sexta-feira, 30 de março de 2012

Vaticano e Judeus: Crise Econômica é Fruto da Crise Moral



No 11o Encontro bilateral entre judeus e a Santa Sé, os dois lados viram que muitos fatores contribuíram para crise financeira atual, mas na raiz do problema está a crise moral, no qual a importância da ganância eclipsou a exstência e a honestidade.

Vejam texto do site do Vaticano.

Jews and Catholics: The Economic Crisis is a Crisis of Moral Values


Vatican City, 30 March 2012 (VIS) - "Religious perspectives on the current financial crisis: vision for a just economic order" was the theme of the eleventh meeting of the Bilateral Commission of the Delegations of the Chief Rabbinate of Israel and the Holy See’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews, which was held in Rome from 27 to 29 March. The event was presided by Rabbi Shear Yashuv Cohen, and by Cardinal Peter Kodwo Turkson, president of the Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace.

In an English-language joint statement issued at the end of the meeting, the two sides highlight that, "while many factors contributed to the financial crisis, at its roots lies a crisis of moral values in which the importance of having, reflected in a culture of greed, eclipsed the importance of being; and where the value of truth reflected in honesty and transparency was sorely lacking in economic activity".

"At the heart of Jewish and Catholic visions for a just economic order is the affirmation of the sovereignty and providence of the Creator of the world with Whom all wealth originates and which is given to humankind as a gift for the common good", the text adds. Therefore "the purpose of an economic order is to serve the well being of society, affirming the human dignity of all people, each created in the divine image". This concept "is antithetical to egocentricity. Rather, it requires the promotion of the well being of the individual in relation to community and society". It also "posits the obligation to guarantee certain basic human needs, such as the protection of life, sustenance, clothing, housing, health, education and employment". The commission also identifies certain particularly vulnerable categories of people, among them migrant and foreign workers "whose condition serves as a measure of the moral health of society".

The statement recalls the obligation on countries with developed economies "to recognise their responsibilities and duties towards countries and societies in need, especially in this era of globalisation". In this context the participants in the meeting recall "the universal destination of the goods of the earth; a culture of “enough” that implies a degree of self-limitation and modesty; responsible stewardship; an ethical system of allocation of resources and priorities". They likewise mention the "partial remission of debts on national and international levels", highlighting the need "to extend this to families and individuals".

The members of the bilateral commission underscore the role that faith communities must play in contributing to a responsible economic order, and the importance of their engagement by government, educational institutions, and the media. Finally they note how "the crisis has revealed the profound lack of an ethical component in economic thinking. Hence, it is imperative that institutes and academies of economic studies and policy formation include ethical training in their curricula, similar to that which has developed in recent years in the field of medical ethics".

quinta-feira, 22 de março de 2012

A Relação entre Política Keynesiana e Mudança Climática

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A jornalista australiana Jo Nova fez conexão entre emissão exagerada de dinheiro e investimento em programas de mudança climática (como o caso do Solyndra nos Estados Unidos).

O jornalista James Delingpole do jornal The Telegraph relacionou o texto de Nova a escola austríaca de economia e disse que esta escola é a única na economia que vale o aprendizado.

A lógica de Jo Nova é que com a emissão de dinheiro os políticos podem fazer investimentos podres e quem ganha dinheiro com a emissão são os especuladores, o resultado não é desenvolvimento, mas inflação. Eu não discordo do argumento dela, mas acho que os políticos não dependem de emissão para fazer políticas ruins. E discordo completamente de Delingpole, um jornalista que gosto muito, sobre a escola austríaca. Esta escola tem o que ensinar, mas também não estimula o crescimento, apenas um liberdade exagerada de comportamento capitalista.

Abaixo vai parte do texto de Jo Nova


Why should you care about esoteric precious metals markets? It’s your currency, even if you don’t own any.

