Crendices e cargo cult (parte II)

Volto ao artigo de Miguel Lebre de Freitas ontem no JdN.

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O gráfico do artigo ilustra bem a diferença entre o mundo dos bens transaccionáveis (sujeitos a importações e exportações, sujeitos à concorrência internacional) e a loucura dos bens não-transaccionáveis... 

Nós funcionamos com base em estímulos e é muito difícil resistir-lhes:

• Endividamento das famílias quando o dinheiro era barato;
• "Relativamente ao ano transato, constata-se que a área nacional de cereais decresceu mais de 20mil hectares, tendo havido apenas aumentos no milho e no arroz." 

Quem tinha capital para investir e quisesse retorno rápido... onde o faria?

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O gráfico ilustra bem quem é que vai sofrer a sério com o Período de Desalavancagem Em Curso (PDEC) ... e reparem, onde está situado esse poder? Qual a relação dos bancos com esse poder?

Crendices e cargo cult

É essencial perceber que existem 3 economias no país.
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"Preços"
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"Por exemplo, ao longo do período 1995-2009, os preços dos bens "locais" aumentaram. Porquê? Porque durante todo aquele período, a procura interna aumentou mais do que a oferta interna e os bens locais não podem ser importados. A subida do preço dos bens "locais", por sua vez, motivou a reorientação da produção em seu favor e o desvio do consumo para as importações. O impacto na estrutura produtiva e no défice externo é bem conhecido."
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E o governo, numa demonstração de "cargo cult" utilizou dinheiro, em 2009, para apoiar a economia dos bens "locais".
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E que tal apoiar o abate de veículos para importar mais carros novos?
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Há que subsidiar as economias do centro da Europa com o dinheiro saqueado aos contribuintes portugueses.

Não é o que nos acontece que conta, é a forma como decidimos encarar o que nos acontece

Continuando a nossa leitura de "Islands of Profit in a Sea of Red Ink" de Jonathan Byrnes.
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"Recession Opportunities":
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"Recession; is this the worst of times or the best of times?

The answer is both. Difficult times bring difficult problems to all managers, but they also create rare opportunities for renewing change.
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Consider cost-cutting. In recession, revenues fall, cash is depleted, and stock prices plummet. In most companies, the instinctive reaction is “all hands on deck” cutting costs. The problem with cost-cutting, however, is two-fold: managers often do it wrong, and cost-cutting is not enough.
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Managers charged with cost-cutting in recessionary times all too often focus inordinately on short-term incremental gains, and miss major strategic opportunities.
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What are the implications for cost-cutting? It means that there is a bad way and a good way to cut costs.
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The bad way is to cut across the board (“let’s get inventory and travel expenses down…”). The good way is to look very carefully at your company and identify the winners and losers in terms of profitability and growth potential. The key is to shift resources systematically from the losers to the winners.
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This will enable you to lock in and nurture the profitable portion of your business, and to find and land more high-potential business. In the vernacular, you should “shoot one, promote one.”
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Opportunity for change
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It turns out that economic difficulties present a critical opportunity to drive progressive change in a company.
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When my readers confirmed that the profitability pattern I wrote about was so widespread, I called a number of top executives to ask a simple question, “Why aren’t you doing anything about it?”
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The answer varied a bit from individual to individual, but the essence was the same: it’s too hard to move a company to change when it’s doing well. This was a dilemma. It was very hard for executives to execute fundamental change, even when they knew that it would create major lasting improvements.
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Recession changes all of this. It is ironic that difficult economic times present one of the most important opportunities to drive renewing change in a company. In difficult times, with the company in jeopardy, managers throughout the company are very worried. It is precisely at this time that they will be most receptive to initiatives and change. Importantly, the same is true for customers and suppliers."
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Claro que quem recorre a apoios e subsídios adia a necessidade de se re-inventar. Recordo sempre o caso da Pirelli e a introdução de "Confronting Reality" de Larry Bossidy e Ram Charan:
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“To confront reality is to recognize the world as it is, not as you wish it to be, and have the courage to do what must be done, not what you’d like to do.”
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"The most widespread unrealistic behavior when the game changes drastically is to violate the First Law of Holes (when you're in one, stop digging). People redouble their efforts to do waht they know best. They often achieve heroic results - which are, alas, almost as often pointless, because they fail to confront the new realities.”

Imaginemos...

Imaginemos que JS e PPC tinham de apresentar o plano que negociaram esta semana, a um conjunto de pessoas com capital e tinham de as convencer a emprestarem dinheiro.

