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Alemania: hundimiento y metamorfosis


La catástrofe socialdemócrata en las elecciones del domingo va más allá del propio SPD y revela una transformación del sistema de partidos de la República Federal


LLUÍS BASSETS 30/09/2009


Lo nunca visto. La abstención, la caída del voto socialdemócrata y -aunque parezca extraño- también del conservador, el incremento del voto liberal, la dispersión de voto y muchas otras cosas han convertido estas elecciones generales alemanas en un caso insólito, una excepción que esta vez no confirma ninguna regla sino que la rompe e indica que Alemania está cambiando y reinventándose. "Nunca en los 60 años de la República Federal..." es la expresión repetida una y otra vez desde la noche del domingo para referirse a las cifras que arrojaron las urnas.


El partido de los que no votan ha sido el que más adhesiones ha recibido en esta ocasión. Un 28% de los electores prefirieron quedarse en casa, superando al número de votantes de la CDU (27,3%), aunque no a la adición de CDU y CSU (33,8%). El momento álgido de la participación se dio en 1972, cuando alcanzó el 91,1% y el momento más bajo, con las primeras elecciones después de la unificación, en 1990, con el 77'8%, cinco puntos más que ahora.

La mayor parte de los abstencionistas fueron votantes en las anteriores elecciones de los dos grandes partidos. Nada menos que 2,1 millones de votantes socialdemócratas se quedaron en casa, pero también lo hicieron 1,1 millones de democristianos. La abstención suele ser la estación intermedia antes de cambiar de voto, una acción a veces difícil cuando la migración es entre partidos muy diferenciados o incluso polarizados. El desgaste de la Gran Coalición ha conducido a muchos votantes descontentos a quedarse en casa. Lo más probable es que la próxima vez voten a otro partido, quizás a alguno de los tres pequeños -FDP, Verdes y Die Linke-, consolidando todavía más el cambio que ahora ha empezado de forma estruendosa.

Pero el fenómeno de la jornada no fue la victoria de Merkel, ni siquiera la irrupción la nueva estrella del firmamento político que es el liberal Guido Westerwelle. El acontecimiento histórico que va más allá incluso de los 60 años de la muletilla es el hundimiento del SPD, el partido de Helmut Schmidt y Willy Brandt, cuya historia se confunde con las del movimiento obrero y del socialismo democrático. Su resultado, ese 23% de votos, está cinco puntos por debajo del peor resultado en la historia electoral de la República Federal, que fue el de 1953. Además de desterrarle a la oposición y de abrir una crisis que le obligará a cambiar de dirección, de programa y de alianzas, estas cifras han disparado todas las alarmas en Alemania y en toda Europa.

¿Por dónde pierde votos el SPD? Por todos los lados y edades y en todas las direcciones. Es algo así como la implosión de un partido. El grueso de las fugas se dirige a la abstención. La transferencia más importante a otra fuerza es la que lleva 1.110.000 votos a Die Linke. También hay transferencia hacia los Verdes, 860.000 votos, la fuerza más beneficiada de las caídas anteriores de los socialdemócratas. Un número muy importante de votos, casi 1.400.000, van a las fuerzas del nuevo gobierno liberal-conservador, repartidos así: 870.000 para la CDU y 520.000 para el FDP.

El SPD sale de estas elecciones como el mayor de unos pequeños que se han convertido en medianos y no como el igual del otro grande que era hasta ahora. La pérdida total ha sido de 6,2 millones de votos, lo que le sitúa, con su porcentaje del 23%, muy lejos del volumen que se considera característico de los partidos de masa o Volkspartei.

Hace sólo 11 años, el SPD obtuvo un 41% y 20 millones de votos, el doble que ahora. Desde entonces ha entrado en una pendiente, con pérdidas en cada elección sucesiva.

La erosión del voto popular socialdemócrata afecta directamente a los trabajadores industriales, que han dado el 28% de sus votos a la CDU-CSU, por encima del 24% al SPD y el 18% a La Izquierda. La deserción de los jóvenes es otro de los datos preocupantes para el futuro del partido. Entre 18 y 24 años el SPD ha perdido un 20% de votos, muy por encima del 11% de su caída. La única franja de edad en la que el voto desciende más suavemente es la de mayores de 60 años, donde sólo baja un 7%.

