Vie d'uscita?/1: il piano obama

Ecco un articolo del Wall Street Journal, che solleva forti dubbi sul piano Obama, non su base ideologica (come hanno fatto ampiamente i Repubblicani) ma ricordando ciò che era già accaduto in Giappone quando nei primi anni '90 fu colpito da una crisi creditizia e decise di approntare un piano di investimenti "keynesiani" per rilanciare l'economia.

In breve, il risultato fu la costruzione di innumerevoli cattedrali nel deserto, un'inutile innalzare sproporzionate strutture che non favorì alcuna ripresa, ma lascio il paese con uno dei debiti pubblici più sbilanciati al mondo.
nel caso presente inoltre, lo stimulus package è composto anche da una enorme iniezione di liquidità "per salvare il sistema bancario": gli 800 miliardi di dollari già stanziati dal piano Paulson (circa Ottobre 2008) sono finiti. Si dice in questi casi che ogni ulteriore rifinanziamento, per quanto ingente, sia come "versare acqua in un lavandino": tutto sarà inghiottito, se le premesse che hanno causato il problema restano, come sono, invariate.
Ma quanto gli Usa possono andare avanti così, ripianando ogni 3-4 mesi i buchi che il sistema continua a riformare, mentre la loro economia reale nel frattempo è in brusca frenata (con il conseguente calo di gettito fiscale)? Quante risorse restano per nuovi investimenti in infrastrutture e "ricerca verde"?
Per di più, pur concedendo doti soprannaturali ad Obama, che in fondo è simpatico, sappiamo bene che un'assemblea di politici chiamata a spendere denaro pubblico tende a identificare il bene comune con il proprio, o dei propri finanziatori. E ciò pare sia avvenuto qui, con l'approvazione di uno zibaldone di voci di spesa le più disparate, opere di dubbia utilità, concessioni ad aziende che dovrebbero invece fallire perché fuori mercato, etc.
(Anche in Usa i politici non scherzano quanto a sfruttare la loro posizione: il successore di Obama al seggio in Senato è stato accusato di aver messo all'asta il posto liberato dal novello Presidente).
Per avere contezza visiva dei ridottissimi margini di manovra lasciati allo Stato americano, un utile grafico del rapporto Debito-Pil Usa:

Barack Obama San

DECEMBER 16, 2008

As January 20 nears, Barack Obama's ambitions for spending on the likes of roads, bridges and jobless benefits keep growing. The latest leak puts the "stimulus" at $1 trillion over a couple of years, and the political class is embracing it as a miracle cure.

Not to spoil the party, but this is not a new idea. Keynesian "pump-priming" in a recession has often been tried, and as an economic stimulus it is overrated. The money that the government spends has to come from somewhere, which means from the private economy in higher taxes or borrowing. The public works are usually less productive than the foregone private investment.

In the Age of Obama, we seem fated to re-explain these eternal lessons. So for today we thought we'd recount the history of the last major country that tried to spend its way to "stimulus" -- Japan during its "lost decade" of the 1990s. In 1992, Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa faced falling property prices and a stock market that had sunk 60% in three years. Mr. Miyazawa's Liberal Democratic Party won re-election promising that Japan would spend its way to becoming a "lifestyle superpower." The country embarked on a great Keynesian experiment:

WSJ Asia editorial page editor Mary Kissel says massive "stimulus" plans didn't help Japan. (Dec. 18)

August 1992: 10.7 trillion yen ($85 billion). Japan passed its largest-ever stimulus package to that time, with 8.6 trillion yen earmarked for public works, 1.2 trillion to expand loan quotas for small- and medium-sized businesses and 900 billion for the Japan Development Bank. The package passed in December, but investment kept falling and unemployment rose. By the end of the year, Japan's debt-to-GDP ratio was 68.6%.

April 1993: 13.2 trillion yen. At exchange rates of the day, this was a whopping $117 billion giveaway, again mostly for public works and small businesses. Tokyo erupted into domestic politicking over election practices, the economy went sideways, and the government fell. New Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa floated tax cuts, deregulation and decentralization to spur growth. But as the economy worsened -- inflation-adjusted GNP shrank 0.5% in the April to June quarter -- the political drumbeat for handouts increased.

