sexta-feira, 30 de dezembro de 2011

O que está por trás da "crise do euro"?

What’s Behind the Euro Crisis and How Will It End?

While the pronouncement of the “euro crisis” has become a main topic in the newsrooms and while a plethora of pundits hasn’t got tired of predicting the end of the common European currency, the facts tell a different story. By the end of 2011 the euro was quoted higher than its long-term average since its inception and the official inflation rate of the euro zone has been kept under two percent. The average debt burden of the countries that make up the euro-zone is less than that of the United States or Japan. What is, then, the problem with the euro? Why doesn’t a day go by without a headline that says that the euro is doomed and that it would be only a matter of time until the European Monetary Union and the European Union, too, would blow apart?
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2011

 




Fonte

2011



2011




quinta-feira, 29 de dezembro de 2011

Revolução da teoria econômica

Heterodox economics - Marginal revolutionaries -The crisis and the blogosphere have opened mainstream economics up to new attack

Bancos centrais sob crítica

Has the Fed Been a Failure?
ABSTRACT
As the one-hundredth anniversary of the 1913 Federal Reserve Act
approaches, we assess whether the nation‘s experiment with the Federal Reserve
has been a success or a failure. Drawing on a wide range of recent empirical
research, we find the following: (1) The Fed‘s full history (1914 to present) has been
characterized by more rather than fewer symptoms of monetary and macroeconomic
instability than the decades leading to the Fed‘s establishment. (2) While the Fed‘s
performance has undoubtedly improved since World War II, even its postwar
performance has not clearly surpassed that of its undoubtedly flawed predecessor,
the National Banking system, before World War I. (3) Some proposed alternative
arrangements might plausibly do better than the Fed as presently constituted. We
conclude that the need for a systematic exploration of alternatives to the
established monetary system is as pressing today as it was a century ago.
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Veja também: Free Banking Org

Da divergência para a convergência e depois divergência de novo

quarta-feira, 28 de dezembro de 2011

O fim da "Década dos BRICs"

BRIC Decade Ends as Growth Peaked: Goldman

In the past decade, mutual funds poured almost $70 billion into Brazil, Russia, India and China, stocks more than quadrupled gains in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index and the economies grew four times faster than America’s.
Now Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (GS), which coined the term BRIC, says the best is over for the largest emerging markets....
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Sobre- e subvalorização das taxas de câmbio em termos de poder de compra e renda

THE Economist’s Big Mac index is a fun guide to whether currencies are at their “correct” level. It is based on the theory of purchasing-power parity (PPP), the notion that in the long run exchange rates should move towards the rate that would equalise the prices of a basket of goods and services around the world. At market exchange rates, a burger is 44% cheaper in China than in America. In other words, the raw Big Mac index suggests that the yuan is 44% undervalued against the dollar. But we have long warned that cheap burgers in China do not prove that the yuan is massively undervalued. Average prices should be lower in poor countries than in rich ones because labour costs are lower. The chart above shows a strong positive relationship between the dollar price of a Big Mac and GDP per person.
PPP signals where exchange rates should move in the long run. To estimate the current fair value of a currency we use the “line of best fit” between Big Mac prices and GDP per person. The difference between the price predicted for each country, given its average income, and its actual price offers a better guide to currency under- and overvaluation than the “raw” index. The beefed-up index suggests that the Brazilian real is the most overvalued currency in the world; the euro is also significantly overvalued. But the yuan now appears to be close to its fair value against the dollar—something for American politicians to chew over. Read more in our Economics focus and leader.
Click on the tabs in the table below for a ranking of currencies on both the raw and the adjusted index:
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Veja também: "O que está por trás da guerra cambial?" por Antony Mueller

2011 na perspectiva de Olivier Blanchard

2011 In Review: Four Hard Truths

By Olivier Blanchard
What a difference a year makes …
We started 2011 in recovery mode, admittedly weak and unbalanced, but nevertheless there was hope. The issues appeared more tractable: how to deal with excessive housing debt in the United States, how to deal with adjustment in countries at the periphery of the Euro area, how to handle volatile capital inflows to emerging economies, and how to improve financial sector regulation.
It was a long agenda, but one that appeared within reach.
Yet, as the year draws to a close, the recovery in many advanced economies is at a standstill, with some investors even exploring the implications of a potential breakup of the euro zone, and the real possibility that conditions may be worse than we saw in 2008.
I draw four main lessons from what has happened
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Macroeconomia no caminho errado

The Trade Cycle; why I=S is a bad place to start doing macro

by Rick Rowe

In the olden days, economists used to talk about the trade cycle. (They meant a cycle in the amount of all trade, not just international trade). They meant a cycle in the amount of exchange. There are fluctuations over time in the amount of buying and selling that people do. In a boom, trade speeds up; and in a recession, trade slows down.
I think we should resurrect that old term. Thinking about the trade cycle is a better way of thinking about short run macroeconomics than how we currently think about it. Nowadays we don't talk about fluctuations in trade; instead we talk about fluctuations in output. It's not the same thing. We are wrong; the old guys were right. Somewhere, maybe around the 1920's or 1930's (I wish I were better at history of thought) macroeconomics took a wrong turn.
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Veja também

