[Usando mucho la imaginación, lo de Plaza Castilla es una balanza:
a un lado Bankia, y al otro la cruda realidad]
España, ese gran país. En septiembre se cumplirán 4 años de descenso sin frenos a los infiernos de la anagnorisis, a la quiebra de un modelo de vida. No es que haya colapsado el sistema del bienestar, es que ha quebrado un modelo de vida basado en el autoengaño. ¿De verdad podíamos creer que nadie íba a pagar esta fiesta? Ahora que veo los resultados de las elecciones en Grecia, o el gobierno de tecnócratas que ha tenido que imponerse Italia o no tendrían estabilidad para llevar a cabo ninguna reforma me doy cuenta de cómo el baño de realidad ha empezado a calar en nosotros. ¿Estamos de acuerdo en todo lo que hace Rajoy? No. Yo en concreto estoy harta de pagar impuestos en progresión geométrica, desencantada de la escasa tijera que se han autoaplicado los políticos, horrorizada de los recortes en educación. Pero parece que por vamos cogiendo a los bancos por los cuernos. Y es que en las cajas de ahorros los españoles hemos sofisticado hasta niveles perversos los dos males de los que habla este fragmento de un artículo de The Economist: al politizar las cajas hasta hacerlas prolongaciones de los gobiernos autonómicos hemos conseguido crear el parásito perfecto, el bancario-funcionario, impuesto a dedazo, para más risa. Ni Rato ha podido con los Blesa, las Mercedes de la Merced y similares.
In their new book, "Why Nations Fail: The origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty", Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, a pair of economists, suggest that many countries are bedevilled by economic institutions that "are structured to extract resources from the many by the few and that fail to protect property rights or provide incentives for economic activity." In contrast, "inclusive" economies distribute power more widely, establish law and order, and have secure property rights and free-market systems.
[...]
The authors place the developed world in the "inclusive" category since they have, by definition, achieved economic success. But their description of extractive economies should ring one or two alarm bells in the mind of Western readers. "Because elites dominating extracting institutions fear creative destruction", the authors write, "they will resist it, and any growth that germinates under extractive institutions will be ultimately short-lived."
There are two potential candidates for extractive elites in the Western economies. The first is the banking sector. The wealth of the finantial industry gives it enormous lobbying power, including as contributors to American presidential campaigns or to Britain's ruling parties. By making themselves "too big to fail", banks ensured that they had to be rescued in 2008.
Much of current economic policy seems to be driven by the need to prop up banks, whether it is record-low interest rates across the developed world or the recent provision of virtually unlimited liquidity by the once-staid European Central Bank. The long-term effects of these policies, which may be hard to reverse, are difficult to assess.
It is tougher to argue that the finantial sector has inhibited growth in other areas of the economy. Indeed, both banks and venture-capital groups play a vital role in supporting new companies. Nevertheless, it is possible that the extremely high rewards in the finantial industry might have diverted talented people away from other activities that could have helped righ economies to grow more sustainably. Furthermore, those high rewards could derive from "rent-seeking" by the finantial sector, in the form of fees, charges and spreads, that have acted as a tax on the rest of the economy.
A second candidate for the extractive category is the public sector. In some countries, such as Greece, there has been a clear policy of "clientelism" in which political parties have rewarded their supporters with jobs and benefits that have been funded by the general taxpayer. In the Anglo-Saxon world, public-sector employees now have more generous pension rights than the majority of private-sector workers.
[...]
[ © The Economist Newspaper Ltd, London (April 14th-20th 2012). Pág. 68. El artículo completo en este enlace ]
In their new book, "Why Nations Fail: The origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty", Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson, a pair of economists, suggest that many countries are bedevilled by economic institutions that "are structured to extract resources from the many by the few and that fail to protect property rights or provide incentives for economic activity." In contrast, "inclusive" economies distribute power more widely, establish law and order, and have secure property rights and free-market systems.
[...]
The authors place the developed world in the "inclusive" category since they have, by definition, achieved economic success. But their description of extractive economies should ring one or two alarm bells in the mind of Western readers. "Because elites dominating extracting institutions fear creative destruction", the authors write, "they will resist it, and any growth that germinates under extractive institutions will be ultimately short-lived."
There are two potential candidates for extractive elites in the Western economies. The first is the banking sector. The wealth of the finantial industry gives it enormous lobbying power, including as contributors to American presidential campaigns or to Britain's ruling parties. By making themselves "too big to fail", banks ensured that they had to be rescued in 2008.
Much of current economic policy seems to be driven by the need to prop up banks, whether it is record-low interest rates across the developed world or the recent provision of virtually unlimited liquidity by the once-staid European Central Bank. The long-term effects of these policies, which may be hard to reverse, are difficult to assess.
It is tougher to argue that the finantial sector has inhibited growth in other areas of the economy. Indeed, both banks and venture-capital groups play a vital role in supporting new companies. Nevertheless, it is possible that the extremely high rewards in the finantial industry might have diverted talented people away from other activities that could have helped righ economies to grow more sustainably. Furthermore, those high rewards could derive from "rent-seeking" by the finantial sector, in the form of fees, charges and spreads, that have acted as a tax on the rest of the economy.
A second candidate for the extractive category is the public sector. In some countries, such as Greece, there has been a clear policy of "clientelism" in which political parties have rewarded their supporters with jobs and benefits that have been funded by the general taxpayer. In the Anglo-Saxon world, public-sector employees now have more generous pension rights than the majority of private-sector workers.
[...]
[ © The Economist Newspaper Ltd, London (April 14th-20th 2012). Pág. 68. El artículo completo en este enlace ]
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