Patrón oro, Gran Depresión, proteccionismo

En The Slide to Protectionism in the Great Depression: Who Succumbed and Why? De Eichengreen & Al, encontramos una excelente narración de lo que pasó en el desastroso periodo de entreguerras, narración que permite aclarar y ordenar la catarata de decisiones erróneas que colapsaron la economía mundial en lo que se conoció como la Gran Depresión. El documento es muy interesante por cuanto lo que circulan por España entre los profesionales son explicaciones parciales, mal articuladas, y basada en los dogmas y mitos de la escuela a la que se cree pertenecer. 

Así, una de las versiones de la GD es la de los austriacos, para los que el patrón oro no jugó ninguna papel nocivo, al revés: fue su abandono lo que causó la crisis. 
Tampoco es cierto otro error muy común, que fue la hiperinflación la que hundió a Alemania. La hiperinflación se acabó cuando Alemania se adhirió al patrón oro en 1924... Lo que le provocó una gran deflación, una dislocación mucho mayor de su economía. No fue la hiperinflación lo que hizo ganar las eleciomes a Hitler en 1933... 
Otra de las versiones trivializadas es la de que fue auge del proteccionismo el causante de la GD. El artículo demuestra que el proteccionismo vino después que la GD. 
Este artículo tiene la virtud de colocar cada una de estas versiones parciales en orden correlativo, de modo que se puede apreciar qué fue lo importante y lo que fue subsidiario en la GD. De él selecciono la parte narrativa, obviando la parte empírica que el lector puede seguir en el original. 

El argumento básico es que la crisis monetaria que causó el patrón oro fue la que tuvo como consecuencia posterior el auge del proteccionismo, una vez que uno de los países pilares del sistema, Gran Bretaña, decidió abandonar el patrón oro en 1931. En 1933 le siguió EEUU. Es decir, las medidas contingentes o tarifarias a las importaciones, o bien su alternativa, el control de salida de capitales, fueron medidas de "retaliation" de los países que no quisieron abandonar el corsé del oro. 

Pero la causa de la crisis fue monetaria, una  contracción mundial del dinero en circulación de la que fue culpable el patrón oro, al exigir de sacrificio en su altar una recesión y deflación brutal  los paises miembros. 

... What accounts for the cross-country variation in the use of protectionist measures? We argue the exchange rate regime and associated economic policies were key determinants of trade policies in the early 1930s. Countries that remained on the gold standard, keeping their currencies fixed, were more likely to restrict foreign trade. With other countries devaluing and gaining competitiveness at their expense, they resorted to protectionist policies to strengthen the balance of payments and limit gold losses. Lacking other instruments, notably an independent monetary policy with which to address the deepening slump, they used trade restrictions to shift demand toward domestic goods and, they hoped, stem the rise in unemployment.

In contrast, countries that abandoned the gold standard, allowing their currencies to depreciate, saw their balances of payments strengthen. They gained gold rather than losing it. Abandoning the gold standard also freed up monetary policy. With no gold parity to defend, interest rates could be cut. No longer constrained by the gold standard, central banks had more freedom to act as lenders of last resort. Because they possessed other policy instruments with which to ameliorate the Depression, they were not forced to resort to trade protection as a second-best macroeconomic tool...

El sistema de pagos ligado al oro del periodo de entreguerras nació lastrado por el empeño de rehabilitar las paridades oficiales de antes de la Primera Guerra Mundial, lo que adolecía de falta absoluta de realismo: las economías había salido de la guerra tocadas de manera muy diferente, y además, a las potencias perdedoras se les había cargado con indemnizaciones de guerra utópicas. Para colmo, la oferta total de oro estaba muy desigualmente distribuida, lo que agrandaba las diferencias de capacidad financiera. 

... Unfortunately, the interwar gold-exchange standard was less robust than its prewar predecessor. Governments largely resurrected the prewar pattern of exchange rates despite the fact that relative financial strength and competitive positions had changed as a result of the war. Old gold parities were restored without lowering price levels to prewar levels, resulting in a lower ratio of the value of gold to nominal transactions. The remaining gold was unevenly distributed, with some 60 per cent in the hands of the United States and France.

Esas debilidades se intentaron compensar con un sistema más flexible, en el que el $ y la £ podían usarse como reserva a la par que el oro. Eso obligaba doblemente a EEUU y GB a ser más escrupulosos con su gestión monetaria, aunque, reiteradamente, esa seriedad era cuestionada. 

While the resulting gold shortage was addressed by encouraging the more widespread use of foreign exchange reserves, this heightened the fragility of the system. The willingness of countries to hold foreign exchange was only as strong as the commitment of the reserve-center countries, the United States and Britain, to honor their commitments to convert their liabilities into gold at a fixed price. If those commitments were called into question, there might be a scramble out of foreign exchange, putting sharp deflationary pressure on the world economy And the credibility of those commitments was now less than before World War I. Whether central banks would subordinate other objectives to defending their gold parities was called into question by democratization, the rise of trade unions, and growing awareness of the problem of unemployment. If they wished to maintain investor confidence, central banks could not now show any inclination to deviate from the gold standard rules.

Finalmente, la decisiva cooperación que hubo entre los principales bancos centrales, antes de la guerra, no fue posible, por razones obvias, después de ésta. 

Finally, the international cooperation that had helped to support the prewar system, allowing countries in crisis to continue to adhere to gold parities, was more difficult in the aftermath of a war that had bequeathed ill will, war debts, and reparations. 

