Ouro
USD Index a fazer mínimos históricos
sábado, 29 de setembro de 2007
sexta-feira, 28 de setembro de 2007
Transparência da CMVM
Via Helder: "Parece que uma sociedade gestora de fundos comunicou à CMVM que foi obrigada a pedir um empréstimo bancário para fazer face a problemas de liquidez e Carlos Tavares ter-se-á recusado a indicar o nome da sociedade. Transparência de informação my ass. Run for the hills!"
De facto, pensei que seria um daqueles factos de publicação obrigatória no site da CMVM....!
De facto, pensei que seria um daqueles factos de publicação obrigatória no site da CMVM....!
quinta-feira, 27 de setembro de 2007
Monetização do crédito à habitação
Hoje, o FED financiou um total de 19 "billions usd" de "Mortgage-Backed" (subscrevo os alertas do FED de NY, um velho hábito olhar para as estatísticas monetárias e balanço do FED).
PS: É suposto serem operações "passageiras". Para mim, vai tornar-se norma. Não sei se percebem.
Os problemas do crédito fácil (dado a capacidade de criação monetária e taxas de juro baixas) são resolvidos com crédito fácil (por emissão de moeda e taxas de juro mais baixas do que o mercado fixaria sem essa emissão).
terça-feira, 25 de setembro de 2007
Ouro sobe enquanto os BCs vendem
Eurosystem Gold Sales 443 Tons To Date . "Gold sales under the agreement, which covers 16 European central banks, are limited to 500 tons a year over a five-year period. The quota year runs from Sept. 27 to Sept. 26. "
segunda-feira, 24 de setembro de 2007
sexta-feira, 21 de setembro de 2007
Bancos Centrais a financiar (monetizando) Crédito à Habitação
Federal Reserve of New York
Temporary Open Market Operations: To implement monetary policy, short-term repurchase and reverse repurchase agreements are used to temporarily affect the size of the Federal Reserve System's portfolio and influence day-to-day trading in the federal funds market.
Deal Date: Thursday, September 20, 2007
DayTerm of Operation2: 7
Collateral Type (Billions Usd):
Treasury 4.65 b
Temporary Open Market Operations: To implement monetary policy, short-term repurchase and reverse repurchase agreements are used to temporarily affect the size of the Federal Reserve System's portfolio and influence day-to-day trading in the federal funds market.
Deal Date: Thursday, September 20, 2007
DayTerm of Operation2: 7
Collateral Type (Billions Usd):
Treasury 4.65 b
Agency 2.00
Mortgage-Backed 12.35
Total 19.00
Mortgage-Backed 12.35
Total 19.00
Moeda com Qualidade
I. Será tanto maior quanto a totalidade da massa monetária existente
1) menos é passível de diminuir
2) menos é passível de aumentar
Ora essas são as qualidades do ouro e da prata num sistema de 100% de reservas. O ouro não pode ser destruido e a sua produção é muito pequena em relação ao stock existente.
II. A forma de uma moeda perder o seu valor monetário é a sua quantidade total sofrer grandes variações:
1) Pela diminuição da sua quantidade (deflação monetária. ex: falências de bancos com defaults sobre depósitos)
2) Pelo aumento da sua quantidade (inflação monetária ex. para evitar falências de bancos, para incentivar artificialmente o crédito, para financiar os déficits)
Ora 1) e 2) são possíveis num sistema de reservas parciais (e já ser verificaram ao longo da história). Como os BCs odeiam a hip. 1), embora esta seja a via de reequilibrar a economia (a cura, embora os economistas digam que é a doença... good god...), a sua solução será sempre hip 2).
No actual sistema, como em cada crise, os BCs incentivam a fusão sucessiva de Bancos (é porque os que têm maior quota de mercado são os que têm maior capacidade de usar o multiplicador de forma mais eficaz, ficando os pequenos e cada sucessiva crise na sua mercê) e o resultado da sua actuação é o "moral hazard" que premeia os bancos e depositantes com maior risco...
... um dia chegaremos a 2) [afinal o actual sistema só existe em pleno desde o início dos anos 70, com o default por parte de Nixon, recusando-se a entregar ouro contra Usd].
É preciso perceber que o actual sistema incentiva o investimento com recurso ao crédito em vez do investimento com capitais próprios, porque quem se financia está a beneficiar do mecanismo de inflação monetária o qual despoleta um redistribuição de riqueza a favor de quem se endivida em ciclos de expansão, recebendo novas quantidades monetárias que aplica sem que os preços tenham ainda ajustado em subida.
1) menos é passível de diminuir
2) menos é passível de aumentar
Ora essas são as qualidades do ouro e da prata num sistema de 100% de reservas. O ouro não pode ser destruido e a sua produção é muito pequena em relação ao stock existente.
II. A forma de uma moeda perder o seu valor monetário é a sua quantidade total sofrer grandes variações:
1) Pela diminuição da sua quantidade (deflação monetária. ex: falências de bancos com defaults sobre depósitos)
2) Pelo aumento da sua quantidade (inflação monetária ex. para evitar falências de bancos, para incentivar artificialmente o crédito, para financiar os déficits)
Ora 1) e 2) são possíveis num sistema de reservas parciais (e já ser verificaram ao longo da história). Como os BCs odeiam a hip. 1), embora esta seja a via de reequilibrar a economia (a cura, embora os economistas digam que é a doença... good god...), a sua solução será sempre hip 2).
No actual sistema, como em cada crise, os BCs incentivam a fusão sucessiva de Bancos (é porque os que têm maior quota de mercado são os que têm maior capacidade de usar o multiplicador de forma mais eficaz, ficando os pequenos e cada sucessiva crise na sua mercê) e o resultado da sua actuação é o "moral hazard" que premeia os bancos e depositantes com maior risco...
