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CONSTRUCTION POLMON

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CONFERENCE SUR LA CONSTRUCTION DE LA POLITIQUE MONETAIRE INFLATION CIBLEE ET CONTEXTE BIMONETAIRE

modeleset maths

esse-t-on de consulter la météo après une tempête imprévue ? Non, bien sûr. Les tornades et tsunamis délivrent au contraire des données que les scientifiques des services de météorologie s'empressent d'analyser pour perfectionner leurs prévisions.
Ainsi en est-il de la finance. La crise donne du grain à moudre aux mathématiciens. Près de 600 d'entre eux étaient réunis les 19 et 20 mars, à Paris, à l'occasion du deuxième Forum international sur la recherche en finance, organisé par l'Institut Europlace. "La crise est un cas magnifique pour un chercheur ; un cas intéressant, comme dirait un médecin d'un malade", apprécie Pierre-Louis Lions, médaille Fields (l'équivalent du prix Nobel pour les mathématiciens de moins de 40 ans) et professeur au Collège de France.
"On a trop fait confiance à des modèles trop simples, à des agences de notation qui elles aussi s'appuyaient sur des modèles simplistes", souligne Michel Crouhy, directeur recherche et développement de Natixis. "Les banques qui ont le moins perdu sont celles qui ont utilisé les modèles les plus sophistiqués", affirme Valérie Rabault, responsable Risk Strategy pour les activités Dérivés-action de BNP Paribas.
La crise permet de mieux cerner les faiblesses des modèles mathématiques. Quatre défis attendent les chercheurs.
Premier défi : la fiabilité des données. Les modèles ne peuvent être fiables que s'ils utilisent des données qui le sont. Or ce n'était plus le cas dans les années qui précédèrent la crise. "En 2000, les trois quarts des prêts américains immobiliers risqués (les subprimes) étaient bien documentés. En 2006, la moitié seulement l'était. Car vérifier l'information coûte cher", explique Til Schuermann, de la Banque centrale (Federal Reserve) de New York.
Deuxième défi : gérer la pénurie. Les modèles et les régulations conduisent un grand nombre d'acteurs à adopter le même comportement. Quand la crise a commencé, ils ont été nombreux à vouloir acheter les mêmes produits pour se couvrir, et n'en ont plus trouvé sur le marché. Ou, quand il y en avait, "ils étaient vendus à des prix exorbitants, du fait d'une volatilité (fluctuation des cours) exceptionnelle", observe Mme Rabault.
En outre, "les instruments nécessaires pour couvrir des titres dont la valeur chute de plus de 40 % en quelques jours n'existaient tout simplement pas sur les marchés cotés, parce que personne n'avait pensé que des clients en auraient un jour besoin", ajoute cette spécialiste. Cette situation de pénurie n'est pas prévue dans les modèles, qui considèrent que tout produit financier est à tout moment disponible sur le marché. "Ce risque de liquidité intéresse les chercheurs", confirme Monique Jeanblanc, professeure de mathématiques à l'université d'Evry.
Troisième défi : les interactions entre les acteurs. Au lieu de gérer la situation d'une banque indépendamment des autres, les modèles mathématiques devront prendre en compte "le risque systémique", ajoute Christian Gouriéroux, professeur au Centre de recherche en économie et statistiques (Crest) et à l'université de Toronto. Les comportements des traders doivent être mieux étudiés. "La crise va recentrer la recherche vers la compréhension des mécanismes, les interactions entre les agents, la physique du marché", se réjouit Frédéric Abergel, professeur, titulaire de la chaire de finance quantitative à l'Ecole centrale de Paris.
Ces modèles existaient depuis le début de la décennie, mais étaient peu utilisés "parce qu'ils mettaient plus en évidence les risques, ce qui impliquait que les banques devaient faire plus de provisions, hypothèse qu'elles n'avaient guère envie d'entendre ! La crise va faire ressortir ces modèles issus de l'éconophysique, qui complètent les modèles mathématiques", ajoute M. Abergel. Pour y parvenir, il faut aussi que les modèles ne soient plus statiques, comme le sont la plupart d'entre eux, mais dynamiques, c'est-à-dire qu'ils tiennent compte de l'évolution des situations et des risques encourus. Mais peu de praticiens sont formés à l'utilisation des modèles dynamiques.
Quatrième défi : mieux considérer les risques. Le métier de gestionnaire des risques est moins respecté que celui de commercial (trader). "Mes meilleurs étudiants ont été embauchés par les traders. Ceux chargés de mesurer les risques étaient moins bien traités, ce qui a introduit des distorsions. C'est un point clé de l'histoire", insiste Jean-Michel Lasry, conseiller scientifique de Calyon. A diplôme égal, un mathématicien travaillant à la gestion des risques, avec cinq ans d'expérience, gagne environ quatre à cinq fois moins que son collègue "quant" - analyste quantitatif, spécialiste des titres financiers sophistiqués -, qui met ses compétences aux profits des traders. CQFD.
Annie Kahn

NUEVA MONEDA INTERNACIONAL PIDE CHINA

BEIJING [DPA]. La pugna por un nuevo orden financiero mundial está a toda marcha. China tomó a Estados Unidos por sorpresa con su osada propuesta de reemplazar al dólar como principal divisa internacional por una nueva supermoneda, aún por crearse.
Con ello, el director del Banco Central de China, Zhou Xiaochuan, cuestionó a Washington y su posición dominante en el sistema financiero mundial. La vieja arquitectura monetaria es ya obsoleta —indicó Zhou— y es necesario reformarla.
“El estallido de la crisis y sus consecuencias en todo el mundo reflejan la fragilidad interna y los riesgos inherentes al sistema monetario internacional”, apuntó.
Según la propuesta, el nuevo sistema, que contaría con una moneda global de reserva y que sería administrado por el Fondo Monetario Internacional (FMI), debe ser independiente de la influencia de determinados países.
La base para la nueva divisa la constituirían los llamados derechos especiales de emisión (SDR, por sus siglas en inglés), una unidad monetaria creada en 1969 con fines de contabilidad, que se basa actualmente en cuatro monedas: en el dólar y el euro, principalmente, y en menor medida en el yen y la libra esterlina.