La CDU-CSU también ha sufrido lo suyo, pero el premio de la cancillería y del Gobierno basta para compensar todos los disgustos. Su 33.8% es la segunda caída consecutiva y también el peor resultado de la historia (siempre haciendo abstracción de las primeras elecciones de 1949, todavía entre las ruinas de la guerra y en medio de la mayor precariedad e inseguridad políticas).

Un caso peculiar es el de la CSU, el partido bávaro hermano acostumbrado a votaciones plebiscitarias. El domingo arrasó en todas las circunscripciones bávaras, obteniendo todos sus correspondientes mandatos directos, y obtuvo una cifra del 42% regional (6,5% a nivel nacional), que para sí querrían muchos partidos en todo el mundo. Pero ha perdido un 6,7% en esta elección, después de una caída del 9% en las generales de 2005; y, lo que es más deprimente para el risueño conservadurismo bávaro, tras perder hace ahora un año la mayoría absoluta en el Parlamento regional que venían manteniendo desde 1958.

El dato central sobre el cambio de sistema lo proporciona la dispersión del voto que viene registrándose desde las elecciones de 2005, cuando la suma de los votos obtenidos por los dos grandes partidos fue ya la menor de la historia, un 69,4%, que quedaba muy lejos del pico del 91,2% de 1976 y del habitual comportamiento por encima del 80%. Este domingo, entre los dos sumaron sólo el 56,8%, cifra que consagra el final del bipartidismo. El aumento de la desafección hacia los dos grandes partidos y el traslado de voto hacia los tres pequeños tiene un fuerte componente generacional. Los mayores de 60 años siguen votando según las reglas del bipartidismo que han vivido toda su vida, mientras que las dos franjas generacionales de votantes más jóvenes desertan en masa y se pasan a los nuevos partidos.

Buceando en el mapa electoral puede observarse como el FDP casi iguala al SPD en un Estado tan poblado como Baden-Würtemberg. Die Linke empata con los socialdemócratas en Berlín, les supera en cuatro de los seis länder del Este (Sajonia, Turingia, Sajona-Anhalt y Brandeburgo) y anda a su zaga en Mecklengurbo-Prepomerania y Sarre, este último en el Oeste. Die Linke supera la barra del 5% en todos los Estados, lo que le sitúa en una posición excelente para seguir avanzando y entrando en gobiernos regionales y locales.

Un partido cargado de historia se está hundiendo, pero con él se hunde también el sistema bipartidista que ha dado estabilidad a Alemania durante los 60 años de fundación de la república que ahora se celebran. Gran parte de las novedades de este domingo se deben a los cambios sociales y económicos que ha experimentado Alemania y el mundo en las últimas décadas, como la globalización o la desaparición de las clases sociales tal como se configuraron en el siglo XX y su sustitución por otras formas de estratificación social. Pero otra parte de estas novedades son el fruto tardío de la unificación alemana, que abrió las puertas primero a un cuarto partido, los Verdes, y luego a un quinto, Die Linke.

Ahora, justo 20 años después de la caída del Muro regresan al poder los liberales con la fórmula llamada de pequeña coalición que más tiempo ha dirigido el Gobierno en estas seis décadas. En asociación con los conservadores han estado en el poder 21 años, y con los socialdemócratas 13; un total de 34 sobre 60. Pero ahora ya no será lo mismo: el partido de Guido Westerwelle no es la tercera fuerza entre dos grandes, sino el tercero de cinco, en un panorama en el que ya se atisba una sexta fuerza que empuja, aunque por el momento se vista de pirata y pida sólo la máxima libertad en la comunicación digital.

El SPD se hunde, pero es el entero sistema político el que se encuentra en plena transformación. Será un sistema menos estable y más plural. Y no tiene por qué ser peor, como temen muchos alemanes con el recuerdo siempre vivo de la República de Weimar que precedió a la subida al poder de Adolf Hitler.