It’s like this. The governments and their central banks make as much free money from thin-air through fractional reserve banking and other methods as they can get away with — it benefits those who “spend that new money first”. They spend it at current prices, and pay it back later, after inflation has decreased its value. The people who pay the difference are those who saved and held money while its purchasing power fell. Speculators grow rich, while retirees and savers get poorer.
In a free market this would quickly lead to inflation, and people would rush to the only currencies the government can’t inflate (or “print” for free)  — they’d buy and hold gold or silver and keep their purchasing power. Remember, gold and silver are the currencies that evolved in the marketplace over the last 5,000 years and are not directly under the control of government. (And “so?” you say?). The point is, if the prices of gold and silver rise fast, people would abandon bonds and get into metals instead, thus correcting the situation by making the printing and speculating game vastly less attractive while saving and production became more attractive. Essentially, people dump the government money and go for the competitor, which means the government (and or Fed) has to increase the interest rate and pay more for its money, and nobody wants that: God forbid that Governments or Banks should pay people a fair rate for borrowing “their” money.
Bonds and “treasuries” (US Treasury Bonds) are fancy words for loans to the government. But if no one wants to buy them, then the government has trouble raising funds for its massive pork barreling vote-buying schemes, and the investment bankers pay higher interest payments which takes all the fun out of Grossly Huge and Obscene Mergers, the SubPrime Parties and the High Frequency Festivals.

As Mrs T. said, “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money“.
If the gold and silver markets are free, the bankers and government are much less able to join in cahoots to get more than their fair share off the people, because their government paper currencies suffer competition from gold and silver. The proverbial pot of gold sits at the end of the Fiddled-Gold-Market-Rainbow. If they can whip-saw the gold and silver market, and keep people from getting too much joy there, they can keep interest rates lower, surreptitiously transfer purchasing power from the public to the money printers, and fool the public into thinking that inflation really was only 3% — even as stocks hit record highs, executive salaries grew malignantly, and houses became unaffordable.

 

Corruption is endemic. It’s due to the amount of money-for-nothing pumped into sovereign currencies.

Gold is an anti-cheating device. So is silver. You have to earn before you can spend it; governments and banks cannot create it at the click of a keyboard. That’s why the reports of widespread manipulation matter to every citizen, not just to investors. Gold represents the natural limits to growth, it’s the pin the pops the Ponzi bubble.
“Free” money allows the psychopaths to rise to the top, it rewards the most brazen, fearless, and unscrupulous behavior. Honest players on a slow-and-steady realistic schedule get eclipsed by competitors that push the limits of the system.
This week we’ve seen two whistleblowers emerge. The second anonymous one called for more.
I call all honest and courageous JPMorgan employees to step up and fight the cronyism and wide-scale manipulation by reporting the truth. …Our deepest secrets lie within the hands of honest employees and can be revealed through honest regulators that are willing to take a look inside one of America’s best kept secrets. Please do not allow this to turn into another Enron.

“Money-for-nothing” corrupts everything

If you wonder how corruption in climate science could be connected, look no further than Climate Money. Without the printing presses running flat out at the Fed, which politicians would have had the luxury of glorious schemes to control the weather? How could they hand out grants to send, say, aquariums on tour to warn of impending storms? Underneath it all, if large financial institutions were not looking forward to a brand-spanking-new $2 Trillion market to trade carbon, who would have found millions to install 70 foot Carbon-Clocks, 50 page science reports and to donate and push into “green” education campaigns? Funny money makes for funny decisions. Shame no one is laughing.
If real people had to earn real money, investment bankers would need to make real decisions, scientists would have to find real evidence, and politicians would have to come up with real reasons.


sexta-feira, 16 de março de 2012

Não é a Falta de Crescimento Econômico, Mas a Cultura da Morte

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Texto de Megan McArdle, no The Atlantic, alerta que os problemas econômicos da Europa não são fundamentados nas políticas econômicas que inibem o crescimento, mas na demografia. É a cultura da morte, estúpido! (métodos contraceptivos), tão bem detalhada na encíclica Evangelium Vitae do papa João Paulo II.

Leiam abaixo:

Europe’s Real Crisis

All of us can breathe easy now: policy makers and analysts finally agree on how to fix Europe’s problems.

“Europe Debt Crisis Plan Hinges on Economic Growth,” declared the Los Angeles Times in October, after finance ministers announced what felt like the hundredth plan to seriously, no-foolin’-this-time, really rescue the European Union’s illiquid and insolvent states.