September 1993: 6.2 trillion yen. Mr. Hosokawa announced a compromise "smaller" stimulus of $59 billion, along with minor deregulation. He dropped plans for an income-tax cut. The stimulus included 2.9 trillion yen in low-interest home financing, one trillion yen for "social infrastructure," and another trillion for business. The economy didn't respond. By the end of the year, Japan's debt-to-GDP reached 74.7%.

Is any of this beginning to sound familiar? There's more.

February 1994: 15.3 trillion yen. This stimulus included 5.8 trillion in income-tax cuts, 7.2 trillion in public investment, 1.5 trillion for small business and employment-support, 500 billion for land purchases and 230 billion for agricultural modernization. The income tax cut was temporary, effective only for 1994. The economy stagnated and Prime Minister Hosokawa resigned amid a corruption scandal. By the end of the year, debt-to-GDP was 80.2%.

September 1995: 14.2 trillion yen. The Socialist government of Tomiichi Murayama, with a wobbly coalition, rolled out a $137 billion whopper, with 4.6 trillion in public works, 3.2 trillion for government land purchases, 1.3 trillion in business loans, and more. Mr. Murayama resigned in early 1996, and in June Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto agreed to raise consumption taxes to 5% from 3%, starting in April 1997, to reduce the fiscal deficit.

In 1994 and 1995, Japan spent 3.1% and 2.9% of its annual GDP, and (helped by central bank easing) the economy did respond with modest growth for about two years. Debt-to-GDP hit 87.6%.

April 1998: 16.7 trillion yen. When growth starting slowing again, the re-elected LDP turned to old medicine: 7.7 trillion yen for public works. The $128 billion grab-bag also included 2.3 trillion for the disposal of bad loans. The government announced four trillion yen in (again) temporary income-tax cuts, spread over two years. Mr. Hashimoto resigned in July after voters registered their discontent at the polls.

November 1998: 23.9 trillion yen. Desperate to get the economy moving, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi rolled out the country's largest-ever stimulus, valued at $195 billion. The giveaway included 8.1 trillion yen in social public works, 5.9 trillion for business loans, one trillion for job-creation programs, 700 billion in cash handouts to 35 million households, and more. By the end of the year, debt-to-GDP hit 114.3%.

November 1999: 18 trillion yen. In a "last push," Mr. Obuchi's government spent 7.4 trillion yen to prop up businesses, 6.8 trillion yen for social infrastructure projects like telecommunications and environmental projects, and two trillion yen for housing loans, among other things. Debt-to-GDP reached 128.3%.

Japan's economy grow anemically over that decade, but as the nearby chart shows, its national debt exploded. Only in this decade, with a monetary reflation and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's decision to privatize state assets and force banks to acknowledge their bad debts, did the economy recover. Yet recent governments have rolled back Mr. Koizumi's reforms and returned to their spending habits. But Japan does have better roads.

Now we're told that a similar spending program -- a new New Deal -- will revive the U.S. economy. How do you say "good luck" in Japanese?

Rain in Spain..

dalla ex-ridente Spagna del competente Zapatero.

Spain’s recession: After the fiesta

By Victor Mallet

Published: February 17 2009 20:13 | Last updated: February 17 2009 20:13

When a top soccer club in a country as fanatical about the game as Spain fails to pay its players, it is a warning that something may be drastically wrong with one of Europe’s most successful economies.

David Villa (below), scorer of Spain’s first goal in the victory last week over England in Seville, is a member of the Valencia squad whose latest salary payment has been delayed indefinitely by the heavily indebted club. He is just one of the growing number of victims, rich and poor, of a plunge into a recession that is on course to be among the steepest in Europe.

The strains are starting to show in Spain’s normally easygoing society. African residents and street hawkers demonstrated twice last week in the Madrid district of Lavapiés against alleged racism and police raids; it subsequently emerged that police in the capital had been given weekly quotas for arresting illegal immigrants. In Andalucia to the south, thousands of other immigrants without food or shelter flooded into country towns at the start of the winter, hunting in vain for olive harvesting work that had already been taken by Spanish job-seekers.

