„USA droht das Schicksal von Lateinamerika“

21/9. Handelsblatt.com 

Überschuldung und explodierende Haushaltsdefizite, ein gelähmtes und zerfallendes politisches System, verschlafene Investoren: das alles erinnert an das Lateinamerika der 80er-Jahre. Wenn die Nordamerikaner nicht aufpassen, droht ihnen dasselbe Schicksal. Ein Gastbeitrag des Chefs der amerikanischen Fondsgesellschaft Pimco.

von Mohamed El-Erian

Je eher dieser unangenehme Vergleich offen diskutiert wird, desto größer die Chance, dass die USA ein „verlorenes Jahrzehnt“, wie es in Lateinamerika genannt wird, noch abwenden: schwaches Wachstum, hohe Arbeitslosigkeit, große Armut und Umschuldungsaktionen. Noch vor wenigen Jahren war das unvorstellbar, heute nicht mehr. Warum? Weil einige Industrieländer, darunter die USA, sich nicht mehr in den gewohnten wirtschaftlichen Zyklen bewegen. Sie leiden jetzt unter schwerwiegenden strukturellen Problemen.

The New World Order

   Date: 27-09-2010
 Source: NewsWeek
 

Tribal ties—race, ethnicity, and religion—are becoming more important than borders.
For centuries we have used maps to delineate borders that have been defined by politics. But it may be time to chuck many of our notions about how humanity organizes itself. Across the world a resurgence of tribal ties is creating more complex global alliances. Where once diplomacy defined borders, now history, race, ethnicity, religion, and culture are dividing humanity into dynamic new groupings.

Pushing on a String

25. September 2010, 05:09:00 | John Mauldin

Pushing on a String
Let’s Shift the Focus
An Invitation to an Inflation Party

This week the Fed altered their end-of-meeting statement by just a few words, but those words have a lot of meaning. It seems they are paving the way to a new round of quantitative easing (QE2), if in their opinion the situation warrants it. A trillion dollars of new money could soon be injected into the system. Tonight we explore some of the implications of a new round of QE. Let’s put our speculation hats on, gentle reader, as we are moving into uncharted territory. There are no maps, just theories, and they don’t all agree. (Note: this letter may print a little long, as there are a lot of charts.)

Let’s Shift the Focus

The Fed issued the usual statement at the end of their meeting this week, and Fed watchers poured over the words, looking carefully for any sign of change in Fed policy. The consensus seems to be that the most important change was the statement concerning inflation, the first such change in over a year.

Forewarned Is Forearmed: How the Early Warning Exercise Expands the IMF’s Surveillance Toolkit

John Lipsky, IMF, Sep 23, 2010 1:47PM

“Never again can we let ourselves be caught unprepared by an economic and financial crisis of such global magnitude.” This was the spirit in which G-20 Finance Ministers in late 2008 tasked the IMF and the newly-formed Financial Stability Board to jointly develop an Early Warning Exercise (EWE), to be ready by the IMF’s 2009 Istanbul Annual Meetings. 

The Super Rich Get Richer, Everyone Else Gets Poorer, and the Democrats Punt

Robert Reich, 24. September 2010, 13:16:37

The super-rich got even wealthier this year, and yet most of them are paying even fewer taxes to support the eduction, job training, and job creation of the rest of us. According to Forbes magazine’s annual survey, just released, the combined net worth of the 400 richest Americans climbed 8% this year, to $1.37 trillion. Wealth rose for 217 members of the list, while 85 saw a decline.

Hungarian Banks Under Pressure

Mary Stokes

Sep 20, 2010 2:39PM

The Hungarian banking sector is generally less fit than its regional peers —with a higher-than-average loan-to-deposit ratio and a below-average capital adequacy ratio—and considerable challenges lie ahead. The main risks relate to asset quality. Non-performing loans (NPLs) as a percentage of total loans jumped from 4.7% at year-end 2008 to 10.1% at year-end 2009. The deputy CEO of OTP, Hungary’s largest bank, says the NPL ratio will keep climbing as long as lending declines, and this state of affairs looks set to continue.