Estados Unidos e China em comparação

We invite you to predict when China will overtake America
AMERICA'S GDP is still roughly twice as big as China’s (using market exchange rates). To predict when the gap might be closed, The Economist has updated its interactive chart below with the latest GDP numbers. This allows you to plug in your own assumptions about real GDP growth in China and America, inflation rates and the yuan’s exchange rate against the dollar. Over the past ten years, real GDP growth averaged 10.5% a year in China and 1.6% in America; inflation (as measured by the GDP deflator) averaged 4.3% and 2.2% respectively. Since Beijing scrapped its dollar peg in 2005, the yuan has risen by an annual average of just over 4%. Our best guess for the next decade is that annual GDP growth averages 7.75% in China and 2.5% in America, inflation rates average 4% and 1.5%, and the yuan appreciates by 3% a year. Plug in these numbers and China will overtake America in 2018. Alternatively, if China’s real growth rate slows to an average of only 5%, then (leaving the other assumptions unchanged) it would not become number one until 2021. What do you think?
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terça-feira, 27 de dezembro de 2011

O que está por trás da crise do euro e como vai terminar?

CASH & CURRENCIES
THE CONTINENTAL ECONOMICS INSTITUTE CURRENCY REVIEW

Antony P. Mueller
What’s behind euro crisis and how will it end?

While the pronouncement of the “euro crises” has become a main topic in the newsrooms and while a plethora of pundits hasn’t got tired of predicting the end of the common European currency, the facts tell a different story. By the end of 2011 the euro was quoted higher than its long-term average since its inception and the official inflation rate of the euro zone has been kept under two percent. The average debt burden of the countries that make up the euro-zone is less than that of the United States or Japan. What is, then, the problem with the euro? Why doesn’t a day go by without a headline that says that the euro is doomed and that it would be only a matter of time until the European Monetary Union and the European Union, too, would blow apart?
The origin of the mess
When the financial crisis broke out in the United States in 2008 no commentator showed up to blame the US dollar as the cause of the housing and financial market crisis and to state that the use of a common currency for a large and highly diverse economy such as that of the United States was the root of the problem. Besides blaming the regulatory framework as being either too strict or too lose, it was mainly the monetary policy that was identified as the origin of the current financial crisis. A monetary policy of extremely low interest rates and ample liquidity put in place by the US central bank since the late 1980s had produced an inflated financial sector.  The appetite of investors and lenders for high yield risky investments had gotten bigger over the decades in as much as the US central bank had acted in a way that hardened the conviction among financial market operators that there would be a reliable bailout guarantee for the financial system as implicitly pledged by the American central bank.  
In Europe, moral hazard was on the rise when planning for a common European currency was put in place in the second half of the 1990s. With the introduction of a common European currency came the belief that because a country such as Greece would use the same currency as Germany or the Netherlands its sovereign debt would be of equal standing. Consequently, it did not take long until bond investors would drive down interest rates of countries such as Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy to the levels of Germany and the Netherlands. As it was the case in the US where financial market operators acted under the delusion of absence of risk during the housing bubble, in Europe it was sovereign debt of the euro-zone members that was held to be risk-free.
In retrospect one can state that the period which some economist identified as the “Great Moderation” was in fact closer to being the time of the “Great Delusion”. Not much different than the politicians in the US who acted as cheerleaders for the mortgage binge in the housing market, governments in Europe were enticed to borrow up to the hilt firstly because interest rates were much lower after they joined the euro-zone and secondly because borrowing was so easy given the willingness of bankers and investors to lend as much as they could in the belief that the investment in bonds of the members of the euro-zone of the Southern periphery would be lucrative and safe.