Cranes stand idle on half-finished housing estates along the coast and on the outskirts of big cities. Many small shops in central Madrid have closed. One building company owner ruined by the economic crisis stands accused of five bank hold-ups; another threatened to set fire to himself unless the local council paid him the €450,000 ($566,000, £397,500) it owed.

“We’re not going to have a recession. We’re going to have a depression like in the 1930s,” says Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quirós, economist and chairman of Freemarket International Consulting. He is one of the more pessimistic analysts but justifies his gloom by pointing at predictions that are widely shared: unemployment at 19 per cent of the workforce by the end of the year (up from more than 14 per cent, or 3.3m people, now); a budget deficit of at least 6.5 per cent of gross domestic product; economic contraction of 3 per cent or more in 2009; and possible deflation. “This is the perfect framework, together with a financial crisis, for a depression,” he concludes.

That could hit what is one of the world’s top 10 economies, and the fourth largest member of the eurozone, so severely that it could lose many of the gains made in the decade since the introduction of the common currency.

Until the global economic crisis hit, the country had performed well. Its return to democracy and prosperity after a civil war and the dictatorship of Francisco Franco is, after all, one of the great success stories of postwar Europe. In the decade to 2006, real growth ran at an annual average of 3.7 per cent, compared with 2.1 per cent for the rest of the eurozone. Per head, GDP has risen to more than 90 per cent of the average for the European Union’s core 15 western member states.

Scorned south

Eurozone governments have kept a keen eye on the worrying propensity of investors to rank some single-currency members as more of a credit risk than others. The gap between interest rates on bonds from best-in-class Germany and those required of presumed laggards – Spain, Greece, Portugal, Ireland and Italy – has grown to record levels in recent months, writes Gerrit Wiesmann.

The danger that higher spending and rising interest payments could push some countries towards default has prompted Giulio Tremonti, Italy’s finance minister, to float the idea of a bond issued collectively by the European Union – a proposal widely rejected on the grounds that it would free governments from taking responsibility for their policies.

Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, said this month that, as each eurozone country was responsible for its budget, so it should be responsible for financing it – although he noted that EU members controlled the European Investment Bank, which could raise money cheaply for anything the EU saw fit.

This expansion helped to create more than 5m jobs and draw in more immigrants as a proportion of the population than anywhere else on the Continent. Construction, especially housebuilding financed by easy credit, was the main driver of the economy for a decade – and therein lies the source of the difficulties. As in the US and Britain, the property bubble has burst with a vengeance.

An estimated 1m newly built flats and houses lie empty in Spain. Housebuilding – which accounted directly for 7.5 per cent of GDP in 2006 – is grinding to a halt. The lobby group representing 14 big property developers said on Tuesday that they had started not a single new house in December and only 135 in the whole final quarter of 2008. Total housing starts peaked at more than 700,000 units in 2006. “The pattern of growth in the Spanish economy during 15 years has been based on financial markets that were very liquid – a lot of liquidity and cheap liquidity,” says Rafael Doménech, chief economist for Europe of BBVA, the Spanish bank. “It was optimal for the Spanish economy, for households and for firms to use that liquidity to increase their debt.”

And so they did. Private sector debt doubled in a decade to 120 per cent of GDP. With much of the credit coming from German pensioners and other savers via Spanish mortgage-backed securities, the current account deficit hit more than 10 per cent of GDP. With a changed environment in the financial markets, says Mr Doménech, “we cannot expect to use the same growth model as in the last 10 years”.

In theory, Spain could replace the lost construction activity with increased output in other sectors. It is one of the world’s more open economies and its companies in fashion, renewable energy, infrastructure and banking have been active exporters and investors overseas. But other economies are in no position to take up the slack. Spain’s automotive industry, which makes up one-fifth of the country’s exports and 6 per cent of GDP, is struggling to deal with a collapse in demand at home and abroad. Tourism is a €50bn business but arrivals fell 3 per cent last year, the first year-on-year decline since the current measuring system was introduced in 1997.

