Para reflexão

Não sei se o tom armagedónico do final do artigo de Evans-Pritchard é possível:
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"More hedge funds will join the EMU divergence play, betting that the North-South split has gone beyond the point of no return for a currency union. This will enrage the Eurogroup. Brussels will dust down its paper exploring the legal basis for capital controls. Italy's Giulio Tremonti will suggest using EU terror legislation against "speculators".

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Wage cuts will prove a self-defeating policy for Club Med, trapping them in textbook debt-deflation. The victims will start to notice this. Articles will appear in the Greek, Spanish, and Portuguese press airing doubts about EMU. Eurosceptic professors will be ungagged. Heresy will spread into mainstream parties.
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Greece's Prime Minister Papandréou will balk at EMU immolation . The Hellenic Socialists will call Europe's bluff, extracting loans that gain time but solve nothing. Berlin will climb down and pay, but only once: thereafter, Zum Teufel.
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In the end, the Euro's fate will be decided by strikes, street protest, and car bombs as the primacy of politics returns. I doubt that 2010 will see the denouement, but the mood music will be bad enough to knock the euro off its stilts."

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No entanto, não posso estar mais de acordo com o início do artigo:

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"As the great bear rally of 2009 runs into the greater Chinese Wall of excess global capacity (Moi ici: Basta voltar aos esquemas deste postal), it will become clear that we are in the grip of a 21st Century Depression – more akin to Japan's Lost Decade than the 1840s or 1930s, but nothing like the normal cycles of the post-War era. The surplus regions (China, Japan, Germania, Gulf ) have not increased demand (Moi ici: Reparem na demografia da China, Japão e Alemanha. Quem é que consome mais, a juventude ou a terceira idade?) enough to compensate for belt-tightening in the deficit bloc (Anglo-sphere, Club Med, East Europe), and fiscal adrenalin is already fading in Europe. The vast East-West imbalances that caused the credit crisis are no better a year later, and perhaps worse (Moi ici: Ontem, no twitter, Tom Peters escreveu "I am a credentialed, fire-breathing, anti-protectionist. But, and there is a but, current exchange rate imbalance with China not sutainable." E o que Martin Wolf escreveu recentemente). Household debt as a share of GDP sits near record levels in two-fifths of the world economy. Our long purge has barely begun. That is the elephant in the global tent."

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O rácio da Procura sobre a Oferta

Neste postal "Cenários: O que diz Roubini (parteI)" desenvolvi uma série de esquemas que acabaram por culminar no da figura que se segue:
Enquanto a Procura for muito menor do que a Oferta vamos ter: deflação; desemprego a subir; confiança a descer (os estímulos governamentais estão a ajudar a mantê-la); falências a subir.
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Ontem, Evans-Pritchard escreveu no Telegraph sobre o tema do rácio da Procura sobre a Oferta: "There's no quick fix to the global economy's excess capacity":
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"Excess plant will hang over us like an oppressive fog until cleared by liquidation, or incomes slowly catch up, or both. Until this occurs, we risk lurching from one false dawn to another, endlessly disappointed.

Justin Lin, the World Bank’s chief economist, warned last month that half-empty factories risk setting off a “deflationary spiral”. We are moving into a phase where the “real economy crisis” bites deeper – meaning mass lay-offs and drastic falls in investment as firms retrench. “Unless we deal with excess capacity, it will wreak havoc on all countries,” he said.

Mr Lin said capacity use had fallen to 72pc in Germany, 69pc in the US, 65pc in Japan, and near 50pc in some poorer countries. These are post-War lows. Fresh data from the Federal Reserve is actually worse. Capacity use in US manufacturing fell to 65.4pc in July"

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Este rácio é o busílis da questão na economia real...
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Será que isto vai de alguma forma ajudar?

Este é o tempo para repensar a estratégia (parte XII)

Este é o tempo para repensar a estratégia.
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"Business leaders ought to recognise, as they catch their breath after months of turbulence, that the strategy they were pursuing until recently is unlikely to be right for today.
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It’s not just that markets have changed. Your organisation has changed. You may have all been through a near-death experience. Even if you avoided calamity, it is unlikely that colleagues are the same carefree people you remember from a year or two ago. Most businesses have been making serious cutbacks. Co-workers may be doing their best to look calm and positive. But they can see unemployment rising and know that sustained recovery is a long way off."
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Para repensar a estratégia Stefan Stern chama a atenção para quatro tarefas cruciais:
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"Four principal tasks emerged as vital for a successful reinvention of strategy: uncovering hidden risks that undermine strategy; using the power of organisational identity; reviving the strategy process; and adapting leadership styles.
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Hidden risks can derail strategy. Do your people really believe in what you are advocating, or does their apparent tacit approval in fact conceal a determined (or subconscious) attempt to subvert it?Are managers throughout the organisation “taking ownership” of the strategy, or simply passing it off as something that has little to do with them?"
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Crediblidade é fundamental... se as pessoas não acreditam, a corrosão do cinismo é terrível.
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Outro ponto, faz-me recordar o que Goldmann escreve com outros no livro "Os Novos Líderes" esta questão da ressonância, da coerência, do alinhamento:

"At our strategy days we ask: ‘Does this resonate with who we are?’”

