No limite, uma pessoa que poupe tudo (mas vamos dizer, acima do limiar do necessário para viver) o que produz significa que fornece trabalho e/ou produtos/serviços aos outros sem pedir nada em troca.
(E os economistas em geral acham que isso é mau para a economia.)
Isto é verdade mesmo que receba um salário ou rendimento por aquilo que produz porque, ou:
- se limita a acumular moeda retirando assim moeda de circulação, o que faz baixar o nível geral de preços e em nada afectando a economia. Mas notar o significado real: essa pessoa produz algo para os outros mas não consome em troca tantos recursos ou tempo de trabalho às outras pessoas, uma vez que não chega sequer a utilizar a moeda acumulada. Assim, quanto mais pessoas assim existirem (produzem tanto como as outras, mas poupam todo o rendimento em acumulação monetária) mais as outras todas beneficiam.
- ou investe tudo o que tem via sistema bancário ou mercado de capitais, contribuindo para a baixa geral das taxas de juro. E assim contribui para que mais cedo, o investimento adicional assim permitido faça baixar o nível geral de preços para todos dado o aumento da produtividade. Será assim alguém que apenas produz para que outros possam investir a longo prazo em novos métodos, etc.
A doença do consumismo é na verdade uma doença da teoria económica que prevalece à esquerda e direita que faz parecer que é do consumo que sai a diminuição da pobreza, começando logo por ser a causa das recessões.
Claro que a decisão de produzir menos (ou trabalhar menos) com a consequência de ter de consumir menos é perfeitamente legítima e racional dado que existem outras formas de viver, como disfrutar do tempo livre, incluíndo auto-produção ou o tipo de comunitarismo contemplativo (ou outro) que os mosteiros desde há longos séculos praticam (embora, raramente são apontados como o exemplo de um micro-comunistarismo quase total que realmente funcionou).
Friday, January 02, 2009
O benefício da poupança
Thursday, January 01, 2009
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
SNS e "atendimento ao cliente"
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
Re: Krugman e os ciclos
No entanto, convém distinguir dois formas de anti-consumismo (que até podem coexistir na mesma pessoa) - uma que defende "consumir menos e poupar mais", e outra "consumir menos e trabalhar menos" (que poderemos associar às tais "direita" e "esquerda culturais"", respectivamente*) .
Agora, se aceitarmos a tese keynesiana que a redução do consumo deprime a economia (é um "se" grande, admito, mas para já vamos assumir que sim), estas duas formas de anti-consumismo terão diferentes consequências:
- o anti-consumismo "de direita" (trabalhar e poupar mais) originará os problemas clássicos das recessões económicas: teremos a economia em queda e gente à procura de trabalho sem o arranjar
- já o anti-consumismo "de esquerda" (trabalhar menos e gastar menos) talvez seja inofensivo: realmente a redução do consumo irá deprimir a economia; mas se essa redução do consumo for acompanhada por uma redução da oferta de trabalho (por exemplo, tirando anos sabáticos de vez em quando, ou passando a trabalhar em horário reduzido), em principio já não teremos o tal problema do desemprego, já que a redução da procura de trabalho é capaz de ser compensada pela redução da oferta de trabalho**
*isto não é uma regra rígida - tenho a ideia que os comunistas ortodoxos costumam estar mais próximos da mentalidade de trabalhar e poupar do que da de trabalhar menos e gastar menos (mas talvez os comunistas ortodoxos não contem como "esquerda cultural"); por outro lado, uma certa direita "aristocrática-camponesa" (praticamente extinta hoje em dia) às vezes também criticava a mentalidade "de classe média" de fartar-se de trabalhar para subir na vida (ver, por exemplo, The Menace of the Herd [pdf], de Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn)
**recordo que as expressões "oferta de trabalho" e "procura de trabalho" significam o contrário daquilo que parece: "oferta de trabalho" são os trabalhadores que se disponibilizam para trabalhar, e "procura de trabalho" são as empresas que procuram trabalhadores
«Ministra diz que lei anti-tabaco fez reduzir em 5 por cento os fumadores»
As origens do Islamismo
Krugman e os ciclos
"It’s true that the economy is currently shrinking. But that’s the result of a slump in private spending. It makes no sense to add to the problem by cutting public spending, too." NYT
Monday, December 29, 2008
Causas da crise financeira - diferentes perspectivas
Was Risk Misperceived, Misrepresented, or Misallocated?, por Mark Thoma:
We know that excessive risk taking was a factor in the financial crisis, but why people were willing to take on excessive risk?
