ECONOMICS & FINANCE 101

Morales e a teoria dos jogos
JOSÉ ALEXANDRE SCHEINKMAN

Pela terceira vez em 70 anos, a Bolívia nacionalizou suas reservas de petróleo e gás natural. Diferentemente das duas primeiras ocasiões, em que os principais alvos foram empresas norte-americanas, desta vez a maior vítima foi a Petrobras.
A decisão da Petrobras de suspender, por enquanto, novos projetos na Bolívia é sensata. Mais ainda, é o único procedimento que protege os interesses dos seus acionistas, em particular dos minoritários, no Brasil e no exterior. A Petrobras tem ADRs listadas na Bolsa de Nova York e, por lei, seus diretores têm a obrigação de defender o patrimônio da empresa.
Essa é uma boa notícia para todos os brasileiros. Se o presidente Lula quiser subsidiar a política de Evo Morales, terá que fazê-lo com recursos do Orçamento e não poderá esconder e dividir os custos, obrigando a Petrobras a pagar a conta. E, como os políticos relutam mais a gastar quando as despesas são transparentes, o preço final da atual política externa vai ser menor.
Além de expropriar a propriedade das empresas estrangeiras, o governo de Morales quer renegociar o contrato vigente para o fornecimento de gás. Segundo esta Folha, autoridades bolivianas sugeriram elevar o preço em 45%. No médio prazo, seria muito danoso para o Brasil perder o acesso ao gás boliviano, que constitui 50% do consumo nacional. Por outro lado, a exportação de gás natural representa 18% do PIB da Bolívia, e a sua suspensão, mesmo que temporária, arrisca jogar o país numa crise econômica profunda.
Situações dessa natureza em que as diferentes partes barganham para chegar a um acordo são estudadas sob diversas óticas. Os economistas utilizam a teoria dos jogos para tentar entender as forças que influenciam o resultado final.
O estudo da barganha utilizando a teoria dos jogos foi iniciado na metade do século passado pelo futuro Prêmio Nobel e personagem do filme "Uma Mente Brilhante", John Nash. Os trabalhos mais recentes nesta literatura enfatizam que cada parte na negociação tem conhecimento imperfeito dos objetivos e custos do adversário. Por isso, é do interesse de cada participante enviar um sinal exagerado do seu custo de aceitar um pacto menos favorável. Da mesma forma, é também do interesse das partes passar a impressão de que possuem alternativas relativamente boas a um acordo. Em muitos casos, vale a pena tomar medidas que dificultem fazer certas concessões no futuro.
Nesse contexto, entende-se o espetáculo midiático da ocupação militar das instalações petrolíferas, que tornou muito difícil qualquer recuo na expropriação. As referências assíduas das autoridades bolivianas a promessas de campanha também fortalecem a sua posição de barganha. O mesmo ocorre quando o presidente Morales aparece com o "irmão maior" Chávez -nesta quinta feira passada, por cortesia do presidente Lula-, porque a Venezuela possui os recursos técnicos e financeiros para ajudar a Bolívia se, ao contrário do esperado, houver rompimento com o Brasil. O presidente da Petrobras também emite os sinais adequados quando lembra as obrigações da empresa com seus acionistas e com as distribuidoras.
Infelizmente, não pode se dizer o mesmo sobre as afirmações do presidente Lula ou de seus auxiliares em política externa, que dão a impressão de desejar uma composição a qualquer preço. Sem optar para o confronto inútil, os nossos dirigentes precisam dar declarações públicas que prometam que os detalhes do acordo determinarão o futuro das relações entre os dois países.
É surpreendente, mas os bolivianos parecem compreender melhor como conduzir essa negociação.



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José Alexandre Scheinkman, 58, professor de economia na Universidade Princeton (EUA), escreve quinzenalmente aos domingos nesta coluna.
E-mail -
[email protected]

da ISTOÉDINHEIRO

Homens de prata
Bill Gates, Warren Buffet e George Soros elegeram o me tal do futuro e estão investindo bilhões. Por quê?



Bill Gates e Warren Buffet têm não uma, mas algumas coisas em comum. São bilionários. Doam fortunas para instituições beneficentes. E estão investindo pesado em prata. No ano passado, o fundador da Microsoft vendeu 61 milhões de ações da fabricante de software por cerca de US$ 1,5 bilhão para investir na produtora de prata canadense Pan American Silver. Por sua vez, Buffet já comprou 130 milhões de onças do metal. Ao custo atual de 12,5 dólares a onça, é um investimento igualmente impressionante, de US$ 1,6 bilhão. Assim como eles, o gestor de fundos George Soros tem dedicado parte de seu tempo e de seus recursos a este mercado. Soros detém hoje cerca de 25% do capital de uma mineradora chamada Apex Silver, que tem um projeto na famosa mina boliviana de Potosi e reservas de 470 milhões de onças. Por trás do interesse do tecnólogo, do megainvestidor e do mais famoso especulador do mercado internacional há uma avaliação comum sobre o potencial de valorização da prata, baseada no esperado crescimento da demanda pelo metal para tecnologias elétricas (em pilhas, por exemplo), medicinais (drogas bactericidas), construção de navios e aviões, além de joalheria.

Arte: Evandro Rodrigues


Soros: é sócio de mina com participação de 25%


Graças a sua condutividade e resistência à oxidação e ao calor, a prata é utilizada em um número crescente de indústrias. Mesmo assim, o mercado mundial deste metal é modestíssimo. Não movimenta mais de US$ 7 bilhões por ano, contra quase US$ 37 bilhões girados anualmente pelo ouro, por exemplo. Já há mais demanda do que oferta de prata no planeta. E, se a procura por esta matéria-prima continuar a crescer no ritmo atual, os preços – quase irrisórios se comparados aos do ouro, hoje na casa de 668 dólares a onça – tendem a explodir. Até porque a possibilidade de aumento da oferta de prata é limitada pelo fato de sua produção, atualmente, ser apenas um subproduto da extração de outros minerais, como zinco e chumbo.



Arte: Evandro Rodrigues


Bill Gates: vendeu ações para aplicar US$ 1,5 bilhão


Com status de insumo industrial e não de metal precioso, a prata tem estado subvalorizada por décadas. O último grande surto de interesse por ela foi registrado em 1979, quando os irmãos Hunt (dois texanos herdeiros da família americana mais rica da época) aliaram-se a um grupo de investidores árabes e compraram 200 milhões de onças de prata, o equivalente a metade do suprimento global à época. Ao longo daquele ano, a cotação da onça do metal nos Estados Unidos saltou de 5 para 54 dólares. A bolha estourou em 1980, com perdas de até 50% em um mesmo dia.

Com a compra, por Bill Gates, de algo entre 10% e 15% da Pan American Silver, o metal está novamente na moda. Há, por exemplo, relatos de investidores do Oriente Médio estocando prata. Mas, no momento, a maior excitação neste mercado gira em torno de um fundo de investimento em prata que o banco inglês Barclays se prepara para lançar. As cotas do iShares Silver Trust poderão ser negociadas em bolsa, o que deve propiciar liquidez ao investimento. Antecipando uma grande compra de barras de prata pelo Barclays, investidores estão adquirindo o metal agora. Resultado: as cotações da prata já subiram 25% desde janeiro.

No Brasil, não há negociação de prata em bolsas e, mesmo no mercado de balcão, os volumes negociados são irrisórios. O metal, a rigor, nem mesmo é considerado um ativo financeiro. Ainda.

Em trocas sucessivas, homem dá clipe de papel e ganha casa no Canadá
DA REDAÇÃO

Pródiga em servir de pano de fundo para histórias absurdas, a internet é palco de mais uma. Hoje, o escritor canadense Kyle MacDonald, 26, deve receber as chaves de sua casa de três quartos na cidade de Kipling, no Estado canadense de Saskatchewan. Nada de mais, fora o fato de ele ter conseguido o imóvel em troca de um clipe de papel.
A troca não foi direta. Em julho do ano passado, Kyle, que morava em Montréal, colocou o anúncio em um site dizendo que queria trocar seu velho clipe vermelho. Conseguiu, no lugar do clipe, uma caneta em forma de peixe, que foi trocada por uma maçaneta, substituída por um fogão de acampamento, que virou um gerador. Depois, vieram, nessa ordem, um kit de chope, um snowmobile (veículo para neve) e uma viagem até Yahk, no Estado de Colúmbia Britânica, Canadá.
A essa altura, Kyle já havia se tornado uma pequena celebridade da internet, com aparições em programas de TV e um fã-clube, que ele divulga no site, junto com contos, fotos e os registros de suas aparições na mídia.
Em seu blog (oneredpaperclip.blogspot.com), onde começou a história toda, Kyle mantém até uma seção de FAQ ("perguntas freqüentes", na sigla em inglês), em que responde a dúvidas como "É uma piada?": "Não".
O que seguiu a viagem foi mais vultoso: um caminhão, depois um contrato com uma gravadora, trocado por um ano de aluguel de uma casa, trocado por uma tarde com o músico Alice Cooper. O encontro foi dado em troca de um globo de neve, em versão com a banda Kiss.
O ator Corbin Bernsen, colecionador de globos de neve, quis o mimo, dando em troca um papel em um filme, com cachê e tudo. E foi menos pelo papel e mais para promover Kipling que o próprio prefeito da cidade deu a Kyle uma casa. Mas ele não sabe se encerra as trocas. "O plano era parar na casa, mas...".