In a battle between culture and strategy, culture usually wins. So in drawing up new strategy, make sure it is not in conflict with an organisational identity that could otherwise engulf and overwhelm it."

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Ainda uma outra fileira de reflexão, por acaso... (mas será que há acasos?) ontem, ao retomar uma auditoria, após o intervalo para almoço, referi ao meu interlocutor a reflexão, ou os ensinamentos do artigo de Lippe e Salterio sobre o perigo de mudanças de gestores colocarem em posições que interferem com a execução estratégica, pessoas que não partiram a pedra da reflexão estratégica e, por isso, olham para ela pelo valor facial... falta-lhes a experiência de a ter criado e de toda a envolvência que a alicerçou.

"Reviving the strategy process is no less important. Here the most interesting ideas put forward have come from Cognosis, another London-based consultancy. Its managing partner, Richard Brown, has spoken of the need to develop “emotionally intelligent strategy” – one that is meaningful and credible to employees. Such strategies are not developed, Mr Brown argues, when only senior management is involved in their creation. Factual analysis might convince the boardroom but can be seen as lifeless by everybody else. For most employees, belief is much more important than simple understanding if they are going to execute a strategy successfully."

Que são tempos para repensar a estratégia disso não tenho dúvidas.

E mais, fazendo o paralelismo entre a economia e a biologia, não creio que a velocidade da evolução biológica seja constante, ela é permanente, está sempre presente. No entanto, acontecimentos excepcionais criam rupturas que abrem janelas de oportunidade e aceleram, para os oportunistas atentos, as hipóteses de evolução.

Trechos retirados de "Time to get your strategy right"

Green shoots (parte II)

Os da foto (da parte I) são verdadeiros, os outros ... Green Shoots In Germany and Estonia?

Green shoots

Estes são verdadeiros e seguros.

Os riscos do modelo assente nas exportações

"Trade data from Asia are flashing warning signals again. Korea's exports were down 28.3pc in May, reversing the April rebound. Malaysia has slipped to -26pc, and India has touched a new low of -33pc.
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Stephen Roach, Morgan Stanley's Far East chief, fears an "Asian Relapse", saying the region is prisoner to its fatal dependency on exports to the West. The export share of GDP has risen from 36pc to 47pc across developing Asia over the last decade.
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"China's incipient rebound relies on a time-worn stimulus formula: upping the ante on infrastructure spending in anticipation of an eventual rebound of global demand," he said. The strategy cannot work this time because Americans have exhausted their credit, and their desire to borrow. Consumption will fall from its peak of 72pc of GDP to the "pre-bubble norm" of 67pc, if not more.
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David Rosenberg from Gluskins Sheff expects Americans to retrench ferociously as 78m baby boomers face the looming threat of penury in old age. "The big story is that the personal savings rate hit a 15-year high of 5.7pc in April. I believe it could test the post-War peak of 15pc. Too many pundits are still living in the old paradigm of Americans shopping till they drop," he said.
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If he is right, this will shatter the surplus economies of China, Japan, and Germany, unless they adjust fast to the new world order."
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Depois deste trecho de Ambrose no Telegraph "Merkel's inflationary fretting may wake the bears from hibernation" vem-me logo à mente o uso que Elaine Supkis faz da mitologia clássica e da função da "Balança" (Lybra). É preciso equilibrio!

Canário? (parte II)

Na sequência do postal de ontem ... acerca do efeito dominó, mais um desenvolvimento:
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"European banks in spotlight as Baltic crisis hits Sweden":
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"It is unclear whether Sweden's bank troubles are the first sign of broader strains for West European banks, which have lent $1.6 trillion to the former Communist bloc. Sweden's exposure to the region at 22pc of GDP is not the highest. Austria's exposure is 70pc of GDP, with $246bn outstanding in Central Europe, Ukraine and the Balkans.
The situation varies from country to country, with the lowest risk in Poland and the Czech Republic. Even so, Danske Bank warns that Austria could face losses reaching 11pc of GDP in an "ugly scenario". Sweden's losses would be 6pc, and Belgium's 3.6pc, the Netherlands' 2.3pc, and Italy's 1.5pc.
"The risk of contagion is serious, Nobody thought Iceland would set off a crisis in Hungary last year, but it did, and the same could happen again," said Lars Christensen, East Europe expert at Danske Bank."

