A posição do FMi é igualmente objecto de atenção no artigo atrás citado. Anne Pettifor analisa as contradições e as omissões dos politicos, dos especuladores e dos economistas do Fundo tomando como ponto de partida a declaração do Fundo do dia 10 de Agosto cujo conteudo era o seguinte(sublinhados nossos): ""We continue to believe that the systemic consequences of the reassessment of credit risk that is taking place will be manageable. The fundamentals supporting strong global growth remain in place."
A autora escreve que "(...)IMF economists, like all those in thrall to the dominant orthodoxy, have a blindspot about finance. Economists conduct their analyses without reference to the creation of credit and debt, focusing instead on goods and services, supply and demand. They regard money as "neutral" and on the whole ignore the role of credit. As Joseph Schumpeter once wrote, economists treat the "phenomena of economic life ...in terms of goods and services, of decisions about them, and of relations between them. Money enters the picture only in the modest role of a technical device that has been adopted in order to facilitate transactions." So the Bank of England's model of the United Kingdom economy has no debt components. True, it is recognised that there are, every so often, monetary "disorders" - but money is "of secondary importance in the explanation of the economic process of reality."
This explains economic orthodoxy's blindspot and its continued indifference over the creation of today's gigantic credit/debt bubble. It also explains why the IMF believes that "underlying economic fundamentals" bear little relation to the collapse of confidence in a finance sector overburdened by debt, excessive gambling, speculation and profit-taking. A speech on 31 July 2007 by IMF deputy managing director, John Lipsky, was remarkable in this respect:
"The fundamental underpinnings of the current global expansion appear to be reasonably solid. If so, the current market strains most likely will help set the stage for both financial and fundamental adjustments. These, in turn, will help set the stage for a new leg of the global expansion."
In other words, the failure of the privatised financial system, the threatened collapse of banks, the bankruptcy of mortgage companies, the collapse of private-equity deals, the burden of unpayable corporate debts, the systemic effects of the sub-prime lending crisis, the repossession of private homes - all these "adjustments" do not threaten "fundamental underpinnings" but rather set "the stage for a new leg of global expansion".(...)"
Etiquetas: Crash