incluso a la actual Directora Gerente, porque ni el hecho de ser mujer, ni su integridad ni su impulso dirigente pueden compensar la ilegitimidad esencial del proceso de selección. En una institución jerárquica como esta, las consecuencias implícitas de estas designaciones se transmiten en cadena a otros puestos administrativos vía nombramientos, contratos por tiempo definido y planificación de la renovación del personal de dirección, hasta contaminar a la organización en su conjunto, a pesar de todos los esfuerzos para evitarlo. La opción del Comité Ejecutivo es un FMI tullido, limitado en su capacidad de acción por las mismas causas estructurales que han provocado los fallos de vigilancia descritos. Ojala hubiera entendido hace veinte años que así era.

Hay mucha gente buena y sabia en esta institución. Pero el abajo firmante se marcha para siempre. Quizás no quieran perder al resto.

Sinceramente,

Peter Doyle



The Global Slowdown

A Disaster of Their Own Making

The Global Slowdown

By MARSHALL AUERBACK
may 5, 2011

Governments across the globe are headed for a disaster entirely of their own making.
Though capital markets remain strong, the global economic backdrop continues to deteriorate as fiscal retrenchment takes hold. Commodity markets have rallied in tandem with the fall in the dollar even though there are signs that growth in the emerging world is slowing. Japan's economy is in the soup, the U.S. economy has failed to pick up as many thought (with a mere 2% growth rate expected to be released for Q1 shortly), and the European economy is overdue for its own slowdown. The U.S. stock market has also rallied despite the threat of a very high gasoline price, disappointing economic growth data, and a fairly mixed earnings picture.
The new theme in the market seems to be that the Fed, unlike other central banks, will stick with super easy money policies, hence the tendency to push the weak dollar, rising equity prices, and soaring commodity prices. But the news that real GDP growth has fallen sharply in the first three months of 2011 is evidence that the current policy mix, with its emphasis on public spending cuts, is not working. If gasoline prices spike as high as they did in June 2008, they will further weaken an already feeble economy. Consumers did not show up at Walmart at the end of the month because they ran out of money. House prices are still falling.
At the same time, the political debate is focused on the public debt limit, which expires in a few weeks. Conservatives are once again threatening not to extend this limit, even though no less a figure than Warren Buffett has said the failure to do so would be the "most asinine act" the U.S. Congress has ever committed.
The evidence of an increasingly imploding euro zone (which continues to embrace fiscal austerity with the zeal of a religious fanatic) does not seem to have shifted the debate much in this country. Many European governments are facing a fiscal crisis due to their failure to advance public purpose and raise the funds needed to maintain existing programs. Only the interventions of the ECB are saving the whole system from total meltdown, but the underlying solvency problem for the individual member states is getting worse as the days go by. The Euro bosses are failing, and with any luck, so is political resistance to rational economic policy.
Last week, we got a whopping negative surprise with real retail sales down 2.1% in Germany, Europe's largest economy. Since analysts had been hoping for no change, this is troubling and suggests that the problems of the euro zone are now extending beyond the periphery problem children, like Ireland, Portugal and Greece, into the core countries. The stronger euro, slowdowns in some emerging economies, and fiscal tightening could all add up to weaker-than-expected German exports, and weak German household spending could lead to a significant disappointment in the rest of Europe.