There are several explanations for this. In one class of models, misperception of risk generates excessive demand for risky assets, housing and financial assets in particular. There are a variety of stories about why risk is misperceived, ratings agencies failed to do their jobs, risk assessment models turned out to be wrong, people believed that housing prices would continue to go up, and so on. The key is that in this class of models the misperception of risk gives people a false sense of security, and induces them to take on more risk than they can handle.
In another class of models, risk is misrepresented. Here, there is out and out fraud or other practices where, essentially, people know that the house is made of cards, but advertise it as being made of bricks anyway, and assure people that it is perfectly safe. Fraud could cause the victim to misperceive risk, so this is related to the first class of models, but I am trying to separate excessive risk taking brought about by intentional misrepresentation from excessive risk taking brought about by errors in judgment (or, perhaps more accurately in some cases, from negligence).
In a third class of models risk is misallocated, and there are two strands of risk misallocation models. In one, the mechanism that causes people to take excessive risk is knowledge that the government will step in and cover any potential catastrophic losses (risk is reallocated from the private to the public sector). This is the moral hazard problem, and the claim that government intervention led to excessive risk taking has been leveled pretty much wherever government has played a role in housing and financial markets, even when the role has not been very large.
In the second strand of risk misallocation models, the cause of excessive risk taking is market failure due to principal agent problems (e.g. when mortgage brokers are paid according to the number of loans that pass through their hands rather than according to the quality of the loans, and hence have no incentive to monitor risk). Market failures of this type can cause excessive risk taking because the person taking the risks does not face the full consequences of their decisions when the risky decisions turn out to be wrong. Why not take a big risk if you win on the upside, but you don't have to pay the full cost (or any of the costs) on the downside? However, unlike the first strand of risk misallocation models where there is too much government intervention, here the problem can arise when government fails to regulate markets properly, so the problem is often the result of too little government intervention rather than too much.
In a final class of models government is also blamed, but this time government is a bully that forces banks - through regulation or moral suasion - to make loans that are overly risky. The very thoroughly discredited models blaming the Community Reinvestment Act for the financial crisis fit into this class, and the models blaming the CRA are the most prominent member of this category. For that reason, I'll call these models "misguided" and set them aside.
So which was it, misperception, misrepresentation, or misallocation? In the following, Tyler Cowen focuses on the misallocation of risk due to government induced moral hazard. My own view is that misallocation of risk did play a role, but I think risk misallocation due to market failures, i.e. the failure of regulation, was more important in generating the crisis than moral hazard brought about by implicit or explicit government guarantees.
Bailout of Long-Term Capital: A Bad Precedent?, por Tyler Cowen:
The financial crisis is a result of many bad decisions, but one of them hasn’t received enough attention: the 1998 bailout of the Long-Term Capital Management hedge fund. If regulators had been less concerned with protecting the fund’s creditors, our current problems might not be quite so bad. ...
At the time, it may have seemed that regulators did the right thing. The bailout did not require upfront money from the government, and the world avoided an even bigger financial crisis. Today, however, that ad hoc intervention by the government no longer looks so wise. With the Long-Term Capital bailout as a precedent, creditors came to believe that their loans to unsound financial institutions would be made good by the Fed — as long as the collapse of those institutions would threaten the global credit system. Bolstered by this sense of security, bad loans mushroomed. ...
The Long-Term Capital episode ... was important precisely because the fund was not a major firm. At the time of its near demise, it was not even a major money center bank, but a hedge fund with about 200 employees. Such funds hadn’t previously been brought under regulatory protection this way. After the episode, financial markets knew that even relatively obscure institutions — through government intervention — might be able to pay back bad loans.
The major creditors of the fund included Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers, all of which went on to lend and invest recklessly and, to one degree or another, pay the consequences. But 1998 should have been the time to send a credible warning that bad loans to overleveraged institutions would mean losses, and that neither the Fed nor the Treasury would make these losses good.