CRÉDITO: Cartões de Crédito impulsionam vendas on-line
SÃO PAULO, 12 de julho de 2006 - A venda de produtos pela internet, que deve chegar a R$ 13 bilhões este ano, vem sendo estimulada pelo uso do cartão de crédito como meio de pagamento. Esta é a principal conclusão do estudo O Cartão de Crédito e o Comércio Eletrônico, realizado pela Credicard Itaú. Nos últimos 12 meses, encerrados em maio passado, 47% dos compradores on-line - ou 4,3 milhões de pessoas - utilizaram o cartão de crédito na rede para pagar o equivalente a 85% de todas as transações.
"O cartão de crédito, pela segurança e praticidade, é hoje a principal forma de pagamento de compras feitas pela internet e tende a manter um forte crescimento", avalia Fernando Chacon, diretor executivo de Marketing e Vendas da Credicard Itaú.
Em segundo lugar na preferência do consumidor para o pagamento das compras on-line vem o boleto bancário, respondendo por 35% das transações, seguido pelos cartões de débito, com 9%.
O ticket médio de compras via web utilizando o cartão de crédito chega a R$ 287 bilhões, ou seja, 219% superior aos R$ 90 de ticket medio registrado nas compras tradicionais. No ano passado, as aquisições via web utilizando cartões de crédito movimentaram R$ 9,9 bilhões, de uma indústria que faturou R$ 127,6 bilhões. "Para este ano, a previsão é que o valor de compras on-line com cartão de crédito chegue a R$ 13,3 bilhões, com um crescimento de 34%", diz Chacon.

Por que jornalista não lê o que escreve?

mesmo que lesse, jornalista, em média, não faz idéia do que seja uma média... 🤣

Economics focus

Curve ball

Sep 28th 2006
From The Economist print edition


A link between unemployment and inflation is fashionable again





IF HAIRCUTS and dress styles can come back into fashion, then so can economic theories. That is why policymakers have recently been debating the implications of the shape of that very 1960s concept, the Phillips curve.

The Phillips curve was named after A.W. Phillips, whose research suggested a trade-off between British unemployment and wage inflation over the period 1861 to 1957. The curve was widely used in the 1960s. Economists developed models that gave politicians a neat way to find the right balance between the two factors; for every percentage-point fall in unemployment, inflation would rise by, say, half a point.


But in the 1970s, the trade-off between unemployment and inflation seemed to evaporate; both rose at the same time, a phenomenon known as stagflation. As Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC, says, “The Phillips curve relationship did exist as long as governments weren't perceived to be exploiting it. When they did, they ended up with accelerating inflation.”

Even before the curve began to break down in practice, Milton Friedman had cast doubt on the theory, as had Edmund Phelps, another American economist. The doubters argued that workers would demand higher wages to protect themselves against the rise in inflation. Thus the only effect of government stimulus would be to increase inflation for the same level of employment; in the long run, the Phillips curve became vertical.

So the Phillips curve fell out of favour and was replaced by its corollary, the NAIRU, or non-accelerating inflation rate of unemployment (in effect, the natural rate). Economists spent much of the 1980s and 1990s debating what the rate might be. In the late 1990s indeed, many forecast that the Federal Reserve would be forced to raise interest rates to counter inflationary pressures when unemployment fell below 6% (and then 5%). But the Fed decided that productivity improvements had driven down the NAIRU and so left policy on hold. Growth duly flourished without causing inflation at the consumer level—although some argue that the laxity of monetary policy caused the tech bubble.

Why has the Phillips curve, displaced by the NAIRU and the output gap (which suggests that inflation will rise when economic growth is above trend), come back into the economic debate after so long in the cold?








In part because, while the NAIRU and the output gap are nice ideas, it is often hard to agree, at any given moment, on the value of either number. But the main reason is that the relationship between unemployment and inflation has settled down again. Low unemployment has not been accompanied by significant increases in inflation; in other words, the Phillips curve has flattened considerably.



A fillip for Phillips
Most commentators have put this down to globalisation. As Paul McCulley, a strategist at PIMCO, a large American fund-management firm, remarks in his latest commentary: “The Fed need not worry that a falling US unemployment rate will quickly generate a rapid acceleration in US wage-driven inflation, as US labour's pricing power is diminished by competition from an augmented global labour supply.”

A flatter Phillips curve is good news when unemployment is falling. But it also implies bad news if inflation rises significantly. It would then take a much larger increase in unemployment (a more severe recession) to bring inflation down again. This may explain why the European Central Bank has found it so difficult to get euro-zone inflation back below its target of 2%.

This is where the credibility of a central bank may matter a lot. If consumers believe the central bank will keep inflation low, then they will not react to temporary shocks (such as high oil prices) by demanding higher wages. Mr King says it is all down to “rules of thumb” concerning the likely level of inflation. “It is easier to control inflation if the public has the same rule of thumb as the central bank. But if the public adopts a different rule, notably that inflation will be higher, the task of the central bank becomes much more difficult.”

That makes it all the more important to decide exactly why the Phillips curve has flattened. In particular, are central banks responsible for the favourable trade-off between unemployment and inflation over the last ten years? Or, as Ken Rogoff of Harvard University suggested recently*, have policymakers merely had a dash of luck: that globalisation happened to coincide with the independence of central banks?

If the answer is luck then central banks need to be on their guard, especially as headline rates of inflation have been rising recently. Some, including the Bank of England, seem to have recognised this problem. They say that while globalisation has caused the prices of manufactured goods to fall, the corollary has been that sharply higher demand for raw materials has caused commodity prices to rise sharply. Core inflation numbers, which exclude food and energy, may thus reflect the good news about globalisation, but ignore the bad.

The Federal Reserve may focus on the low core rate of inflation but workers may be watching the headline numbers, which in most countries have been significantly higher. The sharp drop in oil prices in recent weeks may reduce this differential, but could easily be reversed by supply disruption or a harsh winter.

If workers begin to focus on the effect of higher commodity prices on their spending power, and regard the effect as permanent rather than temporary, then they may push up their wage demands. That could lock higher inflation into the system, giving central banks a devil of a job to bring it back down again.

Patience Is a Virtue

By DAVE KANSAS
October 5, 2006; Page D5

Amid the hoopla surrounding the Dow Jones Industrial Average's record run this week, it is important to remember that not everyone was stopping to cheer at yet another investor milestone. Chief among this calmer group were the value investors.

Value investors love to boast of their humble and simple approach to making money. They are busy crunching numbers, not watching the latest headlines. Their basic notion is fairly straightforward: Buy good companies on the cheap and wait for their value to rise, at least to what they ought to be worth. Christopher H. Browne, in "The Little Book of Value Investing," provides an easily digestible and shortish treatise for anyone who wants to try out this particular investment strategy.


Let the swashbucklers look for rapid earnings growth. The value investor takes his time.
Mr. Browne is well suited for such a task. For starters, his firm, Tweedy Browne, has a long track record of value investing. Years ago, it worked a great deal with Benjamin Graham (1894-1976), the author of "Security Analysis" (1934) and the man widely considered to be the godfather of value investing. In addition, Tweedy Browne has done a lot of business with Warren Buffett, a Graham disciple and value titan. Indeed, Mr. Browne says that his father first bought most of the Berkshire Hathaway stock that Mr. Buffett owns today.

Mr. Graham's value thesis argued that an investor could analyze a company's business and prospects in order to determine its intrinsic value. If a company trades below its intrinsic value, a value investor is interested. If above, he walks away. The notion that a company can trade below its intrinsic value has long befuddled academics who argue that the market is efficient, always pricing its offerings correctly. But as Mr. Browne and other value investors note, the real world doesn't seem to work that way. There are many forces suppressing the "accurate" price and distorting posted values. The value investor crunches his numbers to get past such confusions.

Mr. Browne offers some of the basic math, but he does his best to distill the complexities into easy concepts. One of his favorite notions is to compare value investing with shopping at a grocery store. Shoppers prefer to buy goods that are "on sale" -- positioned below market value. Value investors think the same way. Of course, the analogy has a few flaws. Denizens of the produce aisle sometimes cringe when pawing the "marked down" fresh vegetables, knowing that they are getting close to their spoilage date. In short, a lower price may be the accurate one as well.

