There are strong similarities between the crises of '29 and the present one. But the most striking is that the perpetrators of the crisis are still in place, continuing to enrich themselves, which never happened with Roosevelt. Another difference is the return on the world stage of the Eastern economies, while Europe continues to follow the U.S. model, rather than becoming a center of "autonomy" that attracts Russia and other countries of the former real socialism. Marcello De Cecco, answering questions that tie the threads of this series on 'the capitalist age? ", But urges to develop a point of view" strong "on the economic crisis.
The fundamental questions to which economists seeking an answer can be summarized thus: what is the nature of this crisis is a crisis in financial or real, cyclical or systemic? It makes sense to compare with the crisis of '29? He always
sense to compare what happens in the economy in the world at present with what happened earlier. And we are always, by definition, with the eyes of the present, as Croce said. Looking back, for example, the great crisis, we see today, much of his contemporaries, who in 1929 was preceded by a decade of stable prices, but relative prices, as at present, had seen the huge increase in property values real estate and assets. There had been, as noted at the time Sylos Labini, an inflation without inflation, which even then had favored rentiers against wage earners. So there is some similarity between this and the time of great crisis. Even the additive by politicians and the press the big financiers to the public as the real culprits is a common element.
Today, however, the lesson Keynesian fashion has come back very quickly in any environment, even the neoclassical. The speed with which economists and government leaders, and even the press does not echo their own reasoning, have turned gabbana is very impressive. Of course, if you straighten the situation will return to the old, to preach their pseudo economic laws, when it is appropriate to do so again. Of "Japanese" that are linked all'affusto their guns instead of running away, it really matters little. Consistency is a virtue in great downward. It is probably a good thing, but personally I find this rather bleak turn with the wind though, after fifty years of professional life, I should be accustomed to see it happen cyclically.
As he played, in their inability to assess the likelihood of the crisis, the predilection of mainstream economists to formalize mathematics at the expense of knowledge of the history of economic analysis - and history in general?
It is incorrect to pose the problem as stemming from the "mainstream economists' predilection for mathematical formalization." The only trouble is that these people, for reasons too numerous to examine in detail, they get training math wrong. That, just to understand, that it was easier to learn and easier to use. There are mathematical tools that allow you to model or at least study the phenomena also turbulent, chaotic ones, the variables that do not behave well, ie on a regular basis. I'm just much more difficult to master and use, and to use as a routine people not lofty mind.
The model used by mainstream economists has the advantage of being easily learnable by a wide audience of students, not all of the higher level. Then is used to transmit, to a version that Frederick Coffee admirably called "puppetry" several decades before students French call "autistic."
Frankly, because I believe that economists have had very little impact on the world, on this as on other occasions, likened it to fly coachmen Phaedrus, ready to exclaim, "aremus. The unpleasant thing is that the coachmen fly remains in place even when the plowman or even change the way there is a new cultivator. It fits, fly, and it remains to put together as it did before, "for four Payroll boiled," to quote Carducci, a man unknown to most young people today. But this does not fly unless it becomes irrelevant.
authoritative commentators have long pointed out that freedom of movement and frenetic capital (the result of liberalization and deregulation of finance) undermines the very basis of economic democracy, that democracy itself. Believes that the role of politics today, would only be that of market regulator or should go further?
are not authoritative, and even less than I was when I started writing on this topic. My first two articles on the responsibility of short-term movements of capital to dismantle the system of Bretton Woods in 1975 and 1977. Both easy to read English magazines. I quote, not only because, as a good academic, I want to show that he had his nose in very difficult times, but also because in those Articles not only stressed the importance of Keynes and White had been given, at Bretton Woods, to control the movement of capital, but also tried to identify who had wanted long before 1971, also abolished the few checks that the two fathers of Bretton Woods were managed to bring in the 'final agreement' of 1944.
The enemies of the controls are so prevalent today: those that derive huge profits from free movement, the large international banks. So they were essentially large banks in New York. Then, after the quadrupling of oil prices in 1973 and the enrichment of some Arab princes unable to spend all the money he had arrived, the big British banks were also well some French and Swiss to join the demolition of the checks.
