Das Expertenproblem

Ein paar Zitate aus einem Interview mit Josh Freed:

For experts, it’s easy to predict the obvious, but it’s hard for them to predict when something goes really wrong. [...]

Science writer David Freedman, author of Wrong, determined that two-thirds of studies in major science journals are shown later to be wrong. Almost 100 per cent of long-term economic studies are proven to be wrong.

And in the granddaddy of all studies, Philip Tetlock, a psychology professor at the University of California, Berkeley, spent 20 years following 300 elite media and government experts making 82,000 predictions. After 20 years, the predictions did a fraction better than a chimpanzee throwing darts at a board.

Tetlock found that the best experts were uncertain, because that kept them thinking about it. But that expert you rarely see on television. They’re boring. [...]

The economy has always been hard to predict. There’s a famous quote by a Yale economics professor: “Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau” made on Oct. 17, 1929, days before the Great Crash.

We visited an ex-management consultant who flew all over the world advising top companies and governments. He says the most important thing is to look right, dress right and drop a lot of jargon. No one knows with statistical accuracy how to make a business run or predict the economy.

The guy who really struck me is William White. He helped run the Bank of Canada and was a top banker in Europe. He said that we pretend economics is a science, but it’s not. It’s mass behaviour. It’s unpredictable.

Das ganze Interview gibt es hier.

Über die Bedeutung, wirtschaftliche Ereignisse in einen geschichtlichen Kontext einordnen zu können

Kevin O'Rourke meint:

Paul Krugman is upset about some pretty fanciful accounts of what supposedly happened during the Great Depression, and I don’t blame him. He also wonders whether economics is a progressive science (I am using the word ’science’ in its German sense). Well, one of the things that philosophers of science have argued about in the past is whether, when you have a paradigm shift, you end up losing knowledge, and it’s pretty clear what has happened in this instance. [...]

One lesson is that it is one thing to play counter-intuitive intellectual parlour games in order to get tenure at a fancy university, but another thing entirely to say something about the real world. For that you need a little common sense.

Another lesson is that economists need at least some training in economic history. No-one with the slightest feeling for historical reality could believe that the Great Depression was due to supply side forces, for example. I observe that Krugman, along with such luminaries as Maurice Obstfeld and Ken Rogoff, did his graduate work in MIT, and I surmise (without having any inside knowledge on the matter) that all three were exposed to Charlie Kindleberger and Peter Temin. They are all distinguished theorists, but also have a historical sensitivity, and this makes them better economists — if your definition of a good economist includes the ability to say sensible things about our very messy real world.

One of the most important things that a bit of history gives you is a sense of the importance of context. A model will work very well in some technological or institutional contexts, but not in others. For example, the Reverend Malthus devised a model that did a pretty decent job of describing the world up to the point that he started writing, but which soon became essentially irrelevant in the century that followed, at least in the richer countries of the world. (He had an economist’s sense of timing.) Sometimes the world is well-described by Keynesian models, and sometimes it is not. And so on.

Quelle: The Irish Economy

Banken und Eigenkapitalrentabilität

Martin Wolf schreibt in der FT:

According to a FT article last week, Lloyds’ bank has a target return on equity of 14.5 per cent. Banks like to argue that this is the level of return on equity they need to earn, in order to gain funding from the markets. Naturally, remuneration is linked to achieving such objectives. The question, however, is whether such objectives make any sense. The brief answer is: no.

[...]

Indeed, it is perfectly obvious that these cannot be sustainable safe returns in economies growing at 2 per cent a year, for such a large and well-established industry. At a 15 per cent real return, the value of cumulative retained earnings would double in five years and increase 16-fold in 20 years. Pretty soon, bank equity would be the only real asset in the world!

If you were confident banks could earn 15 per cent real returns, you would not ask for distributions, since the returns would be so much higher than you could plausibly earn anywhere else. Thus, the example of compound growth of bank equity, under reinvestment of profits, is not unreasonable if the returns were themselves plausible. But they are not. Incidentally, if these really were plausible returns, there would also be no problem in obtaining much higher capital in banks, very quickly: just prevent distributions for a few years.

The important point, then, is that these desired returns must represent the result of extreme risk-taking.

[...]

If a bank says it needs a real return on equity of 15 per cent, to obtain funds from investors, it is telling you that it is running an enormously risky business. The question you need to ask yourself is this: can we afford to have financial institutions that are both so large and so essential and yet run such huge risks?

Den Rest dieses äußerst lesenswerten Artikels gibt es hier.