While Germany looms on the horizon, the euro disaster de jour is an eight percent year on year decline in Spanish retail sales. This in a country with a 21.3% unemployment rate. Their construction industry is probably still in decline, and there will be further government cutbacks. The Spanish trade account is now deteriorating and should continue to do so at this exchange rate, short of a disastrous decline in domestic demand. Spain was the domino that wasn't supposed to fall in Euroland. So much for that idea.
Meanwhile, what is happening in Ireland makes a Samuel Beckett play look like a Restoration Comedy by comparison. The issue being faced there is akin to the problem faced by Iceland last year: should voters reject a taxpayer bailout of foreign creditors? Like Iceland, it faces a crushing debt because its government took on the liabilities of its oversized banks, who had lent indiscriminately throughout Euroland. However, unlike Iceland, Irish bank liabilities are denominated in the currency used in Ireland, the euro. Like every other country in the euro zone, the "Celtic Tiger" abandoned its sovereign currency when it joined the Euro. Effectively, it became like a U.S. state within Euroland, which means that it has little domestic policy space to use monetary or fiscal policy to deal with this crisis. The Irish economy continues to deflate into the ground, and default seems like an increasingly likely option unless debt relief is provided by the ECB or the EMU through some other entity. That is actually in the EMU's interests, since much of the bank debt guaranteed by Ireland's government is held externally by EU banks, but huge political opposition in some of the wealthier EU states (e.g. Finland and Germany) makes this an increasingly unlikely scenario. Default and possible expulsion from the euro zone (and all of the attendant systemic problems this would pose for Europe) are increasingly likely possibilities.
In Asia, things are not much better. Japan's industrial production is down far, far more than anyone imagined, as is household consumption. Destructive IMF-style thinking still predominates in Tokyo, where the government is in thrall to a gaggle of deficit terrorists who think they can't afford to fund a proper reconstruction in the country.
The economic data coming out of China is so bad it is hard to assess what is happening, but there is enough evidence to suggest that the Chinese economy too slowed in the fourth quarter of last year and has slowed further in the first quarter of this year. It seems that there are two reasons to expect further slowing:
1. The Chinese keep tightening monetary policy in response to rising inflationary pressures. Unfortunately, hiking rates via direct rate rises is the wrong way to go about it, because the resultant rise in interest income for savers ADDS to aggregate demand through the interest income channels, making their inflation that much worse. In response, Beijing is also beginning to deploy credit controls, which do slow demand, as do automatic stabilizers that work through higher nominal growth, including reduced transfer payments and higher tax receipts. In general, this type of policy response constitutes a significant tightening of fiscal policy and leads to a very hard landing.
2. The ratio of Chinese fixed investment to GDP is so high it is very difficult to sustain. A rising real effective exchange rate is surely squeezing many companies and that should curb their fixed investment. There has been a big shift in the composition of Chinese fixed investment from profitable industries that can self-finance to local government projects which are highly debt-dependent and have minimal ability to self-finance. This shift to more debt-dependent sectors should have an adverse impact on fixed investment, though with some lag.
All in all, not a pretty global picture. It's only made worse by the fact that virtually all economic debates remain heavily skewed to further cutting government spending at a time when growth rates are falling and unemployment claims are rising. In short, the human tragedy we are now experiencing is totally self-inflicted policy stupidity. But then again, when have the neo-liberals ever let facts get in the way of a good theory?
Marshall Auerback is a Senior Fellow at the Roosevelt Institute, and a market analyst and commentator. This column originally appeared on New Deal 2.0.

