A crise chegou também aos BRICs (Brasil, Rússia, Índia e China)

Over the past several years, the most talked-about trend in the global economy has been the so-called rise of the rest, which saw the economies of many developing countries swiftly converging with those of their more developed peers. The primary engines behind this phenomenon were the four major emerging-market countries, known as the BRICs: Brazil, Russia, India, and China. The world was witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime shift, the argument went, in which the major players in the developing world were catching up to or even surpassing their counterparts in the developed world.

These forecasts typically took the developing world's high growth rates from the middle of the last decade and extended them straight into the future, juxtaposing them against predicted sluggish growth in the United States and other advanced industrial countries. Such exercises supposedly proved that, for example, China was on the verge of overtaking the United States as the world's largest economy-a point that Americans clearly took to heart, as over 50 percent of them, according to a Gallup poll conducted this year, said they think that China is already the world's "leading" economy, even though the U.S. economy is still more than twice as large (and with a per capita income seven times as high).

As with previous straight-line projections of economic trends, however-such as forecasts in the 1980s that Japan would soon be number one economically-later returns are throwing cold water on the extravagant predictions. With the world economy heading for its worst year since 2009, Chinese growth is slowing sharply, from double digits down to seven percent or even less. And the rest of the BRICs are tumbling, too: since 2008, Brazil's annual growth has dropped from 4.5 percent to two percent; Russia's, from seven percent to 3.5 percent; and India's, from nine percent to six percent.

None of this should be surprising, because it is hard to sustain rapid growth for more than a decade. The unusual circumstances of the last decade made it look easy: coming off the crisis-ridden 1990s and fueled by a global flood of easy money, the emerging markets took off in a mass upward swing that made virtually every economy a winner. By 2007, when only three countries in the world suffered negative growth, recessions had all but disappeared from the international scene. But now, there is a lot less foreign money flowing into emerging markets. The global economy is returning to its normal state of churn, with many laggards and just a few winners rising in unexpected places. The implications of this shift are striking, because economic momentum is power, and thus the flow of money to rising stars will reshape the global balance of power. [...]

Ver artigo na Foreign Affairs 

Livro ‘O Islão na Europa face ao Islão Global: Dinâmicas e Desafios‘

Lisboa: 25 de Junho às 18h30
no Grémio Literário, Rua Ivens, 37
Apresentação do livro pelo Dr. Figueiredo Lopes

Porto: 29 de Junho às 21h30 
na Fundação Engenheiro António de Almeida, Rua Tenente Valadim, 231-325
Apresentação do livro pelos jornalistas Carlos Magno e Ricardo Alexandre

‘Preparem-se para uma nova era de choques petrolíferos‘ artigo de Martin Wolf no Financial Times

 [...] Oil, unlike natural gas, is a globally traded commodity, whose price is set in world markets. In 2010, the US produced 7.8m barrels a day, 9 per cent of the world’s supply. Unlike Saudi Arabia, the US lacks spare capacity: it is a price taker. Responding to his critics, Mr Obama said: “We are drilling more. We are producing more. But the fact is, producing more oil at home isn’t enough to bring gas prices down overnight.” These remarks are correct, except for the last word. Producing more oil would have next to no effect on oil prices.
Moreover, if there is a specific cause for the rise in oil prices, it is the tightening of sanctions on Iran, which Republicans support. If, as many desire, military action is taken, the impact on oil prices and the world economy will be far greater.
In the longer run, a big reduction in US demand, still 20 per cent of the world’s total, might make an appreciable difference to prices. Moreover, the relative wastefulness of US oil use, compared with other high-income countries, would make such a reduction quite easy to achieve. The best way to make this happen would be to raise prices, via higher taxation. But that policy is deemed un-American. It is a policy fit only for European wimps.
Yet, despite the absurd politicking, we should be concerned about the economic impact of high oil prices: a rise of $10 in the price of oil shifts $320bn a year from higher-spending consumers to lower-spending producers, within and across countries. The 15 per cent rise since December 2011 would shift close to $500bn. The real price of oil is also very high, by historical standards (see chart). Further rises would take the world into uncharted territory. [...]

Ver artigo no Financial Times

Leituras: ‘Para onde vai o Século XXI?‘ in Courrier International

A era que se aproxima de bancos pequenos

How many people does it take to operate a modern bank and how much should such a bank’s shares be worth? The one-two punch of recently announced lay-offs and stock price declines suggests that the answer to both questions is a lot smaller than you might think.
The numbers are staggering. As of midday on Wednesday, shares of Barclays and Credit Suisse, which announced lay-offs last week, are down more than 20 per cent for the month. Shares of HSBC, which will be making 30,000 redundancies – a 10th of its workforce – are down 17 per cent. Shares of Lloyds, which is cutting 15,000 jobs, are down nearly that much. Other financial institutions, including Goldman Sachs and UBS, have announced job cuts and suffered double-digit share price declines. And then there are Bank of America and Citigroup, the two banks facing the most intense pressure from investors this week; together they employ more than half a million people. For now.
Typically, job cuts are good for shareholders because they reduce labour costs and improve efficiency. But these lay-offs have set off a labour-capital death spiral: they are bad for employees but are proving even worse for shareholders, and the declines in the share prices of banks are putting yet more pressure on employees and will probably lead to more lay-offs. And so on, and so on. [...]

Ver notícia no Financial Times

Os novos muros da Web

When George W. Bush referred to “rumours on the, uh, internets” during the 2004 presidential campaign, he was derided for his cluelessness—and “internets” became a shorthand for a lack of understanding of the online world. But what looked like ignorance then looks like prescience now. As divergent forces tug at the internet, it is in danger of losing its universality and splintering into separate digital domains. The internet is as much a trade pact as an invention. A network of networks, it has grown at an astonishing rate over the past 15 years because the bigger it got, the more it made sense for other networks to connect to it. Its open standards made such interconnections cheap and easy, dissolving boundaries between existing academic, corporate and consumer networks (remember CompuServe and AOL?). Just as a free-trade agreement between countries increases the size of the market and boosts gains from trade, so the internet led to greater gains from the exchange of data and allowed innovation to flourish. But now the internet is so large and so widely used that countries, companies and network operators want to wall bits of it off, or make parts of it work in a different way, to promote their own political or commercial interests.

Walled wide web

Three sets of walls are being built. The first is national. China’s “great firewall” already imposes tight controls on internet links with the rest of the world, monitoring traffic and making many sites or services unavailable. Other countries, including Iran, Cuba, Saudi Arabia and Vietnam, have done similar things, and other governments are tightening controls on what people can see and do on the internet.

Second, companies are exerting greater control by building “walled gardens”—an approach that appeared to have died out a decade ago. Facebook has its own closed, internal e-mail system, for example. Google has built a suite of integrated web-based services. Users of Apple’s mobile devices access many internet services through small downloadable software applications, or apps, rather than a web browser. By dictating which apps are allowed on its devices, Apple has become a gatekeeper. As apps spread to other mobile devices, and even cars and televisions, other firms will do so too.