Grocery stores aside, value investors' search for cheapness (or value) leads them away from the headlines -- into backwaters and out-of-sight parts of the investment world. Thus value investors have a bit of a fuddy-duddy reputation. Why is that guy buying a steel mill? Doesn't he know that's so over? The good value investor knows that it's not over; it's merely in hibernation.

The value gang's rivals, growth investors, like sexy concepts like momentum and rapid earnings growth. They are often chasing after the New New Thing and thus are much in the news. Growth investors are swashbucklers; value investors are geeks. Swashbucklers can have some ripping great years (remember the 1990s?), but the geeks tend to do better over the long haul. And getting to the end of the long haul means that a value investor has to be very patient. Mr. Browne makes quite a point of this.

DETAILS



THE LITTLE BOOK OF VALUE INVESTING
By Christopher H. Browne
(Wiley, 180 pages, $19.95)Mr. Browne sprinkles his book with lots of good advice about how to play the value game. Along with the standard valuation exercises, he outlines how to "give a physical" -- that is, a thorough examination of every aspect of an investment property. There is no other way to know whether a targeted company is the right one to buy. He talks about diversification (at least 10 stocks in the portfolio). And he provides other tips, such as watching what corporate insiders are doing with their own investments. One chapter offers a handy 16-point checklist that helps investors examine a company's prospects.

Like other books in "The Little Book of..." series, the language here is plain. These books are meant for investors with some knowledge of the markets but not too much. For market pros, the book may read a bit like a refresher. And it's not as if there is nothing new to learn. Any strategy that has thrived as long as value investing requires a bit of elasticity. Mr. Browne sticks to the basics, but the value crowd he refers to in the book has taken some surprising steps recently.

Mr. Graham might scratch his head at Mr. Buffett's mostly successful foray into currencies -- a notably volatile market -- during the past few years. And although Mr. Browne preaches patience, his own firm appeared impatient when it engaged Hollinger, the media company, in a bare-knuckled activist brawl not long ago. It should be noted that Mr. Browne's firm was on the side of the angels (Hollinger's management was forced out and faces all kinds of legal problems). Thus, it seems, value investors can wander from the strict Grahamism and remain part of the geek crowd. As long as the novel strategies work.

As for Mr. Browne's firm, Tweedy Browne has two value mutual funds. They have performed decently over the past five years, but they trail their benchmarks modestly. Mr. Browne may not be killing the market, but he is certainly adhering to one of his rules of value investing: He's not losing money.

Mr. Kansas is editor of the Journal's Money & Investing section.

Armadilhas para investidores
Por Mara Luquet
09/10/2006
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Uma velha praga que assola o sistema financeiro começa a dar os primeiros sinais de esgotamento: as metas de vendas para os gerentes. Pelo menos dois grandes bancos varejistas, entre eles um estrangeiro, já estão com esse problema no radar. Um avanço e tanto, uma vez que este sempre foi um problema para clientes e bancários, mas nunca para banqueiros. Um terceiro banco, a Caixa Econômica Federal (CEF), implementou sem alarde a primeira grande mudança nesta seara no segundo trimestre de 2003 e, desde então, consolida a nova abordagem nas agências.

Não é um assunto que os bancos gostam de falar. "Nós adotamos a nova metodologia de avaliação, e num primeiro momento, as vendas nas agências desabaram", diz João Carlos Garcia, vice-presidente da Caixa. O ponto de inflexão só foi ocorrer no final de 2003 e hoje o índice de produtos da Caixa por cliente é o dobro do que era antes de o modelo ser implantado.

Garcia lembra do horror que foram os primeiros meses. As vendas despencavam dia-a-dia e ele teve que correr todo o país motivando equipes. "Se o modelo novo não se firmasse rapidamente, voltaria o anterior ainda com mais força", diz ele. Ocorre que, num primeiro momento, os times de cada agência enxergaram o novo modelo como ausência de metas, o que definitivamente não é o caso. "Se não tiver metas você compromete o resultado", diz Renato Antônio Romeo, sócio da SaleSolution, empresa especializada em treinar times de vendas que começa a receber solicitação por parte dos bancos.

As metas, como diz Romeo, não vão desaparecer. Mas alguns dirigentes de grandes bancos começam a refletir sobre a eficiência dessa abordagem num mercado que cada vez mais se pauta pela transparência, responsabilidade social e, claro, concorrência. A palavra de ordem nos bancos hoje é relacionamento. Criar laços duradouros com a clientela é o objetivo e, nesse aspecto, as metas impostas aos gerentes da forma como são feitas hoje causam incômodos.

"Os produtos financeiros são commodities, estão na prateleira de qualquer agência com pouca diferenciação entre eles, o que vai pesar é o relacionamento", diz Romeo. O jargão hoje no mercado financeiro é meta de "solução". "Eles mudaram o nome de produto para solução, mas na prática funciona da mesma forma, o que tem de mudar é a cultura", diz. Segundo Romeo, é o próprio cliente que tem que enxergar que você tem a solução para os problemas dele. "Se você aproveita o momento em que é procurado para empurrar produtos que o cliente não necessita, isso vai cada vez mais desagradá-lo", diz. A forma como os produtos são historicamente vendidos nas agências estraga completamente os planos de longo prazo do banco. "O cliente se sente agredido quando vai para casa cheio de produtos que servem apenas para ajudar o gerente a bater metas."

"É cruel", diz Garcia, há 23 anos na Caixa, boa parte deles em agências. Ele sabe do que está falando. Segundo ele, o modelo antigo consegue fazer com que as metas de vendas sejam alcançadas. "Mas ao custo de uma equipe estraçalhada emocional, psicológica e fisicamente", diz.

Mas o que tem feito os gestores dos bancos refletirem é que o modelo está falhando naquela que é, atualmente, a principal meta dos bancos: criar relacionamentos. É nesta onda que a enorme maioria dos bancos promoveu nos últimos anos uma completa arrumação de suas carteiras de clientes, fazendo uma segmentação da clientela.

A CEF também fez sua segmentação, a partir de 2001. "Mas, com o modelo antigo de metas, estávamos jogando o projeto de segmentação no lixo", diz Garcia. A principal falha em geral é, segundo ele, medir apenas a venda. "O modelo antigo premia a venda de um produto sem saber se ele agrega valor ao cliente", diz.

A nova metodologia de avaliação de metas da Caixa obriga que as agências trabalhem juntas como um time e não concorram umas com as outras. A diretoria define as metas do ano para o banco e leva ao conhecimento de toda a rede. São desenhados três cenários de conjuntura econômica que são enviados para a rede, que tem então três meses para avaliar e enviar de volta à diretoria o relatório dizendo como vai ajudar a atingir a meta geral. "É a rede quem define suas próprias metas em cada produto e para isso precisará conhecer bastante a sua clientela", diz Garcia. Assim, uma agência que tem uma carteira com muitos clientes com 60 anos ou mais, por exemplo, não poderá prometer metas muito ambiciosas nas vendas de planos de previdência.

Garcia explica que a metodologia de avaliação criada pela Caixa obriga que cada funcionário dê conta de seis dimensões: rentabilidade da agência, gestão de captação, gestão do atendimento, gestão de pessoas, gestão de relacionamento com o cliente e gestão do crédito. "A meta dentro desse contexto é uma bússola, mas os objetivos são maiores do que a meta", diz Garcia. "É claro que você também vai encontrar gerentes que têm que cumprir metas, mas o produto que for oferecido tem que agregar valor ao cliente", acrescenta.

No tópico rentabilidade, por exemplo, os funcionários são agora treinados para prestar atenção também ao custo da agência. E, na gestão de atendimento, periodicamente são feitas pesquisas com clientes. Não adianta empurrar produtos, pois a insatisfação será detectada, o que tira pontos na avaliação das metas. Outro ponto que Garcia ressalta é a divisão de produtos, que passou a realçar o que ele chama de "missão" da Caixa. Assim, produtos de habitação são chamados de acesso à moradia e o crédito à pessoa física, de emprego, renda e consumo.

A grande diferença que há entre investir e se descapitalizar
Mara Luquet
23/10/2006
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Quando você compra um carro zero último tipo está ficando mais rico? E se troca de apartamento? Quando deixa seu apartamento de três quartos rumo a uma cobertura de frente para a praia de Ipanema, está aumentando seu patrimônio?

Seu cunhado aposta que sim. E você e sua família também acreditam firmemente que o patrimônio está aumentando. Mas enganar seu cunhado pode até ser divertido. No entanto, enganar a si mesmo é uma outra história, bem mais perigosa.

O fato é que apartamentos costumam drenar recursos de manutenção, condomínio, entre outras despesas, e para saber se ele ajuda a aumentar ou reduzir seu patrimônio é fundamental fazer contas. O mesmo vale para o carro, jóias e muitas outras compras que você jura que são investimento.

