Colombia es el pais del absurdo.

Colombia es el pais del absurdo.

Al paso que va la gasolina extra va a ser mas barata que la corriente.Ayer la refinería de cartagena anunció que le bajará 600 pesos a la extra (ya le había bajado 1000 pesos en Enero) quedando así los precios(de refineria no de gasolinera que incluye los margenes del mayorista, de la gasolinera y los impuestos):

3.956,53 la corriente
4.056,53 la extra

Solamente 100 pesos de diferencia vale la mejor calidad de la gasolina extra?

Por supuesto que no.

La gasolina corriente debería bajar con respecto a la extra para reflejar su menor calidad.

Pero esto es Colombia.......

Sobre las revoluciones

Esto escribe Yoani, del blog Generación Y:

"Mientras se preparan extensos dossiers sobre los cincuenta años de la Revolución Cubana, pocos se preguntan si lo celebrado es el cumpleaños de una criatura viva o sólo el aniversario de algo que ocurrió. Las revoluciones no duran medio siglo, les advierto a los que me preguntan. Terminan por devorarse a sí mismas y excretarse en autoritarismo, control e inmovilidad. Expiran siempre que intentan hacerse eternas. Fallecen por querer mantenerse sin cambiar."

Pareciera que Yoani propone alguna especie de revolución permanente.

Pero creo que el problema de las revoluciones es dos:

1. El intentar un gran cambio rapidamente siempre estará destinado al fracaso. Y como los revolucionarios no quieren fracasar se ven obligados a usar mas y mas la coerción. Todos los cambios reales requieren tiempo y suceden muchas veces de forma sutil e imperceptible en el corto plazo.

2. Las "revoluciones" generalmente buscan acceder al poder para cambiar radicalmente una sociedad. Usualmente no buscan redistribuir o devolver el poder a los ciudadanos. Por lo tanto se vuelven autoritarias y conservadoras.

Citas del dia

Del siempre muy citable Thomas Sowell:

"Most people on the left are not opposed to freedom. They are just in favor of all sorts of things that are incompatible with freedom.
Freedom ultimately means the right of other people to do things that you do not approve of. Nazis were free to be Nazis under Hitler. It is only when you are able to do things that other people don't approve that you are free."


"The essence of bigotry is refusing to others the rights that you demand for yourself."

Obama y el mito de las pequeñas donaciones

Desde hace meses empezó a circular en los medios la idea de que la campaña de Obama se financiaba con pequeñas donaciones (que según los expertos en el tema son aquellas menores a 200 dolares).

Pues bien, era un mito (así como que Obama era el cambio). Lo descubrió la organización independiente y no-partidista llamada "campaign institute reform". Estos son algunos apartes del reporte:

"REALITY CHECK: Obama Received About the Same Percentage from Small Donors in 2008 as Bush in 2004
Obama also raised 80% more from large donors than small, outstripping all rivals and predecessors
It turns out that Barack Obama's donors may not have been quite as different as we had thought. Throughout the election season, this organization and others have been reporting that Obama received about half of his discrete contributions in amounts of $200 or less. The Campaign Finance Institute (CFI) noted in past releases that donations are not the same as donors, since many people give more than once. After a more thorough analysis of data from the Federal Election Commission (FEC), it has become clear that repeaters and large donors were even more important for Obama than we or other analysts had fully appreciated. "The myth is that money from small donors dominated Barack Obama's finances," said CFI's executive director Michael J. Malbin. "The reality of Obama's fundraising was impressive, but the reality does not match the myth."


Obama received about 80% more money from large donors (cumulative contributions of at least $1,000) than from small donors. While the large donors thus were responsible for much more of Obama's money than either his small or middle range group, he received somewhat less proportionally from large donors than did his rivals or predecessors. Forty-seven percent of Obama's money came from large donors compared to 56% for Kerry and 60% for both Bush and McCain. However, because Obama's 47% is based on a larger total, that means he also raised significantly more large-donor money in absolute terms than any of his rivals or predecessors.

