Aqui fica um artigo escrito por Bill Gross. Quém Bill Gross? É só o responsável pelo maior fundo de obrigações norte-americano.
"What, We Worry? Yes."
By William H. Gross
Tuesday, January 13, 2004; Page A17
"The United States is overextended, not just militarily but economically. We are trying to do too much, borrow too much, spend too much, and sooner or later we will have to suffer the consequences. We are a country in the beginning stages of what can best be described as hegemonic decay. Empires take decades if not centuries to wither, a process more clearly viewed through a rearview mirror; Edward Gibbon's masterful account of the decline and fall of the Roman Empire is perhaps the greatest example of this truth. But here and now, we're much less inclined to Gibbon's viewpoint than we are to Alfred E. Newman's. "What, we worry?" is pretty much the national motto when it comes to our finance-based economy and its future prospects.
Let me approach this predicament from a more personal angle -- by comparing a large nation to a typical U.S. family. Pretend that you're a head or co-head of a household. You earn a good salary, but it never seems to be enough. There are bills to pay, the Joneses to keep up with, and you've had your eye on that goofy Hummer for at least a few months now. You'd like to save money, but you can't or you won't, so you don't. As a matter of fact, each year for the past decade or so you've had to borrow 4, 5, 6 percent of your annual income to pay for what you want. You're running a personal deficit. But that's still okay, you figure. You're strong, vibrant, prospects are good, and there's no way you shouldn't be able to handle it. You can grow your way out of current liabilities and have more than enough to pay for future obligations such as college for the kids, that faraway retirement for you and your spouse, and health care, if that should ever come up. And your creditors undoubtedly will see it the same way. They know a good risk when they see one.
But then something happens. Your company's prospects sour, your pay raises virtually vanish, your health deteriorates, your family life sours -- who knows? With no savings and a boatload of debt, the wheels all go into reverse. Creditors are not so friendly. Not only will they not lend you that 6 percent of your salary every year but they want a higher interest rate on what you've already borrowed.
The United States is strikingly similar to the Alfred E. Newmans just described. It's strong and vibrant, with a future seemingly as bright as that of any country on the planet. Productivity is soaring, markets are recovering, its salary (or gross domestic product) shows decent increases almost every year. It goes wherever it wants to go, its Humvees symbolic of global military domination. Where's the decay in this hegemony?
Well, maybe I'm just pessimistic because I'm a Californian, and currently the state of California is not good. But California is 15 percent of this country, and it's a trendsetter in more ways than fashion, Hollywood and tongue rings. It has a huge deficit based on overspending that was in turn based on the anticipation that booming financial markets and their capital gains would continue indefinitely.
The United States is in a similar predicament. For years Americans have wanted to save money, but the savings rate has hovered close to zero. They have depended on those 1990s capital gains to give the impression that their liquid assets were on the rise. And they have had to borrow 4, 5, 6 percent of their annual income (GDP) to pay for what they wanted. Economists call that the trade deficit.
Add to that new evidence that our government's budget deficit is hitting new highs, with few prospects for improvement as President Bush and his economic team claim this is an investment in America, and after all, "we owe it to ourselves." Such nonsense belongs in Mad magazine. The $450 billion is paying for overconsumption, for Hummers in L.A. and Humvees in Iraq, and we increasingly owe it to foreign creditors. "I.M.F. Warns That U.S. Debt Is Threatening Global Stability," read a front-page headline in the New York Times last week. It is plain for all to see that we are living beyond our ability to pay if things go awfully wrong.
Could they? Typically, the spending-savings discipline necessary to right such a fiscal ship has to come from the outside. It's the creditors who say no. And their discipline has already started. Bond market vigilantes have suddenly recoiled in horror at the U.S. budget deficit and the failure of the Fed to guarantee its funding at exorbitantly low interest rates. In turn, foreign creditors have for more than a year been liquidating dollars in favor of other countries' currencies.
But despite the resultant higher interest rates and cheaper dollar these actions imply, our country's economy appears to be chugging right along. So where's the big, bad wolf in this story? Well, in addition to future domestically induced bond market sell-offs destroying the housing market, and a finance-based economy inexorably slowing down as restrictively higher yields work their historical magic, the fulcrum of a future creditor-based revolt probably rests in Beijing rather than in New York or Washington.
Because China's monthly trade surplus of $10 billion-plus with the United States implies a $120 billion annual addition to its dollar reserves, there will come a time when its hundreds of billions in holdings of U.S. notes and bonds look a tad too risky. In turn, the hundreds of billions that Japan and other Asian countries have been buying to keep their currencies competitive with the Chinese yuan and the U.S. dollar will be subject to a sanity check as well. At some point our Asian creditors will wake up and smell the coffee. Perhaps there will be dollar or Treasury note sell-offs or a revaluation of the yuan and then the yen. In any event, we pay the price: higher import costs, a cutback in spending on cheap foreign goods, rising inflation, perhaps chaotic financial markets, a lower standard of living.
China's willingness to buy our bonds, and its philosophy of fixing its currency to the U.S. dollar, will one day be tested. And should it lose patience, all its neighboring Asian states will move in near unison. U.S. interest rates will rise, our goods in the malls and the showrooms will be less affordable, and the process of national belt tightening and increased savings will have begun.
Are the Newmans worrying yet? Not if they bought stocks six months ago. Not if they refinanced their home in early June or bought that Hummer with zero-percent financing.
But they will. "
(in
www.washingtonpost.com)
Enviado: 13/1/2004 22:51
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