America has passed on the baton

By Jeffrey Sachs

Published: September 29 2009 21:21

The world has a new problem-solver. The summit of the Group of 20 in Pittsburgh last week confirmed that the leading economic powers, developed and developing, have cast their lot with collective economic leadership and systematic peer review. American conservatives are dyspeptic. The G20 seems to them both a fantasy in grand planning and a misguided sell-out of capitalist democracies to the miscreants of the third world. These fears are absurdly exaggerated but they do at least hint at an important truth: the G20 is an experiment. On its makeshift scaffolding the success of the planet now rests.

The G20’s true significance is not in the passing of a baton from the G7/G8 but from the G1, the US. Even during the 33 years of the G7 economic forum, the US called the important economic shots. Although the US constitutes only about 20 per cent of the world economy, it has until recently been the indispensable leader, the key to nearly every significant regional military alliance and to global trade, finance and cutting-edge technology.

In fact, US economic leadership had already begun to wane a quarter-century ago but this was obscured by the collapse of the Soviet Union and by the US-led revolution in information and communication technology. Both events seemed to suggest a boost of US economic dominance – but that was illusory, especially as technologies and market-led growth spread to China and other emerging markets.

America’s leadership was also undercut by problems at home: low and declining saving rates, widening income inequality, poor educational attainments, anti-tax paranoia leading to insufficient public investments and chronic budget deficits, and rising political corruption, corporate malfeasance and excessive sway of special interests. George W. Bush and colleagues fantasised about the US as the New Rome, but military disasters abroad, the dismantling of financial and environmental regulations and policies such as tax cuts for the rich gravely exacerbated US weaknesses.

Collective action is now the only alternative, yet it has never been easy to achieve or sustain. Twenty leaders constitute a big group. At Pittsburgh, opening statements spilled over from morning into the lunch hour. The challenge is not merely one of logistics but of the logic of co-operation itself. Can a group this large actually manage the provision of global public goods without succumbing to free-riding and paralysing divisions?

For the cynics, the answer is “no”. American conservatives view the rest of the world, and especially the developing countries, as a congeries of political misfits and miscreants. The reckless rhetoric and provocative actions of a few extremist countries understandably dominate the news cycle. Libyan leader Muammer Gaddafi’s 95-minute confused reverie at the UN podium immediately following US President Barack Obama’s stirring speech seemed to confirm the worst of these neoconservative nightmares.

Yet the G20 meetings in London and Pittsburgh were utterly different from Mr Gaddafi’s harangue. The leaders spoke earnestly and with intelligence, moderation, and insight. There was no grandstanding. Peer pressure and the high stakes of the global community would not allow it. Mr Obama’s personal gravitas did much to set the tone. While Mr Bush seemed always to disdain the summits and to flee as early as possible, Mr Obama powerfully conveys the message that the US needs and wants to work with the rest of the world, and that the rest of the world in fact needs the US to succeed.

We are not out of the woods, of course, a point emphasised by every speaker at the summit. That is not only because of the fragility of the financial stabilisation and economic bottoming out. It is not only because the small number of rejectionist nations poses real threats to the world, as do a larger number of states imploding under extreme poverty, hunger and environmental shocks. It is also because every G20 country is burdened by political institutions poorly designed for 21st-century problems and each is being overtaken by events: energy scarcity, financial systems out of control, food scarcity, water shortage, climate shocks, gaping budget deficits and more.

Moreover, the G20 has yet to solve three vital problems for it to be effective. While it represents 4.2bn people, far expanded from the roughly 900m represented by the G8, it still leaves on the sidelines 2.6bn mostly impoverished people who also should be incorporated. Their inclusion is essential for problem-solving on a host of key global issues. Second, while the G20 is the premier economic forum, it is not a global lawmaking and treaty-signing group. Only the UN can make global law and enforce global treaties. The work of the G20 should be closely integrated with that of the UN. Third, the G20 needs to deepen its problem-solving capacity by systematically harnessing expertise in areas such as energy security, climate change and financial regulation.

