quinta-feira, 30 de abril de 2015

Ajuste Fiscal: "Ótimo, mas não no meu bolso"


A foto acima mostra o milionário George Soros se divertindo com o amigo Barack Obama. O ícone do mercado financeiro e o ícone da esquerda global.

Toda fez que vejo alguém defender ajuste fiscal ou tributação sobre os ricos eu me pergunto se a pessoa se sujeita a entregar o dinheiro do próprio bolso. O cara fala "temos que fazer o ajuste fiscal, cortar na carne". Mas é na carne dos outros. Geralmente, os outros são os mais pobres, aqueles que não têm voz, a maioria que não faz cartel, nem lobby. A classe média, aquela que trabalha e não vive de estado.

George Soros, o super milionário, é a favor que Obama tribute mais os ricos. Mas ele paga seus impostos da forma correta?

Vejam texto de hoje do site Zero Hedge:

Billionaire Hypocrisy: George Soros May Owe $7 Billion In Taxes


  
“You support President Obama’s proposal to increase taxes on the wealthy?” That was the question put to George Soros on CNN some three years ago. Here was his answer:
“Yes, very much… the super bubble really resulted in creating a great increase in inequality, and now we have the after effect where you have slow growth, but if you could have better distribution of income, then the average American would actually be better off.”
There’s no question that “everyday Americans” (as a reminder, those are the people Hillary Clinton wants to help by running for president… well, those people and perhaps a few foreign governments and any investment bank who is willing to pay her husband six figures for a speech) would be better off if they got a larger piece of the pie, but as we’ve seen over the past several months, that’s not likely to happen as wage growth declines for the 80% of American workers classified by the BLS as “non-supervisory” even as the country’s supervisors see their pay increase, and as Fed policy continues to inflate the assets most likely to be concentrated in the hands of the wealthy. As this sad reality continues to play itself out destroying the American Middle Class in the process, we wondered if Soros was doing his best to ameliorate the situation by redistributing more of his vast wealth to the very same “average Americans” about which he expressed so much concern in 2012. The short answer: no. 
Via Bloomberg:
George Soros likes to say the rich should pay more taxes. A substantial part of his wealth, though, comes from delaying them. While building a record as one of the world’s greatest investors, the 84-year-old billionaire used a loophole that allowed him to defer taxes on fees paid by clients and reinvest them in his fund, where they continued to grow tax-free. At the end of 2013, Soros—through Soros Fund Management—had amassed $13.3 billion through the use of deferrals, according to Irish regulatory filings by Soros…

Congress closed the loophole in 2008 and ordered hedge fund managers who used it to pay the accumulated taxes by 2017. A New York-based money manager such as Soros would be subject to a federal rate of 39.6 percent, combined state and city levies totaling 12 percent, and an additional 3.8 percent tax on investment income to pay for Obamacare, according to Andrew Needham, a tax partner at Cravath, Swaine & Moore. Applying those rates to Soros’s deferred income would create a tax bill of $6.7 billion…

When Soros founded his firm, nothing in U.S. law prevented money managers from postponing the acceptance of client fees and letting the money remain in their funds, where it could grow untaxed. But doing so wasn’t really an option for funds based in the U.S., because if managers didn’t take the fees, their clients wouldn’t be able to deduct them from their own taxable income.

Hedge fund managers could circumvent this obstacle by setting up parallel offshore funds for investors who weren’t subject to U.S. taxes and who therefore didn’t care whether their fund manager deferred taxes on the fees. That way, the fees—typically 2 percent of the amount invested and 20 percent of any profits—plus any investment gains, could grow without being taxed until the managers withdrew the money…

A manager with Soros’s track record who started with $12 million from investors, took 20 percent of the profits, and reinvested that money tax-free over 40 years, would end up with $15.9 billion. If that same manager paid federal, state, and local taxes on the fees and related investment gains before reinvesting them, the figure would shrink to $2.4 billion…
Here’s the simple math: 


In the end, it would appear that we simply have yet another case of billionaire hypocrisy: "please raise taxes on all the uber-wealthy... except me."

segunda-feira, 27 de abril de 2015

Estados Unidos em Chamas: Guerra Racial.