Canário?

Quando a primeira peça cai ...
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"Latvia has become the first EU country to face a sovereign debt crisis after failing to sell a single bill at a treasury auction worth $100m (£61m), prompting fears of a fresh storm in Eastern Europe as capital flight tests currency pegs."
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"Latvian debt crisis shakes Eastern Europe"

Uma lição de dinâmica de sistemas

"Debtwatch No 35: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again"
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Atenção ao registo irónico:
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"It seems that in Australia, the reverse can apply: the symptom can be removed without eliminating the cause. We can avoid a serious recession while doing nothing to reduce private debt.
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Excessive private debt caused the Global Financial Crisis. The expansion of private debt caused a false bubble prosperity for the last one and a half decades. Now that the growth in private debt has ceased, economies worldwide are going into a severe downturn driven by deleveraging: consumers in particular are spending far less as they try to reduce their debt levels; output is plummeting, and unemployment is rising."

Vergonha, vergonha, vergonha!!!

Timothy Geithner, o secretário de estado do tesouro norte-americano, tem estado na China a tentar tranquilizar e assegurar os donos do dinheiros de que vale a pena comprar os bilhetes de papel suportados pelo governo norte-americano.
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"A major goal of Geithner's maiden visit to China as Treasury chief is to allay concerns that Washington's bulging budget deficit and ultra-loose monetary policy will fan inflation, undermining both the dollar and U.S. bonds. China is the biggest foreign owner of U.S. Treasury bonds. U.S. data shows that it held $768 billion in Treasuries as of March, but some analysts believe China's total U.S. dollar-denominated investments could be twice as high.
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Durante a visita teve oportunidade de discursar perante uma plateia de estudantes universitários:
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"Chinese assets are very safe," Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University, where he studied Chinese as a student in the 1980s.
His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home."
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Estudantes inteligentes... e dotados de pouca caridade cristã: rirem-se na cara do pedinte não fica bem.

Acordar as moscas que estão a dormir (parte XXIII)

"A restrição financeira é o problema mais grave que se coloca ao crescimento a prazo da economia portuguesa. A dívida do país, pública e privada, vai consumir - como já acontece - enormes recursos. Porque é preciso pagá-la."
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Helena Garrido no Jornal de Negócios em "Obras públicas, Custos Privados"
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A experiência de vida e os modelos mentais dos ministros da situação e da oposição e dos Isaltinos deste país levam-nos para este tipo de políticas... nunca tiveram de combater no mundo dos bens transacionáveis, sempre viveram numa redoma em que o financiamento era assegurado por saxões.

Mexer na ferida

"À espera da Alemanha?"

Vá lá

Vá lá!
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Alguém deve ter segredado alguma coisa ao ouvido...
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"O ministro das Finanças, Fernando Teixeira dos Santos, falou em "sinais positivos", disse que "talvez a partir do segundo semestre comecemos a sentir alguns sinais positivos na economia portuguesa", e que o país estará "próximo de um ponto de viragem".
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O governador do Banco de Portugal pensa que não. Se é verdade que há sinais de menor intensidade da recessão - a subida das bolsas, por exemplo -, também é um facto que "infelizmente o desemprego é uma variável retardada" face às condições conjunturais, recordou. Por isso assume estar "um bocadinho mais pessimista" quanto à retoma, não pondo as mãos no fogo por uma recuperação no segundo semestre deste ano."

Para reflexão

Nestes tempos em que os bolsos grandes dos governos tentam proteger todo o tipo de empresas em dificuldades convém ler este artigo de Don Sull no FT "When good intentions lead to bad decisions".

"Os teus curas de aldeia percebem a enormidade do que fazem todos os domingos?"

Ambrose no Telegraph "US bonds sale faces market resistance"
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""There isn't enough capital in the world to buy the new sovereign issuance required to finance the giant fiscal deficits that countries are so intent on running. There is simply not enough money out there," he said. "If the US loses control of long rates, they will not be able to arrest asset price declines. If they print too much money, they will debase the dollar and cause stagflation.
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"The bottom line is that there is no global 'get out of jail free' card for anyone", he said."
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"It is not clear where the capital will come from to cover global bond issues. Asian central banks and Mid-East oil exporters have cut back on their purchases of US and European bonds as reserve accumulation slows. Russia has slashed its holding by a third to support growth at home. Even Japan's state pension fund has become a net seller of bonds for the first time this year the country's population ages."
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Um filósofo francês agnóstico, esqueci-me do nome, dizia frequentemente a um bispo muito seu amigo algo como o título deste postal.
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Imaginemos pois que mundo poderemos ter com o descalabro do dolar?

