Portugal é um esquema em pirâmide

Nouriel Roubini continua em grande. Será com certeza o economista a quem a crise mais beneficiou em termos de notoriedade e reputação.

Hoje, perante uma pergunta de um jornalista sobre o caso Madoff, disse que toda a economia americana é um esquema Ponzi (de pirâmide). É difícil discordar dos argumentos de Roubini, mas o mais perturbador é que se estivesse a falar de Portugal, diria exactamente o mesmo.

Portugal é um esquema em pirâmide. Resta saber até quando dura...

Filipe Garcia
Economista da IMF


Abaixo segue parte do texto foi retirado do Alphaville do Financial Times)


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A government that will issue trillions of dollars of new debt to pay for this severe recession and to socialize private losses may risk to become a Ponzi government if - in the medium term - does not return to fiscal discipline and debt sustainability.

A country that has - for over 25 years - spent more than income and thus run an endless string of current account deficit and has thus become the largest net foreign debtor in the world (with net foreign liabilities that are likely to be over $3 trillion by the end of this year) is also a Ponzi country that may eventually default on its foreign debt if it does not - over time - tighten its belt and start running smaller current account deficits and actual trade surpluses.

Whenever you persistently  consume more than your income year after year (a household with negative savings, a government with budget deficit, a firm or financial institution with persistent losses, a country with a current account deficit) you are playing a Ponzi game; in the jargon of formal economics you are not satisfying your long run intertemporal budget constraint as you borrow to finance the interest rate on your previous debt and you are thus following an unsustainable debt dynamics (discounted value of your debt growing without limit in NPV terms as the debt grows faster than the interest rate on it) that eventually leads to outright insolvency.

According to Minsky and according to economic theory Ponzi agents (households, firms, banks) are those who need to borrow more to repay both principal and interest on their previous debt; i.e. Minsky’s “Ponzi borrowers” cannot service neither interest or principal payments on their debts. They are called “Ponzi borrowers” as they need persistently increasing prices of the assets they invested in to keep on refinancing their debt obligations.

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