O professor Ladislau Dowbor, que assina a apresentação a edição brasileira do livro "Os Novos Indicadores de Riqueza", editado no Brasil pela Editora Senac, diz que não basta avançar, é preciso saber para onde. Dowbor não está falando do seu apartamento, mas de como os países contabilizam sua riqueza. No livro, de Jean Gadrey e Florence Jany-Catrice, há uma discussão profunda de como estão sendo medidos os progressos econômicos, sociais, ambientais e tudo o que converge para medir se, afinal, as pessoas estão vivendo melhor com o crescimento econômico dos países.

Dowbor cita no prefácio o exemplo da Arábia Saudita, que normalmente é apresentada como país de alta renda, mas está vivendo à custa de reservas de petróleo que se esgotam rapidamente. "É valido dizer que o país tem um PIB elevado?", questiona. "Podemos fazer nossa família se sentir mais rica momentaneamente ao vendermos os móveis da casa, mas na realidade não estamos enriquecendo, estamos nos descapitalizando", diz.

Há um movimento de economistas e outros estudiosos que querem derrubar a ditadura do Produto Interno Bruto (PIB), principal indicador aceito internacionalmente como indicador de riqueza de um país. A principal crítica é de que o PIB contabiliza gastos que na verdade aumentam o consumo, mas não necessariamente a riqueza de um país.

Na semana passada, no II Seminário Novos Indicadores de Riqueza, o tema foi amplamente discutido. Os estudiosos dizem que o PIB, assim como você, contabiliza todos os gastos como investimento. No entanto, destruição ambiental, gastos com armas, por exemplo, não contribuem em nada para aumentar a riqueza de um país e o bem-estar de seus cidadãos.

Segundo o professor José Eli da Veiga, num artigo publicado no caderno Eu & Cultura de sexta-feira, " quando um processo produtivo se baseia essencialmente na exaustão de recursos naturais, o PIB registra aumentos excepcionais, pois seus fundamentos metodológicos não prevêem qualquer dedução que reflita a depreciação do capital natural".

Da mesma forma, prestações de carros, casas e tantas outras despesas que você jura para si mesmo que está aumentando seu patrimônio podem na verdade estar descapitalizando sua família e, o que é pior, aumentando o desgaste nas relações familiares. No longo prazo isso poderá ser uma armadilha. Sabe por que? Porque tanto você como seu filho vão viver muitos anos. Dessa forma, se não cuidar de ter um patrimônio suficiente para financiar sua vida quando estiver com seus 80 e poucos anos, talvez tenha de dividir o apartamento com um senhor de 60 e outro de 40, seu filho e neto. Certamente não será mais a cobertura de Ipanema.

A propósito, para saber se está aumentando seu patrimônio você tem de fazer regularmente a "marcação a mercado" de seu patrimônio. Esta é única forma de saber qual o tamanho real do seu patrimônio e, principalmente, se ele está crescendo ou não ao longo do tempo. Marcação a mercado é um termo técnico utilizado no mercado financeiro que diz basicamente o seguinte: por quanto eu consigo vender tudo o que eu tenho.

Ah! Mas você nem pensa em se desfazer do apartamento, quer morar nele por toda a vida? Não importa. Ainda assim você precisa saber periodicamente quanto ele está valendo. Caso contrário, poderá ter surpresas desagradáveis no futuro quando precisar ir até o mundo real e descobrir que você pode até dar muito valor ao seu patrimônio, mas o mercado não.

Mara Luquet é editora da revista ValorInveste e autora do livro Gestores de Fortuna

E-mail [email protected]

tecnologia é importante desde sempre, e está incorporada ao modelo. segundo Schumpeter, é a única forma de explicar o lucro econômico, e Schumpeter é o único economista cujo modelo inclui o lucro como variável endógena, ie, própria do modelo.

De onde se partir pra entender um pouco mais? Keynes? Schumpeter? Hayek?

vou mandar o modelo de solow, que é o mais básico aceito atualmente. vou te mandar meu material de economia 3 da gv, em pdf.

Hayek é marginal no mundo, hoje. Quase ninguém estuda os liberais autênticos.

keynes é a obra fundamental da macroecnomia, não da economia do crescimento.

schumpeter é o mais genial e difícil de todos. schumpeter é pra gostos já refinados 🤣

Já estou vendo que esse PDF vai me dar trabaaaaalllhhhooo... 😑
Ainda mais se considerar meu 5,0 raspando em PRO2208, que já era simples.

eu estou de luto. Morreu o Friedman. Um a menos. 🤔

Morre o economista americano e Nobel Milton Friedman

WASHINGTON, 16 Nov (AFP) - O economista americano Milton Friedman, prêmio Nobel de Economia em 1976, morreu nesta quinta-feira aos 94 anos, informou o centro de pesquisa liberal Cato Institute.

A VIDA DO NOBEL DE ECONOMIA

O economista Milton Friedman
Nascimento: 31/07/1912
Local: Nova York (EUA)
Formação: mestrado em Economia na Universidade de Chicago
Destaque: vencedor do Prêmio Nobel de Economia em 1976

"O grande economista do livre mercado Milton Friedman morreu hoje", informou o instituto num comunicado.

Segundo o Wall Street Journal, Friedman foi vítima de um ataque cardíaco no hospital para onde foi transportado, perto de sua casa, em San Francisco.

Era considerado líder da Escola de Chicago e seu nome é associado às teorias "monetaristas", que consideram que a inflação pode ser controlada pela oferta monetária.

Foi agraciado com o Nobel por suas realizações nos campos de análise do consumo, de história monetária e da teoria e demonstração da complexidade da política de estabilização.

Milton Friedman, originário de uma família pobre, vinda da Rússia, nasceu no bairro do Brooklyn, em Nova York, a 31 de julho de 1912. No auge da Grande Depressão (1932), Friedman concluiu os estudos em Rutgers, tendo se destacado nas disciplinas de Matemática e Economia, escolhendo a Universidade de Chicago para cursar o mestrado em Economia.

Trabalhou com Frank Knight que, na época, destacava-se nos meios acadêmicos por suas teses conservadoras. É nesse contexto que começou a enraizar a idéia de que a solução para os problemas de uma sociedade é dada por um sistema de competitividade e liberdade absoluta.

Participou do Programa de Reconstrução do New Deal, especificamente num estudo sobre os padrões de consumo familiar. Friedman foi colunista da revista semanal Newsweek e membro do Departamento Nacional de Pesquisas Econômicas (EUA). Foi também conselheiro do governo chileno do General Pinochet e muitas de suas idéias foram aplicadas na primeira fase do governo Nixon.

How Milton Friedman Changed
Economics, Policy and Markets
By GREG IP and MARK WHITEHOUSE
November 17, 2006; Page A1

A half century ago, Milton Friedman's advocacy of free markets over government intervention and his prescription for inflation-fighting by central banks were treated as fringe notions by many economists. By the time the Nobel Prize-winning economist died yesterday at the age of 94, his views had helped to reshape modern capitalism.


A diminutive man known for his strong-willed and combative style, Mr. Friedman provided the intellectual foundations for the anti-inflation, tax-cutting and antigovernment policies of President Ronald Reagan and British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and an era of more-disciplined central banking. His ideas helped to end the military draft in the 1970s, gave birth to staple conservative causes such as school vouchers and created the groundwork for new economic views about the Great Depression, unemployment, inflation and exchange rates.

Many of his ideas remain controversial to this day, or carry less weight. Central bankers don't follow his prescriptions for how to implement monetary policy, considering them impractical. And despite his strong advocacy, publicly funded vouchers for students to attend private schools are still rare and researchers struggle to prove their effectiveness. His advocacy of the decriminalization of drugs hasn't been heeded.

But few would argue against the notion that Mr. Friedman -- with highly technical academic papers, popular books and columns, and the ear of powerful politicians -- helped to shift the center of debate in the U.S. and abroad about the proper role of government in managing a nation's economy. His influence spread far afield, from Hong Kong to Chile to Russia and Eastern Europe, and his ideas took root with reformers pushing for privatization and open markets.

WALL STREET JOURNAL VIDEO



WSJ's David Wessel discusses some of Milton Friedman's contributions to common economic wisdom."Among economic scholars, Milton Friedman had no peer," Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said yesterday. "The direct and indirect influences of his thinking on contemporary monetary economics would be difficult to overstate. Just as important, in his humane and engaging way, Milton conveyed to millions an understanding of the economic benefits of free, competitive markets, as well as the close connection that economic freedoms bear to other types of liberty."

President Bush said, "His work demonstrated that free markets are the great engines of economic development."

Critics said he inspired policies that put millions of people out of work in pursuit of low inflation and demonized almost everything the government did, no matter how beneficial or democratically chosen. "Milton Friedman didn't make a distinction between the big government of the People's Republic of China and the big government of the United States," said James Galbraith, professor of government at the University of Texas and son of the late, liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith, who often sparred with Mr. Friedman.