ABOUT PROTECTIONISM

Washington Post's "Free-Trade" Zombies Discover New Form of "Protectionism" By Joshua Holland, AlterNet Posted on March 28, 2009, Printed on March 28, 2009 http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/www.alternet.org/133926/ What do you call it when a government takes over a bank teetering on the brink of collapse, pumps truck-loads of public funds into it, and then asks it to, you know, maybe make some loans to the families and businesses whose taxes financed its rescue in the first place? Like me, you'd probably call it a fairly commonsense policy. But if you were the kind of mindless "free-trade"-worshiping zombie who writes for the Washington Post, you'd probably call it "protectionism in the 21st century." Like this: EDINBURGH, Scotland -- Once as rooted in the Scottish soil as this city's famous castle, the Royal Bank of Scotland ventured far during the era of globalization -- pumping billions of dollars worth of credit overseas as it expanded into markets as diverse as Kazakhstan, China and Rhode Island. But just as RBS came to symbolize the free flow of credit across borders, the worldwide financial crisis has turned it into a leading example of the reverse: protectionism in the 21st century. The government took majority control of the venerable bank four months ago after it suffered the worst corporate loss in British history. Authorities promptly issued a fresh directive: RBS, which had been in private hands since 1727, would have to sharply boost lending to British companies and home buyers stung by the global credit crunch -- effectively curtailing lending to its equally hard-hit customers overseas. As RBS prepares to comply with the government order to pump billions of dollars more into British credit markets, it is retrenching in at least 15 countries, moving to sell off branches from Vietnam to Romania. Even the WaPo writers know they're torturing the definition of protectionism, as illustrated by this ass-covering graph: World leaders gathering for a major economic summit in London next week are vowing not to repeat the trade wars of the 1930s by imposing the kind of protectionist tariffs on butter, steel and other goods that deepened the Great Depression. But while their promises center largely on avoiding classic forms of trade barriers -- such as higher taxes on imported cars -- the rise of financial protectionism poses a far greater threat to global recovery.. The short response to this ridiculous stretch of the concept of "protectionism" is fairly straightforward: RBS was no longer capable of functioning as a private institution.. It made bad bets. It was going to go belly-up, but was deemed "too big to fail," so it was nationalized by the UK, not by the governments of Vietnam or Romania. And it's clearly not a form of "protectionism" as the Brits didn't do anything to hinder or regulate the flow of capital in and out of the UK -- they imposed conditions on a single institution, which the government happens to own. But I think the more interesting thing here is the ever-expanding definition of a "trade barrier." Let me take a brief moment to tease out the crucially important distinction between "classic forms of trade barriers," and screaming "protectionism" about anything that in any way impacts international commerce. We'll need a bit of background. Most people still believe that discussions of "free-trade" are about ships full of bananas or ball bearings or high-tech widgets crossing oceans. Understanding why that's just a small part of the issue is key to grasping the difference between "free trade" and what these deals we've been signing for the last 30 years are really about -- a corporate power grab. Prior to World War II, trade wars were common, and they often led to shooting wars. In the mid-1940s the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) was created to foster world peace. Many of its authors were FDR liberals. They had high ideals. Between 1944 and the mid-1990s, trade negotiations were conducted by (mostly) white guys in business suits and nobody really gave a damn. Poor countries griped about agricultural subsidies and the rich countries' protectionism, but they were also free to try various development strategies (a big subject itself, but one for another day). During the first decades of the GATT, which governed trade between 1947-1995, the United States and "old" Europe had economies based heavily on manufacturing. But today, almost all advanced economies share a very similar distribution: about one to two percent in agriculture, maybe 20 or so percent in manufacturing and around 80 percent in services. For the first forty or so years of its existence, the members of the GATT negotiated reductions in tariffs, quotas and other traditional forms of market protectionism. They were the manufacturers, and those deals were for the most part negotiated on a level playing field between the world's advanced economies -- what they call "North-North" negotiations in trade lingo. Those who brand opponents of today's trade deals "protectionists" might ask themselves why nobody resisted the GATT during those years of slashing tariffs and quotas and the like. Beginning in the 1970s two things happened -- or I should say two things aside from the oil shock of '73. In 1979, during the Tokyo round of the GATT, negotiators began looking at "non-tariff barriers." These included onerous customs procedures, mountains of paperwork required to import goods, subsidies for domestic industry, etc. That shift to "non-tariff barriers" coincided with the emergence of the new conservative movement -- with its think tanks and front groups -- and the elections of Reagan and Thatcher to head the world's leading political and economic powers. That marked the beginning of both a precipitous decline in union membership and a massive shift in the wealthy economies -- their bread and butter went from manufacturing to services (the latter having already begun after the oil shock). When it comes to services -- and this is really a key point -- there's a massive pile of cash just sitting out there in the things that governments commonly did at the time: from education to sanitation and everything in between. According to Tony Clarke of the Polaris Institute, a Canadian NGO, the total estimated value of the world's service sector -- including public services -- is between 15-20 trillion dollars. That's a honeypot. Now, once they started looking at non-tariff barriers, it was inevitable that somewhere along the line, someone in those think tanks said, "we can call all those environmental laws or food-safety regulations non-tariff barriers too!" With that mindset, in 1986, after seven years of negotiating, the GATT culminated in the creation of the WTO, which had enforcement powers unlike any other multilateral organization. But its rules hadn't been written up by FDR liberals, but by Reagan-Thatcher big-business conservatives. Using the Freedom of Information Act, Public Citizen found that of 500 "experts" who sat on the advisory boards that hammered out the thousands of pages of the WTO treaty, there were a dozen representatives of labor. There were none from groups advocating for the environment, poor country development, human rights or anything else. The rest were multinational execs and various lawyers, lobbyists and industry experts. For too many of them, the new "free trade" framework provided a back door through which they could advance a broader agenda. They could push a set of treaties that pressured -- and in many instances legally compelled -- domestic legislatures to conform to the prevailing economic theories known as the "Washington Consensus" (whenever anyone calls something a "consensus," it probably isn't even close). And the definition of "non-tariff barrier" continued to expand. (In the meantime, since the early days of the GATT, dozens of countries -- many of them newly liberated from the clutches of European colonialism -- had been added -- and most were poor and had poor infrastructure and very different economic distributions. Many relied on agriculture not only for food, but also as a significant source of employment. Early on, the developed countries promised to start cutting agricultural subsidies and giving those developing countries a level playing field for agriculture but so far they just haven't gotten around to it on the scale promised.) By the time we got to the "Singapore Round" in 1996, there was an aggressive push to 1) enact a broad set of "investor protections" that made a variety of laws -- some protecting the public interest -- subject to the WTO's dispute-resolution process and 2) allow countries (or even private companies) to exert pressure on other governments to privatize their public services. Organized labor, community activists, environmentalists, food security specialists, farmers and many other groups started to see these rules as a significant threat to their work. They gathered to greet the Ministers a few years later in Seattle -- the famous "teamsters and turtles" coalition -- and that led to the infamous "Battle in Seattle" (which was actually a brutal police riot). And since that time, the fight has really been about how deep into the realm of domestic policy trade agreements should reach. Which brings us back to the Washington Post's new discovery: a form of "protectionism" that in fact is a purely a domestic matter between a government and a single bank that it owns. Be wary of the trend, or everything your elected officials do will eventually be constrained in the name of supporting "free trade" over an all-encompassing definition of "protectionism." Joshua Holland is an editor and senior writer at AlterNet. © www.alternet.org/133926/