Mismanagement
              
The simple fact that a country such as Greece did over-borrow and as a consequence had to face default, something which is not new at all in financial history, was profoundly misinterpreted by the major groups that were the main decision-makers in the unfolding of the Greek tragedy. When it became evident that Greece encountered difficulties at rolling over its debt, the prospect that Greece would default was vehemently negated right away as a rational option. Of course, Greece wanted to avoid default and in this aim it was joined by its lenders who obviously also did not want Greece to default and obviously so preferred a bailout as well. These two self-interested groups got prompt support by members of the highest echelons of the European Union. By this party of three the stage was set to turn the Greek drama first into a farce and then into Greek tragedy.
The proper way to resolve the Greek debt problem would have been to let Greece and its bankers make their deal and have them work out a rescheduling agreement without a direct European involvement. Yet things took their turn to disaster when politicians of the euro-zone announced that Greece must get a bailout because no euro member state should ever default. This was an absurd allegation and it did not take long until financial market operators sensed that the day had come to speculate against this false and pretentious claim.
When the sell-off of Greek bonds began and interest rates for the country began its steep rise, it became manifest that Greece would be unable to refinance its debt load that was about to fall due in 2011 and thereafter. Contagion spread to Portugal and Spain and towards the end of the year, Italian interest rates began to skyrocket as well. Severe shock waves were sent across Europe and beyond when in late 2011 even Germany and France had to struggle to refinance their public debt. The main credit rating agencies announced that the standing of the core European economies would be under review for a downgrade as it was already done for a series of smaller countries of the euro-zone.
A major factor for the crisis to spin out of control was the disorder that ruled when the crisis began. Serious doubts arose about who would effectively be in charge if a member of the euro-zone should encounter severe payment problems with the prospect of default. The straightforward rule, which was laid down in the Maastricht treaty for the European Monetary Union, namely that each country was responsible for its own debt and that there would be no bailout guarantee by the Union, was discarded without necessity and carelessly replaced by a declaration of solidarity.  
Members of the executive branch of the European Union, the European Commission, pushed ahead with the demand of assisting Greece with funds from the European Union which in essence meant that it was up to the solvent countries of the euro-zone to come up with the money. Germany, which would be the main paymaster for Greece and the other countries in need for financial aid, was not amused. The divergence among the major European decision makers provoked a loss of confidence among financial market operators concerning not only the payment ability of individual countries but also regarding the euro itself and finally the European Union as institution.


Crisis without a cause

The simple fact that a relatively small country such as Greece had payment difficulties and would be in need of rescheduling its debt transmogrified into the so-called “euro crisis”. It would not take long and the financial press and its favorite pundits would pronounce that not only the common European currency would be close to its end but the European Union as well. 
If the European authorities had declared -- in true concordance with the Maastricht Treaty -- that Greek debt is a Greek problem, no “euro crisis” would have occurred. There would have been a Greek debt crisis and bankers would have had to pay their so-called “hair cut” and the interest rates for Greece would have been considerable higher than before. Greek debt payments would have been extended to the future in a rescheduling agreement, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would have provided an emergency loan, and some other countries, such as Germany and France would have provided extra funding. Like in so many instances before, when economies had debt problems, the IMF would have taken over the supervision of the restructuring and the implementation of an adaptation program. In other words: all of which that we have now with the European bailout would also have happened without the European bailout albeit with the major difference that on-one would speak today of the euro crises and only about a Greek debt crisis.
The interventionist hyperactivity of politicians, particularly at the top of the executive branch of the European Union who, so it appears, were following the rule of all power grabbers never to let a crisis go by without using it as an opportunity for extending dominance was surely a major factor in turning a relatively minor problem into one that threatens the stability of the global financial system and has been prone to cause mind-boggling havoc for the people of Europe if indeed the euro zone were to fall apart.


Transformation of the euro-zone

All the while when politicians and governments were arguing and disagreeing in dispute an avalanche of self-declared experts on European matters showed up to offer one dark scenario after the other. A dedicated consumer of financial news soon would have gained the conviction that the Maya prediction of the end of the world in 2012 was nothing compared to the end of the euro and the European Union. Yet while sinister ink was spilled, the exchange rate of the euro held up well and economic growth did not falter in the main economies of the euro-zone. Germany, which represents the largest European economy, experienced the year 2011 as one with steady growth, low interest rates, and a declining unemployment rate. While the pundits were struggling to outcompete each other putting forth one worst case after the next, reality took a different path.
Different from the scenario in which Greece would have settled its debt problem without a deep involvement of the European Union, the actual path now that was taken has transformed the Eurozone into a genuine fiscal union. Did the authorities get what they wanted? Can one truly exclude the hypothesis that maybe it was the intention of some decision-makers at the top echelon of the European Union to take the Greek debt troubles as an opportunity to push the Eurozone forward towards a fiscal union? Anyway, as a consequence of the Greek debt debacle, chief additional European financial institutions were established which for the time to come will band the members of the Eurozone closer together at the cost of leaving some other members of the European Union such as particularly the United Kingdom in isolation.
On May 9, 2010, the 27 members of the European Union set up the “European Financial Stability Facility” (EFSF) as a vehicle to provide financial assistance to member states. The EFSF is allowed to borrow up to 440 billion while the “European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism” (EFSM) as an emergency program may raise up to 60 billion euros which are guaranteed by the budget of the European Union. A veritable fiscal union was practically created on December 9, 2011, when the member states of the European Union, with the exception of the United Kingdom, agreed upon strict limits for government spending and borrowing in including mechanisms of sanction in the case on non-compliance. On December 20, 2011, the European Central Bank (ECB) took its dubious prognosis an imminent liquidity crisis as the pretext to assume the role as a genuine Lender-of-the-Last-Resort for the euro-zone when it offered 489.2 billion euros for the banking sector of the euro-zone as the first of a two part operation to augment liquidity and to animate banks to buy bonds of the troubled euro-zone countries.
With the new institutions and the action of the ECB a profound transformation of the European Union has taken place. With the EFSF and the EFSM financial stability has moved from being a national concern into the authority of the European Union. With the fiscal pact, member countries of the European Union (other than the UK) have given up their sovereignty over their national budgets. Finally, making the round complete, the ECB has taken over comprehensive authority to act as the eurozone’s Lender-of-the-Last-Resort.
The crisis has not weakened the position of the common European currency but fortified its institutional framework.