“Countries have to undergo significant structural reforms that would revamp growth,” said Mario Draghi, the head of the European Central Bank, in a December interview with the Financial Times. 

“Austerity is not enough, even for budgetary discipline, if economic activity does not pick up a decent rate of growth,” Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti told The Economist in January.

Their words have been echoed in a thousand or more op-eds, policy briefs, and TV spots, for good reason. Growth could fix so many dire fiscal and political problems—not just in Europe, but all over the developed world.

If only economic growth could be delivered on demand, like a pizza, just minutes after we realize we want it. Unfortunately, growth (or at least the sustainable variety) is typically a long time in the baking, and dependent on two main ingredients: more workers and higher worker productivity. And much of Europe is short on the former. That has big implications for Europe’s future.

Consider Italy. It is no exaggeration to say that the fate of Italy is the fate of the euro zone: if Italy can keep its debt under control and its banking system solvent, the euro zone will probably make it; if Italy defaults, the resulting panic will probably force Portugal, Ireland, Greece, and Spain to follow suit.

This linchpin is under a great deal of strain. Italy’s public debt stands at $2.3 trillion, roughly 20 percent larger than the country’s GDP. If not for that debt, Italy would have run a slight budget surplus in 2011. But interest payments alone soaked up nearly 5 percent of the GDP, creating a deficit of about 3.6 percent of national income and increasing the debt even more.

This has left Italy incredibly vulnerable. For every percentage point that the interest rate on the debt increases, Italians have to divert another 1.2 percent of national income into debt payments. And because markets are worried about this problem, interest rates have been rising at a brisk clip, with only occasional pauses while the powers that be deploy yet another emergency rescue plan.

Sweating this debt down by austerity alone would take ages, cause immense suffering among people who depended on the cut services, and—as Greece has shown—draw fierce public opposition. Moreover, commentators like Paul Krugman argue that it would actually make the problem worse in the short term, because government austerity makes the economy contract. As they see it, trying to close Europe’s fiscal gaps with austerity alone is like trying to get out of a deep hole by digging harder.

Strong growth by Europe’s troubled debtor nations would of course offer a different, and less painful, way out. After all, if you make $30,000 a year, a $10,000 credit-card balance is crippling; but if you make $300,000 a year, it’s fairly trivial. The faster Italy’s economy expands, the more manageable Italy’s debt becomes.

But that’s where the dearth of workers comes into play. Everyone agrees that rapid growth would be much nicer than higher taxes and slashed pension payments. The hitch is that over the past five years, growth in the Italian economy hasn’t averaged even 1 percent a year. Soaring growth will be tough to achieve, because more and more Italians are getting too old to work—and fewer and fewer Italians have been having the babies needed to replace them.

Italy’s fertility rate has actually been inching up from its 1995 low of 1.19 children for every woman, but it is still only about 1.4—well below the number needed to replenish its population (2.1). As a result, even with some immigration, Italy’s population growth has been very slow. It will soon stall, and eventually go into reverse. And then, one by one, the rest of Europe’s nations will follow. Not one country on the Continent has a fertility rate high enough to replace its current population. Heavy debt and a shrinking population are a very bad combination.

Since the invention of birth control and antibiotics, country after country has gone through a fairly standard shift. First, the mortality rate drops, especially among the young and the aging, and that quickly translates into a bigger workforce. Then, birthrates drop, as families realize that they no longer need to birth a basketball team to ensure that a couple members will survive to adulthood. A falling birthrate means that parents can invest more in each child; with fewer mouths to feed, more and better food can nourish each of them, and children can spend more years in school, causing worker productivity to rise from one generation to the next. As the burden of bearing and rearing children lightens, mothers can do more work outside the home, boosting both household resources and the national economy.

In 1984, when Ronald Reagan spoke of “morning in America,” he was at least demographically accurate. The youngest members of America’s vast Baby Boom were in college; the oldest were on the brink of their peak earning power. America was about to reap what the economists David Bloom and David Canning have dubbed the “demographic dividend” of rising labor supply and productivity. Bloom and Canning’s analysis of East Asia and Ireland attributes a substantial fraction of the recent economic booms in those places to this dividend.