We are at a watershed. Globalisation, ecological destruction, energy insecurity and an interconnected world of nearly 7bn people require collective leadership. G20 co-operation during the past year has helped to head off economic depression but has not yet set the foundations for a financially and environmentally sustainable recovery. The G20 doubters might still be proved right about the limits of collective leadership, but if so, there will be no room for gloating, only a global disaster. The G20, in short, needs to succeed.

The writer is director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Why narrow banking alone is not the finance solution

By Martin Wolf

Published: September 29 2009 21:11



















The FT has a new series on the future of investment. But what, I wonder, is the future of finance itself? Who is confident that the financial system now emerging from the crisis is safer, or better at servicing the public’s needs, than the one that went into it? The answer has to be: few people. The question is how to remedy this dire situation.

What entered the crisis was, we now know, an ill-managed, irresponsible, highly concentrated and undercapitalised financial sector, riddled with conflicts of interest and benefiting from implicit state guarantees. What is emerging is a slightly better capitalised financial sector, but one even more concentrated and benefiting from explicit state guarantees. This is not progress: it has to mean still more and bigger crises in the years ahead.

My friend and colleague, John Kay, is aware of these dangers, as readers of his column know well. His answer, laid out in a pamphlet for the London-based Centre for the Study of Financial Innovation, is “narrow banking”*. Mr Kay rejects the notion that regulation can solve the problem created by state-guaranteed finance.



Supervision, he notes, is always subject to regulatory capture. Moreover, banks “entered the crisis with capital generally in excess of regulatory requirements. These provisions proved not just inadequate but massively inadequate for the problems faced.” Worse, many of the dangers – notably the growth of off-balance-sheet finance – reflected attempts to circumvent regulation. Regulation, then, has not been the answer, but hitherto has been part of the problem.

So what is the answer? Division of banking into a “utility” and a “casino” is Mr Kay’s answer. The big idea is that insured deposits should be backed by “genuinely safe liquid assets” – known as 100 per cent reserve banking. In practice, these assets would be government bonds. This is the most rigorous form of narrow banking. But he is not clear on whether he would insist on this. It seems he might accept looser constraints.

For the sake of clarity, however, let us focus on 100 per cent reserve banking, an idea also discussed in Austrian economics. Is it workable? What might it imply? To answer, we need to understand how we entered our world of credit-based money.

Suppose someone came up with the following design for the core institutions of our financial system: they would be mainly financed by deposits, redeemable on demand; they would invest in a wide range of often illiquid and opaque assets; they would engage in complex trading activities; but they would have a wafer-thin equity cushion. Surely, people would conclude, this is fraudulent. They would be right. Such a structure can only endure because central banks act as lenders of last resort. The government’s ability to create money is put at the disposal of private interests. Right at the moment, the ability to borrow from the government at zero interest is a licence to print money.

In practice, however, we have gone much further than this. We have also explicitly guaranteed many deposits and implicitly guaranteed many more liabilities. Indeed, in the crisis, policymakers guaranteed all the liabilities of institutions deemed systemically significant. Today, the core financial institutions are, beyond doubt, a part of the state.

Mr Kay’s proposal is, in sum, to end the fraud: banks would be forced to hold assets as safe and liquid as their liabilities. We know there are other ways of making a system of fractional-reserve banks relatively safe: a stable domestic oligopoly achieves much the same thing. But that does seem highly regressive.

Is Mr Kay’s the answer? One obvious objection is that it would impose a massive upheaval in finance. But, given the crisis, such an upheaval is the least we should fear. Another objection (though, to some an advantage) is that, taken to its conclusion, it would eliminate monetary policy. Public debt held by banks would set the money supply.

A more profound issue is whether a financial system based on narrow banking could allocate capital efficiently.

Here there are two opposing risks. The first is that the supply of funds to riskier, long-term activities would be greatly reduced if we did adopt narrow banking. Against this, one might argue that, with public sector debt used to back the liabilities of narrow banks, investors would be forced to find other such assets.