Conclusion

As much as the euro crisis became more severe, it also became clear that there is no reasonable alternative to a common currency in Europe. A return to national currencies would not resolve the basic problem that modern economies face. The root of the trouble is not the currency per se but a financial system based on fractional reserve banking, which, in combination with the modern warfare-welfare state drives towards an unremitting expansion of state activity and debt burdens.
Yet the true nature of the current crisis is not that of a currency, be it the euro or the dollar, but the currency crisis is the symptom of fundamental problems of the structure of modern democracy and its monetary system. The fiscal pact is an attempt to stand against the tide of debt expansion. It is hard to see how the goal could be reached. As long as we continue to maintain a monetary system of fractional reserve banking in combination with state money and a welfare-warfare state, the pattern of perilous booms and busts will not vanish.
Antony Mueller
Cash and Currencies - The Continental Economics Institute Currency Review
December 2011

segunda-feira, 26 de dezembro de 2011

O fim do sonho



'Esse negócio vai acabar muito mal. Só não sabemos quando e onde'

Para gestor, desfecho da crise europeia causará grande perda de riqueza no mundo

25 de dezembro de 2011 | 3h 04

Leandro Modé - O Estado de S.Paulo
O semblante tranquilo engana. Luís Stuhlberger, considerado um dos melhores gestores de recursos do Brasil, está preocupado com o desfecho da crise global. "Esse negócio vai acabar muito mal. Nós só não sabemos onde nem como. Porque não há precedentes, não há previsibilidade", afirma, em entrevista exclusiva ao Estado.
Stuhlberger conquistou sua reputação principalmente por causa do trabalho à frente dos fundos da família Verde, destaque de rentabilidade na empresa criada e administrada por ele, a Hedging-Griffo (desde 2006, Credit Suisse Hedging-Griffo, após a venda de metade do capital para o banco suíço). Neste ano, o fundo rendeu pouco acima do CDI, taxa de juros de referência no mercado financeiro. "Num ano em que a bolsa cai tudo isso (mais de 15%), a gente está no CDI. Acho que meu papel está ok. Nossos clientes estão felizes."
A análise de Stuhlberger sobre o Brasil é dividida em duas partes. No curto prazo, afirma, tudo vai bem. "Mas há sinais de que algo está errado. Imóvel está caro, nosso Big Mac é o mais caro do mundo, nosso Corolla é o mais caro do mundo, a nossa arte está ficando a mais cara do mundo", exemplifica. "Nada disso surpreende a presidente Dilma (Rousseff). O duro é, dentro desse sistema político que vivemos, consertar." A seguir, os principais trechos da entrevista, dividida por tópicos:
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Economia brasileira passa Reino Unido em PIB

Brasil levará até 20 anos para ter padrão europeu, diz Mantega

reuters
Em segunda-feira 26/12/2011, às 16:22

BRASÍLIA (Reuters) - O ministro da Fazenda, Guido Mantega, afirmou nesta segunda-feira que, apesar de o Brasil estar crescendo a taxas superiores aos países desenvolvidos, vai levar entre 10 e 20 anos para alcançar um padrão de vida europeu...
O ministro da Fazenda já havia dito que o Brasil se tornaria a sexta maior economia do mundo em 2011 e que o objetivo era ultrapassar a França para se tornar a quinta maior economia nos próximos anos.
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Crise da dívida na perspectiva histórica

Lessons from a century of large public debt reductions and build-ups

S. M. Ali Abbas Nazim Belhocine Asmaa El-Ganainy Mark Horton
18 December 2011

As policymakers continue to grapple with high debts and the troubles that come with them, this column looks at the lessons from data on public debt in 178 countries stretching back as far as 1880. It argues that when faced with an unsustainable debt burden, slow but steady adjustment is the way to go.

Empirical work on debt cycles and debt sustainability has been constrained by lack of public debt data on a large number of countries over a long time period. Existing studies are based on datasets that either cover short time periods (such as Jaimovich and Panizza 2010) or omit a large number of countries (such as Reinhart and Rogoff 2010). In our latest study (Abbas et al 2011), we compile a comprehensive historical public debt database covering 178 countries, starting from 1880 for G7 countries and a few other advanced and emerging economies, and from 1920 for additional advanced and emerging economies. For low-income countries, data coverage generally starts in 1970 (Abbas et al 2011).
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Grande Depressão

This Week in the Great Depression -- What Went Wrong?: Echoes

By late 1931, economic troubles had been growing for more than two years. Those expecting a quick recovery were disappointed and sought explanations. What's wrong with the world economy? How did we get into this swamp?
Among many theories advanced at the time, three stand out: one focused on long-term economic imbalances, one on financial contingencies and one on cultural or psychological explanations.
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sábado, 24 de dezembro de 2011

