Estimadísimos foreros, incluido el filonazi de red6lima:

El Financial Times de hoy recoge en su edición digital un artículo de análisis con ese bonito título. Os traduzco una pizca, sed felices....


"Análisis: Los USA podrían encarar una "década perdida"
Por Stephen Roach
13.01.2009, 17:08 h.

"Nadie en sus cabales piensa realmente que los USA pueda caer víctima de una década perdida a la japonesa. Después de todo, según se argumenta, los responsables públicos usanos tienen la ventaja de conocer qué es lo que sus correligionarios japos hicieron entonces mal."

"Ay si fuera tan simple. Para no iniciados los paralelos entre las crisis de ambas economías parecen sorprendentes. Ambas padecieron los efectos del estallido de burbujas de gran dimensión (inmobiliaria y de equity en el caso nipón e inmobiliaria y de crédito en los USA). Ambas desembocaron en el quebranto de sus sistemas financieros originado por la comisión de enormes errores en la gestión del riesgo. Ambas se vieron víctimas de una temeraria ausencia de supervisión: fallos de los reguladores, agencias de rating mal conducidas y bancos centrales que ignoraron las burbujas de activos. Y las burbujas gemelas acabaron por infectar la dimensión real de ambas economías, el sector empresarial en Japón y el sector del consumo en los USA."
(...)
"Desafortunadamente, hay una importante y siniestra diferencia entre los USA y Japón: el impacto de las burbujas en sus respectivas economías reales. Hasta un nivel de más de un 70 % del PIB estadounidense, el consumidor americano infectado por la burbuja plantea un riesgo mucho mayor para la economía USA que el que dimanaba del boom de gasto de capital inducido por la burbuja nipona, que sólo comprometía alrededor del 17 % del PIB japonés en su momento más álgido allá por las prostimerías de los años 80. Y como además el consumidor estadounidense es de largo es más importante consumidor mundial, las implicaciones globales de la reestructuración postburbuja americana tienen el aspecto de ser mucho más severas que las derivadas de la japonesa."
"Así las cosas que pueden hacer los EE.UU. para evitar convertirse en otro Japón? Para ser francos, no mucho. Al centrarse en inversiones en infraestructura, tecnología de energías alternativas y capital humano, la administración Obama está en la senda correcta en orden a contener la recesión e iniciar una ya hace tiempo perentoria tarea de reequilibrio de la economía estadounidense. Sin embargo, estas actuaciones no van a poder curar la resaca postburbuja del consumidor. Para ello se va a requerir mucho tiempo y una nueva mentalidad pro-ahorro que anime a las familias usanas a vivir dentro de sus posibilidades."

ME CANSO DE TRADUCIR, AQUI TENEIS LA INTEGRIDAD DEL ARTICULO, AMIJHOUS:


Insight: US may face a ‘lost decade’
By Stephen Roach

Published: January 13 2009 17:08 | Last updated: January 13 2009 17:08

No one in their right mind thinks the United States could fall victim to a Japanese-like lost decade. After all, the argument goes, US policymakers have the advantage of knowing what their counterparts in Japan did wrong.

If only it were that simple. For starters, the parallels between crises in the two economies are striking. Both suffered from the bursting of two major bubbles – property and equity in the case of Japan and property and credit in the US. Both had broken financial systems stemming from egregious risk management blunders. Both were victimised by a reckless lack of oversight – regulatory failures, misdirected rating agencies, and central banks that ignored asset bubbles. And the twin bubbles ended up infecting the real side of both economies – the corporate sector in Japan and the consumer sector in the US.

Despite the similarities, few believe that America is Japan. The hope rests on monetary policy. The Federal Reserve laid the groundwork for its approach in 2002 in the aftermath of the dotcom-induced bursting of the equity bubble. A landmark paper co-authored by 13 Fed staff economists concluded that the failures of the Bank of Japan in coping with the bursting of its bubbles were traceable to the lack of speed and vigour in its monetary policy response. It follows that a quicker and bolder reaction would have made a critical difference.

