En ocasiones he escrito sobre las opiniones económicas de David Stockman, Ex-director de la Oficina Presupuestaria con Reagan, Ex- congresista republicano por Michigan, etc. A la hora de analizar la economía y los mercados financieros, Stockman es una de las cabezas pensantes actuales que más me gusta, tanto por su conocimiento como por su sensatez. Hoy te detallo algunas frases recientes que creo que explican muy bien (mucho mejor de lo que yo lo haría) los riesgos de la política económica y monetaria actual en EEUU.
"Central bank financial repression results in the systematic and
severe mispricing of financial assets... The fact is, the prices of money, debt,
equity, traded commodities and all their derivatives comprise a vast
and instantaneous signaling system that cascades through every nook and
cranny of the real economy. When these signals are systematically
falsified by a few dozen central bankers they cause hundreds of millions
of ordinary businessmen, workers, investors and entrepreneurs to alter
their economic calculus... And not in a good way. False signals lead
to mistakes, excesses, losses and waste. They ultimately reduce
economic efficiency and productivity and lower the rate of economic
growth and real wealth gains... Here’s the problem, however. A full generation of financial
repression has left financial assets drastically over-valued because at
the same time that current capitalization rates and PE multiples were
soaring, the main street economy was eating its own seed corn. That is,
the false financial signals emanating from the financial markets were
generating behavior in both the public and private sector that will
drastically reduce the future growth potential of the US economy, and
therefore the earnings capacity of the companies which comprise it. As
we have already seen, one source of that hit to future growth is the
massive bow-wave of deferred taxes being generated by a welfare state
economy which does not save. At the same time, the central banks’
command to speculate instead of save is ripping a second hole in future
growth potential. Namely, US corporations are consuming their own
balance sheets in a spasm of financial engineering- a process that is
steadily reducing investments in productive assets and future growth."
Stockman es muy crítico con la Fed porque no cree que alimentar periódicamente nuevas burbujas en los mercados para beneficio del lobby financiero sea algo positivo para la sociedad. Todo lo contrario. Hoy te incluyo un gráfico que es otra muestra más de la desconexión entre bolsa y economía que la Fed puede presumir de haber magnificado (basta con decir que es por el bien común para que una manipulación oficial parezca incluso benigna).
Las críticas de Stockman no son sólo por la política actual de la Fed sino que, en ocasiones, nos recuerda que Greenspan y Bernanke, predecesores de Janet Yellen al frente de la Fed, sembraron esta gigantesca y peligrosa distorsión monetaria y económica que vivimos. Y es que, el deseo de aumentar el nivel de actividad económica del momento basta para justificar cualquier medida, por dañina que ésta sea en el largo plazo (por ejemplo, fomentar el superendeudamiento de las familias para que consuman más).
Hace pocos días supimos que Ben Bernanke iba a incorporarse a una importante institución financiera: Citadel. Esto es lo que su fundador, Ken Griffin, dijo el jueves pasado sobre Bernanke: “has extraordinary knowledge
of the global economy and his insights on monetary policy and the
capital markets will be extremely valuable to our team and to our
investors.
Ahora te detallo lo que decía Griffin de Bernanke hace dos años, cuando Bernanke dirigía la Fed:
En mayo de 2013 en The Economic Club of Chicago:
“I think QE3 is a terrible idea because we are now reaching the point where the Fed is becoming captive to our political institutions. You see with the Fed owning several trillion dollars of U.S. Treasuries it’s easy to imagine that at the next confirmation hearing the questions posed by politicians will be of the nature, will you continue to help subsidize the cost of the U.S. federal government’s borrowings even at the ensuing risk of potentially creating uncontrollable inflation? That last part won’t be asked but that will be the risk. And I think there will be real pressure on picking people to the Federal Reserve board who will appease our politicians and continue to try to drive interest rates to an artificially low level, very worried about that, very worried about that.”
En abril de 2013 en The Milken Institute Conference:
“The Federal Reserve is really trying to counteract a number of the very poor policies that are coming from our legislative and executive branches and it’s damn near impossible to overcome the headwinds created by Obamacare, an inability to reform tax policy, inability to thoughtfully create jobs in our country and the Fed’s policies are doing two things that I am very gravely concerned about. Number one is we have all learned over the years that if you reduce the cost of capital you increase your use of fixed assets and you take out jobs. Corporate America seeing an ever increasing cost for its employee base and extraordinary low interest rates is taking every step they can possibly take to reduce employment, to build factories abroad and domestically to substitute technology and automated processes for people. So one of the very sad negative characteristics of the Fed’s policies is it’s leading to job destruction.”
En fin, donde dije digo, digo Diego, es algo de lo que no nos vamos a sorprender a estas alturas. Y que los ex-cargos públicos financieros se incorporen a grandes instituciones, tampoco.