Previsão do BC para o crescimento econômico

BC projeta crescimento de 3,5%; Mantega acha pouco

agenciaestado
Em sexta-feira 23/12/2011, às 9:00

Nem 4% nem 5%, como querem a presidente Dilma Rousseff e o ministro da Fazenda, Guido Mantega. Para o Banco Central (BC), a economia brasileira crescerá apenas 3,5% em 2012. O Relatório de Inflação divulgado ontem prevê aceleração do crescimento do Produto Interno Bruto (PIB) entre o primeiro e segundo semestres do ano que vem. Mas a expansão não será suficiente para assegurar a meta de 5% do governo. Em 2011, o BC espera crescimento menor, de 3%.
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sexta-feira, 23 de dezembro de 2011

Brasil em comparação

THE ECONOMIST

Comparing Brazilian states with countries

Compare-cabana

Which countries match the GDP and population of Brazil's states?

THE notion that Brazil is in the vanguard of a group of emerging countries on their way to economic superpower-dom is so widely accepted as to have become trite. But how far along this road is Brazil? One way to get a quick answer is to compare Brazilian states with countries. The map below presents country equivalents for every state in terms of GDP, GDP per person and population. It throws up some curiosities: who knew that Alagoas, a state in the north-east that is currently more famous for its murder rate than for its magnificent beaches, has the same GDP per person as China? It also suggests that even the comparatively rich states in the south and south-east have some way to go before they can be compared with wealthy places in the northern hemisphere. The gauchos of Rio Grande do Sul will not necessarily be delighted to learn that GDP per person in their state is close to that of Gabon.
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Ajuste fiscal espanhol - Olé!

Espanha lançará medidas orçamentárias especiais

agenciaestado
Em sexta-feira 23/12/2011, às 12:08

O governo da Espanha planeja apresentar no dia 30 de dezembro uma série de medidas para atingir as ambiciosas metas de redução do déficit orçamentário, e estabeleceu uma prazo limite em 7 de janeiro do ano que vem para representantes empresariais e sindicatos negociarem um acordo para a reforma do mercado de trabalho, segundo informou hoje a porta-voz do governo, Soraya Saenz de Santamaria, que também é vice-primeira-ministra.
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Novo salário mínimo R$ 622

Salário mínimo sobe para R$ 622 em janeiro

A presidenta Dilma Rousseff assinou nesta sexta-feira (23) o decreto que prevê salário mínimo de R$ 622,73 a partir de 1º janeiro de 2012. O novo valor consta no ofício que o Ministério do Planejamento enviou ao Congresso hoje com a atualização dos parâmetros econômicos utilizados na elaboração da proposta orçamentária do próximo ano (PLN 28/11). A diferença de R$ 3,52 deve-se à revisão do INPC deste ano, que reajusta o mínimo.
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Veja os efeitos sobre a demanda e oferta de trabalho - todo depende da elasticidade dos bens que se produz com o trabalho - mais elástico, maior o efeito negativo do salário mínimo sobre a quantitade do trabalho demandada.

quinta-feira, 22 de dezembro de 2011

Novas regras do BC para compulsório bancário

BC muda regras para aumentar liquidez de bancos

reuters
Em quinta-feira 22/12/2011, às 21:43

BRASÍLIA (Reuters) - O Banco Central decidiu alterar as regras de recolhimento de compulsório bancário sobre recursos com o objetivo de aumentar a liquidez do sistema financeiro, sobretudo nos pequenos e médios bancos. A medida tem o potencial de injetar cerca de 30 bilhões de reais no mercado num momento em que também há preocupação de impulsionar o crescimento econômico.
A autoridade monetária anunciou nesta quinta-feira que vai reduzir o percentual de compulsório a prazo que tem rendimento pela Selic -hoje em 11 por cento ao ano. A partir de 24 de fevereiro, o percentual cairá para 73 por cento e em 27 de abril do ano que vem, para 64 por cento. Atualmente, todo o valor depositado é remunerado pela taxa básica de juros.
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Veja tambem

2012

2012

2012: Perspectivas para a economia mundial

O ano de 2011 vai ser lembrado como o ano da crise soberana europeia. Esta crise ainda não está superada. Ao contrário. O risco para 2012 é que a crise europeia se espalhe por contágio e afete também os países emergentes. A estagnação na Europa e nos Estados Unidos vai continuar. Junto com o Japão, as grandes economias mundiais estarão na crise. Passo a passo esta crise está afetando também os países em desenvolvimento.
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Veja reprint

Banco Central Europeu assume papel do "lender of the last resort"

BCE empresta o valor histórico de € 489 bi a bancos europeus

Operação de liquidez de longo prazo supera as expectativas dos analistas, em um sinal de que as instituições financeiras preveem falta de financiamento em 2012

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Taxa de desemprego está em 5,2 %