Vejam estas fotos dos conflitos de rua e saques que ocorrem hoje e nos últimos dias na cidade de Baltimore nos Estados Unidos, por conta da morte de um negro que morreu quando estava sob custódia da polícia. Comerciantes têm de dizer que os donos são negros para evitar saques.

Até a SWAT, força especial dos Estados Unidos, chegou ao local.

Mas a Casa Branca de Obama diz apenas que é problema local. E a imprensa não perturba. Se fosse o Bush, o mundo estaria todo atacando-o. Seria capa dos jornais brasileiros de hoje e de amanhã. 

Para ver vídeos sobre os protestos, clique aqui. Agradeço as fotos ao site Weasel Zippers


Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 3.48.31 PM
The family asked specifically to stop the protests for today because of the funeral. Great respect they’re showing for the man for whom they say they’re ‘protesting’.
—-
CNN journalist injured:
Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 5.35.07 PM
Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 5.19.33 PM
Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 5.16.26 PM
Screen Shot 2015-04-27 at 2.39.30 PM

sexta-feira, 24 de abril de 2015

O Pimeiro "Dia da Terra" e Ira Einhorn


Vocês sabem quem é Ira Einhorn (foto)? Ele foi um dos primeiros líderes do movimento ambientalista. Ele foi o mestre de cerimônia do primeiro Dia da Terra, no dia 22 de abril de 1970.

Hoje Ira Einhorn está em prisão perpétua. Por quê?

Ele matou e decompôs o corpo da namorada, guardando em um closet, até ser descoberto. Ele fugiu dos Estados Unidos, mas foi extraditado pela França, foi condenado e hoje continua preso.

Eu sempre costumo lembrar dele quando vejo ambientalista radicais, tão preocupados com o planeta e odiando tanto a humanidade, a ponto de pedir a morte de milhões (por qualquer método, aborto, guerra, etc.).

Leiam mais sobre Ira Einhorn no site da NBC News.

terça-feira, 21 de abril de 2015

Argentina: Que Passa com este País? Para mim: Apego à Derrota.


No meu outro blog, Thyself, O Lord, eu falei que uma das condições para se saber como pensa o Papa Francisco é conhecer a Argentina.

Samuel Gregg do Acton Institute fez um bom relato do que é a Argentina, em um texto chamado Weeping for Argentina (Chorando pela Argentina).

Eu já visitei a Argentina duas vezes, e sempre me assustei ao ver como eles se apegam desesperadamente a políticas que foram abandonadas à tempos por tantos países. E que já se provou errada tantas vezes na própria Argentina. Além do fato de como o populismo encontra terreno tão fértil por lá. Mais do que nas regiões mais pobres do Brasil.

Eu resumo dizendo que acho que Argentina tem apego à derrota. A vitória que se alcança com políticas básicas de desenvolvimento é algo indesejado por lá.

Vejam texto de Samuel Gregg, abaixo:

