Três decisões europeias que irão ditar o rumo da economia portuguesa nos próximos meses / The euro is heading for disaster - what luck for David Cameron! The final unwinding of the disastrous single currency could give Britain everything it wants from Europe / Telegraph.

Três decisões europeias que irão ditar o rumo da economia portuguesa nos próximos meses

SÉRGIO ANÍBAL 11/12/2014 – PÚBLICO

Eleições na Grécia, conflito entre França e Bruxelas e definição da política do BCE vão influenciar economia e política orçamental em Portugal.

A Europa vai entrar, nos primeiros meses do próximo ano, num período de grandes decisões que irão influenciar de forma muito significativa a evolução da economia e da política orçamental em Portugal.

São três os acontecimentos a que é preciso estar atento. Em primeiro lugar, a resolução da crise grega. O primeiro-ministro Antonis Samaras decidiu arriscar tudo e antecipou a eleição para a presidência da República que é feita no parlamento. Para conseguir eleger um novo presidente (o candidato que apresentou é o antigo comissário europeu Stavros Dimas) precisa de conseguir recolher pelo menos 180 votos, mas os dois partidos que formam o Governo – o Nova Democracia e o Pasok – têm 25 votos a menos. Precisam por isso de convencer alguns dos pequenos partidos da oposiçãoa viabilizar esta candidatura à presidência. Se não o conseguirem, de acordo com a lei grega, têm de ser imediatamente marcadas eleições legislativas.

Esta incerteza política está já a ser vista com grande nervosismo pelos mercados. Neste momento, à frente nas sondagens está o Syrisa, um partido que é contra o programa da troika e que tem na reestruturação da dívida uma das soluções para o problema da economia grega. Um cenário em que não se consiga formar uma maioria parlamentar estável é também provável.

Uma vez que o empréstimo das autoridades europeias no final deste mês termina no final deste ano (devendo ser aprovada uma extensão de apenas dois meses), a confirmação de um cenário de eleições legislativas antecipadas poderia resultar numa reacção ainda mais negativa dos mercados. Em primeiro lugar em relação à Grécia e à sua dívida pública. Depois, possivelmente, em relação aos países com mais risco de serem contagiados, como Portugal. Uma nova subida das taxas de juro da dívida pública portuguesa seria negativa quer do ponto de vista orçamental como económico, já que a confiança das empresas e dos consumidores sairia afectada.

O segundo momento decisivo na Europa será a resolução do conflito entre Bruxelas e os governos francês e italiano em relação ao orçamento. A Comissão Europeia e o Eurogrupo deram aos dois países (e também à Bélgica) até Março para tomarem medidas que corrijam o défice público previsto para 2015. No caso da França, existe mesmo a ameaça de imposição de multas, em caso de incumprimento.

Para já, Paris apresentou um conjunto de medidas destinadas a pôr a economia a crescer mais, incluindo a liberalização dos horários do comércio ou a abertura de acesso a profissões reguladas. Mas está ainda por saber se em França e na Itália existe a vontade de satisfazer os pedidos de Bruxelas, que são vistos como instruções dadas por Angela Merkel directamente de Berlim.

Portugal, que também tem de demonstrar aos seus parceiros europeus que as suas previsões para o orçamento estão correctas, será certamente influenciado pelo desfecho desta disputa. Uma posição mais flexível em relação à França e Itália poderá significar também menos exigência no que diz respeito a Portugal, evitando que novas medidas de austeridade venham a ser adoptadas.

A terceira grande decisão será tomada em Frankfurt. Com a economia europeia perto da estagnação e em risco de deflação, o Banco Central Europeu tem de decidir se segue o exemplo da Reserva Federal norte-americana e do Banco de Inglaterra e começa a fazer compras de títulos de dívida pública.

Até agora, a sua acção contra a inflação baixa limitou-se à compra de dívida do sector privado. Esta foi a solução encontrada por Mario Draghi para começar a injectar estímulos na economia europeia sem ir definitivamente contra o Bundesbank, que se mantém contra a compra de dívida pública, argumentando que seria um financiamento aos Estados que não os incentiva a realizar as reformas de que precisam.

Mas agora, com a inflação a continuar próxima de zero, o tempo começa a escassear. O problema para Draghi é que encontrar um consenso no BCE parece ser uma tarefa cada vez mais difícil. De acordo com notícias de jornais alemães, dentro do Conselho Executivo do banco, composto por seus elementos, existe uma divisão ao meio entre os que apoiam a compra de dívida pública e os que se opõem.

Para Portugal, a diferença entre o BCE cumprir as expectativas dos mercados ou não pode ser substancial. Se a linha mais ortodoxa vencer em Frankfurt, são de esperar subidas das taxas de juro nos países periféricos e um andamento menos favorável da procura interna em vários países clientes das exportações portuguesas.

The euro is heading for disaster - what luck for David Cameron!

The final unwinding of the disastrous single currency could give Britain everything it wants from Europe

By Peter Oborne 10 Dec 2014 / http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/11286161/The-euro-is-heading-for-disaster-what-luck-for-David-Cameron.html

As Karl Marx was one of the earliest to point out, economics (though so much less interesting) is far more important than politics.

Marx considered all political events as epiphenomena. He viewed great men as blind instruments of irresistible forces which they themselves could hardly comprehend.

The Marxist vision of society has been disproved many times, always at epic human cost. However, his doctrine that productive forces propel history has stood the test of time – and is invaluable for an understanding of the current predicament of the European Union.