Third, there are concerns that network operators looking for new sources of revenue will strike deals with content providers that will favour those websites prepared to pay up. Al Franken, a Democratic senator, spelled out his nightmare scenario in a speech in July: right-wing news sites loading five times faster than left-wing blogs. He and other advocates of “net neutrality” want new laws to stop networks discriminating between different types of traffic. But network operators say that could hamper innovation, and those on the right see net neutrality as a socialist plot to regulate the internet. [...]

Ver artigo no Economist

‘Um século asiático? Não será para já‘ por Guy Sorman in City Journal

Pundits are proclaiming the beginning of an Asian century. Many think that the next G20 meeting, which will take place in Seoul this autumn, represents a transfer of power from West to East, a decline of Western influence, and a geopolitical tectonic shift. Such a hyperbolic vision of history seems justified, at least on the surface, by a series of recent events. China, for instance, is said to have surpassed Germany’s exports and should thus be considered the leading global economic power.

Actually, the statistic is irrelevant, because it considers as exports products that are merely assembled in China: the imports that make possible the assembly—and eventual exporting—should be deducted from the measure. Other observers have pointed to the South Korean company Korean Electric, which recently outbid Électricité de France to build three nuclear reactors in Abu Dhabi. Like the Chinese exports, though, this success should not be overstated. The South Koreans will build and manage American-made reactors, using technology from . . . Westinghouse.

Recent Asian breakthroughs do make for a contrast with the pervasive gloom in the West, where the economic crisis is far from over. Governments in the U.S. and Europe seem unable to understand why huge public expenses have failed to stimulate their economies. Neither the Obama administration nor the Nicolas Sarkozy and Gordon Brown governments grasp the fact that public spending and welfare statism may have broken the backs of would-be entrepreneurs. Asian governments didn’t make the same mistake. South Korea, for example, has simultaneously helped its poor and deregulated its labor market. Asia has used the crisis to reinforce free-market mechanisms.

But proclaiming the end of the West and the advent of the Asian century would be premature, to say the least. First, what do we mean by Asia? Perhaps South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and the Eastern China seaboard share some common cultural characteristics. Central and Western China, however, remain mired in the medieval era; Indonesia belongs to an entirely different world; India, too, is wholly different from the rest of Asia. Asia knows no political unity: parts of it are democratic, other parts ruled by despots. There is no Asian economic system as such: China’s state-run capitalism doesn’t belong to the same category as Japanese and Korean private capitalism. India remains by and large an agricultural economy, dotted with an emerging small-business dynamism. Asia has no decision center, no coordinating institutions like NATO and the European Union.

For all its problems, moreover, the West is relatively at peace with itself; Asia is not. The continent is riddled with active conflicts around Pakistan and potential ones all around the China Sea. What guarantees border stability and open communication in Asia is NATO to the West and the Seventh American Fleet in the Pacific Ocean. If the U.S. Army and Navy were to leave, war would threaten the continent; at the very least, trade would suffer heavy disruptions. Asian economic dynamism would not survive the departure of the global cop. It’s hard to believe in an Asian century when Asian security depends on non-Asian security forces.

Another of Asia’s weaknesses has to do with its poor record on innovation. Chinese exports contain little added value beyond cheap manpower. China sells sophisticated objects like smartphones to the rest of the world, but these devices are invented in the West. Though Japan and South Korea are much more creative than China, they, too, mostly improve products and services initially conceived in the West. Asia’s lagging innovation is probably rooted in its brand of rote education: when they have the opportunity, Asian students flock to North American and European colleges. And the brain drain doesn’t run the other way: 80 percent of Chinese students in the United States never return to China.

Asia’s undoubted progress happens to be related to its conversion to Western values. Capitalism, democracy, individualism, equality of the sexes, and secularism are all Western notions, and they’ve been adopted in varying degrees in Asia. Reactions against Westernization have also set in, alongside efforts to promote so-called Asian values, both Buddhist and Confucian, such as the Harmony Principle. Such attempts are weakened, however, by their evident political intentions. It’s well known among Asia scholars that China and South Korea manipulate the Harmony Principle to prevent democracy and weaken workers’ rights, respectively. Such political mangling is regrettable: the classic Harmony Principle, which essentially tells us that personal happiness is rooted in a natural social order and that one cannot be happy alone, is a rich philosophical concept and deserves better than to reappear in Communist or despotic garb. One also regrets that not much is done in India to keep alive the philosophy and spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the very few twentieth-century universal thinkers who rose from Asia.

Though the prophecy of an Asian century is premature, that doesn’t mean that Western domination won’t eventually subside. Despite its universities, cultural values, entertainment industry, and strong military, the West may not maintain its edge forever. Still, we should note that whenever we compare the relative power of West versus East, we may be clinging to an obsolete vocabulary. Our criteria themselves may belong to the past. Today, geography is a poor framework: there is no such thing as a national economy any longer. All products and services are global. The more sophisticated a product or a service, the more its national identity tends to disappear. There are no Western or Eastern cell phones, to say nothing of financial derivatives. When China buys American Treasury bills, which nation is depending on which? Exchange generates interdependence. When Asia grows, the West doesn’t necessarily become poorer. From now on, we rise or fall together. There is no contradiction, either, between West and East when it comes to threats against our global security, like terrorism or nuclear rogue states. Barriers have broken down even in popular culture: Korean rock singers are all the rage in China. Are they Korean or American?

So forget the Asian century; we’re entering the first global century. Globalization is so new that we don’t yet fully understand what’s happening to us; we cling to old concepts and lack the language to describe an emerging new world. We can argue about whether it will be a better world; what’s certain is that it will be a very different one.

http://www.city-journal.org/2010/eon0122gs.html

‘Política económica de Pequim põe em risco o barco global‘ in Der Spiegel

It was just over a year ago that Huang Fajing, 55, was struggling to keep his company afloat. The president of lighter manufacturer Wenzhou Rifeng Lighters Co., Huang was forced to send his roughly 500 workers home early as a result of the global economic crisis. He himself had little to do but watch television in his luxury apartment in the eastern Chinese industrial city of Wenzhou.

Now, a year later, business is back in full swing in Wenzhou's factories, which supply the world with inexpensive goods, from buttons to electric cables to, of course, lighters. At Rifeng, workers wearing gray uniforms press tiny metal parts into the lighter shells, which are then sold to smokers in Europe, the United States and Japan.

Given Huang's slim profit margins of no more than 5 percent, Huang has carefully fine-tuned the work performed by the young men and women in his factory to eliminate unnecessary movements. But the fact that he has survived the crisis at all is largely thanks to his government -- and the decision in the summer of 2008 to once again peg the exchange rate of the yuan to the US dollar.

The Crutch

Beijing uses this policy to ensure that the country's factories can continue to export their products at ever cheaper prices. Because the value of the dollar has declined sharply, the yuan has fallen along with it, losing up to 17 percent of its value against the euro in 2009. At the same time, this artificially low exchange rate serves as a crutch that enables the Chinese government to protect many of its export businesses against failure. It is the only reason why exports declined by only 1.2 percent in November 2009, relative to the same month a year earlier, allowing China to replace Germany as the world's top export economy.