READER FORUM


"Most Americans have no idea what the science of economics is about. Milton Friedman made economic thought more accessible to more people, and he did it in a simple, straight-forward way that avoided politics and cut to the heart of free market capitalism."
Share your thoughts about Mr. Friedman's contributions to American society.Mr. Friedman, who died of heart failure at home, is survived by his wife, Rose -- whom he met in graduate school and who co-authored many of his books -- his son and daughter.

Mr. Friedman exercised extraordinary influence through his academic work, which is viewed as among the most authoritative in the economics field in the 20th century. He went beyond the role of academic by advising politicians such as Mr. Reagan and Ms. Thatcher and by writing popular books, such as "Capitalism and Freedom" in 1962 and, with his wife, "Free to Choose" in 1979. The latter book was adapted as a television series.

Mr. Friedman was awarded the Nobel Prize for Economic Science in 1976. He was best known for explaining the role of money supply in economic and inflation fluctuations. By managing the amount of money sloshing through a financial system, Mr. Friedman theorized, central banks could control inflation without making costly mistakes.

As with many of his ideas, his prescriptions weren't immediately accepted by central bankers when he advanced them in the 1950s and 1960s. Many economists believed inflation could arise from other factors, such as the influence of unions, corporations or oil-producing countries.

These views were advanced by Mr. Friedman's early mentor and friend, Arthur Burns, Federal Reserve chairman from 1970 to 1978. Mr. Friedman was harshly critical of Mr. Burns's monetary policy, and as inflation rose and unemployment took hold, his own views grew in prominence. By the time he won his Nobel, the unemployment rate had climbed to more than 7% and was on its way to surpassing 10%. The inflation rate, too, had flirted with double-digit levels.


Along with economist Edmund Phelps, this year's Nobel Prize winner, Mr. Friedman in the 1960s also developed the theory that policy makers couldn't maintain low unemployment by permitting higher inflation. The view holds sway at major central banks today, including the Fed, and helped to defeat the inflation of the 1970s and set the stage for the low inflation and low unemployment of the 1990s and today.

It took Paul Volcker, who became Fed chairman in 1979, to put the monetarist theory into practice, adopting money-supply targets that drove interest rates to double digit levels, sent the economy into a deep recession, and ultimately brought inflation down drastically. But unemployment eventually fell as well, proving that Mr. Friedman and Mr. Phelps were right about the absence of a rigid tradeoff between unemployment and inflation.

"That was a victory among many victories," Mr. Phelps said.

While central bankers still accept that inflation is largely a result of money-supply growth, few target the money supply in practice because it is difficult to measure and its relationship to overall spending often shifts.

The Fed stopped setting target ranges for monetary-supply growth in 2000 and has stopped publishing some long-followed data series on money growth. Still, Mr. Bernanke noted in 2003 at a conference on the legacy of Milton and Rose Friedman that the professor's ideas held enormous sway in the field.

"Friedman's monetary framework has been so influential that, in its broad outlines at least, it has nearly become identical with modern monetary theory and practice," Mr. Bernanke said.

His intellectual rigor was matched by a demanding persona. When Mr. Friedman returned reporters' calls, for example, he often called collect. He was also tough on students. Gary Becker, one former student, remembers Mr. Friedman ripped into his dissertation proposal in the early 1950s. Mr. Becker, a University of Chicago professor, went on to win the Nobel himself.

Ultimately, even ideological opponents changed their views about him. "He was the devil figure in my youth," Lawrence Summers, the former Treasury Secretary and nephew of two left-leaning Nobel winners, is quoted saying about Mr. Friedman in the book "Commanding Heights." "Only with time have I come to have large amounts of grudging respect. And with time, increasingly ungrudging respect."

Mr. Friedman was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., in 1912, the fourth child of European immigrants. His mother ran a small retail store and his father "engaged in a succession of mostly unsuccessful 'jobbing' ventures," he wrote in an autobiography on the Web site for the Nobel Prize. "The family income was small and highly uncertain; financial crisis was a constant companion."

Early in his life, he planned to become an actuary. But he emerged after World War II as a strong-viewed young professor at the University of Chicago. At the time, economic thought was dominated by the theories of John Maynard Keynes, who advocated activist government spending to stimulate demand and fix the economy during troubled times, such as the Great Depression of the 1930s. (When asked in 2004 by The Wall Street Journal to name the most important economist of the 20th century besides himself, Mr. Friedman named Mr. Keynes. Read the full Q&A.)

Mr. Friedman, who had started his studies at Chicago during the Depression, challenged the Keynesian approach, espousing the idea that the government should stay out of individuals' affairs whenever possible, and that markets can solve economic problems much more efficiently than government officials can. His ideas formed the basis for what become known as the "Chicago School" of economics, a concept of free-market capitalism.

Influenced by such earlier free-market thinkers as Friedrich von Hayek, Mr. Friedman -- some of whose relatives died during the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe -- saw economic and political freedom as inextricably linked. As he wrote in the 1962 text "Capitalism and Freedom," "a society which is socialist cannot be democratic, in the sense of guaranteeing individual freedom."


"No one in the 20th century has had the ideological influence that Milton Friedman has had in moving the economic profession from Great Depression-era do-goodism towards a friendliness toward, and appreciation of, the free market," said Paul Samuelson, a fellow Nobel laureate and frequent ideological opponent of Mr. Friedman. "We've lost a giant in economics."

Mr. Friedman's ideas weren't all laissez-faire. His concept of a "negative income tax" to eliminate poverty, for example, laid the foundation for today's Earned Income Tax Credit.

Mr. Friedman considered his best purely scientific contribution to economics to be his work on how people make spending decisions -- which was based on data he collected while working with future Nobel laureate Simon Kuznets at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Under his "permanent income" theory, people smooth their spending based on what they expect their incomes to be in the long term -- meaning that things such as unexpected tax breaks or other windfalls will have only a limited effect on spending.

He also attacked the system of fixed currency-exchange rates that emerged after World War II with encouragement from Mr. Keynes. George Shultz, a longtime friend of Mr. Friedman who served in both the Nixon and Reagan administrations, says that after Mr. Nixon was elected in 1968 but before he took office, Mr. Friedman wrote to him saying that "pressures on the tie of the dollar to gold are relentless" and that Mr. Nixon would be wise to sever the link immediately as an affirmative action, rather than be forced to. Mr. Friedman "turned out to be right," but Nixon didn't listen "until he was forced to," Mr. Schultz says.

Mr. Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1971.

By the 1970s, his influence had become substantial. He was a member of the Commission on an All-Volunteer Armed Force, appointed by Mr. Nixon in 1969. Former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, who was also a member, says that at the outset, panel Chairman Thomas Gates "was very clearly unconvinced that a volunteer army would work. At the end of the commission hearings he was strongly in favor of it, and the main reason was Friedman kept dissuading him on all the concerns he had." Mr. Nixon ended the draft in 1973.

In the 1970s, Mr. Friedman courted controversy for his association with Chile's military government which, after toppling a civilian government in 1973, implemented many free-market and monetarist ideas learned by its advisers who had studied at the University of Chicago. He was widely criticized for meeting with Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, whose government was eventually blamed for murdering and torturing thousands. Mr. Friedman's Nobel Prize ceremony was disrupted by demonstrators.

That same year Mr. Reagan, who had just made an unsuccessful bid for the presidency, noted the demonstrations in a radio address and said, "It seems when Milton Friedman talked, someone in Chile listened. Wouldn't it be nice if just once someone in Washington would ask: 'What did he say?'" In another address, he quoted Mr. Friedman, saying, "When you start paying people to be poor, you wind up with an awful lot of poor people."

One of the paradoxes of Mr. Friedman's immense influence on policy was his low regard for policy making. He often advocated abolition of the Fed for its failures during the Great Depression and the 1970s, though he later relented and admitted Mr. Greenspan had done a remarkable job from 1987-2006. After two years in the Treasury Department during World War II, he never served in government, aside from advisory roles.

Lawrence Lindsey, who served in both Bush presidencies and on the Fed board, recalls telling Mr. Friedman in the early 1990s, "Why don't you come to Washington, we could use you here." Mr. Friedman replied, "I detest that town."

Mr. Friedman once described his refusal to leave academia as necessary to his larger mission: "For society to be at once humane and to give opportunity for great human achievements, it is necessary that a small minority of people who do not have materialistic objectives have the greatest degree of freedom."

--Jon E. Hilsenrath contributed to this article.

Write to Greg Ip at [email protected] and Mark Whitehouse at [email protected]

Milton Friedman: In His Own Words
November 16, 2006 2:52 p.m.
[A free economy] gives people what they want instead of what a particular group thinks they ought to want. Underlying most arguments against the free market is a lack of belief in freedom itself.