Much of this money was raised the "old fashioned" way. Since only about 13,000 of those who started out small for Obama ended up crossing the $1,000 threshold, that means the bulk of Obama's $213 million in large-donor contributions during the primaries came from about 85,000 people who started out giving big and stayed there. Much of this large-donor money – perhaps close to a majority – came to the campaign through bundling methods initially perfected by Bush.

According to the Center for Responsive Politics (CRP) – which in the absence of legally mandated disclosure had to use information provided by the campaigns – 561 "bundlers" had raised a minimum of $63 million for Obama by mid-August and 534 people had raised a minimum of $75 million for McCain. The bundlers undoubtedly were responsible for more than these amounts because the campaigns reported the bundlers in ranges and CRP's minimum totals were based conservatively on the low end of each range. A reasonable guess might estimate the real amount at about 50% above the minimum – the mid-point for each range – yielding a total of perhaps about $90 million for Obama as of mid-August and more than $100 million for McCain.

At the top of the bundlers were 47 of Obama's and 65 of McCain's who were listed by the campaigns in mid-August as being responsible for at least $500,000 each. In addition, Public Citizen lists 2,205 people as having contributed in their own names at least $25,000 to joint fundraising committees supporting Obama and 1,846 people as having made similar contributions to joint fundraising committees supporting McCain. "


Con todos los hechos que vienen sucediendo despues de la elección de Obama (o como en este caso, son revelados) me pregunto, si desde la luna de miel del nuevo emperador con la opinión pública de su pais y del mundo durará tanto como sus partidarios mas acerrimos lo esperan.

Cita del dia

"Some may consider freedom may bring chaos to a society. It is in fact true for a society there is no freedom currently, freedom at first may bring some chaos to such society. Societies without freedom under a strong leader may first seem to be in order and people may seem to be happy at first sight but in fact there is an underlying unhappiness hidden where there is no freedom.

Only a freeman feel really responsible for anything. For a non-freeman, all he or she needs to do is to obey the commands from top. Looking at Maslow pyramid, L5 is where the one seeks for freedom. Only a freeman can be innovative. Only an innovative organization can survive in today's competition. An organization can only be innovative if there are innovative individuals in the organization."

Orhan Kalayci, en un grupo de Yahoo

"El ultimo radical"

Interesante entrevista al famoso rector de la universidad Externado de Colombia, Dr. Fernando Hinestrosa.

Pocas veces veo una entrevista en la prensa nacional donde se refleje mi pensamiento.

Aunque me pregunto si el Dr. Hinestrosa practicara lo que dice en la universidad que dirige.

No hay desayuno gratis

La realidad de la medicina estatal en el reino unido, el tipo de modelo "salud universal" que quieren imponernos aquí en Colombia:

"There is a view that all treatments should be available. Unfortunately, that's not possible,'' said Peter Littlejohns, NICE's clinical and public health director. ``There is a limited pot of money.''
He said the four cancer drugs provide a ``marginal benefit at quite often an extreme cost'' and that the agency had to keep in mind that funds spent on the medicines could be used elsewhere to help others at a greater value. ``Those are the hidden patients, the ones who benefit from the things the NHS does spend money on,'' Littlejohns said. "

Que lastima que la Corte Constitucional no entienda que los costos no pueden ser ilimitados.

El "buen Obama"

He estado leyendo con detenimiento el programa o "plataforma" política de Obama. He encontrado buenas (o no tan malas ) ideas que vale la pena destacar teniendo en cuenta que estos son solo promesas:

1. Impuestos:El programa de Obama propone varios recortes o deducciones de impuestos tanto a personas como negocios:

• Promete eliminar impuestos a las ganancias de capital de pequeños y nuevos negocios.
• Promete reducir impuestos a la clase media y los trabajadores.
• Promete reducir impuestos a las empresas que creen trabajos en Estados Unidos y no muevan operaciones al extranjero
• Promete reducir impuestos a las empresas que inviertan en investigación y desarrollo
• Promete reducir impuestos a las familias con hijos para cubrir los gastos de manutención
• Promete otras deducción o reducciones de impuestos para salud, inversión en energía y otras cosas.