Today and in the last two decades, were essentially the great Anglo-American investment banks to scrap all laws and regulations that prevented them from doing their comfortable without supervision. They did with Carter and Reagan, Bush father and son, but even with Clinton. The latter, together with his team of government and consultancy, is one of the major causes of the seriousness with which this crisis could occur, and transmitted to the worsening economy as a whole real world. Unfortunately, the team of economic advisers Clintonites, almost all have returned to Washington along with Obama and have to work again those responsible for the crisis, instead of being punished, were able to enrich themselves even at the stage of bank bailouts. Some of them are distinguished economists, highly paid in the putting the sails to the wind also from the theoretical point of view.
This is a difference between the times of Roosevelt and today. In the thirties, the team of government changed and the perpetrators of the disaster were punished. Today, however, they remain cool-headed to make money, because there are no more alternative power, such as union and one of the large Fordist industry, on which Roosevelt could count. The lobby, with the exception of the arms manufacturers and pharmaceutical and health is one and bankrolls the whole political class, regardless of party affiliation.
Many scholars believe that the solution of the crisis can not be that Washington-Beijing axis. It is conceivable that the European model of social status, even if one can speak a European model, can be a reference for alternative economic policies as the "Washington Consensus", as the Chinese state capitalism? Or is there a risk that the future economic-political world in Europe (with the southern hemisphere) is confined to a marginal position?
What is a systemic crisis that this proves just the bully back to the scene of the eastern economies, primarily China, but also India, Korea. I say return because - I repeat often - a great historian, Alan Milward, stated several years ago that the dominance of Western industrial world, it would have, the historians of tomorrow, as a lapse of two or three centuries in a story that sees the primacy of production as well as a constant scientific East thousands of years. Today this has already happened and will continue to happen. It will be good that we Westerners are beginning to realize. Someone has already done. They are the American and German multinationals, operating as protagonists in China for years, giving that country capital, capital goods and technology that have allowed him to get on a path (it would be better to say, a highway) rapid development and resistance to shock the global economy. Sino-American duopoly does not seem appropriate to speak. It was Gorbachev to say recently that what happened to the Soviet Union is also happening to the United States.
As for Europe, if he can get back on the Silk Road, they learned how to make the Italians in the Middle Ages, will be able once again to build the cathedrals and the Renaissance. But it must do so with the highest decision making closer federal integration, and trying to associate with this particular model also Russia, as well as the former USSR satellites that revolve around already. In one interview with the poster that I remember to have given almost forty years ago, discussed with Valentino talking about this issue, which has now become reality in part, to the Chinese, but still manages to bring to the Russian side.
The current increase in public expenditure does not affect social spending (education, health, pensions and unemployment benefits), but the rescue of banks, finance companies and large groups. What happens, however, squeezing the earnings (real wages and pensions): an intervention on the supply side rather than demand, it is the right strategy to overcome the crisis, returning to acceptable levels of unemployment?
finance as the only lobby I said. How much intervention from the On the demand side, it is taking place, but not in Europe but in China, India, Brazil, etc.. We provide goods and services, lowering costs, ie reducing wages and fixed incomes. It is the destiny of Europe, not being able to be master of its own economic future. This can change only if Russia, which needs a real economic revolution that has the size and spatial and raw materials, will be permanently associated as part of Europe and will not continue, as Mazzini said, to appear and disappear from history of Europe.
What is the price that future generations will have to endure in the face of shapes and sizes to which debt Today, governments took action in an effort not to wreck the world economy?
If we return to stable growth, the debt can quickly return to weigh much less than the GDP has come to do today. But the rapid growth and stable should preferably be done on a development path less stupidly worse scimmiottante what happens in the U.S., namely those that are promoting European goods and services, social security, culture and public research and not foolishly privatized transportation alternative for those invented a huge country like the United States, the exploitation of traditional energy sources such as coal and oil in a non-traditional, not running again behind American technological crazy adventures, totally without a future, but developing the European research in this area has an illustrious past and now ignored. But we have a Europe of nations and not governments, then the opposite of what you just did in Lisbon. Cosma Orsi
interview with Marcello De Cecco (The poster December 30, 2009)