Outro cuco!

Um lead destes:

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"The UK has a strategic nightmare: it has a strong comparative advantage in the world’s most irresponsible industry. So now, in the wake of the biggest financial crisis since the 1930s, the UK must ask itself a painful question: how should the country manage the cuckoo sitting in its nest?"

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Obriga logo a pensar no assunto... a sério.

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Martin Wolf no Financial Times "Why Britain has to curb finance"

As PME's na Europa da Grande Recessão

Comparemos o choradinho que costumamos ouvir da boca dos empresários e associações empresariais em Portugal, pedindo apoios, protecção e subsídios com o conteúdo do artigo "Humble but nimble" da revista The Economist:
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"In contrast to the doom and gloom coming from Europe’s biggest firms, many small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) are cautiously optimistic."
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"But a recent survey by the Federation of Small Business, which represents the smallest SMEs in Britain, found that 60% of businesses were performing as well as or better than last year."
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"Although SMEs are always more vulnerable to downturns than big firms, argues Ludo Van der Heyden, a professor at INSEAD, a French business school, they are also much better at managing through them. To start with, they are usually more efficient and flexible. They “tend not to make the kind of stupid responses that big companies make, such as cutting costs deeply and indiscriminately, so they recover faster”, he says. SMEs are much closer to their customers and there is often more trust between managers and workers, meaning greater labour flexibility."

Acordar as moscas que estão a dormir (parte XXI)

"If people are in aggregate poorer, they must reduce their aggregate spending. It seems almost inconceivable that they will only want to cut their private expenditures. Public spending will need to be cut, too. It will hurt, but it will have to be done."
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"If the long-run proportion of public spending in national income is to stay much the same as planned prior to the crisis, the long-run proportion of receipts should remain the same, as well. But, given the structural shifts in economies, this will now require a different structure of taxation. We have to tax what exists, not what has disappeared."
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Trechos retirados de "Martin Wolf: highly progressive income taxes are a folly" de Martin Wolf.

A não perder!!!

A crónica de Rui Tavares na última página do Público de hoje.
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É tão difícil vermo-nos ao espelho.
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É tão fácil decretar que a "culpa" é do Outro.
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"Lembrei-me dela quando declarámos que a culpa era da ganância dos banqueiros, como se não houvéssemos de olhar para as outras culpas de todos nós."
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"E quase acreditamos que, se nos esquecermos das causas da crise, elas desaparecerão sozinhas. Evitaremos olhar-nos ao espelho enquanto nos for possível. Sim, nós."

Será mau carácter?

Será mau carácter da minha parte?
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Não sei explicar, mas tenho um feeling que me diz que a história que a Elaine conta "Trade Deficits Kill Empires" faz muito mais sentido que a história que Ambrose conta "Asia will author its own destruction if it triggers a crisis over US bonds"
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Ou me engano muito ou estamos a assistir ao fim do Império Americano ponto! Kaput! Finito! The End! Fim! Koniec!
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É História com agá grande a acontecer em tempo real.
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E quem vai comprar os bens que os desgraçados dos cidadãos americanos compravam ao resto do mundo com todo o crédito a que tinham acesso e deixaram de ter?
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Aqueles conselhos que os antigos que viveram a sua infância na primeira metade do século XX nos davam não eram conversa salazarista... eram o fruto da experiência de quem já passou por isto e sabe que a onda volta sempre para cobrar o payback time.
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Outra fonte "Will The Dollar Standard Collapse?" onde se pode ler este resumo significativo:
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"The US gets goods; China gets dollars. China takes its excess dollars, and invests them back in the US, whether in the form of treasury bonds, Freddie Mac mortgage-backed securities, or US corporate bonds. The US takes those dollars and buys more Chinese goods. China gets more excess dollars and reinvests in the US. The US buys more Chinese goods. And on and on, until the US credit market debt as a % of GDP goes from 150% in 1970 to 350% in 2008. Just as reference, that number was 130% in 1950. During the gold standard, debt-to-GDP hardly grew. Under fiat money, it has soared. America isn’t awash in debt because we’re inherently greedy, profligate consumers. It’s because money is no longer backed by gold. China and Japan eagerly reinvest their dollars back in the United States so as to keep their currencies low relative to the US dollar. American consumers and companies happily borrow the money foreigners are throwing their way. The party lasted until 2007, when Americans finally began having trouble paying their enormous debts."