Lo bueno digamos es que Obama tambien tiene su lado de "recorta impuestos". Lo malo es que son recortes selectivos, distorsionadores de las actividad económica y discriminatorios. Son básicamente subsidios. Pero se le abona el interes por reducir la carga tributaria, aunque lamentablemente, no de manera igual para todos.

De todas formas, promete una reducción neta de impuestos en toda la economía acompañada de reducción de gastos:

"Obama’s plan will cut taxes overall, reducing revenues to below the levels that prevailed under Ronald Reagan (less than 18.2 percent of GDP). The Obama tax plan is a net tax cut – his tax relief for middle class families is larger than the revenue raised by his tax changes for families over $250,000. Coupled with his commitment to cut unnecessary spending, Obama will pay for this tax relief while bringing down the budget deficit. "

2. Retirada de Irak: Promete una "retirada responsable". Sin embargo, la retirada ya la comenzó Bush así que su propuesta es mas una continuación de la política actual.

3. Sistema de Salud:

• Promete permitir la importación de medicinas desde paises extranjeros. En este tema la administración Bush ha sido proteccionista, probablemente para proteger los intereses de las farmaceúticas que le venden medicinas caras a los Estadounidenses, en teoría, para poder recuperar los costos de investigación y desarrollo
• Promete apoyar el uso de drogas genéricas. En este aspecto parece que va a ser anti-propiedad intelectual. Excelente.
• Promete incrementar la competencia en el sector de seguros de salud aunque no especifíca claramente como

En general en el tema de sistema de salud, Obama parece estar lejos de una nacionalización, aunque sin duda aumentará el intervencionismo. Sin embargo, al permitir la importación de medicina y reducir la protección de la protección intelectual en ese campo, se esta poniendo del lado de los pacientes y de la libertad económica. Además, esto ayudará a bajar los costos.

4. Responsabilidad Fiscal:

• Propone que cualquier nuevo programa o adición de gasto esté acompaña de una reducción de gasto en otra parte o de un incremento de impuestos.
• Propone reducir los gastos en "auxilios" a los niveles de hace 1993.
• Proponer que todos los contratos del gobierno superiores a 25,000 dolares (una suma bastante baje) sean por subasta.
• Promete reducir exenciones de impuestos a grupos especiales. Sin embargo, esto se contradice con sus políticas de impuestos (ver arriba el primer punto)

5. Relaciones exteriores: No hay mucho aquí para destacar como bueno, pero en general promete una postura menos agresiva contra Iran y no continuar la política de "secretismo" de la administración Bush.

6. "Guerra contra las drogas": Solo encontré esto:

"Expand Use of Drug Courts
Obama and Biden will give first-time, non-violent offenders a chance to serve their sentence, where appropriate, in the type of drug rehabilitation programs that have proven to work better than a prison term in changing bad behavior."

Muy pobre. Esperaba mas libertarianismo en este aspecto por parte de Obama

7. Inmigración: Solo dos promesas para destacar:

• Improve Our Immigration System
  Obama and Biden believe we must fix the dysfunctional immigration bureaucracy and increase the number of legal immigrants to keep families together and meet the demand for jobs that employers cannot fill.
• Bring People Out of the Shadows
  Obama and Biden support a system that allows undocumented immigrants who are in good standing to pay a fine, learn English, and go to the back of the line for the opportunity to become citizens.

Definitivamente no es anti-inmigración, creo que esta bien en este aspecto, pero esperaba un poco mas de liberalismo en este aspecto.

Por el momento, estas son las promesas o ideas de Obama que veo buenas o relativamente no tan malas .