BBCMundo.com: Protesta en Londres antes del G-20

** Protesta en Londres antes del G-20 **
Decenas de miles marcharon en Londres pidiendo medidas contra la pobreza, el cambio climático y el desempleo.<!-Internacional, Londres, G20, Protestas-->
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/hi/spanish/business/newsid_7970000/7970077.stm >

Reacciones ante el Plan Geithner

Obama and Geithner gambling with their country's financial reputations

Barack Obama and his Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, are starting to look like gambling addicts.

By Damian Reece
Last Updated: 5:48AM GMT 24 Mar 2009

Having seen the worst elements of casino capitalism ruin Wall Street and generate billions in losses, the pair have stepped back to the roulette table and plan to place up to $1 trillion (£690bn) on black to try to win back the banks' losses and restore America's financial credibility. All they can do is hope the spin doesn't end in the red.

Even the name of their latest bail-out plan – the Public Private Investment Program – sounds like the sort of financing partnership we have seen fail here all too often when applied to infrastructure investments such as the spectacular train wreck that was Metronet, the bust public private partnership (PPP) for parts of the London Underground. The UK Government's often flawed attempts at clever infrastructure funding and Geithner's plan have a lot in common.

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The Americans want private investors both big and small to join with it and bid for banks' toxic assets to get lending and capital markets moving again.

But what price will be bid? Just as British PPPs such as Metronet failed because the bid pricing was too low, undermining the project from the start, there is absolutely no certainty that private investors in the US will bid a price that makes it worthwhile for American banks to sell their toxic assets.

Geithner's plan is on an impressive scale but that's not enough. Who will police these partnership agreements and guarantee that the rules don't change with a change in White House incumbent, for instance? If the profits soar for private investors who buy toxic assets with government help, what guarantee will there be that these super returns won't be clawed back by a deeply embarrassed Capitol Hill, or that their share of losses aren't increased if things go badly?

These political risks are all too familiar to British PPP companies and will make pricing US toxic assets under Geithner's plan all the more fraught. This extra layer of complexity and uncertainty will slow the financial detox down – not something President Obama, or any of us, can afford.

The incentive for banks to sell their dodgy assets into this scheme is far from compelling because they will immediately have to write off their value and take even more losses which may exacerbate the credit squeeze, not improve it.

Much of the funding for Geithner's plan was passed by a shaken Congress back in the autumn, but only now are we getting the details. The scheme is at least five months late and while it might look clever by involving private investors and the potential for profits, in reality it's ponderous, uncertain and slow. The UK's alternative of insuring banks' toxic assets comes at the price of more state ownership and greater potential taxpayer losses but it has the infinite advantage of delivering much greater certainty in a deeply uncertain world.

Ultimately, President Obama's partnership plan is a test of his government's credibility among American investors and frankly it's not a test he can afford to fail. For such a young administration this is a massively risky bet to be taking within 100 days of taking office.