. . .

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister, has taken the same route as other crisis-hit leaders around the world and announced a blizzard of state spending plans (there were more than 90 separate anti-crisis measures at the last count) in an attempt to slow the rise in unemployment and stave off a prolonged depression. Miguel Sebastián, his industry minister, has flirted with protectionism – although he denies the charge – by launching a “Buy Spanish” campaign.

Yet there is no certainty that the spending measures – some of them announced over the objections of Pedro Solbes, finance minister and former guarantor of fiscal restraint – will have the required effect. What is certain is that the government’s fiscal room for manoeuvre, with the projected budget deficit already more than double the EU’s permitted ceiling of 3 per cent of GDP, is severely limited. Although accumulated public debt remains relatively modest, the deterioration of public finances prompted Standard & Poor’s to remove Spain’s triple-A credit rating last month.

In previous crises, Spain simply devalued its peseta to improve the competitiveness of its exports and attract investment – the path now being taken by the UK and the free-floating pound – but a unilateral devaluation is no longer an option for a member of the single currency zone.

Almost every chief executive, orthodox economist and rightwing opposition politician in the country concludes that the only way for Spain to emerge stronger from the crisis – indeed, to survive it within the confines of the eurozone – is for it to improve productivity and competitiveness by adopting structural reforms. By that they usually mean that employees could be hired and fired more easily and cheaply and wages would be set by companies rather than entire industries.

Miguel Angel Fernández Ordóñez, governor of the central bank, entered the debate last week, irritating the government by calling labour reform the “most important” measure to cut unemployment. There is no sign that Mr Zapatero will embark on any such vigorous programme, but even if he did it would take time to have an impact.

In the meantime, an end to Spain’s outperformance leaves open the question of whether it can all restart when the global crisis ends. Construction was such an important part of growth that recovery will inevitably be slow, economists say. “Probably at the end of three or four years – it is difficult to know when – Spain’s per capita income will accelerate significantly again, reducing the gap with other EU economies,” says Mr Doménech.

That, however, is one of the more optimistic forecasts. Mr Bernaldo de Quirós is not so cheerful. “The Spanish economy won’t start to grow at 3 per cent for about seven years. Spaniards will lose half their wealth,” he says. “It’s horrible.”

AS TILES LOSE THEIR LUSTRE, VILLARREAL STRUGGLES TO COVER THE CRACKS IN AN INDUSTRIAL MONOCULTURE

To the first-time visitor, it may be surprising how many buildings in Villarreal, an otherwise nondescript industrial town in eastern Spain, are faced with ceramic tiles: an office block in shiny white here, a civic monument in matt black there. Even the walls of the soccer stadium have been decorated with yellow tiles.

That is because Villarreal lives and dies by the ceramic tile industry. The town of 51,000 and the surrounding area of Castellón province account for more than 90 per cent of Spain’s decorative tile output, with 220 tile factories and 24 glaze producers.

Yet the industry that has replaced citrus growing as Villarreal’s main provider of wealth and jobs is in serious trouble. “Fear,” says Joaquín Font de Mora, general manager of Vidres, a glaze maker, when asked to describe the mood in Villarreal. “Fear of losing one’s job. Each month you can see that there are companies laying people off.”

The collapse of Spain’s previously frenzied home construction sector has had a catastrophic effect on demand for tiles. “There was lots of talk of the property bubble bursting, but we didn’t think it would be so sudden,” says Mr Font de Mora, speaking at his company’s stand at the Cevisama ceramics trade fair in Valencia. As expected, demand slackened in 2007 and 2008. “But between November 2008 and February this year, it’s been barbaric.”

With stocks of unsold tiles piling up, many manufacturers and their suppliers have cancelled overtime, shed workers or even suspended operations. “There’s lots of supply and not much demand,” says Antonio Piquer Saura, co-director of Rocersa Cerámica, one of the larger family-owned tile makers, which has 280 employees and annual turnover of about €60m ($76m, £53m). “Quite a few companies have closed and others have reduced production.”