Desemprego cai para 5,2% em novembro, mínima recorde

reuters
Em quinta-feira 22/12/2011, às 9:40

RIO DE JANEIRO, 22 Dez (Reuters) - A taxa de desemprego no Brasil caiu para 5,2 por cento em novembro, o menor patamar de todos os meses da série histórica do Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), que começou em 2002, segundo informou o Instituto nesta quinta-feira.
O dado se compara a uma taxa de 5,8 por cento em outubro deste ano e aos 5,7 por cento de novembro do ano passado. Economistas consultados pela Reuters projetavam leitura de 5,65 por cento.
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Lista dos Estados com os piores índices educacionais

Percentual de desempenho ‘abaixo do básico’ e ‘básico’ – 5º ano – Português

Alagoas89,8%
Maranhão87,1%
Sergipe85,4%
Rio Grande do Norte85,2%
Pernambuco85,0%

Percentual de desempenho ‘abaixo do básico’ e ‘básico’ – 5º ano – Matemática

Alagoas91,5%
Maranhão89,9%
Rio Grande do Norte87,8%
Amapá87,7%
Sergipe87,5%

Percentual de desempenho ‘abaixo do básico’ e ‘básico’ – 9º ano – Português

Alagoas90,5%
Maranhão87,9%
Bahia87,8%
Pernambuco87,6%
Paraíba87,0%

Percentual de desempenho ‘abaixo do básico’ e ‘básico’ – 9º ano – Matemática

Amapá96,7%
Alagoas96,5%
Maranhão96,1%
Bahia95,7%
Pernambuco95,5%

Redação: Bruno Brandão – DRT/MG: 11.382
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A inflação voltou para o Brasil

Prévia da inflação oficial acelera para 0,56% em dezembro, diz IBGE

No ano, IPCA-15 acumula alta de 6,56%, acima do teto da meta do BC.
Maior impacto foi exercido pelo grupo de despesas com alimentos e bebidas.

Do G1, em São Paulo
O Índice Nacional de Preços ao Consumidor Amplo - 15 (IPCA-15), que é a prévia da inflação oficial, acelerou para 0,56% em dezembro, após subir 0,46% em novembro, conforme divulgou o Instituto Brasileiro de Geografia e Estatística (IBGE), nesta quarta-feira (21). No mesmo período do ano passado, a taxa havia ficado em 0,69%. No ano e em 12 meses, o IPCA-E, que se constitui no IPCA-15 acumulado, fechou o ano em 6,56% - taxa acima do teto do sistema de metas para inflação do Banco Central, de 6,5%.
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Política orçamentária

Governo endurece e comissão adia novamente Orçamento

reuters
Em quarta-feira 21/12/2011, às 21:11

BRASÍLIA (Reuters) - Sem acordo para o reajuste a aposentados que ganham acima do salário mínimo, a Comissão Mista de Orçamento (CMO) adiou a votação da peça orçamentária de 2012 para quinta-feira.
Nesta quarta, representantes das centrais sindicais, parlamentares da CMO e a área política do governo negociaram uma alternativa para que o Orçamento fosse votado e fosse mantida ao menos a possibilidade de negociação entre aposentados e o governo para criar um dispositivo que reajustasse as aposentadorias acima do índice inflacionário.
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Invasão braileira

"... Brazilian shoppers are taking the U.S. by storm this holiday season, a welcome boost for U.S. retailers facing a sluggish economy. Armed with a strong currency, easier access to credit and abundant enthusiasm for shopping, Brazilians have quietly ousted richer nations, such as the U.K., as the biggest overseas spenders in key U.S. markets like New York City and Florida...."
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Comércio internacional - expansão dos emergentes

Trading places

Dec 19th 2011, 15:07 by World In 2012
Emerging economies will import more than the rich world in 2012
AN ENTERPRISING Englishman in the 1850s famously said that if he “could add an inch of material to every Chinaman’s shirt-tail, the mills of Lancashire could be kept busy for a generation.” Sadly, those mills have since turned to rust, but in the years to come selling to China and the world’s other emerging markets are expected to keep many Western firms busy for years to come. In 2012, an important new milestone will be reached when emerging-markets import more goods and services than the rich economies combined. That is a dramatic change since 2000, when they imported barely half as much as rich countries did. Policymakers will hope that the rapid growth in developing countries’ buying power will boost the profits of companies in rich economies over the coming years.
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quarta-feira, 21 de dezembro de 2011

Previdência social: uma crise programada

Previdência fechará 2011 com melhor resultado desde 2003

reuters

Em quarta-feira 21/12/2011, às 14:10

BRASÍLIA (Reuters) - A Previdência Social deverá fechar este ano com déficit de cerca de 36 bilhões de reais, o melhor resultado desde 2003, segundo informou nesta quarta-feira, o secretário de Políticas de Previdência Social do ministério, Leonardo Rolim.
Até então, a projeção estava entre 35 bilhões e 38 bilhões de reais. Em 2010, disse Rolim, o rombo ficou em cerca de 46 bilhões de reais, em valores atualizados pela inflação.
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África - crescimento econômico em alta