Estos motivos determinaron la incapacidad del sistema para hacer frente al primer choque de la GD. En cuanto se agudizó la desconfianza en el $ y la £, estos países se vieron obligados a subir los tipos de interés para frenar las salidas de oro, lo que amplificó el primer choque, los primeros temblores de los mercados. Una jugada especialmente maligna fue la de Francia, que para no perder oro devaluó su paridad, recuperó competitividad y volvió a recibir entradas de oro, oro que guardada en el BF sin monetizarlo. El efecto fue una contracción aún  mayor de la liquidez mundial. 

For all these reasons, the interwar gold standard was incapable of withstanding the shock of the Great Depression.5 The system immediately came under strain with the economic slowdown and recession that began in 1928-29. The trigger for this downturn continues to be debated, although recent accounts have highlighted the decision by the Federal Reserve Board to tighten monetary policy and the French decisions to de jure stabilize the franc at a depreciated rate and to convert holdings of foreign exchange reserves into gold, all in 1928 (Hamilton 1987, Eichengreen 1992, Johnson 1997). These policies drained gold from the rest of the world and required other countries to pursue more restrictive monetary policies. 

La causa del colapso del comercio mundial fue la crisis financiera de 1931, desatada en Austria.

The spark that caused the world trading system to collapse was the financial crisis in the summer of 1931.11 The failure of the largest Austrian bank, the Creditanstalt, unsettled financial markets and caused capital flows to seize up. The German government depended on foreign loans to finance its expenditures, and the drying up of those loans triggered a run on the mark and a loss of gold reserves (Ferguson and Temin 2003, Temin 2008). The government was forced to impose strict controls on foreign exchange transactions. In theory Germany could have devalued, but the reparations agreement fixed its obligation in dollars of constant gold content. This meant that devaluing would have had devastating effects on the public finances. In any case memories of hyperinflation when the gold standard was in abeyance meant that abandoning the system would have unleashed a collective hysteria.12 To limit losses of gold and foreign exchange reserves, Germany therefore imposed controls on capital movements as well as trade finance. Hungary was hit, since its financial system was tied to Austria’s; it imposed controls in July 1931. Other countries such as Chile, which was battered by declining copper prices, followed with controls of their own...

...  In August the pressure spread to Britain as trade credits extended to Germany by British merchant banks were frozen.13 A sharp increase in interest rates did little to stem the Bank of England’s gold losses. Against the backdrop of rising unemployment which rendered the Bank reluctant to raise interest rates further, the need for lender-of-last-resort intervention now tipped the balance. On September 19, Britain abandoned the gold standard and allowed sterling to depreciate.

That depreciation sent shockwaves through the world economy. Other countries either followed Britain off gold or imposed restrictions on trade and payments as a defensive measure to reduce imports and strengthen the balance of payments. Within days, other countries with close trade and financial ties to Britain -- Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden among them - - allowed their currencies to depreciate relative to gold. Japan, concluding that its recent resumption of gold convertibility had been a mistake, followed in December...

Una vez empezada l "huid del oro", los paises que se quedaron tenían pocas alternativa vas para evitar la contracción. O bi n limitar o penalizar las importaciones, o bien controlar la salida decapitales. 

... Thus, in the midst of the global depression, countries that remained on the gold standard sought to improve their balance of payments position and preserve their gold and foreign exchange reserves. This could be achieved either by limiting capital exports through exchange controls (Germany) or by limiting spending on imports through trade restrictions (France), or both. In fact, such policies were substitute for one another. If exchange controls were comprehensive, they could be administered in a manner that left no need for additional measures such as tariffs or quotas. Import licensing and government allocation of foreign exchange meant that officials could determine the total amount of spending on imports and allocate that spending across different goods and country suppliers. Therefore, a country imposing exchange controls might not have to resort to higher tariffs and quotas because it already had the ability to limit imports through administrative action....

...  If countries remaining on the gold standard raised trade barriers as a result of their inability to resort to other more conventional policies to stabilize their economies and financial systems, it follows that countries should have begun relaxing their trade restrictions once they abandoned gold. There is evidence of this. In 1934, a year after the United States went off gold, Congress enacted the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act authorizing the president to reduce U.S. import duties in trade agreements with other countries. Within four years, the agreements reached under the act had essentially undone the Smoot-Hawley tariff increase (Irwin 1998).

Una vez abandonado el patrón oro por lo países más importantes, estos pudieron relajar sus medidas tarifarias y de control de pagos,

Similarly, once the remaining gold bloc countries devalued in September 1936 and started recovering from the slump, they began removing some of their trade barriers. League of Nations (1942, 85) noted that “Before the end of October 1936, tariff reductions and/or quota relaxations had been announced in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Italy, Czechoslovakia, and Latvia.” For example, having devalued in September, France reduced its tariffs by 15-20 per cent the next month, and Switzerland reduced many of its import tariffs by more than 50 per cent.46 Relaxing the gold constraint and pursuing more expansionary monetary policies relieved the pressure to maintain restrictive trade policies. On the other hand, countries imposing exchange controls never formally abandoned the gold standard and consequently continued to restrict trade through such controls for the rest of the decade... 

Conclusions

 ... Our account helps explain why some countries were more inclined than others to a protectionist response and lends structure to the otherwise chaotic tale of the collapse of world trade. It suggests that had more countries been willing to abandon the gold standard and use monetary policy to counter the slump, fewer would have been driven to impose trade restrictions in the desperate if ultimately futile effort to stem the rise in unemployment...