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Ou seja, tinham de lhes apresentar um Plano de Negócio atraente, um Plano de Negócio que demonstrasse que haveria um retorno do investimento e quanto tempo demoraria a obter esse retorno.

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O que caracteriza um bom Plano de Negócio?

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Sigamos os conselhos de William Sahlman na revista Harvard Business Review no artigo "How to write a Great Business Plan", publicado em Julho de 1997:

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Um bom Plano de Negócio deve conter quatro tópicos fundamentais:

• As Pessoas;
• A Oportunidade;
• O Contexto;
• Os Riscos e as Recompensas.

Consideremos apenas dois, as pessoas e a oportunidade.

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Acerca da oportunidade: "The model should also address the break-even issue: At what level of sales does the business begin to make a profit? And even more important, When does the cas flow turn positive?"

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Por que será possível, no final de 2011, levantar estes impostos extraordinários?

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O que vai mudar, na vida e na gestão do Estado que permita que isso aconteça? Que actuação sobre as causas-raiz se propõem desenvolver?

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Acerca das pessoas: "When I receive a business plan, I always read the resume section first. Not because the people part of the new venture is the most important, but because without the right team, none of the other parts really matter.

I read the résumés of the venture's team with a list of questions in mind. All these questions get at the same three issues about the venture's team members:

• What do they know?
• Whom do they know?
• How well are they known?

What and whom they know are matters of insight and experience. How familiar are the team members with industry players and dynamics?"

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Que experiência, que CV, carrega a equipa que está à frente deste Governo?

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Alguns subsídios:

• "Fake recoveries, os 3 amigos e a linguagem de carroceiro"
• "Fake recoveries, os 3 amigos e a linguagem de carroceiro" (parte II)
• "Fake recoveries, os 3 amigos e a linguagem de carroceiro" (parte III)
• "Modelos mentais, experiência de vida e tomada de decisões" (parte I)
• "Modelos mentais, experiência de vida e tomada de decisões" (parte II)
• "Modelos mentais, experiência de vida e tomada de decisões" (parte III)
• "Modelos mentais, experiência de vida e tomada de decisões" (parte IV)

Julgo que se trata de uma equipa que segue o aqui descrito :
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"Planning is an unnatural process; it is much more fun to do something. And the nicest thing about not planning is that failure comes as a complete surprise rather than being preceded by a period of worry and depression." (Sir John Harvey-Jones)

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Emprestava o seu dinheiro a esta gente?

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Cuidado com a resposta, se ela for negativa vão apelidá-lo de perigoso especulador.

Seldom do countries simply “grow” their way out of deep debt burdens

"Our main finding is that across both advanced countries and emerging markets, high debt/GDP levels (90 percent and above) are associated with notably lower growth outcomes. In addition, for emerging markets, there appears to be a more stringent threshold for total external debt/GDP (60 percent), that is also associated with adverse outcomes for growth. Seldom do countries simply “grow” their way out of deep debt burdens.

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"First, the relationship between government debt and real GDP growth is weak for debt/GDP ratios below a threshold of 90 percent of GDP. Above 90 percent, median growth rates fall by one percent, and average growth falls considerably more. We find that the threshold for public debt is similar in advanced and emerging economies. Second, emerging markets face lower thresholds for external debt (public and private)—which is usually denominated in a foreign currency. When external debt reaches 60 percent of GDP, annual growth declines by about two percent; for higher levels, growth rates are roughly cut in half."

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Talvez o bastonário da ordem dos economistas fizesse bem em ler este artigo "Growth in a Time of Debt"

The Great Wicked Mess

Para lá da Grécia, para lá de Portugal e da Espanha e das suas economias em fanicos e dos seus governos endividados...

• Temos o Reino Unido "Britain and the PIGS" daí o sorriso que este artigo me despertou "Mandelson urges swift action on Dubai debt restructuring";
• Temos os Estados Unidos "What Keeps Australian Central Bankers Up at Night?" e "9,500 Shuttered Stores In Sacramento Area: "Everyone Perfectly Content With Less""; e
• Temos a China e a Australia "Goldman Says "Something Brewing" in China on Currency; What's Really Brewing Is "Trouble"".

Onde está a procura?

Andam, andamos todos ao mesmo.

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Vivemos num mundo de abundância, num mundo de excesso. Há excesso de tudo, excepto de clientes e de empregos.

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Quanto aos clientes, quanto à escassez da procura, esse é o grande busílis da situação actual.