"... From Ghana in the west to Mozambique in the south, Africa’s economies are consistently growing faster than those of almost any other region of the world. At least a dozen have expanded by more than 6% a year for six or more years. Ethiopia will grow by 7.5% this year, without a drop of oil to export. Once a byword for famine, it is now the world’s tenth-largest producer of livestock. Nor is its wealth monopolised by a well-connected clique. Embezzlement is still common but income distribution has improved in the past decade...."
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Desigualdade da renda aumentou nos Estados Unidos

Income inequality in America

"Occupy Wall Street" gets a boost from a new report on income distribution
OF ALL the many banners being waved around the world by disgruntled protesters from Chile to Australia the one that reads, "We Are the 99%" is the catchiest. It is purposefully vague, but it is also underpinned by some solid economics. A report from the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) points out that income inequality in America has not risen dramatically over the past 20 years—when the top 1% of earners are excluded. With them, the picture is quite different. The causes of the good fortune of those at the top are disputed, but the CBO provides some useful detail on that too. The biggest component of the increase in after-tax income for the top one percent is "business income" as opposed to income from labour or investments (though admittedly these things are hard to untangle). Whatever the cause, the data are powerful because they tend to support two prejudices. First, that a system that works well for the very richest has delivered returns on labour that are disappointing for everyone else. Second, that the people at the top have made out like bandits over the past few decades, and that now everyone else must pick up the bill. Of course it is a little more complicated than that. But this downturn ought to test the normally warm feelings in America of the 99% towards the 1%.
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Pobreza em América Latina

Poverty and progress

THE ECONOMIST Poverty continues to fall in Latin America
THE United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean (ECLAC) reckons that 31.4% of the region’s population was living below national poverty lines in 2010. This maintains a steady fall from a peak of 48.4% in 1990. Since 1999, most countries have made strides toward reducing poverty. Two things lie behind this progress. The biggest factor is the region’s strong economic performance: Latin America’s GDP expanded by 5.9% in 2010. This strong recovery meant that the 2008 recession in the region caused only a slight blip. Better-targeted social policies also help, especially cash-transfer schemes for the poor. But sustaining this progress will be hard. Extreme poverty, where income does not cover the need for basic food, is stuck at around 13%. (Several governments, including the Brazilian and Colombian, have unveiled initiatives aimed at the poorest.) Further falls in poverty and inequality will require greater efforts to raise productivity, to improve education and to shrink the informal economy.
Fonte 

TOPIC: Poverty »

Riqueza é o fator mais dominante para a expectativa da vida

Mais rico, maior a expectativa da vida

Pobreza na Alemanha - distribuição regional

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terça-feira, 20 de dezembro de 2011

Ai Se Eu Te Pego

Vídeo de 'Ai Se Eu Te Pego', de Michel Teló, é o mais visto do ano na Espanha

Hit no Brasil e na Europa, sucesso sertanejo já teve quase de 83 milhões de visualizações

SÃO PAULO - Hit na Europa, o vídeo de Ai Se Eu Te Pego, do cantor sertanejo Michel Teló, foi o mais visto em 2011 na Espanha, informou o site do jornal El País nesta terça-feira, 20. O ranking divulgado pelo Youtube não discrimina quantas vezes o vídeo foi assistido no país, revelando somente o total de visualizações no mundo todo: cerca de 83 milhões.

Ai Se Eu Te Pego ficou na frente de artistas locais e vídeos de humor, assim como estrelas da música internacional. De acordo com os dados, vídeos musicais dominam 40% das visualizações no Youtube espanhol.
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Vídeo

Debate sobre o euro

Dois economistas alemães debatem a união monetária europeia:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/0,1518,804700,00.html

Disneyland chinês

http://blogs.reuters.com/photographers-blog/2011/12/12/chinas-deserted-fake-disneyland/

Mercados financeiros na perspectiva da economia experimental

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hfrZnHo3YTk

domingo, 18 de dezembro de 2011

Fuga de capital

Investidor europeu busca segurança fora da zona do euro

agenciaestado
Em domingo 18/12/2011, às 19:47
Investidores do sul da Europa, temerosos com a saúde de seus bancos e com o futuro do euro, estão cada vez mais acumulando seu dinheiro e investimentos em produtos variados fora da zona do euro, afirmam banqueiros e autoridades de governo, segundo o Wall Street Journal.
Em um sinal de problemas para os bancos europeus, investidores da Grécia, Portugal e Itália estão perguntando a banqueiros e advogados sobre maneiras de proteger seu dinheiro em caso de falência de bancos da zona do euro ou um colapso do próprio euro. Alguns estão convertendo seus depósitos em francos suíços. Outros estão comprando imóveis fora da área de união monetária, em locais como Londres, ou criando sociedades de investimento para manter sua riqueza em jurisdições distantes, como Cingapura e Bahamas.