What would have happened without a Fed-organized bailout of Long-Term Capital? ... Fed inaction might have had grave ... economic consequences,... and the economy would have probably plunged into recession. That sounds bad, but it might have been better to have experienced a milder version of a downturn in 1998 than the more severe version of 10 years later.
In 1998, there was no collapsed housing bubble, the government’s budget was in surplus rather than deficit, bank leverage was much lower, and derivatives markets were smaller and less far-reaching. A financial crisis related to Long-Term Capital, however painful, probably would have been easier to handle than the perfect storm of recent months.
The ad hoc aspect of the bailout created a precedent for what has come to be called “regulation by deal” — now the government’s modus operandi. Rather than publicizing definite standards and expectations for bailouts in advance, the Fed and the Treasury confront each particular crisis anew. ... So far, every deal — or lack thereof, in the case of Lehman Brothers — has been different.
While there are some advantages to leaving discretion in regulators’ hands, this hasn’t worked out very well. It has become increasingly apparent that the market doesn’t know what to expect and that many financial institutions are sitting on the sidelines, waiting to see what regulators will do next. Regulatory uncertainty is stifling the ability of financial markets to engineer at least a partial recovery. ...
Sunday, December 28, 2008
Violência nas escolas
O Diário de Noticias escreve:
(clicando, o quadro deve aumentar)Friday, December 26, 2008
Thursday, December 25, 2008
Momento picuinhas
«Sem Roseta e sem BE, o risco do PS perder Lisboa é elevado ao quadrado»
A intenção do autor, claramente, é dizer que, sem o apoio da esquerda, o risco do PS perder a Camara de Lisboa aumenta bastante.
Mas, na sua tentativa de fazer uma metáfora matemática, esqueceu-se de uma coisa: o risco do PS perder a CML é menor que 1 (se o risco fosse igual a 1, não seria um risco, seria uma certeza; e penso que nem seria possível o risco ser maior que 1). Ora, um valor menor que 1 elevado ao quadrado não aumenta, diminui (por exemplo 0,3 elevado ao quadrado é 0,09).
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Protestos na Islandia
Monday, December 22, 2008
Sunday, December 21, 2008
Desenho inteligente?
Mais noticias da Grécia - ataque policial ao Politécnico de Atenas iminente?
On the Greek Riots › #32, 16:06: Athens Polytechnic occupation under imminent threat:
A few moments ago one of the pro-vice-chancellors of the Athens Polytechnic announced to the people inside the occupied building that the control of the building is no longer with the university senate and that it has been passed on to an attorney general instead. Anarchist radio 98 FM reports that the senate has ordered the university guards to leave their positions.
There is a general assembly happening right now at the Athens Polytechnic, with people deciding whether they should leave the building or not.
What the pro-vice-chancellor claimed to have happened is absurd and 100% illegal even by the state’s own laws. What we are all fearing is that a police operation inside the Polytechnic is imminent. This would be the first time in over a decade that such an operation takes place - and the first time ever that police enter university grounds with a mass operation without prior permission by the senate.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Apriorismo e Ciclos
Entretanto fui apanhado em duas frentes de discussão nas caxas de comentários.
The Mises Institute receives a constant stream of correspondence from around the world, and in this one item keeps coming up again and again. People often ask whether there have been any responses to Bryan Caplan's essay "Why I'm not an Austrian Economist" (thanks to Google, the version on his personal site is far more widely circulated than the one that appeared in the Southern Economic Journal).
The answer is yes. See
Navegando pela internet
- Começa-se pela Santa Aliança
- Passando por este post do Miguel Vale Almeida, chega-se a este artigo sobre as piratas Anne Bonney e Mary Read
- Depois, pode-se ir ao artigo da wikipedia sobre Anne Bonny e daí para o filme Anne of the Indies (acho que vi esse filme, para aí em 1984/85)
- como se imagina, fazer uma pesquisa no Google sobre o "almas" pode ser complicado, mas, com um pequeno truque, pode-se chegar a alguns artigos interessantes, como este ou sobretudo este (embora seja conveniente ter cuidado com o que se lê na Net)
