A fazer fé no que o autor de "The End of the World is Just the Beginning", Peter Zeihan, escreve, aprendi umas coisas interessantes no capítulo sobre a finança.
Começa por contar como o Japão, desde o século VII:
"the Japanese had a unique view of debt. In Japan capital exists not to serve economic needs, but instead to serve political needs. To that end, debt was allowed, even encouraged . . . so long as it didn’t become inconvenient to the sovereign. Dating back to the seventh century, if widespread debt got in the way of the emperor or sho-gun’s goals, it was simply dissolved under the debt forgiveness doctrine of tokusei."
Depois, começa a desfiar como os vários países asiáticos usam e abusam das fiat currencies:
"as the most enthusiastic of the fiat currency adopters, the Asians were willing to push the limits of what was possible to the point that Americans and Europeans got a bit skittish about the very nature of Asian finance."
Depois, apresenta o exemplo da China:
"The biggest of the adherents to the Asian financial model is, of course, China. It isn’t so much that the Chinese applied the model in any fundamentally new ways, but instead that they carried the model to its absurd extremes by nearly every measure.
...
By the time the Chinese were ready to get down to the business of business, the gold standard was nearly a decade gone. Modern Communist China has known nothing but the era of fiat currencies and cheap money. It had no good habits to break.
...
The Chinese have embraced the fiat currency era just as warmly as they embraced the Asian financial model. China regularly prints currency at more than double the rate of the United States, sometimes at five times the U.S. rate. And whereas the U.S. dollar is the store of value for the world and the global medium of exchange, the Chinese yuan wasn’t even used in Hong Kong until the 2010s.*
Part and parcel of the Chinese financial model is that there is no top. Because the system throws a bottomless supply of money at issues, it is hongry. Nothing—and I mean nothing—is allowed to stand in the way of development. Price is no issue because the volume of credit is no issue."
Depois, vêm palavras nada meigas sobre o euro:
"The Europeans are far more reserved than the Asians when it comes to finance, but that’s a bit like saying Joan Rivers didn’t like plastic surgery as much as Cher.
The profit motive is alive and well in Europe, with everything from home ownership to industrial expansion constrained by capital availability. Yet Europeans demand higher levels of service, stability, and support from their governments, and most European governments secure that service, stability, and support by tinkering with financial systems, most notably via banks."
Depois de explicar como diferentes países europeus olham para o dinheiro de forma diferente começa a massacrar:
"An obvious characteristic that comes from this is that no two economies are the same. Credit at the national level is also colored by a combination of size and diversity.
...
Somewhere along the line, the Europeans misplaced this basic understanding. They conflated the idea that having a unified currency would deepen economic regional integration as well as push Europe along toward the goal of becoming globally powerful.
For reasons that only made sense at the time, in the 1990s and early 2000s it became Europe’s conventional wisdom that everyone in Europe should be able to borrow at terms that previously had only been offered to the most scrupulous of Europeans. Furthermore, such borrowing should be green-lighted in any volume for any project by any government or corporation at any level.
...
The entire European system is now doing little more than going through the motions until the common currency inevitably shatters.
Before you get all judgy about the Asians or Europeans, please understand that they are hardly the only ones taking advantage of the cash-for-everyone world we currently live in. The Americans are no exception."
Não tenho grande opinião sobre os políticos europeus actuais, mas a fazer fé no livro é muito pior, e não só na Europa, é em todo o mundo.
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