Para os sonhadores iludidos

"In a number of systemically important countries, notably the US and the UK, there is a material risk of a ’sudden stop’ - an emerging-market style interruption of capital inflows to both the public and private sectors - prompted by financial market concerns about the sustainability of the fiscal-financial-monetary programmes proposed and implemented by the fiscal and monetary authorities in these countries. For both countries there is a material risk that the mind-boggling general government deficits (14% of GDP or over for the US and 12 % of GDP or over for the UK for the coming year) will either have to be monetised permanently, implying high inflation as soon as the real economy recovers, the output gap closes and the extraordinary fear-induced liquidity preference of the past year subsides, or lead to sovereign default.
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Pointing to a non-negligible risk of sovereign default in the US and the UK does not, I fear, qualify me as a madman. The last time things got serious, during the Great Depression of the 1930s, both the US and the UK defaulted de facto, and possibly even de jure, on their sovereign debt."
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E este pormenor que se segue devia pôr os cabelos em pé de quem empresta dinheiro aos estados:
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"I believe both defaults were eminently justified. There is no case for letting the interests of the holders of sovereign debt override the interests of the rest of the community, regardless of the financial, economic, social and political costs involved. But to say that these were justifiable sovereign defaults does not mean that they were not sovereign defaults. Similar circumstances could arise again."
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Quando eu escrevo sobre as moscas que estão a dormir e que depois das eleições vão acordar, inevitavelmente ... penso também nisto (basta alargar o nosso pensamento sobre o futuro para além da distância temporal típica dos políticos, da situação e da oposição, que só equacionam o tempo ente aquilo que almoçaram e aquilo que vão jantar):
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"Furthermore, a likely consequence of the fiscal stimuli we have already seen or are about to experience is a negative impact on the medium- and long-term growth potential of the global economy. The reason is that, if fiscal solvency is to be maintained, there will have to be some combination of an increase in the tax burden and a reduction in non-interest public spending in most countries when this contraction is over. The inevitable effect of the crisis and the contraction is a higher public debt burden and therefore a larger future required primary government surplus (as a share of GDP). Almost any increase in the tax burden will hurt potential output - just the level of the path of potential output if you are a classical growth groupie, both the level and the growth rate of the path of potential output if you are an adept of the endogenous growth school...."

Trechos retirados de Willem Buiter: "Non-Negligible" Risk of Default by US and UK
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Este postal começa com "Willem Buiter takes no prisoners, In his latest post," o que me deixa a pensar em quantos prisioneiros Vitor Constância faz ou mantém quando fala.