Pancho...
...et le "maestro" Brad DeLong...
Le paradoxe américain Un jour, bien sûr, tout cela peut finir : les valeurs des monnaies asiatiques peuvent connaître une brusque flambée à la suite d'une explosion inflationniste en Asie, le dollar peut s'effondrer. Face à une explosion de l'inflation aux Etats-Unis, la Réserve fédérale peut aussi estimer qu'un abandon temporaire de la stabilisation du niveau des prix vaut mieux que la hausse du chômage qui résulterait d'un effondrement du dollar et d'une hausse des taux d'intérêt. Deux questions découlent de cet investissement : jusqu'où ce processus peut-il aller ? Et au final, que restera-t-il aux investisseurs américains quand ils se rendront compte à quel point le contrôle de leurs entreprises leur a échappé ?
J. BRADFORD DELONG
Quand la China National Offshore Oil Company a voulu acheter l'américain Unilocal il y a deux ans, elle a déclenché un ouragan politique aux Etats-Unis.Quand Dubai Ports World a acheté la britannique P&O Steam Navigation Company, le fait que P&O exploite des ports aux Etats-Unis a de nouveau provoqué une polémique en Amérique.
On pourrait penser que les Etats-Unis, dont le déficit des comptes courants avoisine les 800 milliards de dollars par an, comprennent qu'une telle brèche ne peut se financer que par la vente d'actifs. Mais le pays, en tout cas le Congrès et les médias, ne semblent pas comprendre que des étrangers puissent acquérir la propriété et le contrôle d'entreprises basées aux Etats-Unis. Ils veulent vivre dans un monde où ils pourraient mener une politique économique dont les propriétaires de capitaux étrangers assumeraient tous les risques sans avoir aucun contrôle sur leurs actifs !
On pourrait croire que les investisseurs étrangers tremblent de frayeur devant une telle perspective et finissent par se détourner des actifs en dollars. Mais jusqu'à présent cela n'a pas été le cas. Le prix élevé du pétrole a rapporté d'immenses revenus aux gouvernements du Moyen-Orient, qui souhaitent toujours transformer leurs gains en actifs américains. Les oligarques russes, tels l'énorme fonds d'investissement créé par le ministre des Finances, Alexeï Koudrine, veulent aussi investir leurs revenus pétroliers aux Etats-Unis.
Pour les pays asiatiques - Chine en tête -, les Etats-Unis restent les importateurs de dernier recours. La clef de leur stratégie de développement consiste à mettre les migrants des campagnes au travail pour fabriquer les produits destinés au marché américain. Ils doutent qu'une stratégie alternative basée sur la dynamisation du marché intérieur puisse fonctionner. Par conséquent, la valeur réelle de leurs monnaies doit rester assez bas(se) par rapport au dollar, ce qui signifie que leurs réserves aujourd'hui investies aux Etats-Unis doivent continuer d'augmenter.
Un gouvernement qui achète une assurance-risque politique en plaçant un stock croissant d'actifs de réserve en valeurs en dollars se prémunit contre certains dangers. Mais il s'expose à d'autres risques, surtout s'il confine ses investissements aux bons du Trésor américain et aux obligations. Les obligations nominales ne sont pas bien protégées de l'inflation, et, à long terme, les actifs susceptibles d'être encaissés sans contrôle efficace sont une proie facile pour les vautours financiers. Les gouvernements étrangers prudents et les investisseurs privés devraient trouver des moyens de se diversifier. Ce qu'il faut, ce sont des organisations intermédiaires qui accorderaient aux étrangers un certain contrôle, permettraient la diversification dans une gamme plus étendue d'actifs situés aux Etats-Unis, tout en apparaissant 100 % américaines aux yeux des politiciens des Etats-Unis.
Prenons le groupe Blackstone. L'investissement chinois de 3 milliards de dollars qui y a été réalisé, quoique ridiculement petit comparé aux possibilités de ce pays, constitue un coup d'essai. Au début, la Chine n'aura que quelques parts dans de nombreuses entreprises américaines. Elle y gagnera une certaine diversification des risques, réduira la pression sur les prix, qui a maintenu à un bas niveau les gains sur ses réserves de devises, et évitera les problèmes politiques. Blackstone aura, lui, davantage de liquide utilisable et de rémunération.
J. BRADFORD DELONG est professeur à l'université de Californie (Berkeley).
The secret language of central bankers
by J. Bradford DeLong
"If I seem unduly clear to you," Alan Greenspan said to his political masters in the United States Congress, "you must have misunderstood what I said."
It was 1987, and the newly-confirmed chair of the Federal Reserve was elaborating on how he had "learned to mumble with great incoherence" in the short months since he had "become a central banker".
Greenspan was a strong believer, in practice if not in theory - for who could understand his theory? - that central bankers should speak in an opaque and convoluted dialect. In comparison, the Oracle at Delphi's advice to the King of Lydia - "If you attack Persia, you will destroy a great kingdom" - is clarity itself.