Many in the West see the rising economic power as an enormous engine of growth that is helping to lift the rest of the world out of the crisis. The government in Beijing has jump-started the domestic economy with a gigantic economic stimulus package worth four trillion yuan, or about €400 billion ($580 billion), which has led to investments in road, railway and airport construction throughout the country. Generous tax rebates to stimulate consumption, particularly of big-ticket items like cars, were also part of the package.

But China, with its enormous export economy, has in fact expanded global imbalances with its aggressive exchange rate strategy -- the same kind of imbalances that were partly responsible for the most recent financial crisis and, as a result, ought to be corrected.

China also risks triggering new, long-term trade conflicts, particularly with its neighbors. Since the beginning of the economic crisis, China has been diverting some of its exports to neighboring countries and away from Europe and the US, where sales have declined.

Series of Dumping Complaints

Some of its neighbors have already taken defensive measures. Vietnam recently devalued its currency, the dong, by 5 percent, making imports more expensive and protecting the domestic industry from a flood of Chinese goods. India has submitted a series of dumping complaints to the World Trade Organization (WTO), including one involving cheap imported paper from China. And Indonesia has sought to protect itself against cheap Chinese nails by imposing protective tariffs.

Western companies, on the other hand, are still relatively unconcerned about Beijing's exchange rate policy -- with good reason. Manufacturers that produce inexpensive shoes, electric drills or computers in China for sale in their domestic markets have no reason to complain. And many German businesses, particularly machine manufacturers, can still sell their products in the realm of the cheap yuan, because their Chinese customers are often willing to pay higher prices for German quality.

Nevertheless, there is growing opposition in Europe and the United States to a policy whereby China is trying to export its way to economic health, essentially at the expense of the rest of the world. Throughout the country, Chinese provincial officials are vying to expand local state-owned factories and build new ones. The steel industry alone has increased its capacity by about a third in the space of only two years.

Duties on Chinese Tires

As a result, the world must brace itself for a new wave of cheap Chinese-made goods. "Unfortunately, we will see a lot more dumping complaints against China in the second half of 2010," predicts Jörg Wuttke, president of the European Union Chamber of Commerce in Beijing.

In late December, the EU imposed a 64.3 percent anti-dumping tariff on Chinese metal wire used in the auto industry, and the US is likewise protecting itself by imposing new duties on cheap Chinese tires and steel pipes. Beijing threatens to retaliate by imposing symbolic tariffs on American chickens and cars.

Ironically, China, with its policy of keeping the yuan artificially undervalued will ultimately harm itself more than anyone -- not unlike a rehab patient reaching desperately for more drugs. In order to keep the yuan down, the Chinese central bank must constantly buy up dollars. As a result, the country has amassed the world's largest foreign currency reserves, worth $2.3 trillion. China invests about two-thirds of its reserves in American currency, primarily in US treasury bonds. But as the dollar continues to fall, the value of this investment declines along with it.

China, however, has so far refused to enter into a debate over their economy's chronic dependence on manipulated exchange rates. At a meeting with EU representatives in Nanjing, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao dismissed as "unfair" a politely worded request that he reduce the value of his currency against the dollar to rein in the flood of exports. Even US President Barack Obama, during his recent visit to China, was reluctant to be appropriately forceful in addressing the politically taboo subject.

Indefinite Exploitation

The issue seems to have become an embarrassment to Beijing's leaders, particularly given their declared goal of balancing China's current accounts with other countries by the end of 2010.

This aim was the work of men like Yu Yongding, 61. A former advisor to the Chinese central bank, Yu now has an office on the 15th floor of the Academy of Social Sciences in Beijing, a respected government think tank. Having been a leading visionary for a world power, Yu now finds himself having to defend his life's work.

He celebrated his greatest triumph on July 21, 2005, when the People's Bank of China, as the Chinese central bank is officially called, slightly appreciated the yuan against the dollar, while simultaneously removing the currency's dollar peg. From then on, instead of being firmly pegged to the dollar, the yuan fluctuated within fixed parameters against a currency basket made up of several different currencies.

This led to a 22-percent increase in the yuan's value against the dollar by November 2008. Reformers like Yu, imagining that China was on the verge of liberating itself from a dependency on low-wage industry, celebrated the course correction as a symbolic beginning. They also believed that a higher-valued yuan would reduce the cost of imports to China, stimulate private consumption and enable the People's Republic to join the ranks of high-tech nations in the long term. "We cannot allow the United States to indefinitely exploit us as a low-wage country," says Yu.

The Bubble Could Burst

During the course of the global crisis, though, the reformers soon found themselves on the defensive. One of those reformers is Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the central bank. Zhou sets the yuan's exchange rate, practically at the instruction of the cabinet, which is intent on doing whatever it can to boost exports to achieve its goal of increasing gross domestic product by 8 percent. Initial forecasts indicate that Chinese GDP actually grew even more in 2009 -- as much as 9 percent.

But with his rigid exchange rate regime, Zhou is also fueling China's enormous economic bubble. Some of the foreign currency he is forced to continually extract from the market to bolster the yuan is subsequently re-injected into the monetary cycle in the form of increased liquidity. Low interest loans from Chinese banks are indirectly fueling widespread speculation in stocks and real estate.

Were the US to suddenly raise interest rates, the bubble could burst. Indeed, by pegging the yuan to the dollar, China ultimately makes itself dependent on US monetary policy. "No one knows how much lower the dollar will go," says economist Lin Jiang of the Sun Yat-Sen University in Guangzhou, "or if the US will suddenly end its policy of easy money."

But many of his fellow Chinese, on the contrary, see the dollar peg as a symbol of national sovereignty instead of distasteful dependence. "The more the West urges China to appreciate the yuan, the less the government will respond," says former central bank advisor Yu.

Huang, the lighter manufacturer, is pinning his hopes on the yuan remaining undervalued. "If Beijing appreciates the currency by more than 1.5 percent," he says, "I will go out of business."

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,671310,00.html

‘OCDE prevê que o comércio mundial se contraia 18% este ano‘ in Público

O comércio mundial vai contrair-se 18 por cento este ano e “recuperar ligeiramente” no próximo ano, indicam as últimas projecções da Organização para a Cooperação e Desenvolvimento Económico (OCDE).

No documento que analisa as principais tendências e desafios na Europa nos próximos anos, a OCDE considera que “as mais recentes projecções indicam um declínio do comércio mundial de 18 por cento em 2009, a maior queda em décadas, e uma recuperação ligeira em 2010”.

A contracção do comércio e as consequências internas em termos de combate ao comércio livre estão entre as preocupações da OCDE, que afirma que um dos principais desafios da União Europeia e dos Governos dos Estados-membros é a resistência à pressão para a adopção de medidas proteccionistas.

[A queda no comércio mundial] “está a pôr pressão em muitos países para aumentarem a protecção às empresas nacionais, o que implica que os próximos anos são um desafio à implementação de políticas de comércio global”.