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estrategia si fracasa plan Obama

BlackRock's Global Macro Hedge Fund Bets on More Stock Declines

By Malcolm Scott

March 24 (Bloomberg) -- BlackRock Inc.'s global macro fund, the world's second-best performer over two years among hedge funds that invest based on economic trends, is betting against this month's equities rally and buying bonds as a recovery from the worst credit crisis since the Great Depression falters.

BlackRock's A$216 million ($152 million) Asset Allocation Alpha Fund returned 41 percent in 2008, when hedge funds around the world lost a record 19 percent on average. The fund is short U.S. and Australian equities, expecting them to decline, and long U.S., German, Australian, Canadian, and U.K. bonds, said its manager David Hudson.

"The risk is that the economic recovery disappoints in the second half and that equity markets need to revisit their lows in the next few months and maybe go through them," Sydney-based Hudson said in an interview March 20.

The MSCI World Index, which tumbled 42 percent last year, has rallied 21 percent since March 9, boosted in part by the U.S. Federal Reserve's decision to pump money into the economy to get credit flowing. Hudson profited from the declines last year by betting against equities.

BlackRock, which oversees $1.3 trillion, is the biggest publicly traded asset manager in the U.S. Over a third of total assets are managed on behalf of non-U.S. investors, and nearly one-third of its employees are outside the U.S.

Clone Fund

The "overwhelmingly" retail investor base of the Alpha fund helped it avoid the redemptions that beset other Australian-based funds last year, Hudson said. About 35 percent of the offshore money invested in Australian hedge funds was redeemed in the last quarter of 2008, according to Australian Fund Monitors.

The fund, set up in March 2006, uses options and futures contracts to bet on currencies, stocks, bonds, commodities and cash. It gained an average 38 percent over two years. Among hedge funds with at least $20 million in assets, only the $706 million Pivot Global Value Fund performed better with an average 50 percent gain, according to data compiled by Bloomberg on the 363 funds globally with a similar strategy.

In January, BlackRock launched the Global Macro Hedge Fund, a Cayman Island-based fund that is denominated in U.S. dollars and clones the Asset Allocation Alpha fund's trading. The new fund, which is targeting fund of funds, private banks and family offices, has struggled to raise money after the credit crisis battered the appetite for hedge fund offerings.

"The interest has been good, but after a year like last year, a lot of people that would be normally allocating to this kind of fund have liquidity constraints," Hudson said.

The Global Macro fund has raised $12 million. Hudson declined to specify targets for funds under management or the capacity for the funds he manages, except to say it's "a long way north of here."

Currency Bets

The Alpha fund's 41 percent return net of fees was the biggest gain in 2008 among the 214 Australian-based hedge funds monitored by Australian Fund Monitors. The fund is up 1.7 percent this year, according to Bloombergdata. It returned 35 percent in 2007.

The Asset Allocation Alpha fund aims to provide investors with a return of 12 percentage points above the benchmark UBS Australia Bank Bill Index over rolling three-year periods, before fees.

Hudson is now looking at wagering against currencies of nations where central banks are resorting to so-called quantitative easing, where policy makers opt to purchase government bonds to push yields lower. He is considering taking short positions in the Swiss Franc, U.K. pound, U.S. dollar and Japanese yen.

The fund has already taken a position on the expectation the Australian dollar will gain and the Canadian dollar will decline because Canada may be next to introduce quantitative easing measures, while Australia is unlikely to, Hudson said. It remains long gold -- a bet that bullion will go up -- versus the U.S. dollar.

To contact the reporter on this story: Malcolm Scott in Sydney Mscott23@bloomberg.net

_

Krugman sobre plan Geithner

Tim Geithner's US bank rescue may not go far enough, experts warn

US President Barack Obama is poised within days to unveil a new trillion-dollar plan aimed at restoring America's crippled banking system to health, as anger over bonuses paid to executives at bailed-out institutions escalates.

By Richard Blackden and Edmund Conway
Last Updated: 9:48PM GMT 21 Mar 2009

Barack Obama is under pressure to rid America's lenders of toxic assets Photo: AP

However, even before it is officially launched, experts have warned that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner's expected plan falls far short of what is needed to ease the financial crisis, with one Nobel prize-winning economist calling it an "awful mess".

The plan builds on the outline Mr Geithner provided last month, which was roundly slammed for lacking vital detail.

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With US unemployment climbing towards 10pc, the Obama administration is under intense pressure to deliver proposals that rid America's lenders of the toxic assets that have choked off the supply of credit to the economy and that will also begin to restore private investors' confidence in the banking system.

Mr Geithner's new plan aims both to expand existing initiatives and to create new schemes alongside them. It plans first to dispose of toxic assets both by setting up a new entity to buy and hold the distressed loans that have eroded the capacity of banks to lend, and by creating a separate Public-Private Investment Fund, first outlined last month, to help fund private investors' purchases of some of the most illiquid mortgage-backed securities.

Second, the Federal Reserve will raise the amount it can lend to investors through its Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility to increase the credit available to cash-strapped consumers and small businesses.

In stark contrast to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's approach, the US administration is reluctant to take large stakes in Wall Street banks as the price for injecting desperately needed capital.

Leading US economist Paul Krugman said the scheme would potentially socialise losses and privatise any gains in the financial system, leaving taxpayers worse off. "This plan will produce big gains for banks that didn't actually need any help; it will, however, do little to reassure the public about banks that are seriously undercapitalised," he said.