The existence of a free market does not of course eliminate the need for government. On the contrary, government is essential both as a forum for determining the "rules of the game" and as an umpire to interpret and enforce the rules decided on. What the market does is to reduce greatly the range of issues that must be decided through political means, and thereby to minimize the extent to which government need participate directly in the game. The characteristic feature of action through political channels is that it tends to require or enforce substantial conformity. The great advantage of the market, on the other hand, is that it permits wide diversity. It is, in political terms, a system of proportional representation. Each man can vote, as it were, for the color of tie he wants and get it; he does not have to see what color-the majority wants and then, if he is in the minority, submit.

It is this feature of the market that we refer to when we say that the market provides economic freedom. But this characteristic also has implications that go far beyond the narrowly economic. Political freedom means the absence of coercion of a man by his fellow men. The fundamental threat to freedom is power to coerce, be it in the hands of a monarch, a dictator, an oligarchy, or a momentary majority. The preservation of freedom requires the elimination of such concentration of power to the fullest possible extent and the dispersal and distribution of whatever power cannot be eliminated -- a system of checks and balances. By removing the organization of economic activity from the control of political authority, the market eliminates this source of coercive power. It enables economic strength to be a check to political power rather than a reinforcement.

Capitalism and Freedom 1962

* * *
The two ideas of human freedom and economic freedom working together came to their greatest fruition in the United States. Those ideas are still very much with us. We are all of us imbued with them. They are part of the very fabric of our being. But we have been straying from them. We have been forgetting the basic truth that the greatest threat to human freedom is the concentration of power, whether in the hands of government or anyone else. We have persuaded ourselves that it is safe to grant power, provided it is for good reasons…

We have persuaded ourselves that it is safe to grant power, provided it is for good reasons. Fortunately, we are waking up. We are again recognizing the dangers of an overgoverned society, coming to understand that good objectives can be perverted by bad means, that reliance on the freedom of people to control their own lives in accordance with their own values is the surest way to achieve the full potential of a great society…

When the law contradicts what most people regard as moral and proper, they will break the law -- whether the law is enacted in the name of a noble ideal ... or in the naked interest of one group at the expense of another. Only fear of punishment, not a sense of justice and morality, will lead people to obey the law. When people start to break one set of laws, the lack of respect for the law inevitably spreads to all laws, even those that everyone regards as moral and proper - laws against violence, theft, and vandalism…

Self-interest is not myopic selfishness. It is whatever it is that interests the participants, whatever they value, whatever goals they pursue. The scientist seeking to advance the frontiers of his discipline, the missionary seeking to convert infidels to the true faith, the philanthropist seeking to bring comfort to the needy -- all are pursuing their interests, as they see them, as they judge them by their own values.

From Free to Choose, book 1980, PBS series

* * *
Responding to 2004 Journal interview question about the argument that the Bush tax cuts favor the rich.

The tax cuts did favor the rich because the top 1% of taxpayers pay a disproportionate amount of taxes. You can't give tax relief to those who don't pay a lot of tax. This is not a bad thing. What in fact do the rich do with their money? They can only consume a limited amount. In practice they end up either investing it or giving it away.

Some people say that those in the middle and low tax brackets are more likely to spend any tax relief they get, giving the economy a stimulus.

Well, that's a different argument and I do not accept it. It's very dubious. The tax cut may lead people to spend more, but that is offset by those who have less to spend because they buy the bonds to finance the deficit. In my opinion, we had a mild recession not because of the tax cuts but because of the Fed. Its expansionary monetary policy is the primary reason for the shallow recession. I do not believe that fiscal policy played a big role.

My support for tax cuts is not only on the supply side. I think the real problem is government spending… Where did you get the Clinton surpluses? They were the result of less legislation and less spending. When that gridlock was broken, many items had accumulated on the agenda and were put through.

Wall Street Journal interview 2004

* * *
I have sometimes been associated with the aphorism "There's no such thing as a free lunch," which I did not invent. I wish more attention were paid to one that I did invent, and that I think is particularly appropriate in this city [Washington], "Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own." But all aphorisms are half-truths. One of our favorite family pursuits on long drives is to try to find the opposite of aphorisms. For example, "History never repeats itself," but "There's nothing new under the sun." Or "look before you leap," but "He who hesitates is lost." The opposite of "There's no such thing as a free lunch" is clearly "The best things in life are free."

And in the real economic world, there is a free lunch, an extraordinary free lunch, and that free lunch is free markets and private property. Why is it that on one side of an arbitrary line there was East Germany and on the other side there was West Germany with such a different level of prosperity? It was because West Germany had a system of largely free, private markets - a free lunch. The same free lunch explains the difference between Hong Kong and mainland China, and the prosperity of the United States and Great Britain.

1993 Washington speech

Q&A: Friedman in Nobel Survey
November 16, 2006 1:04 p.m.
In June 2004, The Wall Street Journal surveyed all the Nobel Prize-winning economists. Here are Milton Friedman's answers.

Q: Which economy do you expect to be the biggest 75 years from now: U.S., European Union, China?

A: China


Q: Which country comes closest to getting economic policy right today?

A: Hong Kong, thanks to the legacy of the British administration.

Q: Who was the most important economist of the 20th century besides you?

A: John Maynard Keynes

Q: Who deserved the Nobel but didn't get it?

A: Joan Robinson and Peter Bauer

Q: What single breakthrough in economic thought in the past 50 years has had the most significant impact on the every day lives of people?

A: Acceptance of the idea that inflation is a monetary phenomenon. It has produced by now more than two decades of relatively low inflation in most developed countries, relatively stable economic output, a high level of employment and of well being.

Q: In what sphere of life, if any, do you think it most important to limit the influence of market forces?

A: Ownership of human beings.

Q: What do you consider the world's single greatest economic challenge today?

A: Holding down the size and scope of government

Q: Do you think the fruits of the global economy will be distributed more evenly 50 years from now, or less evenly?

A: More evenly. The major sources of income differences today are between the developed and the undeveloped countries. This inter-country difference will decline as globalization spreads and more and more countries find a way to achieve economic growth and prosperity.

--David Wessel

Capitalism and Friedman
November 17, 2006; Page A20
There are some public figures whose obituaries can be written years in advance. Milton Friedman was not one of them.

Arguably the greatest economist of the 20th century, he won his Nobel Prize 30 years ago. His classic "Capitalism and Freedom" was published 44 years ago. He died yesterday at the age of 94, but as the op-ed running nearby attests, he was active in writing about, thinking about and explaining how economics affects our world until the end.

In today's feature, he updates and re-examines conclusions he reached about the Great Depression in "A Monetary History of the United States, 1867-1960," a book published with Anna Schwartz 43 years ago. His thesis was that the Great Depression was not, as was once commonly presumed, a "market failure," but a failure of government policy. Contraction of the money supply in the wake of the stock-market crash of 1929 was what turned a financial event into an economic catastrophe.


This insight flowed from Professor Friedman's conviction that "money matters." As the Royal Academy of Sweden noted in announcing his 1976 Nobel, Friedman's was a lonely voice in arguing for the importance of the money supply in economics when he began writing about it in the 1950s.

By the late 1970s, stagflation -- the combination of high inflation and high unemployment -- had made it obvious that the then-dominant Keynesian model had some large holes. These included the effect of the money supply on inflation and the fact that inflation and employment did not move in lockstep as some of Keynes's disciples asserted. It was a seminal insight, creating what became known at the University of Chicago and elsewhere as the "monetarist school" and laying the intellectual basis for central bankers to break the great inflation of the 1970s.

In awarding its Nobel in 1976, the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences cited his "achievements in the fields of consumption analysis, monetary history and theory, and for his demonstration of the complexity of stabilization policy." The citation covers a huge swath of economic thinking, and suggests both the range and the consistency of Professor Friedman's thought. In layman's terms, the Swedish Academy credited him with nothing less than shredding the Keynesian consensus.

First, he had shown that men are no fools. People spend money in accordance with their income expectations over the long-term, not in response to one-time "stimuli" from the government. This is known as the "permanent income" hypothesis, and it called into question Keynesian notions of how short-term stimulus affects the economy. In addition to his monetary insights, Mr. Friedman questioned the degree to which fiscal policy could be used to "fine-tune" the economy by adjusting spending, tax or monetary policy. Today we take for granted that all of these operate with a lag, but it was Milton Friedman who first highlighted the problem.

For all of his academic accomplishments, Professor Friedman's role as a popularizer of free-market principles was arguably more important. He wrote a column in Newsweek for 18 years starting in 1966, preaching the importance of economic freedom to a generation that had never heard such things in school. His 1980 book, "Free to Choose," was a best seller, and the videos that accompanied it were smuggled behind the Iron Curtain like seeds of revolution.

He was among the first to point to Hong Kong as a model of free-market success, a lesson that even today is remaking Communist China. And he first suggested educational vouchers to rescue failing public schools as long ago as 1955; in recent years, he established a foundation to support this idea that continues to advance despite ferocious opposition from unions and other entrenched interests.