... um dia chegaremos a 2) [afinal o actual sistema só existe em pleno desde o início dos anos 70, com o default por parte de Nixon, recusando-se a entregar ouro contra Usd].
É preciso perceber que o actual sistema incentiva o investimento com recurso ao crédito em vez do investimento com capitais próprios, porque quem se financia está a beneficiar do mecanismo de inflação monetária o qual despoleta um redistribuição de riqueza a favor de quem se endivida em ciclos de expansão, recebendo novas quantidades monetárias que aplica sem que os preços tenham ainda ajustado em subida.
Banco Central garante a totalidade dos depósitos
Apesar da garantia estipulada legalmente ser apenas para pequenos e médios depósitos.
Isso quer dizer que podemos colocar depósitos nos Bancos que mais arriscam e mais taxa de juro pagam, porque se tiverem problemas teremos sempre os depósitos garantidos?
Alguém percebe? Acho que estão de cabeça perdida. Até porque depois vieram aumentar a confusão ao dizer que os novos depósitos não estão garantidos.
"LONDON -- Britain attempted Monday to contain a run on the country's fifth largest mortgage lender amid fears that a sustained panic could damage the national economy should it further undermine the confidence of investors and consumers.
Treasury Chief Alistair Darling said the British government will guarantee all existing deposits at troubled bank, Northern Rock PLC."
Isso quer dizer que podemos colocar depósitos nos Bancos que mais arriscam e mais taxa de juro pagam, porque se tiverem problemas teremos sempre os depósitos garantidos?
Alguém percebe? Acho que estão de cabeça perdida. Até porque depois vieram aumentar a confusão ao dizer que os novos depósitos não estão garantidos.
"LONDON -- Britain attempted Monday to contain a run on the country's fifth largest mortgage lender amid fears that a sustained panic could damage the national economy should it further undermine the confidence of investors and consumers.
Treasury Chief Alistair Darling said the British government will guarantee all existing deposits at troubled bank, Northern Rock PLC."
quinta-feira, 20 de setembro de 2007
Show me the Money
Um pouco da história das "corridas aos Bancos", que diga-se durante o padrão-ouro, eram o mecanismo pelo qual precisamente a moeda preservava a sua qualidade, ao punir os Bancos que a punham em causa.
O processo é simples de descrever:
1- Banco abre negócio
2- Os primeiros depositantes "depositam" 10 moedas de ouro e recebem 10 recibos de depósito (notas)
3- Um empresário pretende de crédito 100 moedas de ouro
4- O Banco fabrica 100 recibos de moedas depositadas falsas, concede o crédito e entrega os recibos ao empresário.
5- Passam a existir 110 recibos de depósito de moedas de ouro, contra os quais o Banco apenas tem 10 moedas de ouro(!!) - "reservas parciais"
6- Um dia, os detentores de recibos de 11 moedas de ouro lembram-se de levantar as moedas de ouro.
7- O Banco só tem 10 moedas. A palavra espalha-se e "irracionalmente e em pânico" (sempre o comentário dos economistas, banqueiros, etc) vão tentar levantar as suas moedas de ouro, de acordo com o contrato implicito no recibo (notas).
A confiança numa entidade depositária ou é total ou nenhuma. Por isso as corridas aos Bancos quando surge a mínima das dúvidas.
Fraude é a única palavra de que me lembro (efeito jurídico) para qualificar este processo. Entretanto outro efeito agora económico é o facto do investimento do empresário ter sido feito sem o processo económico assegurar-se que existiu poupança real para o suportar, assim como em termos de preço a taxa de juro será óbviamente muito menor do que a que seria se tivesse de convencer os detentores de 100 moedas de ouro...reais.
"The Guardian : Show us the money
The run on the Northern Rock building society is nothing new. As long as there have been banks there have been crises of confidence - and some were truly spectacular, as Jon Henley reports
A large crowd waits outside the Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank in Minneapolis in the US in the 1890s. Photograph: Minnesota Historical Society/Corbis
It may come as no consolation to the depositors of Northern Rock who queued so patiently outside their local branches, but they are far from the first victims of a banking panic. In fact, the words "banking" and "panic" have been linked for just about as long as financial institutions have existed. No less an authority than the top US investment bank Lehman Brothers, for example, blames the start of the western world's first identifiably financial crash and subsequent bank run on the moment when some incompetent and unimaginative corporate bean-counter in the accounts department of the Holy Roman Empire decided it would be a fun idea to debase its coinage. And that was in 1622.
Then there was Holland's 1637 tulip bubble, during which a single tulip bulb could briefly fetch six times the average wage or, if you were very lucky, a six-bedroomed piece of prime real estate beside one of Amsterdam's premier canals (one particularly precious speciemen, the Semper Augustus, was apparently once sold for 6,000 Dutch florins at a time when a tonne of butter cost 100). You would have thought, too, that Britain's South Sea Bubble of 1720 might have taught us all a few lessons about exaggerated claims of future returns and fevered, easy-money speculation, but of course no: after losing a terrifying £20,000 on the venture, even Sir Isaac Newton was induced to observe that he could "calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men".
Again, according to Lehman Brothers, the 18th century saw 11 banking and financial crashes and the 19th another 18, including American banking crises in (to keep things brief) 1819, 1837, 1847, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1890 and 1896. There were a healthy 33 such storms in the 20th century, chief among them the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Japanese financial turmoil of the 1990s. All, to varying degrees, have caused considerable distress to investors and savers large and small. Stuffing the lot under your mattress may not be such a crazy notion after all.
