"EUA estão totalmente comprometidos com NATO e artigo 5.º", garante Rutte

[Karamba]

Fonte: Morgan Stanley

O Feldman aborda neste texto, duma forma algo superficial mas bastante interessante, diversas questões que as sociedades deverão ultrapassar para superar a actual situação de crise e depressão económica em que nos encontramos.

Ele termina o texto com uma frase que é o tema central do mesmo
(Cataloging the crisis is relatively easy. Conceiving a response is much harder)
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Replacing Pessimism -- A CRIC Cycle Approach (Part I)

Robert Alan Feldman



Gloom is ubiquitous. Nearly every market commentary or financial forecast gushes reasons why things are bad, and why they will only get worse. With war in the Middle East, the Atlantic alliance crumbling, North Korea developing nuclear weapons, terrorism lurking in the shadows, weak global economies, excess supply everywhere, and deflation worsening, it is easy to be depressed. The planet faces simultaneous geopolitical and geoeconomic crises.

There is an alternative to gloom, however. To see this alternative, one needs to use the CRIC cycle -- the cycle of crisis, response, improvement, and complacency -- as a guide. The first part of this two-part series reviews the CRIC cycle itself, and catalogs some of the policy failures around the globe that have led to the current mess. The second part will consider one potential vision for a response that will bring escape.

The CRIC Cycle -- A Quick Review

The original CRIC cycle was developed in Japan as a tool for analyzing the interaction between economic reform and growth. With reform on the horizontal axis and growth on the vertical, the Crisis Quadrant is defined as the combination of weak growth and slow reform (lower left quadrant). As a result of crisis, however, reform accelerates. The new combination in the Reform Quadrant, with fast reform but growth still slow (i.e. lower right quadrant), derives from the time lag between policy change and economic reaction. Once reform policies take hold, growth improves, and -- people being people -- reform slows (upper right quadrant), in the Improvement Quadrant. Unless the reforms are extremely potent, their effect eventually wears off, while reform remains slow (upper left quadrant), leading to the Complacency Quadrant. The inevitable result of complacency is renewed crisis. Originally developed to describe the painful history of Japan’s lost decade, the CRIC cycle now has much broader application to the geopolitical and geoeconomic ailments.

In order to apply the CRIC cycle to the global political and economic situation, however, the growth axis must be relabeled as a “performance” axis. Performance implies not only economic growth but political institutions that are capable of preventing conflict and/or solving it rapidly. While the reform axis can retain its label, the meaning broadens. Economic reform remains a key element, but reform of political institutions -- by which I mean changing the incentives of political players in order to enhance cooperation and make clear decisions -- is included as well. The names of the phases -- crisis, response, improvement, complacency -- can remain.

The Geopolitical/Geoeconomic CRIC Cycle

Few can doubt that there are now crises in both geopolitical and geoeconomic arenas. The global security structure is in disarray. The UN Security Council has failed yet again. It long ago failed on the Israel/Palestine problem, and more recently has failed in the cases of genocides in Rwanda, Kosovo, and East Timor. Regardless of one’s view on whether the use of force is justified in Iraq, there can be no disagreement that the twelve years of Security Council effort to deal with Saddam Hussein have failed. On economic issues, the crises are just as colossal. A quick glance at the encroachment of desert on Beijing shows how global environmental policy has failed. The same is true of global energy policy -- which is of course closely related. Ditto on poverty. Even though some countries (such as China) have made enormous strides in raising living standards, many others in Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America are seeing living standards decline -- with the results of jealousy and terrorism.

It is too facile to blame one country or leader, or even a set of countries or leaders for the current impasse. The political, economic, and policy failures that have led the world to this state are common property. Everyone is guilty. In order for the world to move from the crisis phase of the CRIC cycle into the response phase, however, we must analyze our failures, and how they have interacted. The first phase of this analysis is confession. While recognizing successes, we must all admit our sins. My candidate list for which countries have done what wrong goes as follows. (Responses welcome of course.)