Nas recomendações que os peritos da organização sedeada em Paris deixam aos Governos europeus e à Comissão Europeia, encontram-se o “aprofundamento da liberalização do comércio multilateral” e o apoio ao sucesso das negociações de Doha – através de uma “redução dos subsídios internos, que distorcem a concorrência”, e da “eliminação dos subsídios à exportação”).

http://economia.publico.clix.pt/noticia.aspx?id=1401571&idCanal=57

Leituras: ‘A surpreendente recuperação da Ásia‘ in The Economist

‘O ataque dos BRIC‘: Brasil, Rússia, Índia e China ensaiam bloco contra o G7 in Courrier International

Le Brésil, la Russie, l’Inde et la Chine, pays désormais rassemblés sous l’acronyme "BRIC", se sont réunis pour la première fois en vue de tenir un langage commun face aux grands défis internationaux. Ils ont affirmé vouloir une réforme rapide du système financier mondial, même si la question d'une monnaie de réserve supranationale fait débat entre eux, et ont manifesté le souhait d'être plus influents et de se faire entendre davantage aux Nations unies. Le sommet qui a eu lieu le 16 juin dernier dans l’Oural, à Ekaterinbourg, la troisième ville de Russie, se voulait le contrepoids du sommet du G7 (groupe des sept pays les plus industrialisés) qui aura lieu dans un mois en Italie. Le ministre des Affaires étrangères brésilien, Celso Amorim, a donné le ton vendredi. "Le G7 est mort. Il ne représente plus rien. Je ne sais pas comment sera l’enterrement…", a-t-il confié à l'AFP. Les grands pays émergents représentent 25 % des terres habitables de la planète, 40 % de la population mondiale et 15 % du produit intérieur brut mondial. Ce sont en réalité des pays encore très pauvres, mais leur potentiel de croissance est de plus en plus important. Selon Goldman Sachs, qui a inventé l’acronyme BRIC en 2001, ces pays pèseront de plus en plus dans l’économie mondiale. Le PIB de la Chine, par exemple, dépassera celui des Etats-Unis d’ici à 2050. Aujourd’hui, les pays du BRIC pèsent pour 15 % dans le commerce mondial, un chiffre qui devrait augmenter au fil des années. Nandan Unnikrishnan, chercheur à l'Observer Research Foundation de New Delhi et qui a l’oreille des autorités indiennes, met en exergue ce qui unit les quatre pays. Il évoque aussi les relations tumultueuses entre l’Inde et la Chine, les deux moteurs asiatiques du BRIC.

LE TEMPS Le BRIC est-il un concept viable ?
NANDAN UNNIKRISHNAN Les quatre pays ont de nombreuses préoccupations communes : les réformes de la gouvernance mondiale, la mise en place d’une nouvelle architecture financière avec un système de régulation, la démocratisation du Fonds monétaire international pour refléter le véritable poids économique de chaque pays membre, des réformes à apporter à l’ONU et au Conseil de sécurité. Ces revendications ne doivent pas laisser penser que le BRIC est une nouvelle version des pays non-alignés. Les quatre pays ne sont pas identiques. Les économies brésilienne et russe sont fondées sur l’exploitation et l’exportation des matières premières, alors que l’Inde et la Chine sont des importateurs. Dans le domaine industriel, la Russie et le Brésil ont déjà des secteurs très avancés, notamment l’aviation, que la Chine et l’Inde voudraient développer.

La Chine et l’Inde peuvent-elles vraiment s’entendre ?
Les relations entre les deux pays sont très complexes et représentent un défi. Ils souffrent de l’héritage de la colonisation. Les frontières ont été découpées de façon arbitraire. Elles ont donné lieu à une guerre entre les deux pays en 1962. Le différend n’est toujours pas réglé. Une commission y travaille, mais elle ressemble davantage à un chien qui dort et qu’il ne faut pas réveiller. Il s’agit d’une question difficile, c’est pourquoi il faudra encore beaucoup de temps pour la résoudre. Le plus important, c'est que les possibilités d’une nouvelle guerre sont pratiquement inexistantes.

Y a-t-il des points de convergence ?
Les deux pays sont des économies émergentes. Le commerce entre eux ne cesse d’augmenter : il se monte aujourd’hui à plus de 45 milliards de dollars. Nous avons beaucoup de positions communes dans les forums internationaux, notamment dans les négociations commerciales du cycle de Doha. Le fait que nos diplomates s’entendent nous aide à construire une relation de confiance. Construire cette confiance est un objectif majeur.

Les pays du BRIC ne sont-ils pas concurrents dans le commerce international ?
Absolument. Pas seulement dans la conquête des marchés, mais aussi dans la course aux matières premières. Nous avons tous un grand besoin d’énergie ou d’acier. Le Brésil, la Chine et l’Inde se concurrencent, notamment en Afrique. Il y a aussi une vraie concurrence dans le développement des voies maritimes : Pékin et Delhi tentent de s’assurer l’accès aux ports en Asie et en Afrique.

Comment expliquez-vous qu’il y ait plusieurs plaintes commerciales déposées à l’OMC entre le Brésil, l’Inde et la Chine ? Récemment, l’Inde a d’ailleurs interdit l’importation de différents produits chinois ?
C’est de bonne guerre. Lorsque les enfants font leurs dents, ils cherchent toujours à mordre. Il ne s’agit pas de problèmes fondamentaux. Il faut voir le nombre de choses que nous faisons déjà ensemble.
Des entreprises chinoises investissent en Inde. Des entreprises indiennes produisent en Chine.

http://www.courrierinternational.com/article/2009/06/18/bresil-russie-inde-chine-l-attaque-des-bric
JPTF 2009/06/19

‘A overdose fatal do Ocidente‘ por Gabor Steingart in Der Spiegel

The G-20 has agreed on plans to fight the global downturn. But its approach will only lay the foundation for the next, bigger crisis. Instead of "stability, growth, jobs," the summit's real slogan should have been "debt, unemployment, inflation."

Now they're celebrating again. An "historic compromise" had been reached, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said at the conclusion of the G-20 summit in London, while US President Barack Obama spoke of a "turning point" in the fight against the global downturn. Behind the two leaders, the summit's motto could clearly be seen: "stability, growth, jobs."

When the celebrations have died down, it will be easier to look at what actually happened in London with a cool eye. The summit participants took the easy way out. Their decision to pump a further $5 trillion (€3.72 trillion) into the collapsing world economy within the foreseeable future, could indeed prove to be a historical turning point -- but a turning point downwards. In combating this crisis, the international community is in fact laying the foundation for the next crisis, which will be larger. It would probably have been more honest if the summit participants had written "debt, unemployment, inflation" on the wall. The crucial questions went unanswered because they weren't even asked. Why are we in the current situation anyway? Who or what has got us into this mess?

The search for an answer would have revealed that the failure of the markets was preceded by a failure on the part of the state. Wall Street and the banks -- the greedy players of the financial industry -- played an important, but not decisive, role. The bank manager was the dealer that distributed the hot, speculation-based money throughout the nation.