Victorian banking crisis
By the late 19th century, the City of London and its banks - huge, hierarchical, top-heavy, complacent - seemed all but unassailable. But they were not. In 1866, for example, the bill broker and discount banker Overend, Gurney & Co collapsed with debts of £11m, a breathtaking sum at the time. The company's directors were promptly tried for fraud, but not before they had triggered a financial crisis that saw some 200 other companies, including many smaller banks, go out of business. In 1878, the City of Glasgow Bank also collapsed, its £5.2m "deficiency of capital" reportedly ruining all but 254 of its 1,819 shareholders. These misadventures did, however, have the beneficial effect of prompting our nation's leading financial institutions to behave with a shade more financial responsibility, notably by doing their accounts, underpinned by the establishment of the Bank of England as a lender of last resort.
The panic of 1907
This was a big American crisis during which the stock market lost half its value, the economy fell into recession, banks and trust companies suffered countless and catastrophic runs and the National Bank of North America collapsed. It was sparked, apparently, by a decision by a few New York banks to retract loans but soon spread nationwide and eventually led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System, America's central bank, in 1913. For a number of reasons we do not pretend to understand, it appears that a key player in the crisis was a Mr F Augustus Heinze and his splendidly named Knickerbocker Trust Company, whose dodgy dealings in the financial and commodities markets helped precipitate a stock market crash. The end of the American economy as we know it was, however, averted by one JP Morgan, who sorted the problem out by organising money transfers between the banks, setting up international credit lines, and buying up cheap shares in fundamentally healthy outfits. He did quite well out of it.
The Wall Street crash
The grandaddy of all modern financial disasters began with a frantic flurry of selling (more than 12m shares) on Black Thursday, October 24 1929. Trading slowed somewhat over the next few days, but a sudden slump in share prices gave it second wind, and on October 29, Black Tuesday, the world's foremost capital market crashed, with investors selling a total of 16,410,030 shares, a number not exceeded until 30 years later. Some $14bn was wiped off the value of the New York Stock Exchange in the first day alone, obliging unhappy NYSE clerks to work until 5am the next morning to record all the transactions. By 1933, some 11,000 of America's 25,000 banks had gone bust (although most of the big boys, the Morgans and Rockefellers and Lehmans, survived) and millions of investors were ruined, 11 of them famously jumping from upper-floor windows of Wall Street as the scale of the catastrophe - and of their own losses - became apparent. This was a crash so enormous, so profound, that it marked the end of one era and the start of another; the Roaring Twenties came to a close, the Black Thirties began. Over the next few years, America's jobless total climbed to 13m and millions lost their homes in the Great Depression. Stock prices were still 75% below their 1929 peak as late as April 1942, and it took the market as a whole a quarter of a century to recover.
The Wall Street crash, you may not be surprised to learn, followed a decade-long speculative boom during which millions of investors piled into the stock market and borrowed to buy more. Rising share prices prompted more and more people to invest and more and more banks to lend more and more, creating a classic economic bubble. By the time the end came, brokers would lend you as much as 60% of the face value of the shares you wanted to buy. To those with a little knowledge of economics, this may sound alarmingly familiar. Also familiar may be the fact that the American president of the day declared it would be inappropriate to intervene.
(continua)"
O processo é simples de descrever:
1- Banco abre negócio
2- Os primeiros depositantes "depositam" 10 moedas de ouro e recebem 10 recibos de depósito (notas)
3- Um empresário pretende de crédito 100 moedas de ouro
4- O Banco fabrica 100 recibos de moedas depositadas falsas, concede o crédito e entrega os recibos ao empresário.
5- Passam a existir 110 recibos de depósito de moedas de ouro, contra os quais o Banco apenas tem 10 moedas de ouro(!!) - "reservas parciais"
6- Um dia, os detentores de recibos de 11 moedas de ouro lembram-se de levantar as moedas de ouro.
7- O Banco só tem 10 moedas. A palavra espalha-se e "irracionalmente e em pânico" (sempre o comentário dos economistas, banqueiros, etc) vão tentar levantar as suas moedas de ouro, de acordo com o contrato implicito no recibo (notas).
A confiança numa entidade depositária ou é total ou nenhuma. Por isso as corridas aos Bancos quando surge a mínima das dúvidas.
Fraude é a única palavra de que me lembro (efeito jurídico) para qualificar este processo. Entretanto outro efeito agora económico é o facto do investimento do empresário ter sido feito sem o processo económico assegurar-se que existiu poupança real para o suportar, assim como em termos de preço a taxa de juro será óbviamente muito menor do que a que seria se tivesse de convencer os detentores de 100 moedas de ouro...reais.
"The Guardian : Show us the money
The run on the Northern Rock building society is nothing new. As long as there have been banks there have been crises of confidence - and some were truly spectacular, as Jon Henley reports
A large crowd waits outside the Farmers and Mechanics Savings Bank in Minneapolis in the US in the 1890s. Photograph: Minnesota Historical Society/Corbis
It may come as no consolation to the depositors of Northern Rock who queued so patiently outside their local branches, but they are far from the first victims of a banking panic. In fact, the words "banking" and "panic" have been linked for just about as long as financial institutions have existed. No less an authority than the top US investment bank Lehman Brothers, for example, blames the start of the western world's first identifiably financial crash and subsequent bank run on the moment when some incompetent and unimaginative corporate bean-counter in the accounts department of the Holy Roman Empire decided it would be a fun idea to debase its coinage. And that was in 1622.
