"How can I know what I think until I read what I write?" – Henry James


There are a few lone voices willing to utter heresy. I am an avid follower of Ilusion Monetaria, a blog by ex-Bank of Spain economist (and monetarist) Miguel Navascues here.
Dr Navascues calls a spade a spade. He exhorts Spain to break free of EMU oppression immediately. (Ambrose Evans-Pritchard)

lunes, 24 de noviembre de 2014

Por qué cae Europa?

En un post sin precedentes, Bill Mitchell nos explica definitivamente el motivo de la inevitable caída de Europa. Es demasiado denso para resumirlo, pero les diré que ese trata de su impresión -penosa- de un Congreso en Florencia, organizado por Eunews. Lo importante es que estaban todos los cabezas huecas del tinglado Europeo, a los que Mitchell dinamita su pobre discurso sin compasión. Sí lo siento, es denso, aunque claro, y sí, está en inglés, pero vale la pena. Mitchell es un australiano preocupado por el mal europeo, lo que es paradójico que en las antípodas sepan más de nosotros. Es un Modern Monetary Policy, lo que puede llevar a que ni estemos de acuerdo con algunas de sus posiciones. Pero en la crítica a Europa, acierta de pleno.

Por dar una muestra, van unos párrafos de los más afortunados.
... I spoke to some people who would call themselves firmly ‘left’ in the political spectrum on both economic and social grounds and they were opposed to exit and wanted to strengthen integration. The major reasoning that I could deduce for that extraordinary ‘left’ position in the current context was that the extreme right were leading the charge on the exit option and the ‘left’ couldn’t afford to be associated with Euroscepticism.
That also amazed me. That there could be such a lack of tactical leadership aspiration on the ‘left’. I argued that the challenge was to articulate the differences (and there are huge differences in terms of social policy and attitudes to immigration, climate change etc) even if on some of the economic issues, the left and the right were one.
... The other argument presented against exit by the ‘left’ is that people no longer trust their national political systems and think that Brussels/ECB is a more competent policy making body. This argument is particularly applied to the chaotic and often corrupt Italian political system.
There is truth in the argument that culture intersects with the economy. For example, even if the major insights from MMT are understood, are dysfunctional polity will still deliver poor outcomes.
But is that a recipe for sub-contracting major economic policy to the technocrats and self-serving politicians in the European Commission? Especially, when that system has delivered such a elevated level of incompetence – as is evident everyday in the data that Eurostat pumps out.
... The moderator of my panel also gave a disproportionate time to the ECB Vice President Vítor Constâncio, who spun the usual line that the ECB was in charge of the situation, had been a little surprised by the fact that they had consistently missed their inflation target in the last year (2 per cent) by overestimating the actual inflation.
Interestingly, he then admitted that the Eurozone was now facing a deflationary situation – that is, negative inflation. I read the ECB publications (speeches, news releases, etc) as they come out and the ECB has not yet admitted that. They talk about the dangers of deflation and the need to push the inflation rate up to their target but have never conceded the current situation is one of deflation – which means they have really failed.
... The ‘Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure’ was embedded in the so-called ‘Six-Pack’ and exposes the inherent, anti-people biases that dominate European policy making.
The stated aim of the MIP surveillance mechanism is "to identify potential risks early on, prevent the emergence of harmful macroeconomic imbalances and correct the imbalances that are already in place".
The so-called MIP Scoreboard uses ten ‘early warning’ indicators that provide information about "macroeconomic imbalances and competitiveness losses" which are easy to compute and communicate. Threshold values (positive and negative) are provided to assess when there is an imbalance.
The priorities are clear. A nation that had endured an unemployment rate of say 9.9 per cent for the last three years is not considered to be imbalanced, given the warning threshold is 10 per cent. The Commission chose this very high threshold due to a "focus on adjustment in labour markets and not on cyclical fluctuations".
In other words, they do not consider the unemployment problem in terms of insufficient jobs being caused by deficient levels of spending but, rather, consider the only policy concern to be so-called ‘structural’ issues.

6 comentarios:

João Marcus dijo...

Very depressing! But I mostly agree.

Stuart Medina dijo...

Y si a esto le acompañas el artículo de Wofgang Münchau hoy en el FT ya solo te quedan ganas de salir huyendo. La ironía: los comunistas son keynesianos, los socialdemócratas no saben lo que son y los conservadores son de una superstición llamada escuela austríaca. Y todos ellos incapaces de ver que los alemanes nunca cambiarán la arquitectura monetaria y económica de la UE. ¡Qué inutilidad de clase política y empresarial tenemos! A veces me entran unas ganas de que gane ya Syriza en Grecia, a ver si escarmentando en cabeza ajena....

www.MiguelNavascues.com dijo...

Querido Stuart, eso no hace falta desearlo, caerá por su propio peso. Lo que hay que desear es un milagro.

www.MiguelNavascues.com dijo...

Marcus, is a nightmare!

SalidaDelEuro dijo...

Comparto l mismo pesimismo desde hace varios anhos. Un pesimismo q nace de la impotencia de ver q esta crisis tiene mucho de autoinflingida por una bancarrota intelectual generalizada y una atracion narcisista por la auteridad.
Q no le sorprenda l interes australiano por Euro. Tienen un fuerte complejo de sentirse aislados (como Espanha hasta hace nada pero ellos por motivos geograficos). Dublin y Londres esta lleno de jovencitos australianos q se dedican a revorrer Europa durante unos meses. El australiano q no haya hecho tal cosa n un momento de su vida lo toman por un paleto incorregible.

www.MiguelNavascues.com dijo...

No sabía eso de los australianos, gracias. Un comentario muy bueno. Me gusta eso de austerismo narcisista. Un diez.