There was an old argument for "Greenspanese": voters or politicians or both are inherently short-sighted and myopic. They would always see and want to grasp the benefits of lower interest rates and a little more demand pressure - more production, more employment, higher wages, and higher profits in the short run. But they would either not see or be cynically indifferent to the problems of stagflation that would inevitably follow. The job of the central bank, according to Greenspan's distant predecessor, William McChesney Martin, was to "take away the punch bowl [of low interest rates] before the party really gets going".
But, the argument went, the Fed could not say that this was what it was doing in clear and transparent language, for, if voters and politicians could understand central bankers, they would then force them into following destructive inflationary policies that would be worse for everyone, at least in the long run. By using an opaque and convoluted idiom, the only outsiders - reporters, politicians, and academics - who would be able to understand what the central bank was saying would be those who had carefully studied the issues and the language. This, in turn, would lead them all (with the rare exception of a maverick critic like William Greider) to understand and approve, and to agree that talking in "Greenspanese" is essential for enabling central banks to ensure price stability.
There seems to be general agreement today that this argument no longer applies, if it was ever truly valid. Voters and politicians today, it seems, fear inflation and are willing to accept occasional economic recessions and unemployment above its natural rate as unfortunate but inevitable consequences of the necessary and beneficial pursuit of long-term price stability. The debate about monetary policy can thus be fruitful and productive even if it is no longer restricted to those who have learned "Greenspanese".
Thus, all across the North Atlantic core of the world economy, central banks have embarked on a "transparency" initiative to make their organisation's goals, guesses, procedures, and policies more widely and clearly known. They are relying on economists' basic predisposition to believe that more information is always better than less, that individuals are good judges of what they need to know, and that they are able to evaluate and place in perspective what they know.
But recently - and increasingly so in recent months - central bankers' doubts about the utility of the transparency initiative have increased. The more central banks talk, and the clearer they try to make their language, the more it seems that markets may be reacting excessively and inappropriately to statements that are not really news at all. More information may be leading not to better knowledge, but to more confusion.
We economists have a hard time figuring out why there appears to be so much static on the communications line. Why were so many people in financial markets so sure that the Fed's late-March meeting statement heralded a likelihood of interest-rate hikes soon, rather than being simply an acknowledgement (as the Fed explicitly stated) that what had been very unlikely was now a possibility? Why are cable TV personalities so eager to overstate how quickly central banks change their view of the likely future? Why do participants in financial markets trade on the advice of cable TV personalities when a small amount of number-crunching reveals that the benefits must be lower than the transactions costs incurred by over-frequent trading?
We don't have answers to these questions. So we really don't know whether we should tell central bankers to brush up on their Greenspanese.
...le grand maitre (pour P.-V.) Brad DeLong s'interesse aux noms en chinois de certains pays occidentaux...
Voici une traduction (faite en vitesse) d'un commentaire que P.-V. a lu et trouve tres interessant...
'Il y a certains points que j’aimerais eclaircir Ces derniers temps, je me suis beaucoup informe sur ma propre culture (je suis chinois) et je dois admettre qu’effectivement les anciens chinois donnaient des noms aux differents pays en fonction de leurs vertus specifiques (a ces pays) Quand la Chine ferma sa porte durant la dynastie Ming, elle a eu tout de meme des contacts avec des civilisations etrangeres (civilisations qui sont allees vers la Chine), les italiens inclus… (Marco Polo, vous vous souvenez ?) C’est pour cela qu’ils ont du donner des noms a ces pays etrangers. En ces temps, le Confucianisme et le Bouddhisme etaient des religions tres actives qui sont d’une certaine facon et la je serais poli...?, enracines dans la culture chinoise. De plus, il ne faut pas oublier que pendant la rebellion Boxer sous la dynastie Qing, la Chine etait tres affaiblie – il valait mieux donner des noms sympas aux huit pays aggresseurs. Aussi, a l’Amerique fut donne le nom (Belle – soit ‘mei guo’), (Brave/Juste – ‘ying guo’) a l’Angleterre/Empire britannque, (Equitable, Droite – ‘fa guo’) a la France, (Loyale/Polie – ‘de guo’) a l’Allemagne, (Haute – ‘ao guo’) a l’Autriche. Je ne sais pas ce que ‘er’ dans le nom ‘er guo’ pour la Russie veut dire. Le Japon a depuis son propre nom – nippon ( ou son kanji, lu ri ben en Chinois). Il existait un nom ancien pour l’Italie, mais je l’ai oublie. Il est important de souligner que la Chine est en train de donner de nouveaux noms aux pays aujourd’hui. J’ai regarde un debat concernant cette question a la tele sur PhoenixTV ou des savants affirmaient que le fait de nommer les pays en fonction de leurs vertus etait devenu obselete (merci a l’education communiste), et que la Chine devait plutot se pencher sur un systeme nominatif phonetique. En tant que chinois p.s. : Le premiere fois que j’ai entendu (ya mei li jia) c’etait dans le film de Jackie Chan, Shanghai Noon sinon je ne l’ai ni lu ni entendu nulle part ailleurs. En ce qui concerne l’Angleterre, le football (vous pauvres americains vous l’appellez soccer) les presentateurs utilisent le mot ‘ying ge lan’ afin d’identifier l’equipe anglaise de foot et ‘su ge lan’ afin d’identifier l’equipe de foot ecossaise. L’Angleterre en tant que pays reste cependant ‘ying guo’. Le nom chinois pour la Russie a change plusieurs fois le dernier siecle… Et Wades Giles…m’irrite beaucoup. Je prefere pinyin. ' |
What Kinds of Inequality Should We Worry About?
