Ya tenemos un nuevo Don Quijote: Obama
Publicado: 18 Abr 2009 15:54
Eamon Javers en "the policito" (http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0409/21393.html)
As he battles the economic downturn, President Barack Obama is bracing Americans for a recovery different than any in recent memory – not a go-go return to prosperity like the 1990s but a slow, steady climb to stability.
“We know that an economy built on reckless speculation, inflated home prices, and maxed-out credit cards does not create lasting wealth. It creates the illusion of prosperity, and it’s endangered us all,” Obama said recently.
But what Obama rarely says about ending the “cycle of bubble and bust” is this: he’s prepared to intervene to make sure that kind of red-hot growth doesn’t occur.
And he’s willing to do it with added government regulation if needed to prevent any one sector of the economy from getting out of balance – the way the dot-com boom did in the 1990s and the real-estate market did earlier this decade.
According to Austan Goolsbee, a key Obama economic adviser, the president plans to focus on stopping bubbles along with preventing busts. And in an interview with POLITICO, Goolsbee said the administration will be on the lookout for new bubbles, like the tech stocks or housing prices.
If new threats are spotted, he said Obama would use “regulatory oversight to prevent guys who want to make a quick buck from doing real harm to the economy. . .That is what it means to get out of the bubble and bust cycle.”
It’s a controversial and largely untested idea – one that involves government intervention in the economy to a degree that recent presidents have been unwilling or unable to impose. There would be great political risks for Obama, particularly after the depths of this painful recession, and it would open him up to criticism that he is trying to squelch the free market.
Obama has mainstream support for his position, including from Mark Zandi, an oft-quoted economist at Moody’s Economy.com who advised John McCain during the 2008 campaign. But Zandi said there’s not much an administration can do in practical terms to burst a developing bubble. The best way to cool things down is raising interest rates, which is the purview of the Federal Reserve. Another option would be for regulators to order banks to curtail lending to buyers of certain kinds of assets.
Also, in any bubble, there are plenty of people thrilled to be the beneficiaries – tech stock owners in the 1990s, or homeowners in the 2000s. Those people would form a powerful political opposition to any effort to put the brakes on growth. That would make it extremely difficult for government officials to take action.
“It’s just human nature to let the good times roll,” said former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Mike Oxley, a Republican. “And politicians are human like everybody else. You don’t want to be in a position of throwing a wet blanket on this stuff.”
He said that’s one of the reasons why the Bush administration didn’t intervene in the housing bubble. “Nobody wanted to mess up the party,” said Oxley. “They were hoping against hope that it would naturally slow down. Not too many people are courageous enough to make that call.”
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No puedo ni discutir lo iluso que sería intentar evitar ciertas burbujas y estallidos...de acuerdo en que ciertos sectores como el bancario hay que protegerlos al máximo. (que empiecen a rebajar el sistema fraccional de 10:1 a ratios más conservadores)
Pero joder, vivimos de #@#!%# madre en el capitalismo independientemente de las crisis ciclicas.. ¿que es mejor riqueza con volatilidad o decrecimiento no volatil pero constante?
Que iluso es este hombre, y que ilusos somos pensando que la FEd con su politica de precios de interes puede arreglar las cosas, cuando en realidad es el causante de la crisis, El precio del dinero debería ser cuestion de oferta y demanda.
Esto no es cuestion de izquierda o derecha. El intervencionismo no es una cuestion ideológica o pragmática, es la manera que los poderosos se mantienen poderosos manteniendo regulaciones que prohiben a los demas subir y quitarles el puesto. Si el mundo fuera racional los ricos serían de izquierdas y los pobres liberales. (para algo los más ricos de china son las familias más apegadas al regimen comunista)
La vida es una continua paradoja, o eso siempre parece, pero eso para el observador poco avezado, que intenta identificar causas y efectos simples y prototipicos. Al hombre no se le dio pezuñas, cuernos o escudo para defenderse, pero se le doto de una mente experta en el arte de la simulación, el engaño, la martingala, el cinismo, la apariencia y la verborrea.
