Keynes y la Gran Depresión

Pese la dificultad de su lectura, The Great Slump, de Keynes, es una pieza angular de la historia del pensamiento económico. (Thanks to David Glasner)

Keynes trata de explicar a las profanos la Gran caída -luego rebautizada como la Gran Depresión- de la que ya en 1930 sus daños se ha extendido al mundo entero. En este artículo Keynes anticipa una buena parte de sus ideas que cristalizarán el la Teoría General de 1936. Creo que las coincidencias con la economía europea actual son más que evidentes.

Esas ideas son una ruptura con lo que él luego llamará la economía de los clásicos, es decir, la economía tal como se venía practicando hasta la crisis que Keynes trata de explicar.

Lo que Keynes quiere transmitir es que no hay ciclos alcistas y bajistas que al cabo del tiempos se compensan, sobre actuando en torno a una tendencia a largo plazo alcista. Hay crisis que provocan reacciones de los que agentes que, en contra de lo que decían los clásicos, agravan la crisis y la alargan.

Intento resumir aquí lo esencial de este texto:

- Primero, en contra de lo que decían los clásicos, lo que conviene a cada individuo o productor hacer es contraproducente si lo hacen todos.

In this quandary individual producers base illusory hopes on courses of action which would benefit an individual producer or class of producers so long as they were alone in pursuing them, but which benefit no one if everyone pursues them. For example, to restrict the output of a particular primary commodity raises its price, so long as the output of the industries which use this commodity is unrestricted; but if output is restricted all round, then the demand for the primary commodity falls off by just as much as the supply, and no one is further forward. Or again, if a particular producer or a particular country cuts wages, then, so long as others do not follow suit, that producer or that country is able to get more of what trade is going. But if wages are cut all round, the purchasing power of the community as a whole is reduced by the same amount as the reduction of costs; and, again, no one is further forward.

Thus neither the restriction of output nor the reduction of wages serves in itself to restore equilibrium.
It is the characteristic of a boom that their sale-proceeds exceed their costs; and it is the characteristic of a slump that their costs exceed their sale-proceeds. Moreover, it is a delusion to suppose that they can necessarily restore equilibrium by reducing their total costs, whether it be by restricting their output or cutting rates of remuneration; for the reduction of their outgoings may, by reducing the purchasing power of the earners who are also their customers, diminish their sale-proceeds by a nearly equal amount.

- Segundo, esto es particularmente serio cuando los agentes están endeudados por inversiones del pasado que, por la deflación, ha caídos de precio:

Moreover, even if we were to succeed eventually in re-establishing output at the lower level of money-wages appropriate to (say) the pre-war level of prices, our troubles would not be at an end. For since 1914 an immense burden of bonded debt, both national and international, has been contracted, which is fixed in terms of money. Thus every fall of prices increases the burden of this debt, because it increases the value of the money in which it is fixed.

-Tercero, la importancia crucial de las expectativas:

1. Why are workers and plant unemployed? Because industrialists do not expect to be able to sell without loss what would be produced if they were employed.

2. Why cannot industrialists expect to sell without loss? Because prices have fallen more than costs have fallen—indeed, costs have fallen very little.

- Cuarto, la descoordinación entre las expectativas de los prestamistas y de los inversores.

But capital-goods will not be produced on a larger scale unless the producers of such goods are making a profit. So we come to our second question—upon what do the profits of the producers of capital-goods depend? They depend on whether the public prefer to keep their savings liquid in the shape of money or its equivalent or to use them to buy capital-goods or the equivalent. If the public are reluctant to buy the latter, then the producers of capital-goods will make a loss; consequently less capital-goods will be produced; with the result that, for the reasons given above, producers of consumption-goods will also make a loss. In other words, all classes of producers will tend to make a loss; and general unemployment will ensue. By this time a vicious circle will be set up, and, as the result of a series of actions and reactions, matters will get worse and worse until something happens to turn the tide.

This is an unduly simplified picture of a complicated phenomenon. But I believe that it contains the essential truth. Many variations and fugal embroideries and orchestrations can be superimposed; but this is the tune.

If, then, I am right, the fundamental cause of the trouble is the lack of new enterprise due to an unsatisfactory market for capital investment. Since trade is international, an insufficient output of new capital-goods in the world as a whole affects the prices of commodities everywhere and hence the profits of producers in all countries alike.

Why is there an insufficient output of new capital-goods in the world as a whole? It is due, in my opinion, to a conjunction of several causes. In the first instance, it was due to the attitude of lenders—for new capital-goods are produced to a large extent with borrowed money. Now it is due to the attitude of borrowers, just as much as to that of lenders.

Los prestatarios, o inversores, tienen expectativas sobre sus beneficios futuros demasiado bajas para llegar a un nivel de producción compatible con el pleno empleo; los prestamistas, que son los que financian la inversión, por una serie de razones,

A large proportion of the globe is, for one reason or another, distrusted by lenders, so that they exact a premium for risk so great as to strangle new enterprise altogether. For the last two years, two out of the three principal creditor nations of the world, namely, France and the United States, have largely withdrawn their resources from the international market for long-term loans.
A wide gulf, therefore, is set between the ideas of lenders and the ideas of borrowers for the purpose of genuine new capital investment; with the result that the savings of the lenders are being used up in financing business losses and distress borrowers, instead of financing new capital works.
But there cannot be a real recovery, in my judgment, until the ideas of lenders and the ideas of productive borrowers are brought together again; partly by lenders becoming ready to lend on easier terms and over a wider geographical field, partly by borrowers recovering their good spirits and so becoming readier to borrow.

Y esto enlaza con la condición de rareza monetaria que el patrón oro, recién restaurado, había impuesto en el mundo por el aumento de la demanda de oro y la subida de su precio, que llevan a la contracción de la circulación de dinero en el mundo. Keynes invita a las naciones que dejen de acumular oro, y a que los bancos centrales más importantes se coordinen para bajar los tipos de interés mundiales y animar la inversión (es claro que no ha nacido todavía el Keynes de la política fiscal como guía del dinero).

In every way the more effective remedy would be that the Central Banks of these three great creditor nations should join together in a bold scheme to restore confidence to the international long-term loan market; which would serve to revive enterprise and activity everywhere, and to restore prices and profits, so that in due course the wheels of the world's commerce would go round again. And even if France, hugging the supposed security of gold, prefers to stand aside from the adventure of creating new wealth, I am convinced that Great Britain and the United States, like-minded and acting together, could start the machine again within a reasonable time; if, that is to say, they were energized by a confident conviction as to what was wrong. For it is chiefly the lack of this conviction which to-day is paralyzing the hands of authority on both sides of the Channel and of the Atlantic.

Sobre esta coordinación, que hoy brilla por su ausencia, debido al imperio de la ideas económicas noeliberales (que están aumentando el riesgo de reacciones imprevistas de los mercados ante la falta de coordinación) traigo a colación lo que contestaba Frances Copolla en en la magnífica entrevista de Ana Fuentes:

I’m a big fan of cooperation between central banks. They are major players in the world’s markets and their actions have enormous effects. When one large central bank acts unilaterally, the spillover effects to other parts of the world can be considerable. And competition between them causes currency and trade distortions that can have devastating effects. They really must start acting in a more coordinated fashion.