For Juan José Rubert, mayor of Villarreal and also an economics professor, the fate of the town is a textbook example of the dangers of overdependence on a single industry. “It’s an industrial monoculture,” he says. “Each job that is lost in a ceramics factory can cause one or two more job losses in connected industries. What was once a virtuous circle is now a vicious circle.”

As in the rest of Spain, building sites lie idle, with construction companies not bothering to finish blocks of flats they will be unable to sell. Some of the Se vende and Se alquila signs offering new homes for sale or rent have been on display for two years.

No obvious relief for Villarreal is in sight. Business owners and the local government, which is run by the rightwing Popular party, the national opposition, are sceptical about the multi-billion euro nationwide spending plans announced by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the Socialist prime minister.

Diversification into other sectors of the economy seems an attractive long-term option, although it is hard to imagine any business that could provide as many jobs as the huge ceramic tile factories that dominate the roads into the town.

Spain’s east coast citrus farms are already suffering as a result of intense competition from growers in North Africa. Tourism is an equally long shot for Villarreal – the town is obviously industrial and the beaches are 5km away.

The tile companies are hoping that exports and retail sales in Spain for home improvements will tide them over until the new homes market starts to recover. “We hope that in 2010 little by little Spanish demand will return,” says Mr Font de Mora, gesturing philosophically to a bottle of Rioja. “You have to see the bottle as half full rather than half empty as long as there is any liquid left.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Disclaimer: perché, oggi, l'economia è il punto.

Anche se potrebbe trasparire dai post finora presenti, nelle mie (buone..) intenzioni questo non vuole essere un blog dedicato solo alla crisi (che, in quest'epoca, significa rassomigliare sinistramente ad un bollettino di guerra).
Non credo di essere io ad occuparmi solo di economia; piuttosto è la situazione economica attuale che tocca numerosi aspetti della nostra civiltà e vita personale, essendone insieme specchio e artefice, ben al di là quindi della sezione "Economia" dei giornali o delle discussioni fra gli ormai famigerati "esperti".
Anzi, credo che l'aver confinato ogni possibilità di discussione e conoscenza ai soli economisti, ponendo i fenomeni economici nella sfera dell'ineluttabile e delle ferree leggi di natura, sia una delle cause principali, se non proprio dello sconquasso in corso, almeno della attuale tardiva e affrettata ricerca di rimedi.
Bisogna dire che è stata un'operazione a livello globale ben riuscita perché molto comoda, facendo coincidere gli interessi di diversi soggetti: gli operatori, con l'illusione di avere "le mani libere", i pochi intellettuali e studiosi incoronati Venerati Maestri, lasciati pontificare incontrastati anche quando ripetevano mantra contro un semplice buon senso (e.g. i classici "conti della massaia", per dire), ed infine i politici, felici finalmente di non doversi più occupare in prima persona di un ambito nei secoli sempre ostico e delicato, che avrebbe richiesto da parte loro una certa competenza, ma soprattutto spina dorsale, con una visione d'insieme e del bene comune non più molto considerate dagli elettori come proprie di chi li deve governare.

Canzoncina italiana sull'attualità della crisi..nel 1933!