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Londres: Las protestas que no osan decir su nombre

Arde Tottenham y los motines se extienden a una decena de distritos y a otras ciudades británicas

Parte de su juventud, inmigrante, desempleada o desafecta, se dedica a saquear tiendas y robar TV plasma, zapatillas y celulares.

Los viejos se meten horrorizados a sus casas.

La policía interviene con guantes para evitar muertos (el pretexto que encendió la pradera fue un muerto hace días).  

Los saqueadoreas se mueven de un sitio a otro y se comunican por celular.  ¿Más allá del happening, la exclusión y el

subempleo, que une a estos protestantes sin causa ni propósito?

El primer minstro regresa apresuradamente de vacaciones (¿será ése el verdadero motivo inconfesable de las protestas?  ¿el

que las clases dirigentes se hayan declarado en vacaciones?)

Si el asunto continúa un día más, tendrán que sacar al ejército a las calles.

Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets

Slash and Burn as the New Normal

Feral Capitalism Hits the Streets

By DAVID HARVEY
"Nihilistic and feral teenagers" the Daily Mail called them: the crazy youths from all walks of life who raced around the streets mindlessly and desperately hurling bricks, stones and bottles at the cops while looting here and setting bonfires there, leading the authorities on a merry chase of catch-as-catch-can as they tweeted their way from one strategic target to another.
The word "feral" pulled me up short. It reminded me of how the communards in Paris in 1871 were depicted as wild animals, as hyenas, that deserved to be (and often were) summarily executed in the name of the sanctity of private property, morality, religion, and the family. But then the word conjured up another association: Tony Blair attacking the "feral media," having for so long been comfortably lodged in the left pocket of Rupert Murdoch only later to be substituted as Murdoch reached into his right pocket to pluck out David Cameron.
There will of course be the usual hysterical debate between those prone to view the riots as a matter of pure, unbridled and inexcusable criminality, and those anxious to contextualize events against a background of bad policing; continuing racism and unjustified persecution of youths and minorities; mass unemployment of the young; burgeoning social deprivation; and a mindless politics of austerity that has nothing to do with economics and everything to do with the perpetuation and consolidation of personal wealth and power. Some may even get around to condemning the meaningless and alienating qualities of so many jobs and so much of daily life in the midst of immense but unevenly distributed potentiality for human flourishing.
If we are lucky, we will have commissions and reports to say all over again what was said of Brixton and Toxteth in the Thatcher years. I say 'lucky' because the feral instincts of the current Prime Minister seem more attuned to turn on the water cannons, to call in the tear gas brigade and use the rubber bullets while pontificating unctuously about the loss of moral compass, the decline of civility and the sad deterioration of family values and discipline among errant youths.
But the problem is that we live in a society where capitalism itself has become rampantly feral. Feral politicians cheat on their expenses, feral bankers plunder the public purse for all its worth, CEOs, hedge fund operators and private equity geniuses loot the world of wealth, telephone and credit card companies load mysterious charges on everyone's bills, shopkeepers price gouge, and, at the drop of a hat swindlers and scam artists get to practice three-card monte right up into the highest echelons of the corporate and political world.
A political economy of mass dispossession, of predatory practices to the point of daylight robbery, particularly of the poor and the vulnerable, the unsophisticated and the legally unprotected, has become the order of the day. Does anyone believe it is possible to find an honest capitalist, an honest banker, an honest politician, an honest shopkeeper or an honest police commisioner any more? Yes, they do exist. But only as a minority that everyone else regards as stupid. Get smart. Get Easy Profits. Defraud and steal! The odds of getting caught are low. And in any case there are plenty of ways to shield personal wealth from the costs of corporate malfeasance.
What I say may sound shocking. Most of us don't see it because we don't want to. Certainly no politician dare say it and the press would only print it to heap scorn upon the sayer. But my guess is that every street rioter knows exactly what I mean. They are only doing what everyone else is doing, though in a different way – more blatently and visibly in the streets. Thatcherism unchained the feral instincts of capitalism (the "animal spirits" of the entreprenuer they coyly named it) and nothing has transpired to curb them since. Slash and burn is now openly the motto of the ruling classes pretty much everywhere.
This is the new normal in which we live. This is what the next grand commission of enquiry should address. Everyone, not just the rioters, should be held to account. Feral capitalism should be put on trial for crimes against humanity as well as for crimes against nature.
Sadly, this is what these mindless rioters cannot see or demand. Everything conspires to prevent us from seeing and demanding it also. This is why political power so hastily dons the robes of superior morality and unctuous reason so that no one might see it as so nakedly corrupt and stupidly irrational.
But there are various glimmers of hope and Light around the world. The indignados movements in Spain and Greece, the revolutionary impulses in Latin America, the peasant movements in Asia, are all beginning to see through the vast scam that a predatory and feral global capitalism has unleashed upon the world. What will it take for the rest of us to see and act upon it? How can we begin all over again? What direction should we take? The answers are not easy. But one thing we do know for certain: we can only get to the right answers by asking the right questions.
David Harvey is Distinguished Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His latest book is The Enigma of Capital and the Crises of Capitalism. He can be reached through his website.

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