But the dividend does not last forever. Eventually, the baby bulge reaches retirement age, the labor force stops growing, and older workers start spending their savings, depleting the nation’s supply of capital. The virtuous cycle turns vicious. This is what is happening right now in much of southern Europe.

Is strong growth still possible once the demographic dividend has been paid out? Of course it is, at least in theory. Even if the workforce isn’t expanding, strong-enough gains in worker productivity can substantially lift the economy. Longer hours and longer careers can theoretically have the same effect. But it is far from clear that in practice, these solutions will work, given the advanced age of Europe’s workers.

To see why, picture two neighboring towns, sharing all the same infrastructure and economic opportunities, with one key difference: their median age. In the first town, which I’ll call Morningburg, the average resident is 28. In the second, which I’ll call Twilight City, the average householder is 58.

Research indicates that even with all the same resources at their disposal, these two places look very different, and not just because one’s grocery store does a booming business in diapers while the other’s has a whole aisle devoted to Centrum Silver.

In Morningburg, young workers are rapid, plastic learners, eager to try out new ways of doing things. Since they’re still hoping to make a name for themselves and maybe get rich, they take a lot of risks. They push their managers to expand into new markets, propose iffy but innovative product lines, maybe start their own firm if the boss won’t let them advance fast enough. For the right opportunity, they’ll put in 18-hour days for a year or more.

In Twilight City, time horizons are shorter—people aren’t looking for projects that will make them rich or famous 20 years from now. They are interested in conserving what they have. That’s mostly rational, given Twilighters’ life stage; but studies show that older people worry more than younger ones about losses and are therefore especially averse to risk. Twilighters also tire more easily and need more time off for illness, so hours worked slowly decline each year. Wages stay steady, however; Twilighters, like most people, get very angry if you try to cut their salary.

That makes Twilighters expensive—so when they lose a job, finding another is tough. As a result, Twilighters tend to cling fiercely to their positions, and may block younger workers from getting a foothold in the labor market.

The difficulty of reemployment contributes to Twilight City’s surprisingly high, but somewhat deceptive, rate of entrepreneurship. Looking closely, we find that businesses there are disproportionately owned by semi-retirees who have hung out a consulting shingle, or become part-time caterers, or invested in a hobby business like an antique store. These businesses typically don’t have much growth potential, in part because cautious Twilighters won’t (or can’t) borrow money for expansion.

Morningburg is a boomtown, prone to periodic savage busts when the young strivers realize that those fur-bearing-trout farms they invested in aren’t going to make them rich. Twilight City is a less volatile place—but little change also means little growth.

In theory, smart policy could make Twilight City look a little more like Morningburg: public investment and forced savings could boost research and business development; employment laws could be reformed to make labor markets more flexible; heavy investments could be made in education to improve the productivity of Twilight City’s few young workers.

In practice, all of this is likely to be fiercely opposed by Twilight City’s citizens, who tend to vote against change, particularly if it threatens their pensions or health care. Many of the most vehement public demonstrations in Europe over the past two decades have followed attempts at pension reform.

It is somewhat ironic that the first serious strains caused by Europe’s changing demographics are showing up in the Continent’s welfare budgets, because the pension systems themselves may well have shaped, and limited, Europe’s growth. The 20th century saw international adoption of social-security systems that promised defined benefits paid out of future tax revenue—known to pension experts as “paygo” systems, and to critics as Ponzi schemes. These systems have greatly eased fears of a destitute old age, but multiple studies show that as social-security systems become more generous (and old age more secure), people have fewer children. By one estimate, 50 to 60 percent of the difference between America’s (above-replacement) birthrate and Europe’s can be explained by the latter’s more generous systems. In other words, Europe’s pension system may have set in motion the very demographic decline that helped make that system—and some European governments—insolvent.