It elegantly explains why European Monetary Union was destined to fail. The state socialists and former communists who invented the euro never got to grips with this aspect of Marxist thought. Only Conservatives with an intelligent appreciation of economics and history – an enlightened congregation that included Margaret Thatcher, Oliver Letwin, Peter Lilley, Tim Congdon, John Redwood, Nicholas Ridley and Alan Walters – grasped that the EMU would collapse under the weight of its own contradictions, and that it was folly to construct a single currency before the political conditions were in place.

Meanwhile the European elite who advocated the euro (British representatives included Michael Heseltine, Peter Mandelson, Tony Blair, Ken Clarke, Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander, at the time only a cadet member of the European political class, so perhaps the chief secretary can be forgiven) ignored all warnings. Indeed, Lord Mandelson is still advocating British membership!

It is impossible to exaggerate the arrogance, the bone-headed stupidity and above all the brutality and callousness of these Europhiles. Their demented attempt to impose a new economic model on an unworkable political structure has already caused untold suffering. At the heart of their project is an audacious attempt to prove the primacy of politics over economics. Bear in mind that it is an experiment for which the European elite personally do not have to pay a price.

Their experiment has caused depression (not recession as inaccurately reported by pro-European journalists at the BBC and elsewhere) across much of Europe.

This is getting worse. The Italian economy is moribund, social cohesion has vanished and Italians are starting to turn venomously on immigrants. The Greek economy has shrunk by 30 per cent, and one quarter of the population is out of work. Youth unemployment in Spain stands at an unspeakable 50 per cent.

We are talking about tens of millions of ruined lives, and busted dreams. This reality has already brought about a convulsion in Europe. Entirely new political parties have emerged, from the far-Left and far-Right, brought into existence by a common scream of despair against a broken system.

For the time being, the former political class remains in charge. It has as much legitimacy as the ancien regime in pre-revolutionary France, with the same moral bankruptcy, calculating venality and profound sense of entitlement. This elite has the same distaste for democracy as 18th-century lords, and over the long term the same chances of survival. In its dying convulsions, Jean-Claude Juncker’s political class has abolished democracy. Italy has had three consecutive unelected prime ministers since Silvio Berlusconi’s scepticism about the euro caused the EU elite to recruit an unscrupulous cabal of bankers to remove him (former US Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner gives a gripping account of this unwholesome manoeuvre in his recent memoir).

That it has survived so far is thanks to a series of financial confidence tricks, of which the latest example is Juncker’s implausible scheme to convert €21 billion of equity into a €315 billion slush fund to relaunch the European economy. This amounts to no more than wishful ravings, though it would be financially disastrous if by some malign chance it were put into effect.

Things cannot go on like this, and this month we have witnessed a series of telling signs that the eurozone has turned back into a danger zone. On Monday, we learnt that France and Italy will soon breach their fiscal limits. There are signs of disharmony at the European Central Bank – yet more proof that no central bank can exert real authority without a state behind it.

The ECB is racking up worthless sovereign debt and bank loans in its doomed battle to save the eurozone: in due course there will be an almighty row about who will pay up for the black hole.

Hopes that economic growth will float the eurozone off the rocks have been extinguished by forecasts of stagnation from the cruelly realistic ECB.

Meanwhile the eurozone has been plunged into deflation, meaning that in real terms the value of debt will rise, a chilling repeat of the European experience of the Thirties.

Most deadly of all is the resurrection of the Greek debt horror. The country is ungovernable and on Tuesday the president was (quite rightly) sacked, opening up the possibility of a spring general election, and thus causing the biggest collapse on the Athens stock market in 27 years.

We are very close now to Karl Marx’s moment of alignment. The political structure must be made to fit the economic reality, or vice versa. Bear in mind that the single currency will only work with a single economic policy, a single treasury, a single system of taxation and spending, a single national parliament and single political identity.

Europe’s incapable leadership have been trying to avoid this inevitable outcome. But the looming financial catastrophe will force them to confront it. It will be very frightening indeed for tens of millions of families, all the more so because Europe’s self-imposed economic disaster has destroyed the authority of mainstream parties, politicians and democratic institutions.

I guess that two things will emerge, along with a new social order, out of the chaos. Many countries – Greece and Italy among them – will abandon the lunacy of the euro.

Consolidation will take place at the centre. France, Belgium and a few others will realise Jean Monnet’s dream and come together to form a new state, which will have Germany at its centre.

I admit that it is parochial and self-regarding to consider the consequences for Britain, but they are promising. So far, David Cameron’s campaign for a treaty negotiation to accommodate British sensibilities has seemed selfish and hopeless. But the outlook would change with a new European architecture based around a greater Germany. Expect a two-tier Europe (of the kind advocated by Jacques Delors in 2005) with a second group of countries enjoying looser trading, foreign policy, defence and other arrangements with the centre.

This kind of European Union would be consistent with promises made to the British people in the 1975 referendum. It would be acceptable to all barring a handful of Ukip supporters and hardened Lib Dem voters.

It is exactly the Europe of nation states advocated by Margaret Thatcher – that far-sighted and dangerously acute student of Karl Marx – in her famous Bruges Group speech in 1988. She understood the connection between politics and economics, which is why she tried to prevent monetary union.

I have noted before that Cameron is a very lucky Prime Minister. The looming eurozone crisis will have terrible consequences for countless ordinary people, but will help to get the PM out of a tight spot, and better still, may help realise Margaret Thatcher’s eternal vision of a Europe of nations.