But the poppy farmer sits in the White House. And during his time in office, US President George W. Bush enormously expanded the acreage under cultivation. The chief crop on his farm was the cheap dollar, which eventually flooded the entire world, artificially bloating the banks' balance sheets, creating sham growth and causing a speculative bubble in the US real estate market. The lack of transparency in the financial markets ensured that the poison could spread all around the world.

There are -- even in the modern world -- two things that no private company can do on its own: wage war and print money. Both of those things, however, formed Bush's response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Many column inches have already been devoted to Bush's first mistake, the invasion of Baghdad. But his second error -- flooding the global economy with trillions of dollars of cheap money -- has barely been acknowledged.

No other president has ever printed money and expanded the money supply with such abandon as Bush. This new money -- and therein lies its danger -- was not backed by real value in the form of goods or services. The measure may have had the desired effect -- the world economy revived, at least initially. And US consumption kept the global economy going for years. But the growth rates generated in the process were illusionary. The US had begun to hallucinate.

The addiction to new cash injections was chronic. The US had allowed itself to sink into an abject lifestyle. It sold more and more billions in new government bonds in order to preserve the appearance of a prosperous nation. To make matters worse, private households copied the example of the state. The average American now lives from hand to mouth and has 15 credit cards. The savings rate is almost zero. At the end of the Bush era, 75 percent of global savings were flowing into the US.

The president and the head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, knew about the problem very well. Perhaps the Americans even knew just how irresponsible their actions were -- at any rate, they did everything they could to hide them from the world. Since 2006, figures for the money supply -- in other words, the total number of dollars in circulation -- have no longer been published in the US. As a result, a statistic which is regarded by the European Central Bank as a key indicator is now treated as a state secret in the US.

Only on the basis of independent estimates can the outside world get a sense of the internal erosion of what was once the strongest currency in the world. These estimates report a steep rise in the amount of money in circulation. Since the decision to keep the figures confidential, the growth rate for the expansion of the money supply has tripled. Last year alone, the money supply increased by 17 percent. As a comparison, the money in circulation in Europe grew by a mere 5 percent during the same period.

But the change of government in Washington has not brought a return to self-restraint and solidity. On the contrary, it has led to further abandon. Barack Obama has continued the course towards greater and greater state debt -- and increased the pace. One-third of his budget is no longer covered by revenues. The only things which are currently running at full production in the US are the printing presses at the Treasury.

At the summit in London, delegates talked about everything -- except this issue. As a result, no attention was given to the fact that the crisis is being fought with the same instrument that caused it in the first place. The acreage for cheap dollars will now be extended once again. Only this time, the state is also acting as the dealer, so that it can personally take care of how the trillions are distributed.

The International Money Fund was authorized to double, and later triple, its assistance funds -- by borrowing more. The World Bank is also being authorized to increase its borrowing. All the participating countries want to help their economies through state guarantees, which, should they be made use of, would result in a huge increase in the national debt. The US is preparing a new, debt-financed economic stimulus package. Other countries will probably follow its example.

We live in truly historic times -- in that respect, German Chancellor Angela Merkel is right. The West may very well be giving itself a fatal overdose.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,druck-617224,00.html
JPTF 2009/04/04

G20: ‘Divididos nos mantemos‘ in The Economist

World leaders are descending on London, just as anti-capitalist protesters prepare to unfurl their banners. Barack Obama, who remains widely popular at home and abroad, met Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, on Wednesday April 1st. Mr Obama conceded that “We're not going to agree on every point”. On the eve of the G20 summit the two men should be concerned that too little is being done to respond to the worst economic slump since the 1930s. This week the OECD, for example, concluded that global output will shrink by 2.7% in 2009, sharply down on previous estimates.

As worrying, the various leaders gathering in London are not agreed on how to sort out the economic mess. One risk is that the group, if it seeks consensus, will produce an anodyne statement that adds little or nothing to the existing efforts to respond to the global slump. A greater risk is that the summit is so badly divided, and the outcome is so feeble, that dashed expectations actually worsen confidence.

Broadly, the leaders are trying to tackle five sets of issues. The first, and perhaps least contentious, is the need to recapitalise banks and get credit flowing. All big countries with troubled banks have acted assertively on this. America, long the laggard, at last has a detailed plan that has been, mostly, well-received. Now it is a question of waiting to see whether and how the bail-outs, more lending and other initiatives will help to stimulate economies.

But no consensus exists on the need for fiscal stimulus. Just how much governments of rich countries should borrow and spend to boost their economies is disputed. America would like them to commit to stimulus packages of 2% of GDP for this year and again for 2010. But Germany and France disagree vehemently. They argue that their economies rely much more on what are known as “automatic stabilisers”—tools such as unemployment insurance payments, which increase automatically in a recession—thus they do not need as much discretionary stimulus spending as countries, such as America, where welfare payments are much less generous. Deep differences remain. On Tuesday the Japanese prime minister, Taro Aso, said that Germany’s reluctance to use public spending aggressively stemmed from its lack of understanding of the importance of fiscal mobilisation.

A failure to agree on co-ordinating fiscal plans opens the door to forms of protectionism in stimulus packages motivated by worries about stimulus benefits “leaking” abroad. Such policies could complicate the G20’s efforts to come up with ways to deal with what is already the biggest collapse in trade since the second world war. That collapse is not the result of countries imposing tariffs or devaluing currencies, as happened in the 1930s. Still, the World Bank has tracked the actions of the G20 countries in recent months and found that 17 have taken steps that retard trade, often by subtle means. Thus the leaders in London need to commit to much more than a vague promise to resist protectionism. Ideally, they will lay out a comprehensive list of measures going beyond tariffs and export subsidies—to include, for example, domestic subsidies and discriminatory procurement provisions in stimulus packages—and commit to not use them even where permitted by their existing international trade commitments. A general commitment to free trade, though welcome, would not suffice.

On financial regulation, transatlantic differences have narrowed, with America agreeing to broaden its scope to encompass institutions such as hedge funds. But open disagreement remains possible. Mr Sarkozy’s reported threat to “get up and leave” rather than endorse a G20 statement that promises too little on regulating financial markets could make it all the harder to get a deal on fiscal stimulus.

The last big issue for the G20 is what to do about the dramatic collapse in financial flows to developing and emerging economies, the largest of which are represented in the group. The least contentious part of the response is likely to be commitments to meet aid budgets and support more lending by institutions such as the World Bank and the regional development banks, possibly through greater rich-country lending to these institutions.