La nave

Brutalmente parlando, posso riassumere con una similitudine l’idea che mi sono fatto della situazione, integrando e confrontando ciò che ho letto con ciò che vedo e sento intorno a me.
Se i vari sistemi economico-sociali umani della storia fossero delle navi, il nostro attuale è come un moderno transatlantico, che, rispetto agli altri navigli, sia in assoluto il più grande, efficiente, veloce e confortevole (almeno per i passeggeri delle classi superiori) nel solcare il mare.
Ci siamo però accorti ora che, per qualche ragione, accidente, colpa di qualcuno o inevitabilità, l’acqua ha iniziato a filtrare da delle falle nelle stive: anzi, forse quelle falle ci sono state fin dall’inizio, ma non entrava acqua; anzi, forse l’acqua ha iniziato ad entrare molto tempo fa, ma nessuno l’aveva notato.
Le reazioni a bordo sono inizialmente minimizzare il problema: i comandanti tacciono, i clienti possono continuare a godersi la crociera. I marinai preposti vengono mandati con poca pubblicità nelle stive a controllare il problema, e non risolvono nulla: le loro manovre sono insufficienti, se non dannose, l’acqua è salita e si entra in quantità maggiore.
La nave accenna ben presto a perdere spinta e i comandanti, dopo il colloquio con i tecnici scelti, impotenti a turare le falle, pensano allora che sia meglio tenere i passeggeri ancora all’oscuro della cosa, e mantenere la velocità: motori vengono allora spinti al massimo, ma col solo risultato di bruciare prezioso carburante, visto che il rallentamento è costante.
L’acqua continua ad entrare nelle stive: tutti sulla nave avvertono una leggera pendenza della coperta, e notano per la prima volta che non sfreccia più, ma avanza piuttosto lentamente.
Le reazioni fra i passeggeri sono diverse: la maggior parte cerca, com’è d’altronde normale, di non rovinarsi la vacanza, e continua a danzare al ritmo le orchestrine; altri, più attenti, pensano ad una normale pausa momentanea, voluta o meno, e che fra poco si risolverà il problema e si tornerà a piena velocità; qualcuno dà la colpa agli straccioni delle classi inferiori, perché “avranno combinato qualcosa là sotto” (in effetti spesso salgono a scroccare il buffet nei piani più alti..). C’è chi, per buon senso o competenza, rileva come ci siano i tipici segnali di una falla.
I comandanti, interrogati da tutti (tranne gli ignari appassionati del ballo), smentiscono risolutamente che si stia imbarcando acqua, ammettono delle difficoltà, forse ai motori, che però si risolveranno da sole o con qualche piccolo intervento.
La realtà nelle stive è invece grave: nessun rimedio è stato trovato, e sempre più scompartimenti sono invasi. Gli stessi tecnici poi cominciano a riportare informazioni confuse ai comandanti, e iniziano ad applicare, un po’ affannati, tutte le misure che conoscono, senza alcun miglioramento.
La nave è ora visibilmente inclinata ed è quasi ferma: i passeggeri si radunano sotto la cabina dei comandanti, i quali non hanno soluzioni al problema, e hanno nel frattempo sprecato inutilmente gran parte della riserva di carburante, ma trovano comunque il sistema di rassicurare il pubblico. Con grande enfasi, in corteo, tutto (e solo) lo stato maggiore scende in visita ufficiale nelle stive, per constatare ciò che in realtà già sa, e una volta risalito, dopo plateali consultazioni nei propri quartieri, davanti al pubblico radunato, con aria ferma e sicura, esprime la massima fiducia nei marinai qualificati per il loro lavoro e invita tutti a tornare a fare come se nulla fosse e, se del caso, evitare i mobili che si rovesciano o altri contrattempi dell’inclinazione (si promette la messa a disposizione di cerotti e medicamenti per eventuali feriti).
Ma l’acqua continua a salire dentro la nave, e comincia ad entrare nelle cabine inferiori: i primi passeggeri di terza classe iniziano a precipitarsi verso le scale, e piombare ai piani di sopra. La nave si ferma, e con i motori bloccati anche la luce elettrica scarseggia e fatica a mantenere tutti i comfort dei piani superiori. Diversa gente della prima classe comincia a lamentarsi per lo scarso livello del servizio.
La nave, con una serie di scossoni, inizia velocemente a piegarsi, sempre più bassa.


Ecco, questo è ciò che stiamo vivendo. Data la complessità della struttura, e contraddittorie informazioni date da tecnici e politici, nessuno capisce precisamente l’entità delle falle, né con quale precisa successione l’acqua invaderà gli scompartimenti della nave e tantomeno come, e perfino se, colerà a picco. Forse potrebbe anche tirare avanti per un bel po’ o molto tempo, chissà.

I pochi punti certi sono che la nostra nave sta imbarcando acqua da delle falle che nessuno sa riparare, che non sarà più così rapida e in quanto a comfort e libertà offerta non sarà più così nettamente superiore alle altre imbarcazioni che un tempo, tronfi passeggeri di prima classe, potevamo guardare come residuati storici o bizzarrie.