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Martin Wolf suspira pelo consumo dos consumidores alemães "Europe needs German consumers" só que, como lembra Edward Hugh, a sociedade alemã está envelhecida e já não consegue consumir o que o resto da Europa espera.

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Por outro lado, no outro lado do mundo, na Ásia, também se suspira pelo consumo europeu "Asia’s Exposure to Europe’s Woes".

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Os asiáticos ainda não perceberam que vão ter de confiar sobretudo no seu próprio consumo, os asilados europeus pouco saem do lar, pouco consomem.

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Assim, voltamos sempre ao mesmo tema de fundo desde Novembro de 2008: O que diz Roubini (parte I) e (parte I+1/2)

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As últimas notícias não são novidade, mas não deixam de ser preocupantes:

• "Zona euro cresceu apenas 0,1 por cento no quarto trimestre"
• "Economia ficou estagnada no quarto trimestre do ano passado"

O pior já passou... pois, fiem-se na Virgem e não corram!

"America slides deeper into depression as Wall Street revels"

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O que chama a atenção é logo o subtítulo:

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"December was the worst month for US unemployment since the Great Recession began."

O ponto-limite

About this "O recado do Presidente" and this "É a despesa corrente!" só me ocorre a imagem de um número crescente de pessoas que a pulso, lentamente, com muito esforço...

... conseguiram trepar ao alto da serra para me vir fazer companhia, para apreciar o panorama.

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Ao chegarem, e ao vê-los cansados, esgotados, suados e surpreendidos por me

verem lá em cima fresco como uma alface, só me apetece perguntar "Por que raio não vieram pelas escadas? Por que tiveram de vir pela escarpa?"

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Estas discussões sobre a despesa estão a tornar-se irrelevantes e diletantes.

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Há muitos anos li um livro chamado "O Ponto-Limite", e nós já passámos o ponto-limite, já passámos o ponto de não-retorno. Agora é assim:

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"Economists are split over whether the fiscal screw should be tightened with more immediate effect, as demanded by the Tories, or whether, as the Government insists, this would damage the recovery and therefore be counter productive.
Unfortunately for Mr Brown, the idea that this is a matter of political choice is sadly deluded. In the end, it will be the markets, not the politicians, that decide how much debt is too much. Rising gilt yields suggest that point may not be far off. If Mr Brown had longer to serve, he would find himself facing the same fiscal crisis that sunk so many of his Labour predecessors. Plus ca change."

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Já agora há quer o artigo todo "Cutting Britain's deficit is not a matter of political choice, Mr Brown"

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Impressiona a similitude:

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"We end this year and indeed this decade with the worst deficit in our history, the worst in Europe, simply as a result of the measures taken by this Government".

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In fact it is Gordon Brown, talking at the turn of a past decade when he was just a humble opposition trade and industry spokesman. Twenty years ago, our PM found it politically expedient to accuse the then Conservative Government of presiding over a calamitous deterioration in the public finances.

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Now the boot is on the other foot, and he defends his deficit spending as the only economically literate way of preventing a collapse into full-blown Depression. Profligacy has become the new prudence, so much so that Labour now accuses the Tories in a Herculian 150-page analysis published yesterday of belying their own rhetoric with uncosted tax and spending proposals which would leave the public finances £34bn a year worse off than Labour plans. Who's claiming the austerity mantle now?"

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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Engenharia eleitoral (parte III)

Parte I e parte II.

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"Produção industrial na Alemanha caiu 1,8% em Outubro"

A grande migração de valor em curso

Esta Grande Recessão em curso provocou uma formidável migração de valor.

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Os consumidores, perante o receio do futuro, perante o desemprego, perante o abaixamento dos seus rendimentos, perante o aumento da poupança, testaram mais marcas brancas, experimentaram mais produtos baratos. Quais poderão ser as consequências?

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A The McKinsey Quarterly no artigo "How the recession has changed US consumer behavior" procura dar resposta, ou dar subsídios para a resposta:

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"Companies waiting for a return to normality following the recession may be disappointed. Their customers have tried cheaper products—and actually like them."

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Alguns números para quantificar o desafio:

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"New McKinsey research found that, in any given category, an average of 18 percent of consumer-packaged-goods consumers bought lower-priced brands in the past two years.
Of the consumers who switched to cheaper products, 46 percent said they performed better than expected, and the large majority of these consumers said the performance of such products was much better than expected. As a result, 34 percent of the switchers said they no longer preferred higher-priced products, and an additional 41 percent said that while they preferred the premium brand, it “was not worth the money.”"