Then there was Holland's 1637 tulip bubble, during which a single tulip bulb could briefly fetch six times the average wage or, if you were very lucky, a six-bedroomed piece of prime real estate beside one of Amsterdam's premier canals (one particularly precious speciemen, the Semper Augustus, was apparently once sold for 6,000 Dutch florins at a time when a tonne of butter cost 100). You would have thought, too, that Britain's South Sea Bubble of 1720 might have taught us all a few lessons about exaggerated claims of future returns and fevered, easy-money speculation, but of course no: after losing a terrifying £20,000 on the venture, even Sir Isaac Newton was induced to observe that he could "calculate the movement of the stars, but not the madness of men".
Again, according to Lehman Brothers, the 18th century saw 11 banking and financial crashes and the 19th another 18, including American banking crises in (to keep things brief) 1819, 1837, 1847, 1857, 1873, 1884, 1890 and 1896. There were a healthy 33 such storms in the 20th century, chief among them the Wall Street Crash of 1929 and the Japanese financial turmoil of the 1990s. All, to varying degrees, have caused considerable distress to investors and savers large and small. Stuffing the lot under your mattress may not be such a crazy notion after all.
Victorian banking crisis
By the late 19th century, the City of London and its banks - huge, hierarchical, top-heavy, complacent - seemed all but unassailable. But they were not. In 1866, for example, the bill broker and discount banker Overend, Gurney & Co collapsed with debts of £11m, a breathtaking sum at the time. The company's directors were promptly tried for fraud, but not before they had triggered a financial crisis that saw some 200 other companies, including many smaller banks, go out of business. In 1878, the City of Glasgow Bank also collapsed, its £5.2m "deficiency of capital" reportedly ruining all but 254 of its 1,819 shareholders. These misadventures did, however, have the beneficial effect of prompting our nation's leading financial institutions to behave with a shade more financial responsibility, notably by doing their accounts, underpinned by the establishment of the Bank of England as a lender of last resort.
The panic of 1907
This was a big American crisis during which the stock market lost half its value, the economy fell into recession, banks and trust companies suffered countless and catastrophic runs and the National Bank of North America collapsed. It was sparked, apparently, by a decision by a few New York banks to retract loans but soon spread nationwide and eventually led to the creation of the Federal Reserve System, America's central bank, in 1913. For a number of reasons we do not pretend to understand, it appears that a key player in the crisis was a Mr F Augustus Heinze and his splendidly named Knickerbocker Trust Company, whose dodgy dealings in the financial and commodities markets helped precipitate a stock market crash. The end of the American economy as we know it was, however, averted by one JP Morgan, who sorted the problem out by organising money transfers between the banks, setting up international credit lines, and buying up cheap shares in fundamentally healthy outfits. He did quite well out of it.
The Wall Street crash
The grandaddy of all modern financial disasters began with a frantic flurry of selling (more than 12m shares) on Black Thursday, October 24 1929. Trading slowed somewhat over the next few days, but a sudden slump in share prices gave it second wind, and on October 29, Black Tuesday, the world's foremost capital market crashed, with investors selling a total of 16,410,030 shares, a number not exceeded until 30 years later. Some $14bn was wiped off the value of the New York Stock Exchange in the first day alone, obliging unhappy NYSE clerks to work until 5am the next morning to record all the transactions. By 1933, some 11,000 of America's 25,000 banks had gone bust (although most of the big boys, the Morgans and Rockefellers and Lehmans, survived) and millions of investors were ruined, 11 of them famously jumping from upper-floor windows of Wall Street as the scale of the catastrophe - and of their own losses - became apparent. This was a crash so enormous, so profound, that it marked the end of one era and the start of another; the Roaring Twenties came to a close, the Black Thirties began. Over the next few years, America's jobless total climbed to 13m and millions lost their homes in the Great Depression. Stock prices were still 75% below their 1929 peak as late as April 1942, and it took the market as a whole a quarter of a century to recover.
The Wall Street crash, you may not be surprised to learn, followed a decade-long speculative boom during which millions of investors piled into the stock market and borrowed to buy more. Rising share prices prompted more and more people to invest and more and more banks to lend more and more, creating a classic economic bubble. By the time the end came, brokers would lend you as much as 60% of the face value of the shares you wanted to buy. To those with a little knowledge of economics, this may sound alarmingly familiar. Also familiar may be the fact that the American president of the day declared it would be inappropriate to intervene.
(continua)"
quarta-feira, 19 de setembro de 2007
Jon Stewart pergunta o óbvio:
Se vivemos em capitalismo porque é que existe um Banco Central a fixar taxas?
Rothbard no IHT
There's a run on a bank in Britain: Could it happen in the U.S.?
U.S. bank runs are possible, as the brief panic over Countrywide suggested. But even if one happens, U.S. depositors shouldn't fret too much about losing their shirts.
Not only are most investors' deposits guaranteed by the government, the Fed is obligated to bail out a bank if its failure would be detrimental to the economy, Benston said. "If it were Citi, Chase, Bank of America — they'd step in."
And as the late economist Murray Rothbard wrote in a 1985 article for the publication "The Free Market" during the savings and loan panic: "Everyone knows that, in the case of a bank run, the U.S. Treasury would simply order the Fed to print enough cash to bail out any depositors who want it. The Fed has the unlimited power to print dollars, and it is this unlimited power to inflate that stands behind the current fractional reserve banking system."
"Injecções"
· Fed injecta 9.750 milhões de dólares no mercado
· BCE injecta 155.000 M€ no mercado a sete dias
(Friedman dizia que a inflação é como o alcoolismo, mas parece-me que isto é mais um problema de drogas duras)
Update: BOE Lends Three-Month Money, Widens Collateral Range (Update1)
Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The Bank of England said it will lend 10 billion pounds ($20 billion) to commercial banks in an emergency three-month auction and widen the range of securities it accepts as collateral.