"And I fear that when the plan fails, as it almost surely will, the administration will have shot its bolt: it won't be able to come back to Congress for a plan that might actually work. What an awful mess."

Other critics warn that Mr Geithner's hope to encourage private investors to take on the toxic assets is fraught with difficulties over how the securities, which have long since ceased to be traded, will be priced.

"The American authorities are reluctant to inject the taxpayers' funds needed to get them [the banks] on their feet," said Barry Eichengreen, an expert on America's financial system. "And no bank recapitalisation means no recovery."

The tightrope that President Obama and his Treasury Secretary will have to walk this week is being made that much more precarious by a growing reluctance in Congress to hand over more money to Wall Street. Sparked by the revelation that at least $165m in bonuses have been paid to executives of the bailed-out insurer American International Group, the Senate is due to vote this week on a plan to impose a 70pc tax on bonuses paid to banks that have received taxpayers' cash.

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Fwd: Macroperu Krugman critica el Geyhner

OP-ED COLUMNIST

Financial Policy Despair

By PAUL KRUGMAN

Published: March 22, 2009

Over the weekend The Times and other newspapers reported leaked details about the Obama administration's bank rescue plan, which is to be officially released this week. If the reports are correct, Tim Geithner, the Treasury secretary, has persuaded President Obama to recycle Bush administration policy — specifically, the "cash for trash" plan proposed, then abandoned, six months ago by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson.

Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times

Paul Krugman

Go to Columnist Page »Blog: The Conscience of a Liberal

Readers' Comments

Readers shared their thoughts on this article.

• Read All Comments (493) »

This is more than disappointing. In fact, it fills me with a sense of despair.

After all, we've just been through the firestorm over the A.I.G. bonuses, during which administration officials claimed that they knew nothing, couldn't do anything, and anyway it was someone else's fault. Meanwhile, the administration has failed to quell the public's doubts about what banks are doing with taxpayer money.

And now Mr. Obama has apparently settled on a financial plan that, in essence, assumes that banks are fundamentally sound and that bankers know what they're doing.

It's as if the president were determined to confirm the growing perception that he and his economic team are out of touch, that their economic vision is clouded by excessively close ties to Wall Street. And by the time Mr. Obama realizes that he needs to change course, his political capital may be gone.

Let's talk for a moment about the economics of the situation.

Right now, our economy is being dragged down by our dysfunctional financial system, which has been crippled by huge losses on mortgage-backed securities and other assets.

As economic historians can tell you, this is an old story, not that different from dozens of similar crises over the centuries. And there's a time-honored procedure for dealing with the aftermath of widespread financial failure. It goes like this: the government secures confidence in the system by guaranteeing many (though not necessarily all) bank debts. At the same time, it takes temporary control of truly insolvent banks, in order to clean up their books.

That's what Sweden did in the early 1990s. It's also what we ourselves did after the savings and loan debacle of the Reagan years. And there's no reason we can't do the same thing now.

But the Obama administration, like the Bush administration, apparently wants an easier way out. The common element to the Paulson and Geithner plans is the insistence that the bad assets on banks' books are really worth much, much more than anyone is currently willing to pay for them. In fact, their true value is so high that if they were properly priced, banks wouldn't be in trouble.

And so the . Mr. Paulson proplan is to use taxpayer funds to drive the prices of bad assets up to "fair" levelsposed having the government buy the assets directly. Mr. Geithner instead proposes a complicated scheme in which the government lends money to private investors, who then use the money to buy the stuff. The idea, says Mr. Obama's top economic adviser, is to use "the expertise of the market" to set the value of toxic assets.

But the Geithner scheme would offer a one-way bet: if asset values go up, the investors profit, but if they go down, the investors can walk away from their debt. So this isn't really about letting markets work. It's just an indirect, disguised way to subsidize purchases of bad assets.

The likely cost to taxpayers aside, there's something strange going on here. By my count, this is the third time Obama administration officials have floated a scheme that is essentially a rehash of the Paulson plan, each time adding a new set of bells and whistles and claiming that they're doing something completely different. This is starting to look obsessive.

But the real problem with this plan is that it won't work. Yes, troubled assets may be somewhat undervalued. But the fact is that financial executives literally bet their banks on the belief that there was no housing bubble, and the related belief that unprecedented levels of household debt were no problem. They lost that bet. And no amount of financial hocus-pocus — for that is what the Geithner plan amounts to — will change that fact.

You might say, why not try the plan and see what happens? One answer is that time is wasting: every month that we fail to come to grips with the economic crisis another 600,000 jobs are lost.

Even more important, however, is the way Mr. Obama is squandering his credibility. If this plan fails — as it almost surely will — it's unlikely that he'll be able to persuade Congress to come up with more funds to do what he should have done in the first place.

All is not lost: the public wants Mr. Obama to succeed, which means that he can still rescue his bank rescue plan. But time is running out.