The opposite (and greater) risk is that the fragility of banking would be re-invented, via “quasi-banks”. This is what has just happened, after all, with “shadow banking”. In the end, those entities, too, have been rescued. The big point is that a financial structure characterised by short-term and relatively risk-free liabilities and longer-term and riskier assets is highly profitable, until it collapses, as it is rather likely to do.

The answer to the second dilemma is to make banking illegal. That is to say, financial intermediaries, other than narrow banks, would have the value of their liabilities dependent on the value of their assets. Where assets could not be valued, there would be matching lock-up periods for liabilities. The great game of short-term borrowing, used to purchase longer-term and risky assets, on wafer-thin equity, would be ruled out. The equity risk would be borne by the funds’ investors. Trading entities would exist. But they would need equity funding.
Christophe Chamley of Boston University and the Paris School of Economics and Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University proposed such radical ideas in the FT’s Economists’ Forum on January 27 2009. It is the simplest way I can see of avoiding the danger that narrow banking would shift the risks inherent in such activities elsewhere.

The most important point is that where we are now is intolerable. Today’s concentrations of state-insured private wealth and power must surely go. At present, the official sector believes tighter regulation, particularly higher capital requirements, can contain these risks. But this is likely to fail. If it does, we will need to be radical. Yet narrow banking would still not be enough. We would need to rule out quasi-banking. Otherwise, we would soon return to the world of fragility and bail-outs. Funds that replace banks would have to pass the risks directly on to the outside investors.

The authorities will not entertain such radical ideas right now. But the financial system is so inherently fragile that radical reform cannot be pronounced dead. It is only dormant.

* Narrow Banking: The reform of banking regulation, www.csfi.org.uk

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009.

Gold, It's All Falling Into Place

Click on : http://broadcast.ino.com/education/goldfalling/

INSIDE LOOK - GLOOM, BOOM & DOOM REPORT

Click on :

1) PART 1 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UfuiNjvH9_c&feature=player_embedded

2) PART 2 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gdBIRD87-Ao&feature=player_embedded

3) PART 3 : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kA5dfcMNtCo&feature=player_embedded

The Hard Truth, Courtesy of the FDIC

by: Kid Dynamite

September 30, 2009

Via ZeroHedge, comes a smoking gun release today from the FDIC(pdf). I mentioned last week that the FDIC, which is essentially broke (and by the FDIC, I mean, of course, the DIF - the Deposit Insurance Fund which insures customer deposits up to $250,000), was discussing a plan to re-fund itself by borrowing from its member banks. Tuesday's FDIC press release confirms (pdf) just that. "But wait, Kid Dynamite," you might say, "the release says that the FDIC will have banks prepay 3 years worth of fees." Yes - that's the same as borrowing from the banks.

Sadly, the FDIC wants to go this route, instead of using a special assessment on the banks, because, in their own words:

"Furthermore, any additional special assessment or immediate, large increase in assessment rates would impose a burden on an industry that is struggling to maintain positive earnings overall."

In plain English, that's like saying "everyone wants to pretend that the banks are solvent, but if we make them actually pay us extra money, it will make it harder to cover up the fact that the banks are insolvent." Thus, we wave a magic wand, and even though the FDIC is asking the banks for 3 years worth of money today, the banks will be able to recognize the cost over 3 years. Since when do we treat insurance as a depreciating asset? It's not like when you buy an airplane and recognize the cost over 20 years! There is a simple, unarguable fact: if Citibank (C) pays the FDIC $1B today (I'm making this number up) in fees for the next 3 years, Citibank has $1B less in cash today. Not $333MM less in cash - $1B less in cash.

The FDIC's release from yesterday (pdf) is a must read - it contains some serious and scary truths about our national financial situation, despite what the press and the administration have been telling us over the past six months.

Take, for example, this gem:

"Staff’s current projection of $100 billion in failure costs from 2009 through 2013 is higher than staff’s projection in May of $70 billion over the same period. Projected failures have increased due to further deterioration in the condition of insured institutions, as reflected in the increasing number of problem institutions. Asset quality problems among insured institutions are not expected to abate in the near-term."