Weeping for Argentina

“There are countries which are rich and countries which are poor. And there are poor countries which are growing rich. And then there is Argentina.”
This saying, attributed to the 2010 Nobel Laureate for Literature, Peru’s Mario Vargas Llosa, is perhaps the pithiest description of what many regard as the twentieth century textbook-case of economic decay. Fifteen years into the twenty-first century and in the run-up to national elections in October, there’s no indication that Argentina will change course anytime soon. That’s partly because the Argentine economy’s seemingly intractable problems mirror deep-set political and cultural dysfunctionalities that most of the nation’s elites—and, it should be said, many ordinary Argentines—have little interest in addressing.
The first thing I noticed while recently lecturing in Argentina was just how much conditions had deteriorated since my last visit in 2010. The center of Buenos Aires is an impressive mixture of Art Deco, Baroque, nineteenth-century Parisian, and colonial styles alongside often surprisingly tasteful modern architecture. Amidst those same streets, however, it’s hard not to observe the increased number of beggars, the people befuddled by drink and drugs, the prostitutes, and the numerous homeless sleeping in doorways and the many elegant parks. Moreover, once you drive a few miles away from Buenos Aires’s center, you quickly encounter shanty towns that are no-go areas for the police.
Such contrasts are a common backdrop to contemporary Argentina. Another disparity is between the rampant inflation and general decline in living standards on the one hand, and the interminable “equality-and-social-justice” rhetoric that rules public discourse on the other. The brutal reality is that twelve years of the combined presidencies of the late Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Kirchner and their leftist-populist economic policies have—in the name of promoting greater economic equality and social justice—helped drive Argentina even further into economic decrepitude.
In 2013, Uruguay’s then-President José Mujica—a former leftist guerrilla who’s no conservative—disapprovingly labeled the Argentine government’s approach to the economy as “autarchist.” Such policies have included nationalizing large industries, increasing protectionism, import-substitution measures, on-going expansions of regulation, and the establishment of currency controls. Depending on who you talk to in Argentina, there are at least five official and unofficial exchange rates for the Argentine peso. Unsurprisingly, no one’s anxious to use the government-mandated rates. Most people opt for what’s called the “blue market.” When I queried why the word “blue” was used, I was informed: “Well, it’s a more elegant word than ‘black.’”
Then there is the endemic corruption that pervades Argentina (not to mention most of Latin America). If you want to understand why Pope Francis hammers away at the iniquity of corruption, consider the primary economic context with which he’s familiar. The World Economic Forum’s 2014-2015 Global Competiveness Report ranked Argentina as 139 in the world (on a descending scale of 144) for “ethics and corruption” and 141 for “undue influence.” Corruption is especially widespread in the Argentine judiciary and police, not to mention among politicians, with the Kirchner family being only the most prominent politicos accused of involvement.
On a broader level, the IMF has maintained that the Argentine government has been lying about inflation and growth statistics for years. Seen from this standpoint, the much-publicized killing of the prosecutor Alberto Nisman fits a wider pattern that sooner-or-later becomes characteristic of all leftist-populist regimes: i.e., systematic criminality.
These are just some of the reasons why Argentina was recently ranked 169 (out of 178) on the 2015 Index of Economic Freedom: right next to models of economic rectitude such as the two Congos, Zimbabwe, North Korea, and Venezuela. This translates directly into a burdensome regulatory environment for domestic businesses. On the World Bank’s 2015 Ease of Doing Business Index, Argentina ranked 124 (out of 189) with an even worse rating (146) for ease in starting a business. Naturally the same conditions deter foreign companies from investing in the first place.
Part of the left-populist playbook when things inevitably go wrong is to blame everyone else for the problems, especially foreigners. Kirchnerism’s particular list of bogeymen includes hedge funds, the IMF, America, and scheming “neoliberals.” President Kirchner has also tried to divert Argentines’ attention from their economic plight by seeking—rather like General Galtieri’s junta in 1982—to increase tensions with Britain over the Falklands.
This in turn underscores an even deeper problem in the Argentine body politic: the reluctance to concede that Argentina’s problems are largely self-inflicted. No one made the Argentine electorate vote the Kirchners into power on three occasions. No one outside Argentina forced the Kirchner diarchy to embrace left-populist economics. No one beyond Argentina’s borders compels Argentines to engage in corruption. As for the rampant clientelismthat infects Argentina from top to bottom, it requires two parties: those who use public office to offer favors in return for votes, and those who accept the patronage and then vote accordingly. That means millions of ordinary Argentines are complicit in practices that have poisoned the country’s economy.
So, I was constantly asked in Argentina, what should the country do? More often than not, such questions were prefaced by declarations that Argentina needed strong leaders to turn itself around.
The truth, however, is that Argentina doesn’t need any more “great men,” let alone another populist caudillo. Instead Argentina needs fundamental reforms of its political, legal, and economic institutions. Argentina’s institutions are among the weakest in the world, being ranked by the aforementioned World Economic Forum report at 137 out of 144.
Rectifying this calamitous situation is more easily said than done. Institutional transformation is hard, calls for patience, and takes a long time. In modern democracies in which voters have short memories and even shorter-term horizons, this is increasingly a big ask. It also entails acknowledgment that poverty’s long-term diminishment owes less to wealth redistribution than it does to stable, economic growth-enhancing institutions. In a continent that’s almost as obsessed with economic equality as your average Western European, this would be tantamount to an intellectual revolution.
In Argentina’s case, such changes also mean facing up to the fact that the two political figures invested with pseudo-religious status by many Argentines—Juan and Eva Perón—not only contributed significantly to the nation’s long-term decline, but urgently need de-deification. Even today, one sees prominent pictures and well-kept memorials to the Peróns promiscuously scattered throughout Argentine cities and towns. What better way for Argentina to put distance between itself and populism than by acknowledging just how much damage the Peróns inflicted—and Perónist-like demagoguery continues to foist—upon the country?
The scale of Kirchernism’s failure, not to mention its sheer tawdriness, has created perhaps unique conditions for disavowing this past. But the real question is whether ordinary Argentines and their leaders are willing to make the mental and cultural leap as October’s elections draw closer.
“Anyone,” I was repeatedly informed during my Argentine visit, “would be better than Cristina.” Alas, Argentina’s economic difficulties are such that much more is needed than just “not Cristina.” What’s required is wholesale rejection of entire ways of thinking and practices that are buttressed by attitudes and priorities apparently hardwired into Argentina’s retrograde economic culture.
In that regard, I’m afraid, realism about Argentina, to paraphrase a former Israeli prime minister, involves belief in miracles.