__._,_.___

Roubini

The Prime of Mr. Nouriel Roubini by Helaine Olen April 2009 Issue Life is good for New York University's party-boy economist. Once regarded as a crank, he has parlayed his now-accurate predictions of an economic bust into fame, rising fortune, and a vigorous social life. But is the recession's "Doctor Doom" just a one-hit wonder? It's Saturday night. A stream of young fashionistas and other assorted Manhattan scenesters pours into a fashionable Tribeca building. They're all headed for the loft of a middle-aged economist—a man whose name would hardly have registered with anyone but the most obsessive CNBC watcher a few years ago. A doorman on duty surveys the scene and rolls his eyes. "Another Roubini party," he mutters. The host of the hour, Nouriel Roubini—the New York University professor credited with calling the current economic collapse and a ubiquitous presence on financial-news shows who continues to forecast gloom and doom—is looking positively upbeat this evening. He greets guest after guest with a kiss on both cheeks as music thumps at a volume loud enough to irritate the neighbors. Suspended from the ceiling, above the throngs of minglers, are dozens of small glass globes, resembling nothing so much as bubbles. The decor is apt. As early as 2004, when other economists were proclaiming a new financial age, Roubini was predicting that the bubble buoying the United States economy was about to pop. At the time, he was derided as a crank. His downbeat message, combined with an accent reminiscent of a James Bond villain and a laugh that seems to kick in on a one-second tape delay, quickly earned him the sobriquet Doctor Doom. Now the ridicule has turned into respect, not to mention countless TV appearances, speaking engagements, invitations to testify before Congress, new clients for the consulting firm he runs, and parties packed with young, beautiful admirers. But as the world searches desperately for signs of recovery, Doctor Doom faces his own potential doomsday scenario: If the economy turns up, he could go down as nothing more than a one-hit wonder. Unless he nails it again. That might be tough. Not only has Roubini been a professional downer for years, his reasoning has frequently been off. He first predicted, incorrectly, that there would be a bust as a result of Hurricane Katrina, and later, again incorrectly, that the economy would tank as a result of trade imbalances. The collapse was initially triggered by subprime-credit problems, and he initially underestimated how devastating they would be. More than a few economists are convinced that Roubini's call was less a matter of his genius and more about the simple fact that if you forecast a recession often enough, sooner or later you'll be vindicated. "Nouriel Roubini has been singing the doom-and-gloom story for 10 years," says Nariman Behravesh, chief economist for IHS Global Insight. "Eventually something was going to be right." Bad times have certainly been good for Roubini's social life. For years, he has been a manic host of everything from small dinner parties to big bashes. The soirees are more crowded of late, attracting everyone from members of the hedge-fund set to a former Miss Ukraine and propelling the bachelor economist onto the tabloid gossip pages. (He has become a New York Post regular, and CNBC often plays disco music when he appears on the air.) Roubini's partying side may have remained below the media radar but for his energetic use of Facebook. He kept his profile on the social-networking site open to the general public until a few months ago, something more privacy-minded users typically choose not to do. On his profile, he said he was single and interested in meeting women, and he posted photos of himself hamming it up with females who look two or three decades younger than he is. Among Roubini's Facebook friends is Sarah Austin, a pretty blond who is featured in a black minidress on the website she runs, Pop17.com, which posts interviews with internet "personalities." Austin says she received an unsolicited email from Roubini last fall—complete with links to articles about himself—praising her site and inviting her to a party. She has yet to take him up on the invitation, but the two are now regular correspondents. She assumes he approached her because he wanted to be written up on her website—­and also because, she says, "I fit the criteria for his loft parties. There are a lot of women." Roubini's Facebook presence brought the media-gossip blog Gawker into the Roubini story last fall. In a post called "The Secret Pleasures of Dr. Doom," Nick Denton, the site's founder, flagged what he saw as a disconnect between Roubini's "gloomy public image" and "his playboy lifestyle": "The 50-year-old Iranian-Jewish economist is a ­promiscuous Facebook friend who draws a cosmopolitan crowd to the frequent parties at his Tribeca loft—an apartment with walls indented with plaster vulvas, incidentally." The post would most likely have been forgotten if Roubini himself hadn't responded. He sent a series of rants in the middle of the night to Denton, including this one: "Nick Denton is trying to do a hatchet job on me in two pieces in his trashy junky Gawker; but he is just an ignorant anti-Semite with a Nazi mind and and [sic] a McCarthist [sic] bigot and hypocrite." Roubini defended the art in question as a "tasteful" piece by a noted Latin American artist. Roubini is, in fact, a serious art collector and a member of the Junior Associates program at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The artist, Analia Segal, is a Guggenheim fellow. Still, at the party I attended, occasional whispers could be heard among the guests: "Where are the vaginas?" Such chatter notwithstanding, the gathering was a friendly and civilized affair—no inappropriate behavior, not even a preponderance of booze; mostly scattered wine bottles and bubbly water. "I'm a serious professional economist. I live in New York and have a social life," Roubini says.. "I have book parties and social dinners. And, you know, people will take pictures of you with your friends, and there are some attractive women. It doesn't mean I go out with them. They're my friends. I have nothing to hide." When I send him a thank-you email, I can't resist adding, "If you ask me, the deep mystery at the center of your life is why you would want to subject your apartment to that sort of abuse." He quickly wrote back, "I do not subject my apt. to abuse. It is nice to have friends over, and I have a housekeeper that cleans up everything afterward." Still, Roubini can't help himself: After Gawker cheekily noted that both he and dating columnist Julia Allison were going to attend the World Economic Forum in Davos, he made sure to be photographed with her there. Gawker's dry comment: "Nouriel Roubini partying with intellectual peers." Roubini's response to me: "She's a very smart cookie. Very smart. She can intelligently discuss lots of things." The first time I met Roubini, we had tea at the Algonquin Hotel in midtown Manhattan, a meeting he squeezed in between