In plain speak: While you read headlines every day about the end of the recession, improvement among all metrics, green shoots, and how great it is to have 9.7% unemployment and over 500k in new jobless claims weekly, the fact of the matter is that in the last 4 months, the estimate for losses from bank failures over the next 4 years has increased by 43%! And guess what - asset quality problems are not expected to abate!

The FDIC also reminds us of their previous time frame for restoring the Deposit Insurance Fund:

"In October 2008, the Board adopted a Restoration Plan to return the Deposit Insurance Fund (DIF or the Fund) to its statutorily mandated minimum reserve ratio of 1.15 percent within five years. In February 2009, given the extraordinary circumstances facing the banking industry, the Board amended its Restoration Plan to allow the Fund seven years to return to 1.15 percent. In May 2009, Congress amended the statute governing establishment and implementation of the Restoration Plan to allow the FDIC up to eight years to return the DIF reserve ratio back to 1.15 percent, absent extraordinary circumstances."

So, last year, the FDIC hoped to replenish the DIF within 5 years. As reality hit, they adjusted this estimate to a 7 year time frame in February. Then, in May, despite an epidemic spread of green shoots in the media, the FDIC again extended the estimate of time needed until the DIF was replenished to 8 years.

There is another terrifying tidbit in the FDIC's release that's easy to gloss over:

"At the beginning of this crisis, in June 2008, total assets held by the DIF were approximately $55 billion, and consisted almost entirely of cash and marketable securities (i.e., liquid assets). As the crisis has unfolded, the liquid assets of the DIF have been used to protect depositors of failed institutions and have been exchanged for less liquid claims against the assets in failed institutions. As of June 30, 2009, while total assets of the DIF had increased to almost $65 billion, cash and marketable securities had fallen to about $22 billion. The pace of resolutions continues to put downward pressure on cash balances. While the less liquid assets in the DIF have value that will eventually be converted to cash when sold, the FDIC’s immediate need is for more liquid assets to fund near-term failures."

This is the doozy - the FDIC has been exchanging cash for trash - as banks fail, the FDIC takes assets (as they've admitted above: illiquid, presumably low quality paper - perhaps MBS that will turn out worthless?) and gives the failed banks cash to protect depositors. The last sentence of the quote above presumes that in the end, if they wait long enough, these illiquid assets will have value. The problem is, the FDIC needs cash now, and these assets simply cannot be sold for what we're pretending they are worth right now. If you've been following the crisis, you should realize that this is no different from what the banks the FDIC has not yet seized have been hoping - that their trash assets will eventually recover. Everyone is sitting around extending and pretending, delaying and praying, refusing to mark to market, and keeping their fingers crossed that in the end, these assets will be worth what we pretend they are worth. What happens if they're wrong?

Obviously, I'm adamantly against continued attempts to hide the health of the banking industry. The FDIC doesn't want to impose special fees on the banks because it's a tough time for the banks, so they concoct a plan to cook the books -they admit this! They acknowledge that the "prepayment" plan doesn't really change the balance of the fund!

"Although the FDIC’s immediate liquidity needs would be resolved by the inflow of approximately $45 billion in cash from the prepaid assessments, it would not initially affect the DIF balance. The DIF would initially account for the amount collected as both an asset (cash) and an offsetting liability (deferred revenue)."

When you pull forward revenue, you're not improving the long term health of the insurance fund- you're taking money now, and giving up money later.

We need to have another round of special assessments on the banks to shore up the DIF, write trash assets down to realistic levels, seize the bad banks, take the pain, and then we'll be able to move on unencumbered by a never ending pile of bad debt. As we stand now, failed banks have passed their problems on to the other banks, since the FDIC has inherited fantasy assets which are clogging up the balance sheet of its fund.

Wednesday Outlook: Still Time for Window Dressing

Click on : http://seekingalpha.com/article/164024-wednesday-outlook-still-time-for-window-dressing?source=email

and

Click on : http://seekingalpha.com/article/164027-wednesday-outlook-commodities-global-markets

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