quinta-feira, 16 de abril de 2015

A História Secreta do BIS - Banco que Domina o Mundo


Interessante, muito interessante. Acho que o livro Tower of Basel deve ser lido junto com o entendimento da história da formação do Federal Reserve.

Vamos para um pouco do que tem o livro divulgado no site Zero Hedge. A parte sobre o comportamento do BIS na Segunda Guerra é muito relevante.


First unofficial meeting of the BIS Board of Directors in Basel, April 1930
* * *
The following is an excerpt from TOWER OF BASEL: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World by Adam LeBor.  Reprinted with permission from PublicAffairs.
The world’s most exclusive club has eighteen members. They gather every other month on a Sunday evening at 7 p.m. in conference room E in a circular tower block whose tinted windows overlook the central Basel railway station. Their discussion lasts for one hour, perhaps an hour and a half. Some of those present bring a colleague with them, but the aides rarely speak during this most confidential of conclaves. The meeting closes, the aides leave, and those remaining retire for dinner in the dining room on the eighteenth floor, rightly confident that the food and the wine will be superb. The meal, which continues until 11 p.m. or midnight, is where the real work is done. The protocol and hospitality, honed for more than eight decades, are faultless. Anything said at the dining table, it is understood, is not to be repeated elsewhere.
....
Those discussions, say central bankers, must be confidential. “When you are at the top in the number one post, it can be pretty lonely at times. It is helpful to be able to meet other number ones and say, ‘This is my problem, how do you deal with it?’” King continued. “Being able to talk informally and openly about our experiences has been immensely valuable. We are not speaking in a public forum. We can say what we really think and believe, and we can ask questions and benefit from others.”