late-afternoon business engagements and a live CNBC appearance to discuss the economic crisis. He was wearing what I would soon come to recognize as his uniform: an open-­collared blue shirt revealing a bit of chest hair (he buttons up for TV), blue slacks, and a jacket. He looks younger than his 51 years, in part because of his thick, dark hair but also because he is almost boyishly enthusiastic when it comes to the subjects he cares about, which include art and books as well as economics (but not sports). He had just spent the day at his consulting firm, Roubini Global Economics LLC, which began as a webpage for his students in the late 1990s and has since evolved into a 50-person enterprise with offices in London and Hong Kong as well as New York. It was Halloween, and the RGE staff had dressed up as their boss. Roubini was waving around a mask of his likeness they'd given him. "I am going to be Doctor Doom for Halloween," he declared, mentioning plans to stop off at a few parties after his TV appearance was finished. Roubini doesn't come with an off switch. He speaks in paragraphs—plural. I once watched him twirl his eyeglasses for 45 minutes without a break. Emails arrive from him at all hours. When he teaches, he can't stop himself from telling his second-year MBA students—the folks who will be job hunting soon—how dismal their prospects are. "There are no jobs in New York. There are no jobs in London," he proclaimed during a class I sat in on. The son of an Oriental-rug distributor and the oldest of four children, Roubini was born in Istanbul, but by the time he was five, his family had moved several times, making quick stops in Tehran and Tel Aviv before settling permanently in Italy. Roubini speaks four languages: English, Italian, Hebrew, and Farsi. He says he gravitated to economics out of an interest in left-wing politics. He graduated from college in Italy in 1982 and went on to earn his PhD from Harvard, where he studied under Larry Summers, now President Obama's chief economic adviser. In 1998, Roubini left academia to work in the Clinton administration, and he has also served as a consultant to both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. During his stint in Washington, Roubini's dour take on the U.S. economy began to gel. While following the Asian and Latin American monetary crises in the late 1990s, he saw similarities be­tween developing countries and the U.S., arguing that they all fostered crony capitalists and tended to run huge current-account deficits. (In other words, they spent more money than they were taking in. In the case of the U.S., it's like we were using an in-store credit card at a retailer named China.) He became convinced that the U.S. had the potential to be the biggest bubble of all, and by 2004, he was speaking and writing about his belief that the country was facing economic catastrophe. Roubini calls his economic approach "holistic." Instead of primarily studying mathematical models and formulas, he says he also draws his ideas from history, literature, and international politics. He maintains that this eclectic approach is what helped him be so prescient. Perhaps appropriately for a modern media creature, Roubini has published some of his most notable theories and forecasts not in academic papers but in the form of blog posts. The article that arguably made his career, "The Rising Risk of a Systemic Financial Meltdown: The 12 Steps to Financial Disaster," was posted on February 5, 2008. It pegged the start of the recession to December 2007 (dead accurate, it turned out) and warned that the downturn would be extremely severe, thanks to the continuing housing bust and the bursting of the credit bubble, which would, in turn, lead to an intense credit contraction and a "serious and protracted" falloff in consumer spending. For good measure, he also predicted the failure of at least one bank with heavy exposure to mortgages and major problems in the shadow banking system, which would affect everything from hedge and money-market funds to investment banks and structured investment vehicles. Losses on credit default swaps, he predicted, could lead to the bankruptcy of a "large broker dealer," and the entire chain of sorry events would cause an inevitable downward spiral. Bear Stearns collapsed a little more than a month later. Roubini was far from the only person to go on television and point out that the world's financial emperor had no clothes. Morgan Stanley economist Stephen Roach, former Oppenheimer analyst Meredith Whitney, and investment advisers like Gary Shilling, Peter Schiff, and Marc Faber questioned the conventional wisdom during the boom years. What distinguishes Roubini from the others, at least in part, is his persistent attention to the business of publicity. Roubini is widely known for the speed with which he returns reporters' emails, and he is loath to pass up a media opportunity, no matter how early in the morning or late in the evening his presence is requested. Roubini, though, tells me that these days he actually turns down 95 percent of his interview requests. "Honestly, I never call anybody, but when CNBC and Bloomberg—literally, every week, several times a week—say, 'Come on our show,' there is no way we can say, 'I'm not going to do it.' Right?" The fact that RGE has a sophisticated (and free) online component increases Roubini's profile. By aggregating material from other economics bloggers, he ensures that those commentators will, in turn, both link to RGE and mention Roubini's posts and his other work in their own writings. Roubini also Twitters: "Nouriel is having fun at the Google After Hours party in Davos after a day of wonkdom"; "Nouriel has an op-ed on how to control Systemic Risk in the Financial Times today." Roubini turned his website and consulting into a more organized business three and a half years ago. Backed by notable investors, including William Janeway, a managing director at Warburg Pincus LLC, and Arminio Fraga, the former president of Brazil's central bank, Roubini set up an office above a Manhattan Mini Storage facility a few blocks from his loft. From that one room, RGE has since expanded to seven locations. The Hong Kong and London offices opened last year, and Roubini hopes to launch RGE outposts in Frankfurt, Singapore, Moscow, and Dubai by the end of 2009. "We would be delusional if we thought we were growing because of anything but Nouriel's notoriety," says RGE chief executive officer Dean Daniels. "His predictions are what open the door." Among the firm's new clients is billionaire investor Ronald Perelman, who first contacted Roubini after watching him on Charlie Rose last year. Perelman was so impressed with Roubini's performance that he asked him to meet with him and other members of his company. "I'm crazy about him. I think he's very smart, very direct," Perelman says, adding that Roubini's advice has caused him to back off from making certain investments, at least in the short term. "I think he is one of the brightest, the most effective economists that I've ever met, certainly that I've