Despues iré comentando la larga lista de malas ideas.

La chambonada de los semaforos

Que tal la chambonada del secretario de movilidad del distrito. Cancelaron el contrato de ETB para el mantenimiento de los semaforos en Junio sin tener un reemplazo inmediato.

Hoy estamos a noviembre y la red de semaforos presenta fallas en un 40% creando un caos en las vias.

Que no sorprenda la caida de la popularidad de Samuel Moreno.

Carta de un pequeño empresario a Obama

Mr. Obama,

Given the uproar about the simple question asked you by Joe the plumber, and the persecution that has been heaped on him because he dared to question you, I find myself motivated to say a few things to you myself. While Joe aspires to start a business someday, I already have started not one, but 4 businesses. But first, let me introduce myself. You can call me "Cory the well driller". I am a 54 year old high school graduate. I didn't go to college like you, I was too ready to go "conquer the world" when I finished high school. 25 years ago at age 29, I started my own water well drilling business at a time when the economy here in East Texas was in a tailspin from the crash of the early 80's oil boom. I didn't get any help from the government, nor did I look for any. I borrowed what I could from my sister, my uncle, and even the pawn shop and managed to scrape together a homemade drill rig and a few tools to do my first job. My businesses did not start as a result of privilege. They are the result of my personal drive, personal ambition, self discipline, self reliance, and a determination to treat my customers fairly. From the very start my business provided one other (than myself) East Texan a full time job. I couldn't afford a backhoe the first few years (something every well drilling business had), so I and my helper had to dig the mud pits that are necessary for each and every job with hand shovels. I had to use my 10 year old, 1/2 ton pickup truck for my water tank truck (normally a job for at least a 2 ton truck).

A year and a half after I started the business, I scraped together a 20% down payment to get a modest bank loan and bought a (28 year) old, worn out, slightly bigger drilling rig to allow me to drill the deeper water wells in my area. I spent the next few years drilling wells with the rig while simultaneously rebuilding it between jobs. Through these years I never knew from one month to the next if I would have any work or be able to pay the bills. I got behind on my income taxes one year, and spent the next two years paying that back (with penalty and interest) while keeping up with ongoing taxes. I got behind on my water well supply bill 2 different years (way behind the second time... $80,000.00), and spent over a year paying it back (each time) while continuing to pay for ongoing supplies C.O.D.. Of course, the personal stress endured through these experiences and years is hard to measure. I do have a stent in my heart now to memorialize it all.

I spent the next 10 years developing the reputation for being the most competent and most honest water well driller in East Texas. 2 years along the way, I hired another full time employee for the drilling business so that we could provide full time water well pump service as well as the well drilling. Also, 3 years along the path, I bought a water well screen service machine from a friend, starting business # 2. 5 years later I made a business loan for $100,000.00 to build a new, higher production, computer controlled screen service machine. I had designed the machine myself, and it didn't work out for 3 years so I had to make the loan payments without the benefit of any added income from the new machine. No government program was there to help me with the payments, or to help me sleep at night as I lay awake wondering how I would solve my machine problems or pay my bills. Finally, after 3 years, I got the screen machine working properly, and that provided another full time job for an East Texan in the screen service business.

2 years after that, I made another business loan, this time for $250,000.00, to buy another used drilling rig and all the support equipment needed to run another, larger, drill rig. This provided another 2 full time jobs for East Texans. Again, I spent a couple of years not knowing if I had made a smart move, or a move that would bankrupt me. For the third time in 13 years, I had placed everything I owned on the line, risking everything, in order to build a business.