All the governors present at the two-day gathering are assured of total confidentiality, discretion, and the highest levels of security. The meetings take place on several floors that are usually used only when the governors are in attendance. The governors are provided with a dedicated office and the necessary support and secretarial staff. The Swiss authorities have no juridisdiction over the BIS premises. Founded by an international treaty, and further protected by the 1987 Headquarters Agreement with the Swiss government, the BIS enjoys similar protections to those granted to the headquarters of the United Nations, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and diplomatic embassies. The Swiss authorities need the permission of the BIS management to enter the bank’s buildings, which are described as “inviolable.”
The BIS has the right to communicate in code and to send and receive correspondence in bags covered by the same protection as embassies, meaning they cannot be opened. The BIS is exempt from Swiss taxes. Its employees do not have to pay income tax on their salaries, which are usually generous, designed to compete with the private sector. The general man- ager’s salary in 2011 was 763,930 Swiss francs, while head of departments were paid 587,640 per annum, plus generous allowances. The bank’s extraordinary legal privileges also extend to its staff and directors. Senior managers enjoy a special status, similar to that of diplomats, while carrying out their duties in Switzerland, which means their bags cannot be searched (unless there is evidence of a blatant criminal act), and their papers are inviolable. The central bank governors traveling to Basel for the bimonthly meetings enjoy the same status while in Switzerland. All bank officials are immune under Swiss law, for life, for all the acts carried out during the discharge of their duties. The bank is a popular place to work and not just because of the salaries. Around six hundred staff come from over fifty countries. The atmosphere is multi-national and cosmopolitan, albeit very Swiss, emphasizing the bank’s hierarchy. Like many of those working for the UN or the IMF, some of the staff of the BIS, especially senior management, are driven by a sense of mission, that they are working for a higher, even celestial purpose and so are immune from normal considerations of accountability and transparency.
The bank’s management has tried to plan for every eventuality so that the Swiss police need never be called. The BIS headquarters has high-tech sprinkler systems with multiple back-ups, in-house medical facilities, and its own bomb shelter in the event of a terrorist attack or armed conflagration. The BIS’s assets are not subject to civil claims under Swiss law and can never be seized.
The BIS strictly guards the bankers’ secrecyThe minutes, agenda, and actual attendance list of the Global Economy Meeting or the ECC are not released in any form. This is because no official minutes are taken, although the bankers sometimes scribble their own notes. Sometimes there will be a brief press conference or bland statement afterwards but never anything detailed. This tradition of privileged confidentiality reaches back to the bank’s foundation.
What, then, does this matter to the rest of us? Bankers have been gathering confidentially since money was first invented. Central bankers like to view themselves as the high priests of finance, as technocrats overseeing arcane monetary rituals and a financial liturgy understood only by a small, self-selecting elite.
But the governors who meet in Basel every other month are public servants. Their salaries, airplane tickets, hotel bills, and lucrative pensions when they retire are paid out of the public purse. The national reserves held by central banks are public money, the wealth of nations. The central bankers’ discussions at the BIS, the information that they share, the policies that are evaluated, the opinions that are exchanged, and the subsequent decisions that are taken, are profoundly political. Central bankers, whose independence is constitutionally protected, control monetary policy in the developed world. They manage the supply of money to national economies. They set interest rates, thus deciding the value of our savings and investments. They decide whether to focus on austerity or growth. Their decisions shape our lives.
The BIS’s tradition of secrecy reaches back through the decades. During the 1960s, for example, the bank hosted the London Gold Pool.Eight countries pledged to manipulate the gold market to keep the price at around thirty-five dollars per ounce, in line with the provisions of the Bretton Woods Accord that governed the post–World War II international financial system. Although the London Gold Pool no longer exists, its successor is the BIS Markets Committee, which meets every other month on the occasion of the governors’ meetings to discuss trends in the financial markets. Officials from twenty-one central banks attend. The committee releases occasional papers, but its agenda and discussions remain secret.
Nowadays the countries represented at the Global Economy Meetings together account for around four-fifths of global gross domestic product (GDP)— most of the produced wealth of the world—according to the BIS’s own statistics. Central bankers now “seem more powerful than politicians,” wrote The Economist newspaper, “holding the destiny of the global economy in their hands.” How did this happen? The BIS, the world’s most secretive global financial institution, can claim much of the credit. From its first day of existence, the BIS has dedicated itself to furthering the interests of central banks and building the new architecture of transnational finance. In doing so, it has spawned a new class of close-knit global technocrats whose members glide between highly-paid positions at the BIS, the IMF, and central and commercial banks.