``This measure is being taken to alleviate the strains in longer-maturity money markets,'' the bank said in a statement today. The Bank of England, which will accept ``mortgage collateral'' in the auction, said the minimum rate it will lend at is 6.75 percent. "
Nota: E assim temos a confirmação da mais recente tendência de actuação pelos Bancos Centrais:
A monetização, já não só da Dívida Pública (olhar para um balanço de um BC: O activo é maioritáriamente Dívida Pública comprada por pura emissão monetária colocado no passivo), mas também das próprias carteiras de crédito dos bancos (no caso, de crédito à habitação). Os regulamentos dos BCs nos últimos anos acabaram com as limitações legais, podendo agora financiar até o investimento em títulos (acções, etc).
É como se fosse o próprio Banco Central, a por emissão monetária, a financiar o crédito à habitação.
Isto só revela que os próprios Bancos Comerciais com mais "liquidez", já não têm sequer Dívida Pública em quantidade suficiente em carteira de investimento para ser objecto de operações deste montante. Assim, os BCs são obrigados para estas operações de "injecção" a financiarem activos reais.
Mises diria que são todos loucos (ou no mínimo "a bunch of socialists!" como chamou aos economistas presentes numa reunião da "ultra-liberal" Mont Pelerin Society).
· BCE injecta 155.000 M€ no mercado a sete dias
(Friedman dizia que a inflação é como o alcoolismo, mas parece-me que isto é mais um problema de drogas duras)
Update: BOE Lends Three-Month Money, Widens Collateral Range (Update1)
Sept. 19 (Bloomberg) -- The Bank of England said it will lend 10 billion pounds ($20 billion) to commercial banks in an emergency three-month auction and widen the range of securities it accepts as collateral.
``This measure is being taken to alleviate the strains in longer-maturity money markets,'' the bank said in a statement today. The Bank of England, which will accept ``mortgage collateral'' in the auction, said the minimum rate it will lend at is 6.75 percent. "
Nota: E assim temos a confirmação da mais recente tendência de actuação pelos Bancos Centrais:
A monetização, já não só da Dívida Pública (olhar para um balanço de um BC: O activo é maioritáriamente Dívida Pública comprada por pura emissão monetária colocado no passivo), mas também das próprias carteiras de crédito dos bancos (no caso, de crédito à habitação). Os regulamentos dos BCs nos últimos anos acabaram com as limitações legais, podendo agora financiar até o investimento em títulos (acções, etc).
É como se fosse o próprio Banco Central, a por emissão monetária, a financiar o crédito à habitação.
Isto só revela que os próprios Bancos Comerciais com mais "liquidez", já não têm sequer Dívida Pública em quantidade suficiente em carteira de investimento para ser objecto de operações deste montante. Assim, os BCs são obrigados para estas operações de "injecção" a financiarem activos reais.
Mises diria que são todos loucos (ou no mínimo "a bunch of socialists!" como chamou aos economistas presentes numa reunião da "ultra-liberal" Mont Pelerin Society).
terça-feira, 18 de setembro de 2007
As perdas de uns são os ganhos de outros
O engraçado na actual crise (qual crise? os BCs resolvem tudo...) é que se existem investidores sofisticados (compras de carteira de crédito à habitação de alto risco) a perder dinheiro mas logo socorridos pelos Bancos Centrais (e mesmo Estados, parece)... os beneficiados são todos aqueles que conseguiram crédito à habitação a taxas mais baixas, ou muito mais baixas, do que seria natural.
Parte das perdas explicam-se porque determinadas carteiras de crédito à habitação têm uma taxa de juro média inferior à necessária para suportar a taxa de defaults entretanto verificada.
A taxa de juro média de uma carteira de crédito concedido (vamos dizer o spread para a euribor) deve ser tal que cubra pelo menos as perdas (ex-ante a probabilidade de ocorrerem) incorridas em parte dessa carteira por incumprimentos.
Se a taxa de incumprimento é hoje maior do que a implícita na taxa de juro média, isso significa que essa taxa de juro deveria ter sido em média maior.
E quem ganhou com isso foram todos os clientes com baixo rating que apesar de isso, conseguiram crédito à habitação a uma taxa muito mais favorável do que seria objectivamente exigível. Aliás, a partir de agora, essa taxa de juro será com toda a certeza maior.
Existem políticos a culpar os especuladores e exigir mais regulamentação.
Isso quererá dizer que vão exigir por lei que as taxas a serem cobradas sejam mais altas?
Estarão a pensar nos pobres dos investidores sofisticados que coitados estão agora a sofrer perdas dado a sua falta de jeito para calcular probabilidades de incumprimento?
PS: Claro que outra questão é a própria culpa dos BCs ao permitirem a expansão de crédito por expansão monetária o que conduz a um ciclo de expansão e de subida dos preços dos activos (preços das casas) e onde a avaliação do tal risco/probabilidade de incumprimento resulte em optimismo.
Parte das perdas explicam-se porque determinadas carteiras de crédito à habitação têm uma taxa de juro média inferior à necessária para suportar a taxa de defaults entretanto verificada.
A taxa de juro média de uma carteira de crédito concedido (vamos dizer o spread para a euribor) deve ser tal que cubra pelo menos as perdas (ex-ante a probabilidade de ocorrerem) incorridas em parte dessa carteira por incumprimentos.
Se a taxa de incumprimento é hoje maior do que a implícita na taxa de juro média, isso significa que essa taxa de juro deveria ter sido em média maior.
E quem ganhou com isso foram todos os clientes com baixo rating que apesar de isso, conseguiram crédito à habitação a uma taxa muito mais favorável do que seria objectivamente exigível. Aliás, a partir de agora, essa taxa de juro será com toda a certeza maior.
Existem políticos a culpar os especuladores e exigir mais regulamentação.