A couple of years into this, I came up with a bright idea for a new kind of mud pump, a fundamentally necessary pump used on water well drill rigs. I spent my entire life savings to date (just $30,000.00), building a prototype of the pump and took it to the national water well convention to show it off. Customers immediately started coming out of the woodworks to buy the pumps, but there was a problem. I had depleted my assets making the prototype, and nobody would make me a business loan to start production of the new pumps. With several deposits for pump orders in hand, and nowhere to go, I finally started applying for as many credit card as I could find and took cash withdrawals on these cards to the tune of over $150,000.00 (including modest loans from my dear sister and brother), to get this 3rd business going.

Yes, once again, I had everything hanging over the line in an effort to start another business. I had never manufactured anything, and I had to design and bring into production a complex hydraulic machine from an untested prototype to a reliable production model (in six months). How many nights I lay awake wondering if I had just made the paramount mistake of my life I cannot tell you, but there were plenty. I managed to get the pumps into production, which immediately created another 2 full time jobs in East Texas. Some of the models in the first year suffered from quality issues due to the poor workmanship of one of my key suppliers, so I and an employee (another East Texan employed) had to drive across the country to repair customers' pumps, practically from coast to coast. I stood behind the product, and made payments to all the credit cards that had financed me (and my brother and sister). I spent the next 5 years improving and refining the product, building a reputation for the pump and the company, working to get the pump into drill rig manufacturers' product lines, and paying back credit cards. During all this time I continued to manage a growing water well business that was now operating 3 drill rig crews, and 2 well service crews. Also, the screen service business continued to grow. No government programs were there to help me, Mr. Obama, but that's ok, I didn't expect any, nor did I want any. I was too busy fighting to make success happen to sit around waiting for the government to help me.

Now, we have been manufacturing the mud pumps for 7 years, my combined businesses employ 32 full time employees, and distribute $5,000,000.00 annually through the local economy. Now, just 4 months ago I borrowed $1,254,000.00, purchasing computer controlled machining equipment to start my 4th business, a production machine shop. The machine shop will serve the mud pump company so that we can better manufacture our pumps that are being shipped worldwide. Of course, the machine shop will also do work for outside companies as well. This has already produced 2 more full time jobs, and 2 more should develop out of it in the next few months. This should work out, but if it doesn't it will be because you, and the other professional politicians like yourself, will have destroyed our countrys' (and the world) economy with your meddling with mortgage loan programs through your liberal manipulation and intimidation of loaning institutions to make sure that unqualified borrowers could get mortgages. You see, at the very time when I couldn't get a business loan to get my mud pumps into production, you were working with Acorn and the Community Reinvestment Act programs to make sure that unqualified borrowers could buy homes with no down payment, and even no credit or worse yet, bad credit. Even the infamous, liberal, Ninja loans (No Income, No Job or Assets). While these unqualified borrowers were enjoying unrealistically low interest rates, I was paying 22% to 24% interest on the credit cards that I had used to provide me the funds for the mud pump business that has created jobs for more East Texans. It's funny, because after 25 years of turning almost every dime of extra money back into my businesses to grow them, it has been only in the last two years that I have finally made enough money to be able to put a little away for retirement, and now the value of that has dropped 40% because of the policies you and your ilk have perpetrated on our country.

You see, Mr. Obama, I'm the guy you intend to raise taxes on. I'm the guy who has spent 25 years toiling and sweating, fretting and fighting, stressing and risking, to build a business and get ahead. I'm the guy who has been on the very edge of bankruptcy more than a dozen times over the last 25 years, and all the while creating more and more jobs for East Texans who didn't want to take a risk, and would not demand from themselves what I have demanded from myself. I'm the guy you characterize as "the Americans who can afford it the most" that you believe should be taxed more to provide income redistribution "to spread the wealth" to those who have never toiled, sweated, fretted, fought, stressed, or risked anything. You want to characterize me as someone who has enjoyed a life of privilege and who needs to pay a higher percentage of my income than those who have bought into your entitlement culture. I resent you, Mr. Obama, as I resent all who want to use class warfare as a tool to advance their political career. What's worse, each year more Americans buy into your liberal entitlement culture, and turn to the government for their hope of a better life instead of themselves. Liberals are succeeding through more than 40 years of collaborative effort between the predominant liberal media, and liberal indoctrination programs in the public school systems across our land.