Why No Amount of Fiscal or Monetary Stimulus Will Be Enough, Given How Small A Share of Total Income the Middle Now Receives

Robert Rreich, 22/9

Fiscal policy is deadlocked. So, apparently, is monetary policy. 

The Fed’s decision today (Tuesday) to keep short-term interest rates near zero is no surprise. What’s odd is its apparent decision not to boost the economy by buying hundreds of billions of bonds — despite its acknowledgment that ”the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months,” and that prices are rising too slowly for comfort (i.e., we might be facing deflation). 

Every indicator suggests third-quarter growth will be as slow if not slower than in the second quarter. Consumer confidence is down. Retail sales are down. Housing sales are down. Commercial real estate is in trouble.

A growth rate of 1.6 percent means even higher unemployment ahead. Maybe we’re not in a double-dip but we might as well be in one. Growth this slow is the equivalent of heading downward, relative to the growth needed to get us out of the hole we’re in. 

Would Raising Competitiveness Solve the Problems of Europe and the World?

Xi Li, Sep 22, 2010 3:41PM

In the new world of globalization, a fashionable phrase after the financial crisis is, raising competitiveness.   A lunch tale from my own experience exemplifies how catchy this phrase is.  As the European sovereign crisis unfolded in April, I was having lunch with a large group of financial industry professionals, many of whom have master’s and Ph.D. degrees and at least a few years of experience in the financial industry, as well as CFA designations.  At the time, the Greek sovereign CDS shot out of the roof, and our discussion inevitably touched on the crisis in PIIGS countries.  The sentiment at the table was that these countries deserve to suffer unless they can raise their competitiveness through internal deflation, and that these countries are too small to affect the global economy, and we can just leave them alone.  

Summers: Good Riddance

Barry Ritholtz

Sep 22, 2010 3:24PM

The good news: Summers is gone Jan 1 (no word yet on Geithner). The bad news? I am not sure what (if any) impact this will have on the administration’s economic policies.

To review:  Summers is the former Clinton Treasury Secretary, mentored by Robert Rubin. As such, he was one of (many) architects of the financial crisis. In addition to believing all of the usual foolishness about efficient markets, he bought into the radical deregulation arguments pushed by the free market absolutists. 

„Im Zeitraum“ mit Küng, Uexküll etc.

Die Gesprächsreihe „Im Zeitraum – Vorreiten und Nachdenken“ im ORF Radiokulturhaus Wien startet mit frischem Elan in den Herbst.

Diejenigen, die bereits „Im Zeitraum“ besucht haben, wissen, dass es dabei nicht nur informativ lehrreich, sondern auch durchaus unterhaltsam zugeht, wenngleich die Themen und Inhalte ernst sind. Manche der Gesprächspartner werden Ihnen noch nicht bekannt sein, weil es mir bei der Auswahl wenig um Prominenz, sondern vor allem um inhaltliche Substanz geht. Aber die ist bei diesen kommenden Referenten gegeben. 

Die Reihe startet mit dem renommierten deutschen Psychotherapeuten Wolf Büntig, dessen professionelle Erfahrung und rhetorische Brillanz neue Einsichten in das eigene Seelenleben bieten. Der Dortmunder Kommunikationswissenschaftler und Wirtschaftscouch Claus Eurich ist noch ein Geheimtipp, ist aber in Insiderkreisen als außergewöhnlicher messerscharfer Analytiker gesellschaftlicher, ökonomischer und politischer Prozesse bekannt geworden.

Europas bekanntester Theologe Hans Küng wird im November mit Hannes Androsch, Erwin Bader und Hanns Pichler der Frage nachgehen, inwieweit sein Konzept des Weltethos auf eine globalisierte Wirtschaft angewendet werden kann.