More fraught, though within reach, are efforts to augment the resources of the IMF and to get the fund to deploy this money rapidly, something which emerging ones are ambivalent about. Success will probably involve getting China to offer to lend the IMF a large sum of money from its massive reserves. But this is unlikely without at least a clear promise of more say in running the fund, hitherto an institution dominated by Europe and America. Reform of the fund will mean giving emerging members more vote shares. Inclusion as part of the Financial Stability Forum, a group of regulators and central bankers charged with the technicalities of financial supervision, may also make them more willing to support an expansion of the fund. But China and other large emerging economies want more than incremental reform. Aware of the complexity of negotiating far-reaching changes to vote shares at the IMF, they would like interim measures demonstrating good faith, such as a commitment to let the leadership of the fund to be decided “irrespective of nationality”. But this is something that G20 finance ministers failed to endorse at a meeting in March.

http://www.economist.com/finance/PrinterFriendly.cfm?story_id=13401931
JPTF 2009/03/02

‘Como a China vê o mundo‘ in The Economist

It is an ill wind that blows no one any good. For many in China even the buffeting by the gale that has hit the global economy has a bracing message. The rise of China over the past three decades has been astonishing. But it has lacked the one feature it needed fully to satisfy the ultranationalist fringe: an accompanying decline of the West. Now capitalism is in a funk in its heartlands. Europe and Japan, embroiled in the deepest post-war recession, are barely worth consideration as rivals. America, the superpower, has passed its peak. Although in public China’s leaders eschew triumphalism, there is a sense in Beijing that the reassertion of the Middle Kingdom’s global ascendancy is at hand.

China’s prime minister, Wen Jiabao, no longer sticks to the script that China is a humble player in world affairs that wants to focus on its own economic development. He talks of China as a “great power” and worries about America’s profligate spending endangering his $1 trillion nest egg there. Incautious remarks by the new American treasury secretary about China manipulating its currency were dismissed as ridiculous; a duly penitent Hillary Clinton was welcomed in Beijing, but as an equal. This month saw an apparent attempt to engineer a low-level naval confrontation with an American spy ship in the South China Sea. Yet at least the Americans get noticed. Europe, that speck on the horizon, is ignored: an EU summit was cancelled and France is still blacklisted because Nicolas Sarkozy dared to meet the Dalai Lama.

Already a big idea has spread far beyond China: that geopolitics is now a bipolar affair, with America and China the only two that matter. Thus in London next month the real business will not be the G20 meeting but the “G2” summit between Presidents Barack Obama and Hu Jintao. This not only worries the Europeans, who, having got rid of George Bush’s unipolar politics, have no wish to see it replaced by a Pacific duopoly, and the Japanese, who have long been paranoid about their rivals in Asia. It also seems to be having an effect in Washington, where Congress’s fascination with America’s nearest rival risks acquiring a protectionist edge.

Reds under the bed
Before panic spreads, it is worth noting that China’s new assertiveness reflects weakness as well as strength. This remains a poor country facing, in Mr Wen’s words, its most difficult year of the new century. The latest wild guess at how many jobs have already been lost—20m—hints at the scale of the problem. The World Bank has cut its forecast for China’s growth this year to 6.5%. That is robust compared with almost anywhere else, but to many Chinese, used to double-digit rates, it will feel like a recession. Already there are tens of thousands of protests each year: from those robbed of their land for development; from laid-off workers; from those suffering the side-effects of environmental despoliation. Even if China magically achieves its official 8% target, the grievances will worsen.

Far from oozing self-confidence, China is witnessing a fierce debate both about its economic system and the sort of great power it wants to be—and it is a debate the government does not like. This year the regime curtailed even the perfunctory annual meeting of its parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), preferring to confine discussion to back-rooms and obscure internet forums. Liberals calling for greater openness are being dealt with in the time-honoured repressive fashion. But China’s leaders also face rumblings of discontent from leftist nationalists, who see the downturn as a chance to halt market-oriented reforms at home, and for China to assert itself more stridently abroad. An angry China can veer into xenophobia, but not all the nationalist left’s causes are so dangerous: one is for the better public services and social-safety net the country sorely needs.

So China is in a more precarious situation than many Westerners think. The world is not bipolar and may never become so. The EU, for all its faults, is the world’s biggest economy. India’s population will overtake China’s. But that does not obscure the fact that China’s relative power is plainly growing—and both the West and China itself need to adjust to this.

For Mr Obama, this means pulling off a difficult balancing act. In the longer term, if he has not managed to seduce China (and for that matter India and Brazil) more firmly into the liberal multilateral system by the time he leaves office, then historians may judge him a failure. In the short term he needs to hold China to its promises and to scold it for its lapses: Mrs Clinton should have taken it to task over Tibet and human rights when she was there. The Bush administration made much of the idea of welcoming China as a “responsible stakeholder” in the international system. The G20 is a chance to give China a bigger stake in global decision-making than was available in the small clubs of the G7 and G8. But it is also a chance for China to show it can exercise its new influence responsibly.

The bill for the great Chinese takeaway
China’s record as a citizen of the world is strikingly threadbare. On a host of issues from Iran to Sudan, it has used its main geopolitical asset, its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council, to obstruct progress, hiding behind the excuse that it does not want to intervene in other countries’ affairs. That, sadly, will take time to change. But on the more immediate issue at hand, the world economy, there is room for action.

Over the past quarter-century no country has gained more from globalisation than China. Hundreds of millions of its people have been dragged out of subsistence into the middle class. China has been a grumpy taker in this process. It helped derail the latest round of world trade talks. The G20 meeting offers it a chance to show a change of heart. In particular, it is being asked to bolster the IMF’s resources so that the fund can rescue crisis-hit countries in places like eastern Europe. Some in Beijing would prefer to ignore the IMF, since it might help ex-communist countries that have developed “an anti-China mentality”. Rising above such cavilling and paying up would be a small step in itself. But it would be a sign that the Middle Kingdom has understood what it is to be a great power.

http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=13326106
JPTF 2009/03/22

‘Mercados afundam-se enquanto investidores ponderam a presidência de Obama‘ in China Daily, 6 de Novembro de 2008

A case of postelection nerves sent Wall Street plunging Wednesday as investors absorbing a stream of bad economic news wondered how a Barack Obama presidency will help the country weather a possibly severe recession. Volatility returned to the market, with the Dow Jones industrials falling nearly 500 points and all the major indexes tumbling more than 5 percent.

The market was expected to give back some gains after a six-day runup that lifted the Standard & Poor's 500 index more than 18 percent. But investors lost some of their recent confidence about the economy and began dumping stocks again; light volume helped exaggerate the price swings.

And in Asia, stock markets tumbled Thursday, following Wall Street lower as US presidential election euphoria gave way to worries about the global economy and company profits.

apan's Nikkei stock average retreated 6.5 percent to 8,899.14, and Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index lost 7.5 percent to 13,727.50

South Korea's benchmark Kospi index broke a five-session winning streak to dive 7.6 percent. Markets in Singapore, Australia and the Chinese mainland also dropped sharply.

The pullback was in line with weakness on Wall Street, where investor optimism surrounding the election of Democrat Barack Obama as president quickly evaporated in the face of gloomy economic news. The U.S. service sector, the largest component of America's gross domestic product, contracted sharply in October as new orders and employment fell.

"I think what is happening in the market is a continuation of really the last few weeks," said Subodh Kumar, global investment strategist at Subodh Kumar & Associates in Toronto. "The markets are still incorporating the slowdown in the global economy."
Worries about the financial sector intensified after Goldman Sachs Group Inc. began to notify about 3,200 employees globally that they have been lost their jobs as part of a broader plan to slash 10 percent of the investment bank's work force, a person familiar with the situation said. The cuts were first reported last month. Goldman fell 8 percent, while other financial names like Citigroup Inc. fell 14 percent.