What is so terribly sad about this is this. America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self reliance, self motivation, self determination, self discipline, personal betterment, hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach of every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states. If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn't it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government. You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever expanding dependence on government. What's remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn't need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.

You see, I know because I've had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture.

Oh, I know you will say I am uncompassionate. Sorry, Mr. Obama, wrong again. You see, I've seen what the average percentage of your income has been given to charities over the years of 2000 to 2004 (ignoring the years you started running for office - can you pronounce "politically motivated"), you averaged less than 1% annually. And your running mate, Joe Biden, averaged less than ¼% of his annual income in charitable contributions over the last 10 years. Like so many liberals, the two of you want to give to the needy, just as long as it is someone else's money you are giving to them. I won't say what I have given to charities over the last 25 years, but the percentage is several times more than you and Joe Biden. combined (don't you just hate google?). Tell me again how you feel my pain.

In short, Mr. Obama, your political philosophies represent everything that is wrong with our country. You represent the culture of government dependence instead of self reliance; Entitlement mentality instead of personal achievement; Penalization of the successful to reward the unmotivated; Political correctness instead of open mindedness and open debate. If you are successful, you may preside over the final transformation of America from being the greatest and most self-reliant culture on earth, to just another country of whiners and wimps, who sit around looking to the government to solve their problems. Like all of western Europe. All countries on the decline. All countries that, because of liberal socialistic mentalities, have a little less to offer mankind every year.

God help us...

Cory Miller

just a ordinary, extraordinary American, the way a lot of Americans used to be.

P.S. Yes, Mr. Obama, I am a real American... www.cmillerdrilling.com

Links variados sobre la burbuja y la crisis

1. Monetary Policy and Mussaism: We Economists Were Wrong

2. Bubble of Bubbles Due to Asset Inflation:Morgan Stanley Says Bubbles Will Likely Burst Soon

3.Why the Mortgage Crisis Happened

4. Debt and Delusion

5. The Great Inflation

6. The Central (Banking) Importance of Asset Inflation

Cita preocupante del dia

"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the name of liberalism, they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it happened."

Norman Thomas. Fuene: aqui.

Creo que esta cita da una explicación de muchos cambios en las ultimas decadas, promovidos por personas, supuestamente del centro del espectro político o supuestamente meramente intervencionistas.

Los siete pecados capitales de la crisis

Fuente: Steve Breen

Los reyes filosofos de la FED

Brad Delong comenta la causa de la crisis:

"The current financial crisis has its roots in Greenspan's decision to keep interest rates very low in 2002 and 2003 to head off the danger of a deflation-induced double-dip recession, and his subsequent decision that the costs of cleaning up after a housing bubble were likely to be less than the costs of the high unemployment that would be generated by a preemptive attempt to pop a housing-speculation bubble. Two years ago, I would have said that Greenspan's judgment here was correct. Six months ago, I would have said that his judgment was probably correct. Today -- in the middle of the largest nationalizations in history -- I can no longer state that Greenspan made the right calls with respect to the level of interest rates and the housing bubble in the 2000s."


El articulo tambien resume la historia de la banca central y la economía política de la FED vs congreso vs ejecutivo en Estados Unidos.Lo extraño es que no veo llamados a cuestionar los poderes de la banca central. Solo piden mas regulación para los bancos, mientras reconocen que la causa estuvo en las acciones de la FED!

Que la banca central debe tener mucho poder se ha convertido en un tabú incuestionable. Y esta crisis parece que no va a cambiar eso.