And so the ****** was written for America’s central bank. Bubbles come and go – not much you can do about that, the Fed has long maintained. However, if the monetary authority rides quickly to the rescue of a post-bubble economy, a Japanese style trap can be avoided. This approach appeared to pass an important reality check following the bursting of the US equity bubble in 2000. The Fed was quick to slash the federal funds rate by 550 basis points to 1 per cent and the US economy eventually recovered. In a celebrated mission-accomplished speech, Alan Greenspan boasted that “…our strategy of addressing the bubble’s consequences rather than the bubble itself has been successful…”

That experience gave the Fed licence to prescribe the same medicine as other bubbles popped. Unfortunately, those tactics backfired. The Fed’s post-bubble clean-up campaign of 2001-03 now looks to have been only a one-off success – it provided a short-term fix at the cost of creating a long-term disaster. By following the anti-Japan ****** and lowering the policy rate to rock-bottom levels and holding it there, the Fed ended up inflating the biggest bubbles of them all – property and credit.

Fear not, claim the optimists. This time, America has been much quicker than Japan to write down bad loans, inject new capital into its banks, embrace a large fiscal stimulus, and adopt the so-called quantitative easing tactics of monetary policy. Noble as these efforts are, they may not be enough. That’s because they do not arrest the most powerful force at work in the post-bubble US economy – the imperative of tempering excess consumption. The over-extended, saving-short, asset-dependent US consumer has only just begun what appears to be a multi-year retrenchment. That means the authorities in Japan and the US may have something else in common – limited policy traction and the related frustration of pushing on that proverbial string.

All this raises the distinct possibility that the US central bank may have drawn the wrong lessons from Japan’s lost decade. The correct policy pre******ion may have less to do with the speed and scope of post-bubble clean-up tactics and more to do with avoiding major asset bubbles in the first place. Just as the BoJ failed on that score, so, too, did the Fed.

Unfortunately, there is an important and ominous distinction between the US and Japan – the impacts of bubbles on their respective real economies. At more than 70 per cent of US GDP, the bubble-infected American consumer actually poses a much greater risk to today’s US economy than that imparted by Japan’s bubble-induced capital-spending boom, which accounted for only about 17 per cent of Japanese GDP at its peak in the late 1980s. Moreover, since the US consumer is by far the most important consumer in the world, the global implications of America’s post-bubble shakeout are likely to be far more severe than those imparted by Japan.

So what can the US do to avoid becoming another Japan? Quite frankly, not much. By focusing on investments in infrastructure, alternative energy technologies, and human capital, the Obama Administration is correct in attempting to contain the recession and initiate a long overdue rebalancing of the US economy. However, these actions will not cure the post-bubble hangover of the over-extended consumer. That will take time and a new pro-saving mentality that encourages American families to live within their means.

Like Japan of the 1990s, the US faces stiff headwinds. And until the rest of the world uncovers a new consumer – which is not likely during the next few years – a protracted global slowdown is distinctly possible.

The writer is chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

Ya quisieran los norteamericanos pasar los próximos 10 años como los japoneses.

En Japón no se ha visto miseria, en EEUU estará en todas partes.

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Podría ser peor, podrían encarar... LA DECADA PRODIGIOSA!!

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me hace gracia lo de "podrian"

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A mí también, y lo de década no menos.

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Otra de EEUU de hoy.

U.S. Retail Sales Decline for a Record Sixth Month

Jan. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Sales at U.S. retailers fell more than twice as much as forecast in December as job losses and the choking-off of credit led Americans to cut back on everything from eating out to car purchases.

The 2.7 percent decrease, the sixth consecutive drop, extended the longest string of declines in records going back to 1992, the Commerce Department said today in Washington. Purchases excluding automobiles slumped 3.1 percent.

