Curiosidade do dia

"The only part of the so-called national wealth that actually enters into the collective possessions of modern people is– their national debt. Hence,…the modern doctrine that a nation becomes richer the more deeply it is in debt. Public debt becomes the credo of capital. And with the rise of national debt-making, want of faith in the national debt takes the place of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost….
.
As with the stroke of the enchanter’s wand…, [ the public debt] endows barren money with the power of breeding and thus turns it into capital.”… [But] modern fiscal policy…contains within itself the germ of automatic progression. Overtaxation is not an accident, but rather a principle."

Trecho retirado de "Chapter Thirty-One: Genesis of the Industrial Capitalist" de "Capital"

The Rise of the Predator State (parte III)

Na sequência deste artigo de opinião de Pedro Lomba "Karl Marx tinha razão e os partidos sabem-no", aconselha-se o seu autor a pesquisar a metáfora da predação, como elemento para a compreensão das relações económicas, tendo em conta as ideias the Thorstein Veblen, publicadas em 1899 no livro "Theory of the Leisure Class".
.
Recordo The Rise of the Predator State (parte I) e The Rise of the Predator State (parte II). Neste último postal sublinhei:
.
"In a world where the winners are all connected, it is not only the prey (who by and large carry little political weight) who lose out. It is everyone who has not licked the appropriate boots. Predatory regimes are, more or less exactly, like protection rackets: powerful and feared but neither loved nor respected. They cannot reward everyone, and therefore they do not enjoy a broad political base. In addition, they are intrinsically unstable, something that does not trouble the predators but makes life for ordinary business enterprise exceptionally trying.
...
predators suck the capacity from government and deplete it of the ability to govern. In the short run, again, this looks like simple incompetence, but this is an illusion. Predators do not mind being thought incompetent: the accusation helps to obscure their actual agenda."
.
Aquele primeiro período da citação "In a world where the winners are all connected, it is not only the prey (who by and large carry little political weight) who lose out." veio-me logo à cabeça quando no Público li o trecho que se segue": "O CDS-PP desafiou ontem o Governo a apresentar uma solução para o futuro do Banco Privado Português (BPP) e propôs que seja criada uma comissão arbitral que apure "o que são depósitos ou não" naquele banco."
.
E o último período da citação "Predators do not mind being thought incompetent: the accusation helps to obscure their actual agenda" ... a tinta da nova lei sobre o financiamento dos partidos ainda não secou e já pensam em alterações... pois.

Uma teoria interessante...

... que leva a um modelo que simula a nossa realidade e ajuda a percebê-la e a encadear os acontecimentos "The Roving Cavaliers of Credit".
.
Alguns trechos:
.
"Thus rather than credit money being created with a lag after government money, the data shows that credit money is created first, up to a year before there are changes in base money. This contradicts the money multiplier model of how credit and debt are created: rather than fiat money being needed to “seed” the credit creation process, credit is created first and then after that, base money changes.
.
It doesn’t take sophisticated statistics to show that the second prediction is wrong—all you have to do is look at the ratio of private debt to money. The theoretical prediction has never been right—rather than the money stock exceeding debt, debt has always exceeded the money supply—and the degree of divergence has grown over time."
...
"“In the real world, banks extend credit, creating deposits in the process, and look for reserves later”.[5]
.
Thus loans come first—simultaneously creating deposits—and at a later stage the reserves are found. The main mechanism behind this are the “lines of credit” that major corporations have arranged with banks that enable them to expand their loans from whatever they are now up to a specified limit."
...
"Thus causation in money creation runs in the opposite direction to that of the money multiplier model: the credit money dog wags the fiat money tail. Both the actual level of money in the system, and the component of it that is created by the government, are controlled by the commercial system itself, and not by the Federal Reserve."
...
"The only way that Bernanke’s “printing press example” would work to cause inflation in our current debt-laden would be if simply Zimbabwean levels of money were printed—so that fiat money could substantially repay outstanding debt and effectively supplant credit-based money.
.
Measured on this scale, Bernanke’s increase in Base Money goes from being heroic to trivial. Not only does the scale of credit-created money greatly exceed government-created money, but debt in turn greatly exceeds even the broadest measure of the money stock—the M3 series that the Fed some years ago decided to discontinue."
...
"We are therefore not in a “fractional reserve banking system”, but in a credit-money one, where the dynamics of money and debt are vastly different to those assumed by Bernanke and neoclassical economics in general.[10]
.
Calling our current financial system a “fiat money” or “fractional reserve banking system” is akin to the blind man who classified an elephant as a snake, because he felt its trunk. We live in a credit money system with a fiat money subsystem that has some independence, but certainly doesn’t rule the monetary roost—far from it."
...
"Though in some ways the answers are obvious, it lets us see why banks are truly cavalier with credit. The conclusions are that bank income is bigger:

• If the rate of money creation is higher (this is by far the most important factor);
• If the rate of circulation of unlent reserves is higher; and
• If the rate of debt repayment is lower—which is why, in “normal” financial circumstances, banks are quite happy not to have debt repaid.

In some ways these conclusions are unremarkable: banks make money by extending debt, and the more they create, the more they are likely to earn. But this is a revolutionary conclusion when compared to standard thinking about banks and debt, because the money multiplier model implies that, whatever banks might want to do, they are constrained from so doing by a money creation process that they do not control.
.
However, in the real world, they do control the creation of credit. Given their proclivity to lend as much as is possible, the only real constraint on bank lending is the public’s willingness to go into debt. In the model economy shown here, that willingness directly relates to the perceived possibilities for profitable investment—and since these are limited, so also is the uptake of debt.
.
But in the real world—and in my models of Minsky’s Financial Instability Hypothesis—there is an additional reason why the public will take on debt: the perception of possibilities for private gain from leveraged speculation on asset prices."
.
A furna vulcânica no fundo do oceano...