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Para as marcas "caras" que tenham ficado a saborear os rendimentos à sombra da bananeira, e que tenham deixado que o valor dos seus produtos sofresse uma erosão, como vão dar a volta?

Canário (parte IX)

Vai ser bonita a festa ...

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E vai ajudar a enterrar de vez os TGVs e auto-estradas e o status-quo português.

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"Greece can expect no gifts from Europe"

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"The EU’s authorities, rightly or wrongly, are more afraid of the moral hazard of a bail-out than the possible spillover effect of a hypothetical Greek default to other eurozone countries. If faced with a choice between preserving the integrity of the stability pact and the integrity of Greece, they are currently minded to choose the former."

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Nas costas dos outros vemos as nossas.

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"The lion’s share of the total deficit reduction effort is earmarked to come from tax measures, and most of those from the fight against tax evasion. Tax evasion is always the item first on the list of desperate governments. (Moi ici: onde é que eu já visto?) The European Commission and Europe’s finance ministers, who have heard this story before, are rightly asking for genuine deficit reduction."

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Wolfgang Munchau é mais optimista que eu: "Just as the Greek people are unprepared for austerity, investors are unprepared for what awaits them. I would still bet that outright default is unlikely. But I wonder whether the current Greek bond spreads reflect the true risks."

O deboche despesista (parte II)

Talvez estas vozes e o destino dos grandes dominós grego e espanhol venham impor o fim do deboche despesista em que os governos se têm envolvido.

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"Moody's reforça ‘outlook' negativo para dívida portuguesa"

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"Moddy's reforça outlook negativo sobre dívida pública portuguesa"

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Talvez o Dubai também ajude à festa.

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A espiral despesista e irracional em que se envolveram os governos talvez desemboque na necessidade de uma guerra para desviar as atenções... este postal dá muito que pensar "Marc Faber Sees War Against an Invented Enemy and a Big Financial Bust":

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""I think eventually there will be a big bust and then the whole credit expansion will come to an end," Faber added.
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"Before that happens, governments will continue printing money which in time will lead to a very high inflation rate, and the economy will not respond to stimulus".
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In one of his Gloomiest predictions, Faber, referred to as Dr Doom, said "the average family will be hurt by that, and then in order to distract the attention of the people, the governments will go to war".
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"People ask me against whom? Well, they will invent an enemy," Faber said."

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"Faber: The years 2006 and 2007 were "the peak of prosperity" and the world economy is not likely to return soon to that level.
Mish: Agreed. I had quite some time ago proposed Peak Credit and her twin sister Peak Earnings have arrived. Here is a snip from the former. ... That final wave of consumer recklessness created the exact conditions required for its own destruction. The housing bubble orgy was the last hurrah. It is not coming back and there will be no bigger bubble to replace it. Consumers and banks have both been burnt, and attitudes have changed."

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BTW, aquelas palavras da Moody's: "A agência destaca que a situação orçamental portuguesa "estava já a deteriorar-se há algum tempo, ainda antes de a crise financeira começar". Além disso, a economia portuguesa "está presa numa dinâmica de baixo crescimento devido à fraca competitividade", o que faz com o Governo tenha de "tomar decisões difíceis se quiser reduzir a dívida""

Para reflexão

"So, people and some central banks are seeking refuge in a stable currency that is beyond the control of the financial engineers.

"With the exception only of the period of the gold standard, practically all governments of history have used their exclusive power to issue money to defraud and plunder the people." Fredrich August von Hayek

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"The gold standard has one tremendous virtue: the quantity of the money supply, under the gold standard, is independent of the policies of governments and political parties. This is its advantage. It is a form of protection against spendthrift governments." Ludwig von Mises
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Alan Greenspan himself states the case most eloquently in his famous essay from 1966 Gold and Economic Freedom.
"This is the shabby secret of the welfare statists' tirades against gold. Deficit spending is simply a scheme for the confiscation of wealth. Gold stands in the way of this insidious process. It stands as a protector of property rights. If one grasps this, one has no difficulty in understanding the statists' antagonism toward the gold standard.""

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Por que sobe a cotação do ouro...

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E ainda:

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"Personally, I have been feeling vertigo with gold near $1180. All my contrarian instincts cause me to dislike momentum stories — but there again, maybe this is not momentum. Perhaps it is a civilization shift. Can’t make up my mind."

O canário grego (parte II)

"Bets rise on rich country bond defaults"

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"Greek market falls alert eurozone"

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"Could sovereign debt be the new subprime?"

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Vai ser uma festa bonita pá!

