“The west’s 20 years of policy self-harm”
Heute habe ich einen interessanten Rückblick auf das Krisenmanagement der letzten Jahre und damit verbunden eine Warnung: Es wird nicht leichter, sondern schwerer:
- 10 years ago “(…) was, after all, the finest hour (as far as economic policy goes) of western governments in general, and for British economic diplomacy in particular, with the UK cajoling the rest of the world into strong and co-ordinated action on fiscal and monetary stimulus and recapitalisation of banks.” – bto: Bei den Banken waren die Briten allerdings in der Eurozone nicht so richtig erfolgreich. Leider.
- “But that moment of glory stands in stark contrast to government policies in the run-up and the aftermath of the crisis, when a series of policy mistakes made things a lot worse than they needed to be. What were they?” – bto: Das ist die absolut richtige Feststellung. In der Tat lag es an dem immer höheren Leverage im System, der sich weiter verschlimmert, statt verbessert hat, wie wir wissen.
- “The crisis itself only happened because of the huge build-up of debt that policymakers treated with reprehensible neglect. While economic observers worried about current account asymmetries, the real danger lay not in net flows (inflows minus outflows) of finance between countries, but gross (total) flows. As the Bank for International Settlements chart below shows, this stock of cross-border financial claims trebled from $10tn to more than $30tn just from 2000 to 2008, an order of magnitude greater than the net flows.” – bto: Damit aber nicht genug, auch die Verschuldung innerhalb von Ländern ist deutlich gestiegen.
Quelle: BIS
- “With huge cross-border credit growth, of course, came huge domestic credit growth. (…) it was clearly a policy error to allow private credit at this scale: we now know that beyond a certain point, more private credit (whether a higher level or faster growth) is harmful for economic growth and an indicator of a looming financial crisis.” – bto: Und das gilt auch heute noch! China: hoch und schnell …
- “After the welcome outburst of good policy in 2008-09, which arrested the downturn and triggered an initially strong recovery, the mistakes continued. In the US and Europe alike, fiscal stimulus was reversed and monetary stimulus was never pushed to the limit, and was sometimes prematurely withdrawn. The result was slower growth and lower economic activity than would have been achievable, manifest in less than full employment almost everywhere (…) On a very conservative calculation for the US, I found that the wasted economic output due to letting the economy languish for too long below full employment amounted to about 50 per cent of one year’s worth of output.” – bto: Das mag stimmen, aber wir haben dennoch das Problem, dass auch eine solche Politik letztlich zu einer weiter steigenden Schuldenquote geführt haben dürfte und damit nur Zeit kauft und die Grundlage für eine noch größere Krise in der Zukunft legt?
- “Economists have shown empirically that financial crises as a rule strengthen hard-right extremes and erode the political centre. As Manuel Funke, Moritz Schularick and Christoph Trebesch conclude in a study of crises going back to 1870: ‘The typical political reaction to financial crises is as follows: votes for far-right parties increase strongly, government majorities shrink, the fractionalisation of parliaments rises and the overall number of parties represented in parliament jumps. These developments likely hinder crisis resolution and contribute to political gridlock. The resulting policy uncertainty may contribute to the much-debated slow economic recoveries from financial crises.’” – bto: Das stimmt und wir können es in Italien beobachten. Ich denke, bei uns ist das nicht der Fall. Die AfD war als euro-kritische Partei nicht relevant. Erst die Migration hat sie groß gemacht.
- “(…) the self-inflicted crisis and retarded growth of the west has abruptly sped up the emerging economies’ catch-up. Just between 2005 and 2011, the OECD’s share of the global economy (measured at purchasing power parity exchange rates, which adjust for differences in the cost of living) fell from about 60 to 50 per cent.” – bto: was natürlich vor allem an der Expansion in China liegt. Auch hier die Frage: Ist das nachhaltig?
→ ft.com (Anmeldung erforderlich): “The west’s 20 years of policy self-harm”, 7. November 2018