Isso quererá dizer que vão exigir por lei que as taxas a serem cobradas sejam mais altas?
Estarão a pensar nos pobres dos investidores sofisticados que coitados estão agora a sofrer perdas dado a sua falta de jeito para calcular probabilidades de incumprimento?
PS: Claro que outra questão é a própria culpa dos BCs ao permitirem a expansão de crédito por expansão monetária o que conduz a um ciclo de expansão e de subida dos preços dos activos (preços das casas) e onde a avaliação do tal risco/probabilidade de incumprimento resulte em optimismo.
Banca, Bancos Centrais e Ciclos económicos
The Austrian Theory of the Trade Cycle, Economic Depressions: Their Cause and Cure, Murray N. Rothbard
"Mises developed the following theory of the business cycle:
Without bank credit expansion, supply and demand tend to be equilibrated through the free price system, and no cumulative booms or busts can then develop. But then government through its central bank stimulates bank credit expansion by expanding central bank liabilities and therefore the cash reserves of all the nation's commercial banks. The banks then proceed to expand credit and hence the nation's money supply in the form of check deposits. As the Ricardians saw, this expansion of bank money drives up the prices of goods and hence causes inflation. But, Mises showed, it does something else, and something even more sinister. Bank credit expansion, by pouring new loan funds into the business world, artificially lowers the rate of interest in the economy below its free market level.
On the free and unhampered market, the interest rate is determined purely by the "time-preferences" of all the individuals that make up the market economy. For the essence of a loan is that a "present good" (money which can be used at present) is being exchanged for a "future good" (an IOU which can only be used at some point in the future). Since people always prefer money right now to the present prospect of getting the same amount of money some time in the future, the present good always commands a premium in the market over the future. This premium is the interest rate, and its height will vary according to the degree to which people prefer the present to the future, i.e., the degree of their time-preferences.
People's time-preferences also determine the extent to which people will save and invest, as compared to how much they will consume. If people's time-preferences should fall, i.e., if their degree of preference for present over future falls, then people will tend to consume less now and save and invest more; at the same time, and for the same reason, the rate of interest, the rate of time-discount, will also fall. Economic growth comes about largely as the result of falling rates of time-preference, which lead to an increase in the proportion of saving and investment to consumption, and also to a falling rate of interest.
But what happens when the rate of interest falls, not because of lower time-preferences and higher savings, but from government interference that promotes the expansion of bank credit? In other words, if the rate of interest falls artificially, due to intervention, rather than naturally, as a result of changes in the valuations and preferences of the consuming public?
What happens is trouble. For businessmen, seeing the rate of interest fall, react as they always would and must to such a change of market signals: They invest more in capital and producers' goods. Investments, particularly in lengthy and time-consuming projects, which previously looked unprofitable now seem profitable, because of the fall of the interest charge. In short, businessmen react as they would react if savings had genuinely increased: They expand their investment in durable equipment, in capital goods, in industrial raw material, in construction as compared to their direct production of consumer goods.
Businesses, in short, happily borrow the newly expanded bank money that is coming to them at cheaper rates; they use the money to invest in capital goods, and eventually this money gets paid out in higher rents to land, and higher wages to workers in the capital goods industries. The increased business demand bids up labor costs, but businesses think they can pay these higher costs because they have been fooled by the government-and-bank intervention in the loan market and its decisively important tampering with the interest-rate signal of the marketplace.
The problem comes as soon as the workers and landlords?largely the former, since most gross business income is paid out in wages?begin to spend the new bank money that they have received in the form of higher wages. For the time-preferences of the public have not really gotten lower; the public doesn't want to save more than it has. So the workers set about to consume most of their new income, in short to reestablish the old consumer/saving proportions. This means that they redirect the spending back to the consumer goods industries, and they don't save and invest enough to buy the newly-produced machines, capital equipment, industrial raw materials, etc. This all reveals itself as a sudden sharp and continuing depression in the producers' goods industries. Once the consumers reestablished their desired consumption/investment proportions, it is thus revealed that business had invested too much in capital goods and had underinvested in consumer goods. Business had been seduced by the governmental tampering and artificial lowering of the rate of interest, and acted as if more savings were available to invest than were really there. As soon as the new bank money filtered through the system and the consumers reestablished their old proportions, it became clear that there were not enough savings to buy all the producers' goods, and that business had misinvested the limited savings available. Business had overinvested in capital goods and underinvested in consumer products.
The inflationary boom thus leads to distortions of the pricing and production system. Prices of labor and raw materials in the capital goods industries had been bid up during the boom too high to be profitable once the consumers reassert their old consumption/investment preferences. The "depression" is then seen as the necessary and healthy phase by which the market economy sloughs off and liquidates the unsound, uneconomic investments of the boom, and reestablishes those proportions between consumption and investment that are truly desired by the consumers. The depression is the painful but necessary process by which the free market sloughs off the excesses and errors of the boom and reestablishes the market economy in its function of efficient service to the mass of consumers. Since prices of factors of production have been bid too high in the boom, this means that prices of labor and goods in these capital goods industries must be allowed to fall until proper market relations are resumed.
Since the workers receive the increased money in the form of higher wages fairly rapidly, how is it that booms can go on for years without having their unsound investments revealed, their errors due to tampering with market signals become evident, and the depression-adjustment process begins its work? The answer is that booms would be very short lived if the bank credit expansion and subsequent pushing of the rate of interest below the free market level were a one-shot affair. But the point is that the credit expansion is not one-shot; it proceeds on and on, never giving consumers the chance to reestablish their preferred proportions of consumption and saving, never allowing the rise in costs in the capital goods industries to catch up to the inflationary rise in prices. Like the repeated doping of a horse, the boom is kept on its way and ahead of its inevitable comeuppance, by repeated doses of the stimulant of bank credit. It is only when bank credit expansion must finally stop, either because the banks are getting into a shaky condition or because the public begins to balk at the continuing inflation, that retribution finally catches up with the boom. As soon as credit expansion stops, then the piper must be paid, and the inevitable readjustments liquidate the unsound over-investments of the boom, with the reassertion of a greater proportionate emphasis on consumers' goods production.