The founder of the technocrats’ cabal was Per Jacobssen, the Swedish economist who served as the BIS’s economic adviser from 1931 to 1956. The bland title belied his power and reach. Enormously influential, well connected, and highly regarded by his peers, Jacobssen wrote the first BIS annual reports, which were—and remain—essential reading throughout the world’s treasuries. Jacobssen was an early supporter of European federalism. He argued relentlessly against inflation, excessive government spending, and state intervention in the economy. Jacobssen left the BIS in 1956 to take over the IMF. His legacy still shapes our world. The consequences of his mix of economic liberalism, price obsession, and dismantling of national sovereignty play out nightly in the European news bulletins on our television screens.
The BIS’s defenders deny that the organization is secretive. The bank’s archives are open and researchers may consult most documents that are more than thirty years old. The BIS archivists are indeed cordial, helpful, and professional. The bank’s website includes all its annual reports, which are downloadable, as well as numerous policy papers produced by the bank’s highly regarded research department. The BIS publishes detailed accounts of the securities and derivatives markets, and international banking statistics. But these are largely compilations and analyses of information already in the public domain. The details of the bank’s own core activities, including much of its banking operations for its customers, central banks, and international organizations, remain secret. The Global Economy Meetings and the other crucial financial gatherings that take place at Basel, such as the Markets Committee, remain closed to outsiders. Private individuals may not hold an account at BIS, unless they work for the bank. The bank’s opacity, lack of accountability, and ever-increasing influence raises profound questions— not just about monetary policy but transparency, accountability, and how power is exercised in our democracies.
* * *
WHEN I EXPLAINED to friends and acquaintances that I was writing a book about the Bank for International Settlements, the usual response was a puzzled look, followed by a question: “The bank for what?” My interlocutors were intelligent people, who follow current affairs. Many had some interest in and understanding of the global economy and financial crisis. Yet only a handful had heard of the BIS. This was strange, as the BIS is the most important bank in the world and predates both the IMF and the World Bank. For decades it has stood at the center of a global network of money, power, and covert global influence.
The BIS was founded in 1930. It was ostensibly set up as part of the Young Plan to administer German reparations payments for the First World War. The bank’s key architects were Montagu Norman, who was the governor of the Bank of England, and Hjalmar Schacht, the president of the Reichsbank who described the BIS as “my” bank. The BIS’s founding members were the central banks of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, and a consortium of Japanese banks. Shares were also offered to the Federal Reserve, but the United States, suspicious of anything that might infringe on its national sovereignty, refused its allocation. Instead a consortium of commercial banks took up the shares: J. P. Morgan, the First National Bank of New York, and the First National Bank of Chicago.
The real purpose of the BIS was detailed in its statutes: to “promote the cooperation of central banks and to provide additional facilities for international financial operations.” It was the culmination of the central bankers’ decades-old dream, to have their own bank—powerful, independent, and free from interfering politicians and nosy reporters. Most felicitous of all, the BIS was self-financing and would be in perpetuity. Its clients were its own founders and shareholders— the central banks. During the 1930s, the BIS was the central meeting place for a cabal of central bankers, dominated by Norman and Schacht. This group helped rebuild Germany. The New York Times described Schacht, widely acknowledged as the genius behind the resurgent German economy, as “The Iron-Willed Pilot of Nazi Finance.” During the war, the BIS became a de-facto arm of the Reichsbank, accepting looted Nazi gold and carrying out foreign exchange deals for Nazi Germany.
The bank’s alliance with Berlin was known in Washington, DC, and London. But the need for the BIS to keep functioning, to keep the new channels of transnational finance open, was about the only thing all sides agreed on. Basel was the perfect location, as it is perched on the northern edge of Switzerland and sits al- most on the French and German borders. A few miles away, Nazi and Allied soldiers were fighting and dying. None of that mattered at the BIS. Board meetings were suspended, but relations between the BIS staff of the belligerent nations remained cordial, professional, and productive. Nationalities were irrelevantThe overriding loyalty was to international finance. The president, Thomas McKittrick, was an American. Roger Auboin, the general manager, was French. Paul Hechler, the assistant general manager, was a member of the Nazi party and signed his correspondence “Heil Hitler.” Rafaelle Pilotti, the secretary general, was Italian. Per Jacobssen, the bank’s influential economic adviser, was Swedish. His and Pilotti’s deputies were British.
After 1945, five BIS directors, including Hjalmar Schacht, were charged with war crimes. Germany lost the war but won the economic peace, in large part thanks to the BIS. The international stage, contacts, banking networks, and legitimacy the BIS provided, first to the Reichsbank and then to its successor banks, has helped ensure the continuity of immensely powerful financial and economic interests from the Nazi era to the present day.
* * *
As the world’s economy lurches from crisis to crisis, financial institutions are scrutinized as never before. Legions of reporters, bloggers, and investigative journalists scour the banks’ every move. Yet somehow, apart from brief mentions on the financial pages, the BIS has largely managed to avoid critical scrutiny. Until now.

