Ainda que a crescente presença de Ron Paul nos media americanos provoque uma profunda azia a Paul Krugman, é do domínio factual que ao longo da última década se assistiu ao pujante reaparecimento da escola austríaca em boa medida facilitado pelo tremendo fracasso das medicinas económicas ortodoxas. O próprio chefe economista do Deutsche Bank, ao apresentar a sua demissão, confessou-se como um "Austríaco em economia" (disputável, mas enfim...). Não é pois de estranhar que o prolífico economista Robert Murphy tenha sido convidado para escrever regularmente no Washington Times. No seu primeiro texto, no passado sábado, pode ler-se:
Note the pattern over the last decade: Instead of giving us a painful but standard recession, Alan Greenspan gave us the illusion of a quick recovery in the early 2000s. When the housing bubble burst, it was no longer a mere recession we faced, but the collapse of major investment banks. Once again, the Fed intervened to spare Americans such a catastrophe.
Two years later, it was now not banks but small governments that were at risk of going bankrupt. But as usual, the central banks rushed to the rescue, apparently solving economic woes by creating dollars and euros out of thin air.
Then a year later, the problems resumed. Now it wasn’t just small governments at risk, but large governments and a major currency.
Enfim, uma leitura "austríaca" dos factos que, confesso, de tão inabitual na Spiegel, me leva a interrogar se não se está a preparar uma surpresa na Mitteleuropa
The pattern is clear: Printing up money (or more accurately, creating electronic reserves by purchasing assets and expanding the central banks’ balance sheets) can kick the can down the road, but it doesn’t solve the underlying structural problems with the economy. By delaying the needed adjustments and allowing consumers to persist in their delusions of prosperity, these interventions actually allow the problems to fester.
Sucede que, hoje mesmo, o comentarista residente Michael Sauga, no Spiegel Online, escreve o seguinte, ao rebater a tese de Obama que a Europa (i.e., a Alemanha) "não estaria a fazer o que dela se esperaria", leia-se, monetizar a dívida pública em larga escala:
American economists, central bankers and fiscal policy makers have reinterpreted British economist John Maynard Keynes's clever idea that government spending is the best way to counteract a serious economic downturn -- and have turned it into a permanent prescription. In their version of the Keynesian theory, declining growth or tumbling stock prices should prompt central banks to lower interest rates and governments to come to the rescue with economic stimulus programs. US economists call this "kick-starting" the economy.
The only problem is that this method of encouraging growth has not stimulated the US economy in recent years, but in fact has put it on a crash course. From the Asian economic crisis to the Internet and subprime mortgage bubbles, economic stimulus programs by monetary and fiscal policy makers have regularly laid the groundwork for the next crash instead of encouraging sustainable growth. In the last decade, the volume of lending in the United States grew five times as fast as the real economy.
Cheap money created the fertilizer for the excesses of the US financial industry. Low interest rates seduced mortgage providers into talking even the homeless into taking out mortgages. And the same low rates made it easier for investment banks and hedge funds, using increasingly risky loan structures, to transform the once-leisurely insurance and bond markets into casinos.
Uma caracterização da última década das administrações americanas e, muito em especial, da Reserva Federal, muito próxima da de um "Austríaco". Ora, conhecendo-se a linha editorial da Spiegel, este é um artigo, no mínimo, inabitual por aquelas bandas. Será que, brevemente, na MittelEuropa, haverá novidades?
(Também publicado no Estado Sentido)
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