Commodities stocks also fell after steelmaker ArcelorMittal said it would slash production because of weakening demand. Its stock plunged 21.5 percent.

Although the market expected Obama to win the election, as the session wore on investors were clearly worrying about the weakness of the economy and pondered what the Obama administration might do to help it. Analysts said the market is already anxious about who Obama selects as the next Treasury Secretary, as well as who he picks for other Cabinet positions

Analysts said investors were also uneasy in advance of the Labor Department's October employment report, to be issued on Friday. Economists on average expect a 200,000 drop in payrolls, according to Thomson/IFR. Employers have been slashing jobs after a freeze-up in the credit markets crippled many companies' ability to get financing.

Late-day selling by hedge funds helped deepen the market's losses during the last hour. More selling by the funds is expected to weigh on the market ahead of a Nov. 15 cutoff for shareholders to notify fund managers of their intent to cash out investments before year-end.

According to preliminary calculations, the Dow fell 486.01, or 5.05 percent, to 9,139.27.

The S&P 500 index fell 52.98, or 5.27 percent, to 952.77. Through the six sessions that ended Tuesday, the index, the one most closely watched by market professionals, rose 18.3 percent.

The Nasdaq composite index fell 98.48, or 5.53 percent, to 1,681.64, while the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies fell 31.33, or 5.74 percent, to 514.64.

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/world/2008-11/06/content_7178541.htm
JPTF 2008/11/06

‘A caminho de uma recessão global‘ in The Economist, 9 de Outubro de 2008

Deprive a person of oxygen and he will turn blue, collapse and eventually die. Deprive economies of credit and a similar process kicks in. As the financial crisis has broadened and intensified, the global economy has begun to suffocate. That is why the world’s central banks have been administering emergency measures, including a round of co-ordinated interest-rate cuts on Wednesday October 8th. With luck they will prevent catastrophe. They are unlikely to avert a global recession.

According to the IMF’s most recent World Economic Outlook, published on Wednesday, the world economy is “entering a major downturn” in the face of “the most dangerous shock” to rich-country financial markets since the 1930s. The fund expects global growth, measured on the basis of purchasing-power parity (PPP), to come down to 3% in 2009, the slowest pace since 2002 and on the verge of what it considers to be a global recession. (The fund’s definition of global recession takes many factors into account, including the rate of population growth.) Given the scale of the financial freeze, the fund’s forecast looks optimistic. Other forecasters are convinced that a global recession is inevitable. Economists at UBS, for instance, expect global growth of only 2.2% in 2009.

The rich world’s economies were either shrinking, or close to it, long before September. Recent weeks have made a rich-world recession all but inevitable. America’s economy lost steam throughout the summer. Temporarily buoyed by fiscal stimulus and strong exports, output grew at a solid 2.8% annualised rate between April and June. But as the stimulus wore off, the job market worsened, credit tightened and consumer spending slid.

That slide became a rout in September. The economy lost 159,000 jobs, the most in a month since 2003. Car sales fell to a 16-year low as would-be buyers were unable to get credit. The economy may already have shrunk in the third quarter. The rest of the year is likely to be worse. Some economists expect consumer spending to fall at its fastest pace since the 1980 recession. Add in other gloomy evidence, such as a survey of purchasing managers that suggests manufacturing is extremely weak, and it is clear that output is now falling. America’s recession may not yet be official, but it is well under way.

In Europe the outlook is equally grim. The British economy, which stalled in the second quarter, is now unmistakably falling into recession. The IMF’s forecasts suggest that Britain will see the worst performance of any big economy in the year to the fourth quarter of 2008. The economies of the euro area, too, are struggling badly. Figures released on Wednesday showed that output in the euro area fell at an annualised rate of 0.8% in the second quarter. GDP shrank in the currency zone’s three largest countries—Germany, France and Italy. The fourth largest, Spain, barely grew.

As elsewhere, the most recent figures have grown grimmer still. Business confidence has turned down and a closely watched survey of purchasing managers points to a further contraction in activity over the summer months. Even the European economies that are less directly affected by housing busts, such as Germany, have been hard hit. The big hope for the euro area was that German shoppers, relatively free of debt and with scope to save a little less, would make up for weakness in debt-laden economies such as Spain. But household spending in Germany has been falling since the end of last year.

Japan, too, is looking weak. Its economy shrank at an annualised rate of 3% in the second quarter as exports fell, investment slowed and high food and fuel prices dented consumer confidence. Japanese banks are less embroiled in the financial crisis than those in Europe and America, but with other economies falling into recession and the yen soaring, the prospects for Japan’s exports and economy are dark.

This gloomy backdrop explains why the co-ordinated rate cuts were so essential. Even without the financial seizure, the case for cheaper money was becoming abundantly clear. With commodity prices falling sharply (the price of a barrel of crude was down to $88 on October 8th) and economies suffering, inflation risks are evaporating in the rich world. If oil prices remain at around today’s levels, headline inflation will be below 1% in America by next summer. Deflation is an increasing risk. That suggests more rate cuts will be needed, particularly in Europe.

All told, the IMF expects the rich-world economies to grow by only 0.5% in 2009. Its forecast of 3% global growth depends on reasonably robust expansion in emerging economies. The fund expects developing countries, as a group, to grow by 6.1% in 2009, more slowly than their blistering 8% pace of recent years, but far from recession. That would imply an unprecedented growth gap between the rich and emerging world (see chart).

Some emerging economies, notably China, have shown remarkable resilience to the financial storm. Many other markets, however, are being hit hard as investors flee risk. Analysts at Morgan Stanley estimate that capital flows to emerging economies could fall to $550 billion in 2009 from around $750 billion in 2007 and 2008. Such a sharp drop would hit economies that rely heavily on foreign finance: more than 80 developing countries are likely to run current-account deficits of more than 5% of GDP this year.

The links in the real economy could also be stronger than many imagine. Exports will be hit as recession grips the rich world. Falling commodity prices bode ill for the countries that produce them, notably in Latin America. The Brazilian real has fallen by more than a quarter against the dollar in the past month. Thanks to more disciplined macroeconomic policies and large cushions of reserves, many emerging economies have strong defences against a rich-world downturn. But they will not escape unscathed. A mild global recession is the best that can be hoped for.

http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=12382253&source=features_box_main
JPTF 2008/10/10

‘FTSE cai mais de 7% e a crise financeira global acentua-se‘ in Telegraph, 6 de Outubro de 2008