quarta-feira, 15 de abril de 2015

"Dívida dos EUA não é de US$ 13 trilhões é de US$ 210 trilhões". Insustentável. E a do Brasil?


Por um método de cálculo que considera todos os compromissos do governo americano, um professor de economia de Boston, chamado Laurence Kotlikoff, mostrou que a palavra insustentável não consegue definir a dívida pública dos Estados Unidos. Já era.

E no Brasil, qual seria nossa dívida por este método?

Vejamos parte do texto de Ron Haskins da Brookings Institution, sobre o caso americano.

The federal debt is worse than you think

Of all the failures of recent Congresses and Presidents, none is more important than their failure to deal with the nation's long-term debt. Although Congress tied itself in knots trying to address the problem, the growth of debt remains, in the words of the Congressional Budget Office, "unsustainable."
Debt figures tell part of the story. When the Great Recession hit, the federal debt was equal to about 40 percent of GDP. But to fight the recession, Congress enacted an $800 billion dollar stimulus bill. Stimulus spending, combined with already enacted spending and tax policy, resulted in four years of trillion dollar deficits. As a result, the debt ballooned to 78 percent of GDP in 2013, almost twice the pre-recession level. The annual deficit is now declining at a stately pace, but by 2016 it will begin increasing again, and by 2020 under CBO's alternative fiscal scenario, we will once again return to annual deficits above a trillion dollars, thereby once again greatly increasing the national debt.
What's the word for our fiscal situation? Stunning? Shocking? Desperate? In recent testimony before the Senate Budget Committee, Boston University Economics Professor Laurence Kotlikoff, in effect, told the Committee that all of these terms are pathetically inadequate to describe our true fiscal situation. In compelling testimony, Kotlikoff argues that the federal fiscal situation is much worse than the CBO estimates let on. The reason is that CBO's debt estimates do not take into account the full financial obligations the government is committed to honor, especially for future payments of Social Security, Medicare, and interest on the debt. He asserts that the federal government should help the public understand the nation's true fiscal situation by using what economists call "the infinite-horizon fiscal gap," defined as the value of all projected future expenditures minus the value of all projected future receipts using a reasonable discount rate.
What difference does the fiscal gap approach make in our understanding of the true federal debt? CBO tells us that the national debt was a little less than $13 trillion in 2014. But the fiscal gap in that year as calculated by Kotlikoff was $210 trillion, more than 16 times larger than the debt estimated by CBO and already judged, by CBO and many others, to be unsustainable.
Kotlikoff goes on to illustrate that the fiscal gap is increasing at an alarming rate and that delay makes our problem much worse. In 2003, just a little more than a decade ago, the fiscal gap was $60 trillion. But by last year it had catapulted to $210 trillion.


(Agradeço o texto ao site Creative Minority Report)

quinta-feira, 9 de abril de 2015

A Decadência das Universidades.


O renomado historiador Victor Davis Hanson escreveu sobre a decadência das universidades nos Estados Unidos, de como elas não conseguem plenamente nenhum objetivo básico na formação dos estudantes.

Além dos objetivos básicos de uma universidade, ele fala da falta de critérios sólidos para que entrem os melhores estudantes. Fico pensando na falta de um bom vestibular nas universidades brasileiras. Hanson também critica o "politicamente correto" que hipersensibiliza as pessoas. E fala dos elevados preços para estudar nas "boas" universidades. Ele quer um "teste de saída" para ver se os estudantes realmente aprenderam o que estudaram.