Thus, the Misesian theory of the business cycle accounts for all of our puzzles: The repeated and recurrent nature of the cycle, the massive cluster of entrepreneurial error, the far greater intensity of the boom and bust in the producers' goods industries."
"Mises developed the following theory of the business cycle:
Without bank credit expansion, supply and demand tend to be equilibrated through the free price system, and no cumulative booms or busts can then develop. But then government through its central bank stimulates bank credit expansion by expanding central bank liabilities and therefore the cash reserves of all the nation's commercial banks. The banks then proceed to expand credit and hence the nation's money supply in the form of check deposits. As the Ricardians saw, this expansion of bank money drives up the prices of goods and hence causes inflation. But, Mises showed, it does something else, and something even more sinister. Bank credit expansion, by pouring new loan funds into the business world, artificially lowers the rate of interest in the economy below its free market level.
On the free and unhampered market, the interest rate is determined purely by the "time-preferences" of all the individuals that make up the market economy. For the essence of a loan is that a "present good" (money which can be used at present) is being exchanged for a "future good" (an IOU which can only be used at some point in the future). Since people always prefer money right now to the present prospect of getting the same amount of money some time in the future, the present good always commands a premium in the market over the future. This premium is the interest rate, and its height will vary according to the degree to which people prefer the present to the future, i.e., the degree of their time-preferences.
People's time-preferences also determine the extent to which people will save and invest, as compared to how much they will consume. If people's time-preferences should fall, i.e., if their degree of preference for present over future falls, then people will tend to consume less now and save and invest more; at the same time, and for the same reason, the rate of interest, the rate of time-discount, will also fall. Economic growth comes about largely as the result of falling rates of time-preference, which lead to an increase in the proportion of saving and investment to consumption, and also to a falling rate of interest.
But what happens when the rate of interest falls, not because of lower time-preferences and higher savings, but from government interference that promotes the expansion of bank credit? In other words, if the rate of interest falls artificially, due to intervention, rather than naturally, as a result of changes in the valuations and preferences of the consuming public?
What happens is trouble. For businessmen, seeing the rate of interest fall, react as they always would and must to such a change of market signals: They invest more in capital and producers' goods. Investments, particularly in lengthy and time-consuming projects, which previously looked unprofitable now seem profitable, because of the fall of the interest charge. In short, businessmen react as they would react if savings had genuinely increased: They expand their investment in durable equipment, in capital goods, in industrial raw material, in construction as compared to their direct production of consumer goods.
Businesses, in short, happily borrow the newly expanded bank money that is coming to them at cheaper rates; they use the money to invest in capital goods, and eventually this money gets paid out in higher rents to land, and higher wages to workers in the capital goods industries. The increased business demand bids up labor costs, but businesses think they can pay these higher costs because they have been fooled by the government-and-bank intervention in the loan market and its decisively important tampering with the interest-rate signal of the marketplace.
The problem comes as soon as the workers and landlords?largely the former, since most gross business income is paid out in wages?begin to spend the new bank money that they have received in the form of higher wages. For the time-preferences of the public have not really gotten lower; the public doesn't want to save more than it has. So the workers set about to consume most of their new income, in short to reestablish the old consumer/saving proportions. This means that they redirect the spending back to the consumer goods industries, and they don't save and invest enough to buy the newly-produced machines, capital equipment, industrial raw materials, etc. This all reveals itself as a sudden sharp and continuing depression in the producers' goods industries. Once the consumers reestablished their desired consumption/investment proportions, it is thus revealed that business had invested too much in capital goods and had underinvested in consumer goods. Business had been seduced by the governmental tampering and artificial lowering of the rate of interest, and acted as if more savings were available to invest than were really there. As soon as the new bank money filtered through the system and the consumers reestablished their old proportions, it became clear that there were not enough savings to buy all the producers' goods, and that business had misinvested the limited savings available. Business had overinvested in capital goods and underinvested in consumer products.
The inflationary boom thus leads to distortions of the pricing and production system. Prices of labor and raw materials in the capital goods industries had been bid up during the boom too high to be profitable once the consumers reassert their old consumption/investment preferences. The "depression" is then seen as the necessary and healthy phase by which the market economy sloughs off and liquidates the unsound, uneconomic investments of the boom, and reestablishes those proportions between consumption and investment that are truly desired by the consumers. The depression is the painful but necessary process by which the free market sloughs off the excesses and errors of the boom and reestablishes the market economy in its function of efficient service to the mass of consumers. Since prices of factors of production have been bid too high in the boom, this means that prices of labor and goods in these capital goods industries must be allowed to fall until proper market relations are resumed.
Since the workers receive the increased money in the form of higher wages fairly rapidly, how is it that booms can go on for years without having their unsound investments revealed, their errors due to tampering with market signals become evident, and the depression-adjustment process begins its work? The answer is that booms would be very short lived if the bank credit expansion and subsequent pushing of the rate of interest below the free market level were a one-shot affair. But the point is that the credit expansion is not one-shot; it proceeds on and on, never giving consumers the chance to reestablish their preferred proportions of consumption and saving, never allowing the rise in costs in the capital goods industries to catch up to the inflationary rise in prices. Like the repeated doping of a horse, the boom is kept on its way and ahead of its inevitable comeuppance, by repeated doses of the stimulant of bank credit. It is only when bank credit expansion must finally stop, either because the banks are getting into a shaky condition or because the public begins to balk at the continuing inflation, that retribution finally catches up with the boom. As soon as credit expansion stops, then the piper must be paid, and the inevitable readjustments liquidate the unsound over-investments of the boom, with the reassertion of a greater proportionate emphasis on consumers' goods production.