Esta es la introducción al articulo:

"Ben Bernanke is the closest thing to a central economic planner the United States has ever had. He bestrides our narrow economic world like a colossus. Unelected (he was appointed by President George W. Bush and confirmed by an overwhelming majority in the Senate) and unaccountable (unless the Congress decides that it wishes to amend the Federal Reserve Act and take the blame for whatever else goes wrong with the economy), he is responsible only to his conscience -- and his open-market committee of himself, the other six governors of the Federal Reserve Board, and the 12 presidents of the regional Federal Reserve banks. The fate of the economy in the next administration depends far less on the president than on this moral-philosopher-prince to whose judgment we have entrusted a remarkable share of control over our destiny.

How did an ivory-tower academic whose specialty is the details of the Great Depression get to this position? What does he do all day? How did so much power come to rest in a single institution, a single individual? The current system is the product of a century and a half of evolution in the role of a central bank, on both sides of the Atlantic, through a series of accidents and crises. For a generation, the idea of social democracy -- with government ownership, control, and regulation of at least the "commanding heights" of the economy -- has been in retreat. But in the middle of this market economy is an immense island of central planning: the Federal Reserve.

In normal times, the Fed -- not the market -- decides what the short-term interest rate is. The interest rate is perhaps the key price in the economy. It is the price at which we trade wealth in the present for wealth in the future. When the interest rate is low, our focus is on the future: Businesses and consumers borrow and invest. When the interest rate is high, our focus is on the present because distant-future promises of cash are not worth very much in today's dollars. You might think that if there were ever a decision we would leave to the market and the aggregated preferences of millions of individuals, it would be the terms on which we trade present comfort off for future wealth. But we don't. We leave that decision to the discretion of the philosopher-prince Bernanke and his committee. And in extraordinary moments like the September Wall Street crisis, when the flow of funds through financial markets dries up, we leave the decisions of which banks to nationalize, which to close down, which to forcibly merge, and which to rescue and on what terms to our financial overlords in the Eccles Building on the National Mall."

Vale la pena mencionar que Delong es democrata, trabajo en la administración Clinton y se considera de centro o centro-izquierda. Su articulo no corresponde a la típica visión libertaria, pero estada carga del realismo político que le falta, diría yo, a la mayoría de economistas.

Termina con este parrafo:"Cicero said that the problem with his political ally Cato was that he thought they lived in the Republic of Plato while they really lived in the Sewer of Romulus. It is either our curse or our blessing that we live in the Republic of the Central Banker."

Creo que los modelos de algunos economistas seguro tambien funcionarían bien en la republica de Platón, el sistema de los filosofos reyes que planifican la sociedad.

Graficas del dia

Declinacion de la produccion de petroleo en la era Chavez:Declinacion de la produccion de petroleo en la era Chavez:

Grafica del origen de la estructura de deuda que condujo a la crisis:

Europa y la crisis

Los europeos han quedo culpa al supuesto "capitalismo salvaje" de los gringos y su supuesta "falta de regulacion" por el origen de la crisis.

Sin embargo, se sabe ya que los bancos alemanes estan sobreexpuestos a deudas de paises como Islandia o España, fuertemente golpeados por la crisis.

Y se ha sabido que los bancos europeos tambien estaban fuertemente endeudados y eran unos de los grandes clientes de AIG.

Los derivados y la crisis

Mucho se ha escrito en las ultimas semanas sobre el uso y abuso de los "derivados" como una de las causas de esta crisis. Y naturalmente varios analistas y expertos han salido a pedir que sean fuertemente regulados.

Sin duda, los derivados de credito, una forma de seguros, conocidos como "Credit Default Swap" o CDS (por sus siglas en ingles), han sido uno de los principales elementos de esta crisis. Para un excelente resumen del tema, ver esta pagina.