Today’s figures indicate that the hit to spending in the recession is even deeper than estimated, and spurred a slide in stock-index futures. The loss of 2.6 million jobs and declining home and stock values are squeezing households, hurting retailers from Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to Tiffany & Co., which today said its holiday sales fell 21 percent and cut its earnings forecast.

“Consumers are facing negative real income, mounting job losses and limited access to credit that hammered their willingness and ability to spend,” said Lindsey Piegza, an economic analyst at FTN Financial in New York, which had forecast a drop of 3.5 percent. “It was a very dismal holiday season for the consumer that does not bode well as we roll over into 2009.”

Stock-index futures extended their declines and Treasuries climbed after today’s report. Yields on benchmark 10-year notes fell to 2.22 percent at 40 a.m. in New York, from 2.29 percent late yesterday. Futures on the Standard & Poor’s 500 Stock Index slid 1.8 percent to 852.80.

Economists’ Forecasts

Retail sales were projected to fall 1.2 percent after an originally reported 1.8 percent drop the prior month, according to the median estimate of 78 economists in a Bloomberg News survey. Forecasts ranged from declines of 3.5 percent to 0.3 percent.

Today’s report will serve as a reminder to lawmakers of the urgency to enact President-elect Barack Obama’s stimulus proposals to combat the recession.

Obama, who takes office Jan. 20, is proposing a two-year recovery plan that includes about $300 billion in tax cuts for individuals and businesses and infrastructure spending aimed at creating or saving 4 million jobs.

“It’s not too late to change course -- but only if we take immediate and dramatic action,” Obama said in his weekly radio address on Jan 10.

Annual Decline

Sales fell 0.1 percent for all of 2008 compared with the prior year, the first decrease in the Commerce Department’s records. Comparable data only go back to 1992 because government economists reformulated their retail-sales figures earlier this decade, and didn’t revise historical records beyond that year.

November’s decline was revised to 2.1 percent from a previously estimated fall of 1.8 percent.

Today’s report showed declines in 11 of the 13 major categories tracked by the government, led by a 16 percent plunge at gasoline service stations that partly reflected the slump in fuel costs. The drop at grocery stores was the biggest since April 2002 and the decrease at restaurants was the largest since the terrorist attacks in September 2001.

Only health and beauty stores and a miscellaneous category saw increases last month.

Purchases of expensive goods are falling as banks restrict access to credit. Auto sales fell 36 percent in December from the same month last year, capping the industry’s worst year since 1992.

Holiday Sales

Same-store sales dropped 2.2 percent in the last two months of 2008, making it the worst holiday shopping season in almost four decades of record keeping, the International Council of Shopping Centers said last week.

The first half of this year will also be “extraordinarily challenging,” Wal-Mart Chief Executive Officer H. Lee Scott told a retailers’ convention this week in New York City. “Some people are giving up eating out; some people are giving up movies; some people are giving up other things like shopping,” Scott said. “Those are fundamental changes that will continue.”

Americans are scrimping as unemployment last month rose to 7.2 percent, the highest level in almost 16 years. Job losses are likely to continue for most of this year, economists said.

The plunge at filling station in part reflected a 43 cent- per-gallon drop in the average cost of gasoline last month. Excluding gas, retail sales fell 1.4 percent.

The U.S. economy shrank at a 0.5 percent annual pace from July through September as Americans reduced purchases at a 3.8 percent annual rate, the first decline in consumer spending since 1991 and the biggest in 28 years, the government said last month.

The economic slump probably worsened in the fourth quarter as declines in business investment and construction intensified and consumers continued to pull back.

Excluding autos, gasoline and building materials, the retail group the government uses to calculate gross domestic product figures for consumer spending, sales dropped 1.4 percent, after a 0.1 percent increase in the prior month. The government uses data from other sources to calculate the contribution from the three categories excluded.

Bloomberg.com: Worldwide

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