As he battles the economic downturn, President Barack Obama is bracing Americans for a recovery different than any in recent memory – not a go-go return to prosperity like the 1990s but a slow, steady climb to stability.
“We know that an economy built on reckless speculation, inflated home prices, and maxed-out credit cards does not create lasting wealth. It creates the illusion of prosperity, and it’s endangered us all,” Obama said recently.
But what Obama rarely says about ending the “cycle of bubble and bust” is this: he’s prepared to intervene to make sure that kind of red-hot growth doesn’t occur.
And he’s willing to do it with added government regulation if needed to prevent any one sector of the economy from getting out of balance – the way the dot-com boom did in the 1990s and the real-estate market did earlier this decade.
According to Austan Goolsbee, a key Obama economic adviser, the president plans to focus on stopping bubbles along with preventing busts. And in an interview with POLITICO, Goolsbee said the administration will be on the lookout for new bubbles, like the tech stocks or housing prices.
If new threats are spotted, he said Obama would use “regulatory oversight to prevent guys who want to make a quick buck from doing real harm to the economy. . .That is what it means to get out of the bubble and bust cycle.”
It’s a controversial and largely untested idea – one that involves government intervention in the economy to a degree that recent presidents have been unwilling or unable to impose. There would be great political risks for Obama, particularly after the depths of this painful recession, and it would open him up to criticism that he is trying to squelch the free market.
Obama has mainstream support for his position, including from Mark Zandi, an oft-quoted economist at Moody’s Economy.com who advised John McCain during the 2008 campaign. But Zandi said there’s not much an administration can do in practical terms to burst a developing bubble. The best way to cool things down is raising interest rates, which is the purview of the Federal Reserve. Another option would be for regulators to order banks to curtail lending to buyers of certain kinds of assets.
Also, in any bubble, there are plenty of people thrilled to be the beneficiaries – tech stock owners in the 1990s, or homeowners in the 2000s. Those people would form a powerful political opposition to any effort to put the brakes on growth. That would make it extremely difficult for government officials to take action.
“It’s just human nature to let the good times roll,” said former House Financial Services Committee Chairman Mike Oxley, a Republican. “And politicians are human like everybody else. You don’t want to be in a position of throwing a wet blanket on this stuff.”
He said that’s one of the reasons why the Bush administration didn’t intervene in the housing bubble. “Nobody wanted to mess up the party,” said Oxley. “They were hoping against hope that it would naturally slow down. Not too many people are courageous enough to make that call.”
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No puedo ni discutir lo iluso que sería intentar evitar ciertas burbujas y estallidos...de acuerdo en que ciertos sectores como el bancario hay que protegerlos al máximo. (que empiecen a rebajar el sistema fraccional de 10:1 a ratios más conservadores)
Pero joder, vivimos de #@#!%# madre en el capitalismo independientemente de las crisis ciclicas.. ¿que es mejor riqueza con volatilidad o decrecimiento no volatil pero constante?
Que iluso es este hombre, y que ilusos somos pensando que la FEd con su politica de precios de interes puede arreglar las cosas, cuando en realidad es el causante de la crisis, El precio del dinero debería ser cuestion de oferta y demanda.
Esto no es cuestion de izquierda o derecha. El intervencionismo no es una cuestion ideológica o pragmática, es la manera que los poderosos se mantienen poderosos manteniendo regulaciones que prohiben a los demas subir y quitarles el puesto. Si el mundo fuera racional los ricos serían de izquierdas y los pobres liberales. (para algo los más ricos de china son las familias más apegadas al regimen comunista)
La vida es una continua paradoja, o eso siempre parece, pero eso para el observador poco avezado, que intenta identificar causas y efectos simples y prototipicos. Al hombre no se le dio pezuñas, cuernos o escudo para defenderse, pero se le doto de una mente experta en el arte de la simulación, el engaño, la martingala, el cinismo, la apariencia y la verborrea.