Thus, the Misesian theory of the business cycle accounts for all of our puzzles: The repeated and recurrent nature of the cycle, the massive cluster of entrepreneurial error, the far greater intensity of the boom and bust in the producers' goods industries."
Crédito Sem Risco e Depósitos
"The FT has also learnt that the Treasury, the Bank of England and the FSA have begun reviewing the system for protecting savers, which only guarantees deposits up to £35,000, and are considering a US-style alternative to ring-fence deposits in event of a bank’s failure"
Bom, creio que se percebe que vamos passar a ter "depósitos" (na verdade o depositante está a conceder crédito) livres de qualquer risco.
O que significa que os depositantes passam a poder depositar em qualquer banco, faça este o que fizer com o dinheiro dos depositantes. Isto é, para além de já ter a capacidade de diluir o valor monetário ao conceder crédito por ciração monetária...e de poder investir a 30 anos com fundos "à ordem".
Se os reguladores estão mesmo preocupados com os "depósitos" porque é que não concedem que algo chamado "depósito" deve existir à ordem de forma imediata e na totalidade (100% de reservas)?
Porque é que os bancos são diferentes de qualquer entidade depositária?
Por outro lado, como é que podemos conceder que os particulares concedam créditos aos bancos, recebendo um juro e sem correrem qualquer risco?
No mínimo, o que chamam a hoje "depósito" devia passar a ser chamdo "crédito ao banco por um dia automáticamente renovável" e algo chamado Depósito devia corresponder a uma operação de simples guarda (extra-patrimonial) de valores.
Onde é que anda a DECO?
Bom, creio que se percebe que vamos passar a ter "depósitos" (na verdade o depositante está a conceder crédito) livres de qualquer risco.
O que significa que os depositantes passam a poder depositar em qualquer banco, faça este o que fizer com o dinheiro dos depositantes. Isto é, para além de já ter a capacidade de diluir o valor monetário ao conceder crédito por ciração monetária...e de poder investir a 30 anos com fundos "à ordem".
Se os reguladores estão mesmo preocupados com os "depósitos" porque é que não concedem que algo chamado "depósito" deve existir à ordem de forma imediata e na totalidade (100% de reservas)?
Porque é que os bancos são diferentes de qualquer entidade depositária?
Por outro lado, como é que podemos conceder que os particulares concedam créditos aos bancos, recebendo um juro e sem correrem qualquer risco?
No mínimo, o que chamam a hoje "depósito" devia passar a ser chamdo "crédito ao banco por um dia automáticamente renovável" e algo chamado Depósito devia corresponder a uma operação de simples guarda (extra-patrimonial) de valores.
Onde é que anda a DECO?
Socialismo Monetário
Northern Rock, Rivals' Shares Rise on State Guarantee
"Hundreds of savers lined up outside Northern Rock branches for three days after the Bank of England provided emergency funding, drawing about 3 billion pounds ($6 billion) of deposits, according to the Daily Telegraph. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said late yesterday the government will guarantee all accounts. The pledge will be extended to any solvent bank in similar circumstances, a Treasury spokesman said.
``The decision of the government together with the Bank of England late yesterday to guarantee the deposits of Northern Rock customers should, in our view, moderate the run on Northern Rock's deposit base and bolster confidence in the system,''"
1. Portanto, os Bancos investem a longo prazo (concedento crédito à habitação) com o recurso a financiamento de curto prazo, criação monetária e depósitos
2. Quanto o financiamento escasseia e as taxas de financiamento sobem aparecem os Bancos Centrais a conceder o crédito em falta (por pura criação monetária) a taxas muito abaixo do mercado (de modo a não as deixar subir).
3. Quanto os depositantes preocupados aparecem a reivindicar os depósitos, o Estado e o Banco Central ultrapassam logo logo a suposta garantia estipulada para pequenos e médios depósitos, passando a garantir a totalidade dos depósitos.
Está tudo bem. Mas isto não é capitalismo. São crises socialistas provocadas por sistemas socialistas.
"Hundreds of savers lined up outside Northern Rock branches for three days after the Bank of England provided emergency funding, drawing about 3 billion pounds ($6 billion) of deposits, according to the Daily Telegraph. Chancellor of the Exchequer Alistair Darling said late yesterday the government will guarantee all accounts. The pledge will be extended to any solvent bank in similar circumstances, a Treasury spokesman said.
``The decision of the government together with the Bank of England late yesterday to guarantee the deposits of Northern Rock customers should, in our view, moderate the run on Northern Rock's deposit base and bolster confidence in the system,''"
1. Portanto, os Bancos investem a longo prazo (concedento crédito à habitação) com o recurso a financiamento de curto prazo, criação monetária e depósitos
2. Quanto o financiamento escasseia e as taxas de financiamento sobem aparecem os Bancos Centrais a conceder o crédito em falta (por pura criação monetária) a taxas muito abaixo do mercado (de modo a não as deixar subir).
3. Quanto os depositantes preocupados aparecem a reivindicar os depósitos, o Estado e o Banco Central ultrapassam logo logo a suposta garantia estipulada para pequenos e médios depósitos, passando a garantir a totalidade dos depósitos.
Está tudo bem. Mas isto não é capitalismo. São crises socialistas provocadas por sistemas socialistas.
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