Die Auswirkungen der großen Schuldenangst

Robert Shiller schreibt in seinem jüngsten Artikel:

It might not seem that Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis and growing concern about the United States’ debt position should shake basic economic confidence. But they apparently have. And loss of confidence, by discouraging consumption and investment, can be a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing the economic weakness that is feared. ...

The ... Thomson-Reuters University of Michigan Surveys of Consumers ... has included a remarkable question about the reasonably long-term future, five years hence... :“Looking ahead, which would you say is more likely – that in the country as a whole we’ll have continuous good times during the next five years or so, or that we will have periods of widespread unemployment or depression, or what?” ...
Those answers plunged into depression territory between July and August, [the period when US political leaders worried everyone that they would be unable to raise the federal government’s debt ceiling and prevent the US from defaulting,] and the index of optimism based on answers to this question is at its lowest level since the oil-crisis-induced “great recession” of the early 1980’s. It stood at 135, its highest-ever level, in 2000, at the very peak of the millennium stock market bubble. By May 2011, it had fallen to 88. By September, just four months later, it was down to 48. ...
The timing and substance of these consumer-survey results suggest that our fundamental outlook about the economy ... is closely bound up with stories of excessive borrowing, loss of governmental and personal responsibility, and a sense that matters are beyond control. That kind of loss of confidence may well last for years.
That said, the economic outlook ... may hinge on ... our finding some way to replace one narrative – currently a tale of out-of-control debt – with a more inspiring story.

via Mark Thoma

Über die Bedeutung politischer Rhetorik

Marmor und Mashaw versuchen in einem Artikel für die New York Times die Unterschiede in der politischen Rhetorik und auf der Präferenzenskala herauszuarbeiten - im Vergleich der Zeit der Großen Depression, die den amerikanischen Bürgern in den 1930er-Jahren das Leben schwer machte, und den schwierigen wirtschaftlichen Zeiten, denen sich die Amerikaner aktuell gegenübersehen:

there is a crucial difference between then and now: the words that our political leaders use to talk about our problems have changed. Where politicians once drew on a morally resonant language of people, family and shared social concern, they now deploy the cold technical idiom of budgetary accounting. This is more than a superficial difference in rhetoric. It threatens to deprive us of the intellectual resources needed to address today’s problems. [...]

In 1934, the focus was on people, family security and the risks to family economic well-being that we all share. Today, the people have disappeared. The conversation is now about the federal budget, not about the real economy in which real people live. If a moral concept plays a role in today’s debates, it is only the stern proselytizing of forcing the government to live within its means. If the effect of government policy on average people is discussed, it is only as providing incentives for the sick to economize on medical costs and for the already strapped worker to save for retirement.

From the 1930s to the 1960s, as the Princeton historian Daniel T. Rodgers demonstrates in his recent book, “The Age of Fracture,” American public discourse was filled with references to the social circumstances of average citizens, our common institutions and our common history. Over the last five decades, that discourse has changed in ways that emphasize individual choice, agency and preferences. The language of sociology and common culture has been replaced by the language of economics and individualism.

In 1934, the government was us. We had shared circumstances, shared risks and shared obligations. Today the government is the other — not an institution for the achievement of our common goals, but an alien presence that stands between us and the realization of individual ambitions. Programs of social insurance have become “entitlements,” a word apparently meant to signify not a collectively provided and cherished basis for family-income security, but a sinister threat to our national well-being.

Quelle: NYT

Die nächste Runde im wirtschaftspolitischen Ringkampf in den USA

Die wirtschaftspolitische Auseinandersetzung zwischen Demokraten und Republikanern geht in den USA weiter. Vier führende republikanische Politiker wenden sich in einem Brief an Fed-Chef Bernanke:

It is our understanding that the Board Members of the Federal Reserve will meet later this week to consider additional monetary stimulus proposals. We write to express our reservations about any such measures. Respectfully, we submit that the board should resist further extraordinary intervention in the U.S. economy, particularly without a clear articulation of the goals of such a policy, direction for success, ample data proving a case for economic action and quantifiable benefits to the American people.

Stan Collender äußerte sich dazu:

In other words, now that the GOP has made it all but impossible for fiscal policy to be used to improve they economy, they want to make sure that the only other tool the government has at its disposal -- monetary policy -- isn't used either.

Why take on the Fed? The Republicans have some direct control over fiscal policy because they can either refuse to consider a proposal in the House where they are in the majority or can filibuster legislation in the Senate where they are in the minority. Because the Fed is an independent agency, the GOP can only do what they did today in the letter by threatening to bring down the wrath of god if it dares take any action to get the economy moving.