O canário grego

Simplesmente adoro.

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Adoro a poesia incluída nos textos de Ambrose-Pritchard, por exemplo:

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"Euro membership blocks every plausible way out of the crisis, other than EU beggary. This is what happens when a facile political elite signs up to a currency union for reasons of prestige or to snatch windfall gains without understanding the terms of its Faustian contract."

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"The newly-elected Hellenic Socialists (PASOK) of George Papandreou confess that the budget deficit will be more than 12pc of GDP this year, four times the original claim of the last lot. After campaigning on extra spending, it will have to do the exact opposite. "We need to save the country from bankruptcy," he said. (Moi ici: onde é que eu já vi este filme? Eu não sabia!!!)
Good luck. Communist-led shipyard workers have already clashed violently with police. Some 200 anarchists were arrested in Athens last week after they torched streets of cars in a tear gas battle.

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Mr Papandreou has mooted a pay freeze for state workers earning more than €2,000 a month. (Moi ici: Picanço e Avoila contratariam snipers") This has already set off an internal party revolt. "There is enormous denial," said Lars Christensen, emerging markets chief at Danske Bank. "They don't seem to understand that very serious austerity measures are needed. It is a striking contrast with Ireland," he said."

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"Modern economies have reached such debt levels before, and survived, but never in the circumstances facing Greece. "They can't devalue: they can't print money," said Mr Christensen.
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Wages rose a staggering 12pc in the 2008-2009 pay-round alone (IMF data), suicidal in a Teutonic currency union. Greece has slipped to 71st in the competitiveness index of the World Economic Forum, behind Egypt and Botswana."

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E se o dominó grego cair, acreditam que não seremos afectados?

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Trechos retirado daqui.

O deboche despesista

"In my view, whatever predictive ability markets once had has been steadily eroded by years of monetary recklessness, a cultural shift away from long-term investing towards short-term trading and speculation, and the shrinking share of market participants -- read professionals -- who actually understand the fundamentals that matter.

So, to those economists who keep insisting that the large and growing obligations our government is committing us to in the name of saving or increasing jobs -- a theory that hasn't quite panned out yet, as it happens -- don't matter because markets are signalling otherwise, I say one thing.

Bunk."

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Trecho retirado daqui

Para arqueologia futura

Um dia, num futuro distante, hei-de voltar a este postal para responder às gerações que ainda não nasceram quando estas me perguntarem:

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"- Quando foi? Quando é que as moscas começaram a despertar?"

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Ontem à noite na SIC-N, A. Nogueira Leite e João Duque avançaram com a possibilidade do pagamento do 13º mês ou do mês de Dezembro aos funcionários públicos não poder ser feito. Quase ao mesmo tempo na RTPN Manuela Arcanjo dizia, sobre o mesmo tema "... vai ser brutal, eu gostaria de não estar cá"

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Hoje, os jornais já não conseguem esconder a realidade:

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"Os números que corroem as contas";

"OCDE arrasa Economia portuguesa"

"OCDE diz que portugueses perdem nível de vida até 2017"

"Mais impostos no futuro para tapar buraco de sete mil milhões no OE"

"OCDE Portugal sem capacidade para criar empregos até 2017"

"Loucos e falidos" quem desconfiar da sanidade deste título tem de ler o último parágrafo deste artigo "Teixeira dos Santos nega descontrolo do défice" a parte que está entre aspas... rir ou chorar?

"O problema do orçamento"

Até o diário do governo já não consegue peres metelizar "Má gestão das expectativas"

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In the meantime o mundo lá fora prepara-se para um novo Tratado de Tordesilhas como há muito refere António Maria, Paul Krugman dixit.

Para reflexão

A diferença entre a economia da França e a economia da Alemanha segundo Edward Hugh, e o papel da demografia, do mercado interno e a necessidade de exportar.

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Roubini abandonou a postura optimista dos últimos meses (?), quanto ao desemprego o pior está para vir.

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E a propósito do desemprego este artigo no WSJ "China and the American Jobs Machine":

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"Both America and China are capable of producing far more than their own consumers are capable of buying. In the U.S., the root of the problem is a growing share of total income going to the richest Americans, leaving the middle class with relatively less purchasing power unless they go deep into debt. Inequality is also widening in China, but the problem there is a declining share of the fruits of economic growth going to average Chinese and an increasing share going to capital investment.

Both societies are threatened by the disconnect between production and consumption. In China, the threat is civil unrest. In the U.S., it's a prolonged jobs and earnings recession that, when combined with widening inequality, could create political backlash."