ever dealt with." Perelman, another man-about-town who catches his share of tabloid flak, met up with Roubini on St. Barts and hung out with him during a recent vacation. Perelman says he plans to ask Roubini to one of his famous Shabbat dinners. But he has yet to attend one of Roubini's loft parties and had to turn down a recent invitation. RGE's site, called Roubini Global Monitor, combines aggregated and original content in a way that's similar to the Huffington Post. Analysts hired by RGE parse data on economic and political conditions in every area of the world. In addition, RGE has about 250 bloggers and analysts who contribute to the site. Some material is available by subscription only; clients include hedge funds, think tanks, and even the World Bank, RGE says. Subscription prices range from $10,000, for "reading rights," to more than $100,000, which includes personal meetings and consultations with Roubini or his staff. But with Roubini's views so well known, why would anyone pay to become a client? "In many ways, I tell them the same things I'm telling the public," Roubini acknowledges, but he adds that he and his team flesh out arguments for clients and give them the time and attention they need. Just back from Davos, Roubini meets me again at the Algonquin Hotel. This time he orders a $15 glass of pinot noir. The Davos conference, where shell-shocked finance executives treated him like a rock star, was but one stop in a three-week global jaunt. "Zurich, Moscow, London, Istanbul, Abu Dhabi, you name it," he says. Earlier, despite putting in a full day at RGE, he managed to find time to meet with five different publishers about writing a book on the economic crisis. Even sitting down, Roubini can't stop moving—pulling his hair, tugging at his ear, shifting his position. He leaves at 8:30 to return to his NYU office and answer emails, but he's planning to quit at 11 to meet friends for dinner. And he's still trying to decide if he should have a party in his loft the following evening. At 4:12 a.m., he sends out a Twitter linking to a Bloomberg article on an International Monetary Fund report claiming that many advanced economies are already in a depression. He says his doctor has told him that he's endangering his health by sleeping only three or four hours a night. It isn't that he can't sleep, he says. It's just impossible for him to accomplish everything he wants to in a conventional workday of 8 or 10 or 12 hours. At the moment, Roubini's level of influence is probably as great as it ever will be. When he announced at a conference in Dubai—a few hours before Barack Obama's inauguration—that he believed global losses in the credit crisis could top $3.6 trillion, the U.S. stock market promptly plunged. Britain's Telegraph claimed the economist's comments were partly responsible for intensifying the losses. It wasn't the first time. During an October speech in London, Roubini predicted that stock markets in the U.S. and other countries would soon have to shut down for as long as a week to end the rash of panic selling. The forecast went viral immediately. The next day, a number of world markets suffered severe drops, and futures on U.S. markets fell so far that trading in them was halted. The Big Picture, Barry Ritholtz's popular financial blog, posted a guide to how the New York Stock Exchange's circuit breakers work and what sort of drop would be needed to close the market for the day. Ritholtz says the post was a coincidence and not a response to Roubini's predictions that the market would have to shut down. The U.S. stock market ultimately rallied the following week, but Roubini suspects that there could have been some sort of government intervention. "You started low, and instead of falling more, it rallied like crazy. I think that the Treasury might have made such a call," he says. "It was way too strange to be market dynamics." It sounds like conspiracy-theory talk, the sort of chatter one might hear on late-night talk radio, except that other people started saying similar things: Scott Nations, president of Fortress Trading, went on CNBC a few weeks later to make a similar charge, though he claimed the government intervention occurred on different days. Such controversy only fuels the Roubini publicity machine, which needs to be running in full gear to keep up with the growing competition among celebrity doom-mongers.. Nassim Taleb, the famously dour author of The Black Swan, recently said on Charlie Rose's show, "I think it's worse than Roubini thinks. I have the same story." Taleb, who met Roubini for the first time earlier this year, says he meant no rivalry by his comments. "When this crisis was evolving, he was the only economist who made sense," Taleb says. "I have enormous respect for him, and if you know me, I don't have respect for a lot of people." The two recently joined forces to set up (predictably) a Facebook group called Make Bankers Accountable, which encourages banking executives to return bonuses received in previous years. Roubini says he does not want to be known only for his bearish views. But when I ask what it will take for him to see a positive future for the economy, he has a hard time answering. When I press him, he says consumption is key; it will be triggered by job stability and income growth. He has become an outspoken advocate of temporarily nationalizing insolvent banks, saying any other solution is simply prolonging the U.S.'s fiscal agony. Roubini actually thinks the recession could, according to official indicators, end by December. But he maintains that we are in for a weak recovery, one in which companies will continue to shed jobs for at least a year after the economy begins to grow. He still continues to use the "Doctor Doom" sobriquet in his Facebook status updates and lists it prominently in his bio on the website of the company that books his speaking engagements. "It's a nice nickname," he says. "But I tell you, the day when we reach the bottom, I'll be the first one to call in and say Doctor Doom has become Doctor Boom. I'm not a permabear." +++++++ Mas sobre el "apocaliptico" Roubini: Hedging His Bets The star economist splits his time between serious work and posh parties. Six Bloggers of the Apocalypse It takes a lot to make Roubini sound like a Polyanna, but these pundits do it. Roubini Was Right Nouriel Roubini's thoughts about the economy in October 2008.

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http://www.betaggarcian.blogspot.com/

BBCMundo.com: Chávez toma medidas contra la crisis

** Chávez toma medidas contra la crisis **
El gobierno aumentó el IVA y triplicará su endeudamiento para paliar los efectos de la crisis económica mundial.<!-America Latina, Venezuela, reformas económicas-->
< http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/em/fr/-/hi/spanish/latin_america/newsid_7957000/7957528.stm >

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.

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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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