Sept. 23 (Bloomberg) -- If Henry Paulson and Ben S. Bernanke want to know what happens when central banks and governments bail out financial institutions, they should be ``learning Swedish.' (...)
The Nordic effort -- similar in speed and scope to what the U.S. is planning now, though smaller in size -- did manage to end the financial crisis. At the same time, it didn't prevent a deeper recession and surging unemployment in all three countries.
``In the long term, there were benefits, but it took half a decade before they began to show in the economy,'' said Esko Ollila, a member of the Bank of Finland board from 1983 to 2000.(...)
Surging Economies
At the end of the 1980s, the economies of Sweden, Finland and Norway had surged after deregulation [reparar que aqui o que importa é a ligação entre a des-regulação da economia e o crescimento obtido ... mas o sector monetário mantém-se regulado por moeda emitida pelo Banco Central...o qual induz a expansão do crédito e juros baixos ... causando uma "bolha que tem de rebentar"] and low interest rates encouraged banks to lend more. Finnish house prices jumped 80 percent in real terms, and its stock market soared 164 percent in five years, according to JPMorgan Chase & Co.
The byproduct was a mounting debt burden. As policy makers sought to slow inflation and protect their fixed exchange rates, banks found their balance sheets decimated by nonperforming loans amounting to 10 percent of the region's gross domestic product.
The response to the subsequent financial crisis was one of ``rapidity and vigor,'' said then-Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan in a 1999 speech. Sweden guaranteed bank obligations against losses and established a $14 billion restructuring fund to provide failing banks with capital in return for equity. In addition to taking over Nordbanken AB, the government created a ``bad bank'' that bought troubled assets at a discount, while leaving financial institutions to manage their more-liquid holdings.
Merging Banks
Norway's government took similar steps by insuring savings and seizing control of the country's three biggest banks. Finland merged more than 40 banks, including Skopbank Ltd., into a government-run entity and moved nonperforming assets to management companies run by its central bank.
While the interventions ``were sweeping and ultimately a success,'' they didn't bring immediate relief to the three countries' economies, as banks cut back on lending and companies and consumers spent less, said Lauri Uotila, chief economist at Sampo Bank, a unit of Danske Bank A/S in Helsinki.
The Finnish and Swedish economies contracted in 1991, 1992 and 1993. Norges Bank calculates that during the early 1990s, output fell 12.3 percent in Finland, 5.8 percent in Sweden and 4.1 percent in Norway. Unemployment didn't peak in Finland until May 1994, when the rate reached 19.9 percent, having fallen as low as 2.1 percent in 1990. Sweden's jobless rate averaged 9.9 percent in 1997, up from 1.6 percent in 1990.
(no texto restante fala-se ainda da bolha que rebentou no Japão no final dos anos 80)O desafio dos actuais comentadores à presente crise é explicar porque aparece tanto erro económico em tantas crises anteriores (bolhas da internet, do japão, 1929, bolhas do séc. 19 - muito mais localizadas, etc) produzido pelos agentes de forma ciclica.
Quem o quiser perceber tem que olhar para a Teoria dos Ciclos Económicos da Escola Austriaca que tentando bater um recorde de poucas palavras se deve a:
A expansão do crédito por criação monetária estabelece um expansão do investimento não sustentado em poupança real e vountária, parecendo rentabilizar projectos devido a uma taxa de juro artificialmente baixa (dado que o crédito não teve de competir pela poupança existente) e simultâneamente desencorajando a poupança.
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