Everyone Has Sinned

As a loyal and patriotic American, I will start with some of my own country’s failures, concentrating on economics. (1) US energy policy is a disaster, and has been for 30 years. Of course, the US has made major strides in energy efficiency and reducing pollution, but not nearly enough. When the first oil crisis struck in 1973, the US complained about its dependence on foreign energy. Thirty years later, we are just as dependent and still complaining. While criticizing (in my view justly) the Kyoto Protocol as wholly inadequate, the US has proposed no viable option. Nor do we have an R&D program for clean energy that anywhere near addresses the problem. To boot, some of the money the US spends on energy ends up in the hands of terrorists. (2) The US has many successes in structural reform, but refuses to correct some egregious failures. For example, I would argue that the legal profession has the US economy by the throat. By enacting and expanding new “rights,” lawyers have transferred enormous amounts of wealth into their own pockets. Part of the crisis in medical care derives from this piracy. And the political funding of American democracy is part and parcel of the whole problem. Corruption -- legal and otherwise -- in the political system has distorted the efficiency of resource use. (3) Education below the graduate level is in a terrible state. The US continues to score extremely low in international tests of scholastic ability. For a country whose future must depend on knowledge-based technological development, this is a clear threat to prosperity. So far, the US has avoided the consequences of poor education by raiding the rest of the world for talent. While good for the US, this brain drain impoverishes others. The list of sins could go on, but you get the idea.

Europe has is own share of sins. (1) Social policy has destroyed incentives both to work and to acquire skills. While some clear progress has been made in some countries, the progress has not been sufficient to keep up with the needs of globalization or to keep unemployment down. Chancellor Schroeder in Germany has put his political life on the line to change some antiquated labor practices, but the fact that he must fight so hard and against so many for so little only shows how deeply Europe remains in the welfare trap. (2) Despite the successful introduction of the common currency, much heavy lifting on economic integration and on fiscal discipline remains. Now that the Stability Pact constraints on fiscal deficits are beginning to bind even in France, much effort is being spent on how to wiggle out of them. Moreover, a common economy requires a common labor market, but labor practice differences hinder migration. (3) Europe has failed to develop an effective common defense policy, much less a common military. This disorganization has hamstrung European efforts to aid international security initiatives. It is disingenuous for Europe to criticize the US as unilateral and hegemonic, while having no common military policy or power of its own and relying on the US for enforcement -- as demonstrated in Kosovo.

On to China. I have enormous respect for what China has accomplished over the last decade. In fact, I regard Chinese leadership on economic issues as the boldest, most foresighted in the world. The evidence comes in market reforms, rapid growth, and WTO entry. But China is not perfect either. (1) The financial system remains a problem waiting to happen, along with the many state enterprises that continue to misallocate resources. True, China has shut down large numbers of such enterprises, and has sacrificed millions of jobs in them. Relative to the size of the problem, however, the results have not been sufficient. (2) Corruption remains a serious issue, as the Chinese government’s own campaigns against corruption show. (3) Environment policy is still insufficient to address accelerating deterioration. (4) Even energy policy, which has used the price mechanism to make enormous strides in efficiency of fossil fuel use over the decade, continues to face an immense challenge. Where will the global price of oil be without huge increases in fuel efficiency?

And what about Japan? (1) The most massive economic failure has been the refusal to face the non-performing loan/asset problem. Protected by a large current account surplus, neither political or corporate leaders would accept responsibility for the collapse of capital efficiency. Vested interests in politics, the silo mentality in the bureaucracy, and balkanization in politics prevented progress under the false guise of protecting employment. Employment has suffered anyway (and will suffer more), without enough progress on bad loans. (2) Structural policy also has been hamstrung by vested interests in both politics and the bureaucracy. The regulatory structure remains an impediment to foreign investment, which could bring new dynamism and ideas. Political dialogue on the issue remains at the level of complaint about foreign vultures waiting to pounce on Japanese banks. (3) Corporate governance and accounting, while significantly improved, remain far from strict enough to convince investors that capital will be managed and allocated efficiently. No wonder: In the recent debate over measures for the stock market, some senior leaders advocate postponement of the March 2006 deadline for enforcement of impairment accounting (which would require firms to write down assets that have fallen more than 50% below book value) -- as if intentionally misrepresenting facts would bolster confidence! The list could go on. And not just for Japan, but also for Russia, the Asia-Pacific countries, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa -- you name it.

Cataloging the crisis is relatively easy. Conceiving a response is much harder. The second part of this piece will consider one potential response.
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Boa noite, e um abraço para Vocês.