Sobre o teste de saída, fico pensando na minha péssima graduação. Eu fui aprender o que eu deveria aprender apenas no mestrado.

É um texto para se pensar. Vejamos parte do que ele diz:


The Modern University Is Failing Students in Every Respect

by Victor Davis Hanson // National Review Online

Modern American universities used to assume four goals.
First, their general education core taught students how to reason inductively and imparted an aesthetic sense through acquiring knowledge of Michelangelo, the Battle of Gettysburg, “Medea” and “King Lear,” Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy,” and astronomy and Euclidean geometry.
Second, campuses encouraged edgy speech and raucous expression — and exposure to all sorts of weird ideas and mostly unpopular thoughts. College talk was never envisioned as boring, politically correct megaphones echoing orthodox pieties.
Third, four years of college trained students for productive careers. Implicit was the university’s assurance that its degree was a wise career investment.
Finally, universities were not monopolistic price gougers. They sought affordability to allow access to a broad middle class that had neither federal subsidies nor lots of money.
The American undergraduate university is now failing on all four counts.
A bachelor’s degree is no longer proof that any graduate can read critically or write effectively. National college-entrance-test scores have generally declined the last few years, and grading standards have as well.
Too often, universities emulate greenhouses where fragile adults are coddled as if they were hothouse orchids. Hypersensitive students are warned about “micro-aggressions” that in the real world would be imperceptible.
Apprehensive professors are sometimes supposed to offer “trigger warnings” that assume students are delicate Victorians who cannot handle landmark authors such as Joseph Conrad or Mark Twain.
“Safe spaces” are designated areas where traumatized students can be shielded from supposedly hurtful or unwelcome language that should not exist in a just and fair world.
...
The collective debt of college students and graduates is more than $1 trillion. Such loans result from astronomical tuition costs that for decades have spiked more rapidly than the rate of inflation.
Today’s campuses have a higher administrator-to-student ratio than ever before. Those who actually teach are now a minority of university employees. Various expensive “centers” address student problems that once were considered either private matters or well beyond the limited resources of the campus.
Is it too late for solutions?
For many youths, vocational school is preferable to college. Americans need to appreciate that training to become a master auto mechanic, paramedic, or skilled electrician is as valuable to society as a cultural-anthropology or feminist-studies curriculum.
There are far too many special studies courses and trendy majors — and far too few liberal-arts surveys of literature, history, art, music, math, and science that for centuries were the sole hallowed methods of instilling knowledge.
Administrators should decide whether they see students as mature, independent adults who handle life’s vicissitudes with courage and without need for restrictions on free expression. Or should students remain perennial weepy adolescents, requiring constant sheltering, solicitousness, and self-esteem building?
Diversity might be better redefined in its most ancient and idealistic sense as differences in opinion and thought rather than just variety in appearance, race, gender, or religion.
A national standardized exit test should be required of all graduates. If colleges predicate admissions in part on performance on the SAT or ACT, they certainly should be assessed on how well — or not so well — students score on similar tests after years of expensive study.
Finally, the federal government should hold universities fiscally accountable. The availability of federal grants should be pegged to a college’s ability to hold annual tuition increases to the rate of inflation.
At this late date, only classically liberal solutions can address what have become illiberal problems.

quarta-feira, 1 de abril de 2015

Vídeo: Como se dá bem nos Negócios (O Company Face)



Vejam abaixo um vídeo divertido chamado "company face- como ter sucesso na carreira".

O vídeo está de acordo com os manuais de administração "formando líderes". Geralmente, eles sugerem um modelo de subserviência total aos superiores, você concorda, você sugere (e não ensina ao chefe), você está do lado dele sempre (acima dos interesses de sua família), você compartilha o pensamento do chefe.

Eu costumo dizer que uma das minhas dificuldades para "subir na carreira" é que eu não compartilho os sorrisos, quando os acho ofensivos ou anti-cristãos. Isto é, não espere que eu divida com você a sua opinião. Eu tenho a minha, e quem molda a minha é Cristo. Cristo me ensina a ser bondoso com todos, a servir todos, mas adorar a apenas um Deus.