Em 30 anos pouco mudou - só piorou

sábado, 17 de dezembro de 2011

Agregadas macroeconômicas

Os agregados keynesianos escondem justamente o essencial
Umas das mais acuradas frases pronunciadas por F.A. Hayek sobre John Maynard Keynes, e uma das mais repetidas, advém de uma crítica sua feita ao livro de Keynes lançado em 1930, A Treatise on Money. Hayek escreveu: "As agregações feitas pelo senhor Keynes ocultam os mais fundamentais mecanismos de mudanças que ocorrem na economia". A macroeconomia austríaca baseia-se firmemente na análise dos "mecanismos de mudanças" que ocorrem no âmbito microeconômico, os quais, em última instância, abrangem toda a atividade econômica. E é esse discernimento austríaco o método que melhor explica tanto os erros e má alocações de recursos que ocorrem no período da expansão econômica artificial quanto a maneira correta de se curar recessões.
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Austeridade orçamental

O alarme de Krugman e a austeridade


Por Amity Shlaes, Valor

Então, é oficial. O "The New York Times", ou pelo menos o colunista Paul Krugman, declarou que estamos em uma depressão mundial. E chegou bem a tempo para o Natal.

A democracia está em jogo, sustentou Krugman em sua coluna de 11 de dezembro e a Europa, social e economicamente, se inclinará ao fascismo, se não deixar de buscar uma "austeridade cada vez mais rigorosa, sem esforço de contrabalanço para promover o crescimento"...

Há evidências de que a austeridade promoveu o crescimento no passado e não o fascismo. Esses exemplos podem ser menos conhecidos, mas sugerem que a austeridade pode trazer a recuperação com mais velocidade do que quando se gasta.

Um forte exemplo na história dos EUA é a recessão no início dos anos 20. O governo reagiu à desaceleração sem gastar; cortou-se pela metade. A recuperação foi tão rápida que poucas pessoas se lembram dessa recessão....
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Teoria psicológica da conjuntura

Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
Globalization and Monetary Policy Institute
Working Paper No. 98
http://www.dallasfed.org/institute/wpapers/2011/0098.pdf
Do Mood Swings Drive Business Cycles and is it Rational?*
Paul Beaudry
University of British Columbia
Deokwoo Nam
City University of Hong Kong
Jian Wang
Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas
December 2011
Abstract
This paper provides new evidence in support of the idea that bouts of optimism and pessimism drive much of US business cycles. In particular, we begin by using sign-restriction based identification schemes to isolate innovations in optimism or pessimism and we document the extent to which such episodes explain macroeconomic fluctuations. We then examine the link between these identified mood shocks and subsequent developments in fundamentals using alternative identification schemes (i.e., variants of the maximum forecast
error variance approach). We find that there is a very close link between the two, suggesting that agents' feelings of optimism and pessimism are at least partially rational as total factor productivity (TFP) is observed to rise 8-10 quarters after an initial bout of optimism. While this later finding is consistent with some previous findings in the news shock literature, we cannot rule out that such episodes reflect self-fulfilling beliefs. Overall, we argue that mood swings account for over 50% of business cycle fluctuations in hours and output.
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Médias, agregados e teoria econômica

Averages and Aggregates

In an interesting, though apparently neglected, aside, Professor Hayek has remarked that " … neither aggregates nor averages do act upon one another, and it will never be possible to establish necessary connections of cause and effect between them as we can between individual phenomena, individual prices, etc. I would even go so far as to assert that, from the very nature of economic theory, averages can never form a link in its reasoning."
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Teoria econômica e história empírica

Nonpraxeological Schools of Thought

Nonpraxeological schools of thought mistakenly believe that relationships between certain events are well-established empirical laws when they are really necessary and logical praxeological ones. And they thereby behave as if the statement "a ball cannot be red and nonred all over at the same time" requires testing in Europe, America, Africa, Asia, and Australia (of course requiring a lot of funds in order to pay for such daring nonsensical research). Moreover, the nonpraxeologists also believe that relationships between certain events are well-established empirical laws (with predictive implications) when a priori reasoning can show them to be no more than information regarding contingent historical connections between events, which does not provide us with any knowledge whatsoever regarding the future course of events.
This illustrates another fundamental confusion non-Austrian schools have: a confusion over the categorical difference between theory and history and the implication that this difference has for the problem of social and economic forecasting.
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O problema de déficits comerciais

http://www.economist.com/economics/by-invitation/questions/are-persistent-trade-deficits-bad-thing

Crescimento populacional

AFRICAN demography is unique. It is the only continent that will double in size, reaching 2 billion people by 2045 at current rates. Some countries, such as Liberia and Niger, are growing faster still. They are due to double in size in less than 20 years—an increase that is causing forecasts of Malthusian disaster for countries that cannot feed themselves. Yet Africa is also showing signs of embarking on the same transition towards smaller families that has occurred everywhere else, thus avoiding the Malthusian trap. When fertility started to fall in Asia after 1960 and Latin America after 1970 it did so quickly, ineluctably and universally. The number of children a woman could expect in her lifetime fell from six to two in a generation. Evidence of lower fertility is raising hopes that Africa can reap a “demographic dividend”, the economic benefit countries get when the share of the working-age population rises relative to children and old people. Mais