by Brad DeLong
What kinds of inequality and how much we should worry about it depends on the counterfactual:
How much should we worry about inequality--on the global level, on the societal level, on the personal level? Answering that question requires that we first answer another question: "Compared to what?" What is the counterfactual, what is the alternative situation against which we are going to judge the degree of inequality that we see? Florida is a much more materially unequal society than Cuba. But the right way to look at the situation--if Florida and Cuba are our alternatives--is not to say that Florida has too much inequality, but that Cuba has much much too much poverty.
On the global level, it is hard for me to make the argument that inequality as one of the world's major political-economic problems. It is hard for me at least to envision changes in economic policies or in political arrangements over the past fifty years which would have transferred any significant portion of the wealth of today's rich nations of the global North to today's poor nations of the global South. I can easily envision changes that would have impoverished nations now in the rich North: Communist victories in the post-World War II elections in Italy and France would have done the job for those countries. I can easily envision changes that would have enriched nations now in the poorer South: the promotion of Deng Xiaoping to the post of China's paramount leader in 1956 rather than 1976 would certainly have done the job for China. But alternatives that would have made the South richer at the price of reducing the wealth of the North? I find those much harder to imagine, without a wholesale revolution in human psychology
On the personal level, it is also hard for me at least to make the argument that a great deal of political-economic worry should be spent on the problem that some people are richer than others. Some have worked harder; some have applied their intelligence more skillfully; some have been better people; some have been worse people; many more have just been lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time. But are there alternative political-economic arrangements that could make individuals' relative wealth closely correspond to their relative moral or other merit? I don't see what they might be. The addressable problems are those of poverty and social insurance, of safety net, not of inequality.
But on the level of individual societies, on the level of nations, I believe that inequality does loom as a serious political-economic problem. In the United States, the average earnings premium received by those with four-year college degrees over those with no college has gone from 30% to 90% over the past three decades. This is a matter of supply and demand: the skill requirements of the American economy have outstripped the educational system's ability to educate and train, skills acquired through formal education have become more relatively scarce as a factor of production, the education earnings premium has risen, and the income and wealth distribution has pulled apart. Ceci Rouse and Orley Ashenfelter of Princeton University report that they find no signs that those who receive little education do so because education does not pay off for them: if anything, the returns to an extra year of schooling appear greater for those who get little education than for those who get a lot. Odds are that a greater effort to raise the average level of education in America would have both made the country richer and produced a much more even distribution of income and wealth by making educated workers more abundant and less-skilled workers harder to find and thus worth more on the market.
Again in the United States, corporate CEOs and their peers and near-peers make ten times as much today relative to the patterns of a generation ago. They do not do this because a CEO's work effort level and negotiation and management skills are in relative terms ten times as valuable to a corporation today as they were to a corporation of a generation ago. They have risen because of a reduction in the ability of other corporate stakeholders to constrain the freedom of top managers and high financiers to direct the value added in their direction.
Similar patterns are found in other countries across the globe. Within each country, odds are that the increase in inequality that we have seen in the past generation is predominantly a result of failures of social investment and changes in regulations and expectations, and has not been accompanied by any acceleration in the overall rate of economic growth. For the most part, it looks like these changes in economy and society have not resulted in more wealth but in an upward redistribution of wealth: a successful right-wing class war. The easiest counterfactuals to imagine are those in which greater public investments in education and greater moral, legal, and cultural constraints on the freedom of action of those at the top produce an equal or greater amount of total wealth and income with a lower degree of inequality.
This kind of inequality should be a source of concern. Bill Gates, Paul Allen, Steve Ballmer, and the other hundred-millionaires of Microsoft are brilliant, hard-working, entrepreneurial, and justly wealthy. But only the first 5% of their wealth can have any justification as part of an economic reward system to enourage entrepreneurship and enterprise. And the last 95% of their wealth? It would create much more happiness and opportunity if divided evenly among the citizens of the United States or the world than if they were to consume any portion of it.
Moreover, an unequal society cannot help but be an unjust society. The very first thing that any society's wealthy try to buy with their wealth is a head start for their children. And the wealthier they are, the bigger the head start. Any society that justifies itself on a hope of equality of opportunity cannot help but be undermined by too great a degree of inequality of result.
In the United States, the problem of inequality has two dimensions: insufficient effort to educate, and insufficient control by other stakeholders' of the ability of the top 50,000 or so earners' discretion. In other countries the problem of inequality has these two but also other dimensions as well. In all it is something we should worry about, because we can see in our minds' eyes alternatives that would make for better, healthier, happier, and equally well-off societies.