This newspaper had the privilege of publishing Milton Friedman's articles on numerous occasions over the years. We've also disagreed with him from time to time, notably on exchange rates and drug legalization. These disputes always gave us cause to reflect, and 20 years ago amid one debate on the benefits of fixed exchange rates we noted that "being spanked by Milton Friedman is one of life's most humiliating experiences."

In truth, Professor Friedman always argued with civility and a bracing wit. One of his best barbs on the size of government: "Given our monstrous, overgrown government structure, any three letters chosen at random would probably designate an agency or part of a department that could be profitably abolished." And he popularized "There is no such thing as a free lunch."

In "Two Lucky People," written with his wife, Rose Friedman, who survives him as a distinguished economist in her own right, Mr. Friedman well described the role of a public intellectual: "We do not influence the course of events by persuading people that we are right when we make what they regard as radical proposals. Rather, we exert influence by keeping options available when something has to be done at a time of crisis."

On the death of Ronald Reagan, whom he advised, Mr. Friedman wrote on these pages that "few people in human history have contributed more to the achievement of human freedom." The same can and long will be said of Milton Friedman.

Why Money Matters
By MILTON FRIEDMAN
November 17, 2006; Page A20

The third of three episodes in a major natural experiment in monetary policy that started more than 80 years ago is just now coming to an end. The experiment consists in observing the effect on the economy and the stock market of the monetary policies followed during, and after, three very similar periods of rapid economic growth in response to rapid technological change: to wit, the booms of the 1920s in the U.S., the '80s in Japan, and the '90s in the U.S.

The prosperous '20s in the U.S. were followed by the most severe economic contraction in its history. In our "Monetary History" (1963), Anna Schwartz and I attributed the severity of the contraction to a monetary policy that permitted the quantity of money to decline by one-third from 1929 to 1933. Since 1963, two episodes have occurred that are almost mirror images of the U.S. economy in the '20s: the '80s in Japan, and the '90s in the U.S. All three episodes were marked by a long period of rapid economic growth, sparked by rapid technological change and the emergence of new industries, and accompanied by a stock market boom that terminated in a crash. Monetary policy played a role in these booms, but only a supporting role. Technological change appears to have been the major player.


These three episodes provide the equivalent of a controlled experiment to test our hypothesis about what we termed the Great Contraction. In this experiment, the quantity of money is the counterpart of the experimenter's input. The performance of the economy and the level of the stock market are the counterpart of the experimenter's output, i.e., the variables whose relation to input the experimenter is seeking to determine. The three boom episodes all occurred in developed private enterprise market economies, involved in international finance and trade, and with similar monetary systems, including a central bank with power to control the quantity of money. This is the counterpart of the controlled conditions of the experimenter's laboratory.

The Money Supply: In addition, history has provided a close counterpart to the kind of variation in input that our hypothetical experimenter might have deliberately chosen. As Fig. 1 shows, monetary policy, as measured by the behavior of the quantity of money, was very similar in the three boom periods, and very different in the three post boom periods, with settings that might be described as low, medium, high.

To measure the quantity of money, I use M2 in the U.S. and the conceptually equivalent M2 plus certificates of deposit in Japan. To express the data for the two countries and the widely separated periods in comparable units, I use as an index of the money stock the ratio of the quantity of money to its average value for the six years prior to the cycle peak. The peak quarter of the relevant business cycle is the third quarter of 1929 (29.3) for the earlier U.S. episode; the first quarter of 1992 (92.1) for Japan; and the first quarter of 2001 (01.1) for the second U.S. episode (see Table 1). Finally, the data are plotted to align the dates at the cycle peak.

Fig. 1 shows a striking contrast between the period before the cycle peak and the period after the cycle peak. There are some differences before the peak -- money growth is slowest on the average for the earlier U.S. episode, fastest for Japan -- but the differences are small and there is reasonably steady money growth in all three episodes. The contrast with the period after the cycle peak could hardly be greater. Money supply declines sharply after the cycle peak in the first episode, goes from stable to rising mildly in the second, and rises steadily and sharply in the third. Our hypothetical experimenter planned his experiment well.

The GDP: The results of the third episode of this natural experiment are now all in. Fig. 2 shows how GDP in nominal terms (dollars or yen in current prices) behaved during the boom and post boom periods. I use nominal GDP rather than real GDP because M2 is also a nominal magnitude. How changes in nominal GDP are divided between prices and output is an important question but one that is not directly relevant to this experiment. One further preliminary comment: I believe the erratic behavior of nominal GNP during the '20s and '30s is largely a statistical artifact. The data for that period are scarce and of poor quality.

As in Fig. 1, there is a striking contrast between the boom and the post-boom periods: roughly similar growth during the booms, widely variable growth during the post-boom. Both before and after the cycle peak, nominal GDP growth paralleled monetary growth. During the boom, money and nominal GDP grew most rapidly in Japan, most slowly in the first U.S. episode, and at an intermediate rate in the second U.S. episode. Table 2 shows the ratio of the money stock at the cycle peak to its value six years earlier (the initial date in the figures) and the corresponding ratio for GDP. In the first two rows of the table, the ratios are highest for Japan, lowest for the U.S. 1920s.


After the cycle peak, money fell sharply in the first episode and so did nominal GDP; money growth stagnated in the second episode and so did GDP; money grew at a rapid rate in the third episode and, after a brief lag (corresponding to the mild 2001 recession) so did GDP. Table 3 shows the ratio of the money stock at the terminal date plotted to its value at the cyclical peak and the corresponding ratio for GDP. Both ratios are decidedly lowest for the U.S. 1920s, and decidedly highest for the U.S. 1990s.

The Stock Market: The peak of the stock market, as measured by S&P's index, coincided with the cycle peak in the first episode, both occurring in the third quarter of 1929 (29.3). However, that was not the case in the later episodes. In Japan, stock prices as measured by the Nikkei peaked in the fourth quarter of 1989 (89.4), nine quarters before the cycle peak. In the second U.S. episode, stock prices as measured by S&P 500 peaked in the third quarter of 2000 (00.3), two quarters prior to the cycle peak. Accordingly, Fig. 3 plots the data to align the series at the stock market peak.

The near identity of the three stock market series during the boom is truly remarkable. Yet even the minor deviations that exist reflect to some extent the differences in monetary growth, as Table 2 makes clear. Money growth was highest in Japan, and the Nikkei shows the largest rise in the stock market. The other two do not conform: Money rose more in the '90s than in the '20s, while stock prices rose slightly less, as shown by the ratio of peak to initial value in Table 2.

Of more interest for our purpose is what happened after the peak. For a year after, the three stock-price series fell in tandem, responding to the inner dynamics of a collapsing bubble. Then, the differences in monetary policy began to have an effect. Beginning in late 1930, the S&P index started falling away from the others under the influence of a collapsing money stock. For another year and a half, the other two indexes move in tandem. Then the much more expansive policy of the Fed in the '90s than of the Bank of Japan in the '80s takes effect and pulls the S&P 500 away from the Nikkei, which stabilizes in response to the passive monetary policy of the Bank of Japan (as shown by Table 3).

The results of this natural experiment are clear, at least for major ups and downs: What happens to the quantity of money has a determinative effect on what happens to national income and to stock prices. The results strongly support Anna Schwartz's and my 1963 conjecture about the role of monetary policy in the Great Contraction. They also support the view that monetary policy deserves much credit for the mildness of the recession that followed the collapse of the U.S. boom in late 2000.

Mr. Friedman, who died yesterday, was the 1976 Nobel Laureate in economics. He was a senior research fellow at the Hoover Institution and professor emeritus at the University of Chicago

depois de todos esses textos, leio a cobertura brasileira, com Luiz Gonzaga Beluzzo dizendo: "ele teve lá sua importância, mas estávamos em campos opostos"...Taí Beluzzo, Prêmio Pévermeio de Conomia, realçando sua influência na vida e no pensamento na grande área que vai de Campinas a Jundiaí....

Entre janeiro de 2003 e outubro de 2006, empresas estrangeiras se desfizeram de US$ 18,9 bilhões em negócios no país.

Visto como crucial para o desenvolvimento do Brasil, o setor elétrico liderou o ranking de desinvestimento neste ano, com retiradas de US$ 1,5 bilhão até outubro -24,4% do total de US$ 6,19 bilhões do período.
Entre as operações que contribuíram para esse resultado está a transferência de propriedade da Light do grupo francês EDF para o consórcio brasileiro integrado por Cemig, Andrade Gutierrez e Pactual Energia, por US$ 320 milhões.

O segundo lugar no ranking de desinvestimento foi do setor de intermediação financeira, com saídas de US$ 1,1 bilhão entre janeiro e outubro. Quase metade desse valor -US$ 490 milhões- é resultado da venda dos ativos da American Express no Brasil para o Bradesco, fechada em março.