Pension and other welfare benefits, promised long ago when the workforce was expanding quickly, are at the heart of Europe’s current fiscal convulsions, which are perhaps a harbinger of worse to come. In David Canning’s view, the 2008 crash and its aftermath have merely moved up a long-inevitable implosion by 10 to 15 years. European nations “had unrealistic systems that were eventually going to cause a crisis,” he told me.

These difficulties are why almost everyone who studies the interaction of rich-world demographics and economic growth recommends raising the retirement age and forcing people to save more on their own, well before a debt crisis hits. “Aging is a good thing,” Canning says. “It means health improvements and longer lives. We only think it’s a bad thing because we’re trying to hang on to these institutions. We should be welcoming these changes, but changing our institutions to match.” He and Bloom, among others, are urging countries to use their demographic dividends wisely—to reinvest them in the things that make their workforces more productive. If they do that, perhaps living standards can keep rising.

“There’s a big difference between aggregate GDP growth and per capita GDP growth,” says Nick Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute. “For personal well-being, what matters is per capita GDP growth. You can certainly imagine a country with declining GDP but increasing per capita well-being.”

You certainly can imagine it, but it seems hard to actually achieve in a country with heavy national debt. If the population is shrinking but the debt burden isn’t, then promises to bondholders will weigh ever more heavily on each person. The government could default, of course, but the resulting crisis would also depress growth.
For the most part, Europe has already spent its demographic dividend. And the recent inability of countries like Spain and Greece to hit their deficit targets illustrates just how difficult coping with financial and fiscal instability can be when growth fails to materialize as expected. Neither voters nor employers were prepared to make the necessary compromises—and as the endless, fractious negotiations over Greek debt show, it is very hard to get them to adjust to reality, even when the alternative is disastrous. We shouldn’t necessarily expect people to become more resigned to compromise as time goes on—quite possibly we should expect the opposite.

Southern Europe is already living in Twilight City. And those of us who live in Morningburg or Afternoonville should pay close attention to what happens next, because eventually, we’re all heading to that neck of the woods. The United Nations estimates that by 2030, the number of people older than 60 will be growing more than three times as fast as the general population. By 2050, one in every five people will be over 60. In the developed world, the proportion will be more like one in three. Europe (along with Japan) is at the forefront of an unprecedented shift.

“The problem,” says Canning, “is that aging is a new thing. We know quite well what the effects of going to low fertility are—but we’ve never seen this sort of aging before, so it’s hard to make predictions.”
One prediction is safe, however: aging will present challenges that, as of now, no nation has adequately prepared to face.


(Agradeço a indicação do texto site Culture War Notes)

terça-feira, 6 de março de 2012

A Participação do Goldman Sachs na Fraude Grega

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Para que a Grécia conseguisse entrar na Zona do Euro, o país mentiu sobre seus números de déficit público e de evolução da dívida pública. Quem colaborou com a fraude foi o banco Goldman Sachs. O mundo já sabia disso, no entanto, hoje mais detalhes da fraude foram revelados pela Bloomberg. A transação feita com a Grécia foi bem lucrativa para o banco e a manipulação de informação usada exibiu um país que apresentava queda na relação dívida/PIB e assim podia ingressar na Zona do Euro em 2001.

A transação é bem complexa, o assunto exige muito conhecimento técnico, e o texto da Bloomberg não explica em detalhes. Mas a Bloomberg diz que a transação entre o Goldman Sachs  e a Grécia trocou dívida emitida pela Grécia em dólares e ienes para euros utilizando uma taxa de câmbio histórica, um mecanismo que implicava uma redução da dívida. E também usou um swap (troca) de taxa de juros que não tinha base no mercado para pagar o empréstimo. Esses swaps permitiram às contrapartes trocar duas formas de pagamento de juros, como as taxas fixas ou flutuantes, referenciados a um valor nominal da dívida. Os custos de negociação sobre o swap subiu porque o negócio tinha um valor nocional de mais de 15 bilhões de euros, mais do que o montante do empréstimo em si. O negócio significou que o Goldman Sachs cobrou taxa de serviços proporcionalmente mais altas do que para negociações mais elevadas e complexas.