The UK's index of leading shares initially dropped more than 240 points before recovering slightly to 4,876.56 shortly after the market opened at 8am. In Europe, shares fell in Italy, Germany and France.
Earlier Asian shares fell as deteriorating credit markets prompted European governments to pledge bailouts for troubled banks.
Japan's Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group and Australia's Macquarie dropped more than 6pc after Germany agreed on a $68bn package for Hypo Real Estate Holding and Britain said it's ready to support its banks.
Sumitomo Metal Mining lost 4.1pc after copper and gold prices sank amid concern a $700bn US bank bailout won't prevent a slowdown in global economic growth.
"It will probably be a rough week for global investors as they realize the credit crisis has a long way to play out," said Frederic Dickson, who helps oversee $25bn as chief market strategist at DA Davidson & Co. in Lake Oswego, Oregon.
"US action was an absolutely essential first step, and global intervention is needed."
The broader MSCI Asia Pacific Index fell 2.8pc to 101.68 in Tokyo and is poised for its lowest close since July 27, 2005. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index futures fell 1.6pc, while the euro fell 0.9pc to $1.3642.
Japan's Nikkei 225 Stock Average fell 3.3pc to 10,575.04. Mitsui Fudosan, the country's largest real-estate company, tumbled after UBS AG slashed its recommendation.
All markets open for trading in Asia declined, with benchmark stock indexes in South Korea, Taiwan and Australia falling more than 3pc.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/3143690/FTSE-100-falls-as-global-banking-crisis-deepens.html
JPTF 2008/10/06

André Glucksmann: Impõe-se ‘sair da bolha mental pós-moderna‘ in Le Figaro, 30 de Setembro de 2008

Inutile de consulter les grands économistes classiques pour comprendre la crise actuelle. Relisez simplement La Tulipe noire d'Alexandre Dumas et l'esprit du capitalisme descendra sur vous. L'alpha et l'oméga c'est la spéculation, à la fois dynamique conquérante, option sur un avenir prospère et d'autre part escalade perverse d'espérances sur les espérances, accumulation de crédits tirés sur des pronostics ultra-optimistes, châteaux de cartes soufflés par la première contre-performance venue. La spéculation c'est le ressort positif, vingt années de globalisation, l'enrichissement d'une majorité sur la planète - exemple : la Chine - et patatras ! La menace d'un effondrement à la mesure du succès précédent.

À la différence d'échelle près, la logique de l'emballement spéculatif sur les tulipes évoqué par Dumas annonce les pyramides de créances creuses des subprimes. Le capitalisme, c'est la mutualisation assurantielle des dangers et des espérances. D'où le dynamisme et simultanément la spéculation sur la spéculation. À la fois la réglementation prudente et la transgression imprudente des anciennes règles, le partage des risques et l'audace de risquer mieux que d'autres. D'où les faillites qui ponctuent une expansion impossible à contrôler d'avance mais insubmersible, malgré de successives et gigantesques avanies. Inutile d'opposer un capitalisme industriel supposé sage et une sphère financière promise à la folie. Le progrès industriel lui-même n'a rien d'un fleuve tranquille, il alterne sans cesse création et destruction, mise en friche des forces productives et explosion de nouvelles sources de richesse. La finance encourage ce mouvement de destruction créatrice, qui définit siècle après siècle l'occidentalisation du monde.

Rien d'original donc dans les bulles qui menacent d'implosion l'économie planétaire, si ce n'est l'insouciance avec laquelle on les a laissées gonfler. Les avertissements n'ont pourtant pas manqué. Aux États-Unis (Enron), comme en France (Crédit lyonnais, BNP), des emballements locaux mais ruineux ont révélé, à la tête d'entreprises privées ou publiques, des décideurs napoléoniens qui se croyaient tout permis. On vit des fonctionnaires lancer leurs entreprises à l'assaut de Hollywood, sans pour autant négliger leurs avantages personnels et le contribuable dut payer les pots cassés.

Le problème est moins telle ou telle technique financière qu'on promet désormais de contrôler, que l'état d'esprit général qui en a permis la floraison effrénée. Retrouvez dans les conseils d'administration le leitmotiv postmoderne : il n'y a pas de risque, pas de mal, preuve par les parachutes dorés. Depuis la fin de la guerre froide, la promesse d'un monde apaisé diffuse, urbi et orbi, l'annonce d'une histoire sans défi, sans conflit, sans tragique qui autorise tout et n'importe quoi.

Une bulle spéculative se soutient d'un pari qui se confirme lui-même. Elle est, selon le linguiste Austin, «performative». Pour le spéculateur, créditer c'est faire être. «La séance est ouverte !», proclame le président d'une assemblée, c'est vrai parce qu'il le dit : ici la réalité se règle sur le dire, alors que dans les cas ordinaires le dire, non plus performatif mais indicatif, se règle sur la réalité. La bulle financière accumule les crédits sur les crédits et s'enrichit de son autoaffirmation. Elle s'enferme dans son rapport à soi, c'est son côté bulle, et abolit progressivement le principe de réalité : seuls sont effectifs les produits financiers que mes investissements inventent.

Pareil fantasme de toute puissance napoléonienne n'anime pas seulement le trader, mais aussi bien ceux qui le laissent s'aventurer, pas seulement les patrons des instituts financiers, mais les autorités politiques, universitaires et mass médiatiques, qui ne s'inquiètent de rien. L'idéologie performative - c'est vrai parce que nous le disons - gouverne l'occidentalisation de la planète depuis la fin de la guerre froide : le camp adverse s'étant désagrégé, l'avenir nous appartient et les dangers fondamentaux se sont évanouis.

Reconnaissez dans le déni «performatif» de la référence au réel la «folle du logis», que les auteurs classiques nomment «imagination». Le postmoderne, qui s'institue «par-delà le bien et le mal» et qui se moque de la distinction du vrai et du faux - supposée idole du passé - lâche la bride à son imagination et habite une bulle cosmique. L'euphorie n'est pas moindre en matière politique qu'en manipulation boursière, il fallut près de dix ans pour que Bush, Rice, Blair et le Quai d'Orsay découvrent que Poutine n'est pas le «good guy» et le démocrate en herbe dont ils s'étaient entichés. Il faudra probablement dix ans pour procéder à une évaluation froide des deux tournants décisifs marquant la fin du XXe siècle. La réunification d'une grande partie de l'Europe, qui, depuis les révolutions démocratiques de Géorgie et d'Ukraine, inquiète souverainement le Kremlin. Et l'émergence de la Chine, qui modifie de fond en comble l'équilibre mondial. D'une part, le «miracle économique» suscité par la réforme de Deng Xiaoping relègue définitivement l'économisme collectiviste marxiste au Musée Grévin : l'avantage de l'économie de marché saute aujourd'hui aux yeux. D'autre part, un tel miracle économique n'est aucunement gage de démocratie et de coexistence pacifique. Les deux miracles économiques majeurs du XXe siècle, l'Allemagne et le Japon, ne sont-ils pas à l'origine des 50 millions de morts de la Seconde Guerre mondiale ?

Puisse le frisson anticipant une crise universelle nous offrir l'occasion de sortir de la bulle mentale postmoderne, de doucher l'euphorie de nos vœux pieux et d'oser avoir, enfin, les yeux en face des trous. Mais je crains d'énoncer ainsi un vœu pieux de plus.

http://www.lefigaro.fr/debats/2008/09/30/01005-20080930ARTFIG00499-une-bulle-economico-mentale-.php
JPTF 2008/09/30