(texto completo em folha.uol.com.br/fsp/dinheiro)

Entre as operações que contribuíram para esse resultado está a transferência de propriedade da Light do grupo francês EDF para o consórcio brasileiro integrado por Cemig, Andrade Gutierrez e Pactual Energia, por US$ 320 milhões.

Não entendi onde transferência de propriedade é desinvestimento...isso me parece analfabetismo crônico.

Quase metade desse valor -US$ 490 milhões- é resultado da venda dos ativos da American Express no Brasil para o Bradesco, fechada em março.

De novo..."Não importa onde vive o acionista, importa onde é a fábrica" J.K.

em termos de valor econômico, não muda nada.

Mas, além da corrupção, o real valorizado, alta carga tributária e o baixo ritmo de crescimento assustam os investidores, não? É o que aparece solto pelo texto da Folha.

corrupção

provavelmente sim.

real valorizado

provavelmente não: é um problema conjuntural para o qual o mercadom financeiro tem respostas bem aceitáveis.

alta carga tributária

provavelmente não. boas empresas utilizam de maneira inteligente os recursos de elisão fiscal, paraísos e canais de remssa de lucro sofisticados.

baixo ritmo de crescimento

Depende da elasticidade das receitas da empresa em relação ao PIB, e não do PIB em si.

O que ocorre é transferência de risco. O "desinvestimento" se dá porque as percepções de risco de um estrangeiro e de um brasileiro são diferentes, então o risco sempre flui da parte menos habilitada a lidar com ele pra parte mais habilitada.

Comentei da diminuição de investimentos lá na Não à corrupção e à impunidade e responderam:

Mas a detalhes a serem lembrados que a Folha esqueceu (prefiro “imaginar” que Claudia Trevisan tenha esquecido destes detalhes ao invés de omiti-los), como por exemplo, a desaceleração econômica dos EUA, Europa e Japão, os investimentos recrudesceram a partir de 2002 em todo o mundo (e não somente no Brasil). Além disso, grande parte dos investimentos realizados no Brasil no período a partir dos anos 90 eram resultantes dos processos de privatização e a construção de base de produção para atender ao mercado brasileiro e latino-americano.

Com a queda de renda real da população brasileira desde 1999 (devido à desvalorização da nossa moeda frente ao dólar), o desastre ocorrido na Argentina e o baixo crescimento econômico da região, os investidores passaram a negligenciar a região em detrimento da Ásia (principalmente á China e seus “operários” de aproximadamente 40 centavos de dólar a hora).

Mas, agora aqui entre a gente, é engraçado defender uma política contracionista como a desvalorização da nossa moeda em detrimento de “meia-dúzia” de empresários. A própria Fiesp e Iedi apresentaram um documento denominado “Brasil na busca do crescimento econômico” no qual ressaltam que seria ideal , o dólar sendo cotado em média á R$ 2,50 para o desenvolvimento nacional (o que resulta numa cotação não muito distante da que temos hoje). Outro detalhe é que a taxa de cambio no Brasil é flutuante. Ou seja quando mais dólares circulando na economia brasileira, mais baixa será sua cotação (e assim mais valorizada nossa moeda e consequentemente o aumento do poder de compra da população).

Com a queda de renda real da população brasileira desde 1999 (devido à desvalorização da nossa moeda frente ao dólar), o desastre ocorrido na Argentina e o baixo crescimento econômico da região, os investidores passaram a negligenciar a região em detrimento da Ásia (principalmente á China e seus “operários” de aproximadamente 40 centavos de dólar a hora).

É verdade, mas não é tão verdade assim. O trade off não é simplesmente "China bombando com trabalho escravo e nóis si fudeno". Mesmo porque Chile, Panamá, Costa Rica, Trinidad Tobago e até a Colômbia estão recebendo bastante investimento estrangeiro direto. Crescermos pouco porque não temos mão-de-obra qualificada e temos que financiar o governo. não temos nem gente nem grana pra crescer. mas a china não chega muito longe com o seu modelo e ela sabe disso. a verdadeira potência daquela região é a índia.

Mas, agora aqui entre a gente, é engraçado defender uma política contracionista como a desvalorização da nossa moeda em detrimento de “meia-dúzia” de empresários. A própria Fiesp e Iedi apresentaram um documento denominado “Brasil na busca do crescimento econômico” no qual ressaltam que seria ideal , o dólar sendo cotado em média á R$ 2,50 para o desenvolvimento nacional (o que resulta numa cotação não muito distante da que temos hoje). Outro detalhe é que a taxa de cambio no Brasil é flutuante. Ou seja quando mais dólares circulando na economia brasileira, mais baixa será sua cotação (e assim mais valorizada nossa moeda e consequentemente o aumento do poder de compra da população).

Ainda bem que, como diz o nosso presidêntio, o câmbio flutuante flutua. Câmbio flutuante praticamente impõe controles qualitativos de política monetária e fiscal - metas de inflação e tamanho limite de déficit público. Agora, não consegui entender, pelo que o cara escrveu, se ele é contra, a favor ou muito pelo contrário...

Brasil ocupa a última posição no ranking de competitividade do BRIC-M

O Brasil ocupa a última posição no ranking de competitividade do BRIC-M, grupo que reúne também Rússia, Índia, China e México. O desempenho insatisfatório, compartilhado com o México, é justificado principalmente por elevados custos fiscais, institucionais e operacionais, aponta o Painel de Competitividade 2006, levantamento da Amcham e do Movimento Brasil Competitivo divulgado nesta segunda-feira.

O Painel de Competitividade é composto por 24 variáveis. Apresentamos piora em apresentou piora em 14, entre eles Risco Soberano, Intenção de Investimentos Diretos Estrangeiros (IDE), Transparência da Política Governamental, Custo de Energia, Infra-estrutura de Escoamento de Mercadorias, e Empreendedorismo.

( matéria completa em amcham.com.br/update/2006 )

BRIC-M

Nunca um relatório de banco repercutiu tanto. BRIC é um acrônimo criado pelo Goldman Sachs "juntando" economias que "poderiam" estar na frente do mundo em 2050. Apenas isso. Agora virou "instituição" geopolítica.

compartilhado com o México

então a situação do México é pior: o México é investment grade. Tem um dado curioso: nas 3 últimas crises bravas que o país passou (82, 87, 99), o México afundou de dois a três anos antes.

Risco Soberano

esquisito...risco soberano é funçao das reservas internacionais, é medido pelo famigerado "risco brasil" e realmente ele está baixo.

Intenção de Investimentos Diretos Estrangeiros (IDE)

Essa informação, junto com a anterior, me faz crer que há uma forte componente de risco político "crássico".

Custo de Energia, Infra-estrutura de Escoamento de Mercadorias

esse realmente é batata.

Empreendedorismo

esse não vai mudar nunca. não é nossa cultura.

Fonte: http://cosmicvariance.com/

Economics vs. Physics Love-Off

Who gets more love, economists or physicists? Robin Hanson stamps his foot in frustration at the lack of respect economists receive, in a nicely self-undermining blurb (via Ezra Klein):

Consider how differently the public treats physics and economics. Physicists can say that this week they think the universe has eleven dimensions, three of which are purple, and two of which are twisted clockwise, and reporters will quote them unskeptically, saying “Isn’t that cool!” But if economists say, as they have for centuries, that a minimum wage raises unemployment, reporters treat them skeptically and feel they need to find a contrary quote to “balance” their story.


As Ezra and Kevin Drum point out, this is straightforwardly wrong on the merits: economists have a huge amount of influence over actual public policy, while admiration for physicists doesn’t get you too much beyond the “Isn’t that cool!” level, and occasional appearances on late-night radio. (It’s like conservatives complaining that most university professors are liberal, while they control the government, corporations, and the military.) Atrios and Echidne also point out that the single chosen example of economic wisdom, that the minimum wage raises unemployment, is wrong. And that physicists have quite the demonstrable track record of making statements about the universe that seem counterintuitive at first glance, but turn out to be right.

In fact, I think these three sentences point to a definite failure on the part of physicists to successfully get their message across. We physicists talk about crazy things all the time — extra dimensions, black holes, quark confinement, wavefunction collapse, conservation of momentum, the Earth moving around the Sun. Things that, on their face, seem to be incompatible with our everyday experience. But we don’t just throw these ideas out there randomly; they are hypotheses that we’re driven to by the constraints put upon us by the data. Some of these ideas may turn out to be wrong, and some may be right, and we have certain well-tested procedures for sorting them out. (In the wake of Milton Friedmann’s death, folks have been re-arguing his contention that successful predictions from an economic model are more important than correct assumptions underlying it. I would hope that both are important.) Unfortunately — and to a signficant extent this is our own fault — it’s not always clear to the person on the street which ideas are speculative and which have come to be accepted, nor is it clear that we have good reasons even for the wildest speculations.

But the idea that three dimensions are purple and two are twisted clockwise — that’s intriguing. I’ll have to look into it.

Update: Robin Hanson expands on what he meant about the minimum wage.[/url]