Interessante também foi que hoje o jornal The Telegraph explicou o histórico da crise da dívida na Grécia por meio de figuras, como esta abaixo,vale a pena clicar no link. O texto é bastante didático:



Voltando ao Goldman Sachs, é a velha história do que é chamado nos Estados Unidos de "crony capitalism" (falso capitalismo). Nós brasileiros conhecemos isso muito bem, a relação espúria entre o mercado privado e o governo.

O Goldman Sachs é conhecidíssimo nos Estdos Unidos, por sempre fornecer pessoal do seu quadro para fazer parte do Banco Central (Federal Reserve) ou do Tesouro norte-americanos. Os atuais presidente do Federal Reserve e o secretários do Tesouro têm relações íntimas com o Goldman Sachs. O banco que mais contribuiu (e o segundo maior contribuidor de todos) para a eleição do Obama foi o Goldman Sachs. Aqui vai um texto da relação Obama e Goldman Sachs de Michelle Malkin. No governo Bush, eles também estavam no governo. O ex-secretário do Tesouro no governo Bush, Henry Paulson, foi presidente do Goldman Sachs, e por aí vai.

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sexta-feira, 2 de março de 2012

Economia Chinesa e a Política de Filho Único

Um texto de hoje da Bloomberg, agência de notícias do mercado financeiro, discute o efeito da política de um filho na economia da China. A política foi adotada para supostamente aliviar a pobreza. Resultado da política hoje: pobreza.

A política do filho único foi criada em 1979 e provocou milhões de abortos, especialmente de meninas. O grande ativista da China, Chen Guangcheng, lutou fortemente contra isso. 

Não há nenhuma discussão moral no texto da Bloomberg, nunca há textos sobre moral no mercado financeiro, que possui uma visão de curtíssimo prazo e não costuma discutir números com governos, para evitar perder mercado.Mas eles discutem o problema do aumento do número de meninos em relação às meninas com os milhões de abortos.

Sem falar em questões morais e mesmo de necessidade de meninas para casamentos, talvez como a política de filho único gerou um problema econômico, pela queda no número de jovens para a força de trabalho, a China passe da política de filho único para a política de morte ao velho.

Mas vamos ao texto da Bloomberg, traduzo grande parte do texto abaixo:

Enquanto o maior Congresso Nacional do mundo reúne-se em Pequim para se preparar para uma nova liderança, o provável sucessor Xi Jinping herdará um obstáculo para o crescimento que remonta quase à época de Mao Tsé-Tung: a política do filho único

Implementada em 1979 para aliviar a pobreza, a restrição no tamanho da família vai cortar o número de pessoas de 15 a 24 anos, o esteio de fábricas que levou ao crescimento de duas décadas, em 27 por cento para 164 milhões até 2025, segundo as Nações Unidas.. Ao mesmo tempo, o investimento que alimentaram mais da metade da expansão do ano passado 9,2 por cento será limitada pelo aumento dos custos com pensões e cuidados de saúde, pois aqueles com idade superior a 65 por cento aumentaram 78% para 195 milhões.

"Esta é uma das últimas chances para mudar a política antes que as coisas piorem muito", disse Helen Qiao, chefe economista do Morgan Stanley em Hong Kong. "Se eles começam a levantar a restrição de um único filho em habitantes urbanos agora, a economia pode ter um impulso de pessoas ainda desejam ter mais de uma criança." 

Aumentar a taxa de fecundidade de 2,3 filhos por mulher, de cerca de 1,6, reduziria o declínio na força de trabalho pela metade até 2050 para 8,8 por cento, de 17,3 por cento, segundo a ONU.  

Relaxar a política do filho único é "urgente" para ajudar a mudar a economia na direção de maior consumo, Qiao disse. "Aumenta a força de trabalho terá 16 anos, mas as pessoas vão ter bebês agora eo impulso para o consumo virá de imediato." 

Khiem Do, chefe Hong Kong com base em estratégia multiasset da Baring Asset Management Ltd., que administra cerca de US $ 46 bilhões, disse uma flexibilização da política ajudaria a "consumidor e indústrias da habitação, consumo duráveis ​​e de construção".  