Sin embargo, como lo explica este articulo, la mayoria de estos derivados de credito, excepto los relacionados con las hipotecas han funcionado bien y su rol como "gestionadores de riesgo" no deberia ignorarse:

"The amount of blame laid at the feet of the derivatives market never ceases to amaze me. True, the sheer size of the derivatives market, and the fact that it grew faster than regulators could handle, raise legitimate concerns. But financial products are not solely to blame for the current situation (severe financial crises occur without them). Further, the markets for most financial derivatives (excepting mortgage-backed CDOs) are not in serious peril. Felix Salmon wrote an eloquent defence of how the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market has functioned and continues to function quite well.
Products like CDS provide invaluable transparency for the debt market. The problem, as both Mr Salmon and Mr Merton point out, is that these derivatives hedge risk. This makes investors feel safer, and just as people wearing seat belts drive faster and those with four-wheel drive become more likely to drive in the snow, a financial safety net encourages some investors to take on more risk than might otherwise be their preference.
That's not necessarily a bad thing. It encouraged people to invest in developing countries, which gave those countries the capital necessary to build infrastructure and expand markets. Which brought many people out of poverty. But it also meant some foolish and foolishly large investments were made. Blaming the financial derivatives for the crisis is like blaming the seat belt or four-wheel drive for the accident. Should we limit automotive safety innovations, because they encourage risky driving?"

El problema de los derivados en esta crisis esta basicamente circunscrito a los relacionados con hipotecas. No deberia olvidarse que esta crisis se origina por una caida de precios en el sector inmobiliario.

No es esta una crisis de derivados. Es una crisis del sector inmobiliario, altamante dependiente de las tasas de interes, que se extendio al sector financiero y luego al sector real.

Sobre el origen de la crisis

Explica el NY Times: "The roots of the credit crisis stretch back to another notable boom-and-bust: the tech bubble of the late 1990’s. When the stock market began a steep decline in 2000 and the nation slipped into recession the next year, the Federal Reserve sharply lowered interest rates to limit the economic damage.
Lower interest rates make mortgage payments cheaper, and demand for homes began to rise, sending prices up. In addition, millions of homeowners took advantage of the rate drop to refinance their existing mortgages. As the industry ramped up, the quality of the mortgages went down.
And turn sour they did, when home buyers had to leverage themselves to the hilt to make a purchase. Default and delinquency rates began to rise in 2006"

A pesar de entender los problemas de politica monetaria relacionados con la crisis, ni el NY Times ni ningun medio masivo pide cambios institucionales en la FED.

Hecho del día

" The most common economic criticism of the Soviet bloc has long been its failure to use incentives. This is a half-truth. As Hedrick Smith explained in "The Russians", the party leadership used incentives in the sectors where it really wanted results:
Not only do defense and space efforts get top national priority and funding, but they also operate on a different system from the rest of the economy. Samuel Pisar, an American lawyer, writer, and consultant on East-West trade, made the shrewd observation to me that the military sector is “the only sector of the Soviet economy which operates like a market economy, in the sense that the customers pull out of the economic mechanism the kinds of weaponry they want.. . . The military, like customers in the West . . . can say, ‘No, no, no, that isn’t what we want.’”"

El texto viene de este articulo sobre el comunismo.

Hay algo extraño en este argumento y es es que no queda claro porque los líderes del partido no querían realmente resultados en toda la economía.

De todas formas, lo mencionado en este texto, asumiendo que es cierto, es un hecho sorprendente.

Según el autor del articulo, los datos vienen de: "Hedrick Smith, The Russians (New York: Ballantine Books, 1974), pp. 312–313."

Aqui esta la página web del libro en Amazon. Y aquí hay una reseña del libro.

Lucha de clases en elecciones de Estados Unidos

"Voters who make $60,000 a year or less favor the Democratic party while those who make more are fairly evenly divided between both parties. Investors favor the GOP, 43% to 42%, while those who do not invest favor the Democrats, 53% to 31%.
"

y tambien de genero:

"Men now favor the GOP by a 43% to 41% margin, while women continue to show big support for the Democrats, 49% to 36%."

El dato mas interesante es este:

"Voters who work for the government favor the Democrats, while entrepreneurs support the Republicans."

Aquí esta el enlace.