Isso pode não ser suficiente para convencer os quase 3.000 delegados para a próxima semana do Congresso Nacional Popular para reverter as regras que têm sido um pilar da política do Partido Comunista por três décadas e são apoiados por cidades, incluindo Xangai, que enfrentam custos crescentes de pensão. 

"Uma súbita inversão de marcha não é provável", disse Cai Yong, pesquisador do Centro de População Carolina na University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. "O governo está mais preocupado com problemas de curto prazo. Mais e mais pessoas a ver o problema, mas não há urgência para mudá-la porque é a queima lenta. " 

O governo já permite algumas exceções, como permitir que as famílias rurais ter um segundo filho se o primeiro for uma menina. Casais em algumas regiões é permitido um segundo filho se ambos os pais são filhos únicos. Grupos étnicos minoritários são excluídos da restrição. Aqueles que podem pagar uma multa podem ter um segundo ou terceiro bebê. "

A China vai mudar sua política do filho único", disse Ronald Wan, diretor de Hong Kong com base na gestão China Merchants Securities Co. "Não vai ser de noite. Eles vão fazer o ajuste fino, pouco a pouco. Dairy Milk e as empresas relacionadas com as crianças, como a educação, vestuário, será beneficiada. "  

O dilema enfrentado cidades da China é que o fim da política do filho único, implementada três anos após a morte de Mao, significaria mais dinheiro necessário para as escolas e instalações das crianças, assim como os governos locais enfrentam surgindo contas para pensões e cuidados para os idosos.  

A População do Município de Xangai e da Comissão de Planejamento Familiar no ano passado rejeitou uma proposta para permitir que os casais a terem dois filhos, porque afectaria um sistema que já tem de lidar com o envelhecimento da população.

Expandindo o sistema chinês de pensões rudimentar para todos os trabalhadores custaria 7 por cento do PIB, ou 411 bilião dólares, subindo para 15 por cento do PIB em 2050, como o número de triplos pensionistas, de acordo com Richard Jackson, diretor da Iniciativa Global de Envelhecimento do Centro de Estudos Estratégicos e Internacionais em Washington. O conjunto de trabalhadores capazes de pagar os impostos vai cair por 233 a 682 milhões, as projeções da ONU mostram.

Relutância da China para acabar com a política também está enraizada no diz respeito a uma explosão populacional prejudicaria o progresso econômico, uma teoria proposta pelo economista político Thomas Malthus dois séculos atrás, disse Wang Feng, diretor do Centro Brookings-Tsinghua, uma joint venture entre Tsinghua da China University e com sede em Washington Brookings Institution. 

"A sombra malthusiana é realmente escura e pesada sobre a cabeça da China", disse Wang. "A China perdeu tanto tempo já. Agora o tempo está realmente acabando. " 

Taxa de fertilidade do Japão é 1,42 enquanto que em os EUA é 2,08.  

Sem medidas para relaxar a política do filho único e incentivar mais crianças, a taxa da China pode afundar para fechar a 1 dentro de 20 anos. 

 A China está "atirando no próprio pé" e deve oferecer incentivos às famílias para ter mais filhos, disse Wang. Em Xangai a taxa de fecundidade foi de cerca de 0,79 no ano encerrado em outubro de 2010, segundo os últimos dados do departamento de estatísticas da cidade.  

Pior ainda, a política levou a milhares de fetos abortados, muitos deles do sexo feminino por causa da importância das crianças do sexo masculino na sociedade chinesa, causando um desequilíbrio entre os sexos. Um estudo de 2007 pela Divisão de População do Estado e Comissão de Planejamento Familiar, disse que até 2020 haverá 30 milhões de homens mais em idade de casar do que as mulheres, de acordo com a agência de notícias estatal Xinhua.  

O "grande grupo de infelizes, insatisfeitos" homens, incapazes de encontrar esposas, "é claramente uma preocupação social", disse Wang.  

Alguns pais viajam para Hong Kong para ter um segundo filho em um esforço para contornar as regras, de acordo com hospitais da cidade. Mais de 230.000 bebês nasceram de mães continental em Hong Kong na década de 2010, de acordo com o Censo da cidade e Departamento de Estatística.