Und Paul Krugman meint:

There’s a well-established line of work in economics on the political business cycle, starting with a paper by my original mentor Bill Nordhaus (pdf). The basic idea was that since voters tend to have short memories, it pays for a government to reflate the economy centering on the proposition that government have an incentive to reflate the economy in the period leading up to an election, even if this imposes costs that will have to be paid later. [...]

But now there’s a new wrinkle. As Stan Collender says, it’s hard to see the GOP letter threatening Ben Bernanke if he does anything to help the economy as anything but an attempt to invert the political business cycle, pressuring the central bank to ensure a weak economy in the year before the election.

Politiker, die ihre Wiederwahl anstreben, wollen gute wirtschaftliche Daten vorweisen, um diese für sich beanspruchen und als Wahlwerbung verwenden zu können. Die Opposition hingegen, die danach strebt, eine politische Ablöse zu erreichen, kalkuliert damit, dass eine schwache Wirtschaft dem Amtsinhaber angelastet wird, was bei den Wahlen dem Herausforderer zugutekommen sollte.

Die Präsidentschaftswahl in den USA wird im November 2012 stattfinden. Der amtierende Präsident Obama, seines Zeichens Demokrat, stellt sich der Wiederwahl. Er wird sich im Wahlkampf mit einem republikanischen Herausforderer auseinandersetzen müssen, der an der Wirtschaftspolitik Obamas kein gutes Haar lassen wird.

Menschliches Leid in wirtschaftlichen Krisenzeiten

In den Medien ist aktuell zumeist von einem weiteren Anstieg der Schuldenlast, von der Notwendigkeit der fiskalischen Konsolidierung, von der Unweigerlichkeit weiterer Entlassungen und Gehaltskürzungen, von erhöhten Steuern und mangelnder wirtschaftlicher Konkurrenzfähigkeit die Rede, wenn es um die Liste der sogenannten "Problemländer", auf der Griechenland ganz oben steht, geht. Die menschlichen Schicksale werden verhältnismäßig selten angesprochen. Darum sei auf Auszüge aus einem Artikel im WSJ verwiesen:

Two years into Greece's debt crisis, its citizens are reeling from austerity measures imposed to prevent a government debt default that could cause havoc throughout Europe. The economic pain is the price Greece and Europe are paying to defend the euro, the centerpiece of 60 years of efforts to unite the Continent. But as Greece's economy shrinks, its society is fraying, raising questions about how long Greeks will be able to take the strain.

Gross domestic product in the second quarter was down more than 7% from a year before, amid government spending cuts and tax increases that, combined, will add up to about 20% of GDP. Unemployment is over 16%. Crime, homelessness, emigration and personal bankruptcies are on the rise.

The most dramatic sign of Greece's pain, however, is a surge in suicides.

Recorded suicides have roughly doubled since before the crisis to about six per 100,000 residents annually [...] About 40% more Greeks killed themselves in the first five months of this year than in the same period last year [...]

Suicide has also risen in much of the rest of Europe since the financial crisis began, according to a recent study published in the British medical journal The Lancet, which said Greece is among the hardest hit.

While some countries have higher rates of recorded suicides, including the U.S.'s over 10 per 100,000, mental-health professionals here say Greece's data greatly understate the incidence of suicide because it carries a strong stigma among Greeks. The Greek Orthodox Church forbids funeral services for suicides unless the deceased was mentally ill. Families often mask suicide deaths as accidents.

Quelle: WSJ

Die Einkommensentwicklung in den USA

Quelle: WSJ Blog

Ich bezog mich bereits im Oktober vergangenen Jahres auf die seit Jahrzehnten stagnierenden Medianeinkommen in den USA; damals im Zusammenhang mit der Entstehung der Finanzkrise. Die obige Grafik zeigt, dass auch in den letzten zehn Jahren nur Einkommensbezieher mit höheren Bildungsabschlüssen reale Zuwächse zu verzeichnen hatten; alle anderen gemäß ihrer Bildungsabschlüsse eingeteilten Gruppen mussten Einbußen hinnehmen.

Zur Aktion der Notenbanken

Hier verwies ich auf das konzertierte Handeln der Notenbanken, die europäischen Banken Liquidität in Dollars zur Verfügung stellen. Dazu ein weiterer Artikel, der sich mit den Hintergründen aus der Perspektive der Fed auseinandersetzt:

Yesterday the Fed announced that along with the central banks of Great Britain, Japan, and Switzerland it would provide dollars to European banks that have lost their ability to access dollar capital markets (basically each other and US-based money market funds that are slowly letting their holdings of European bank commercial paper decrease as it comes due. And if they are “rolling it over,” they are buying very short-term paper, according to officials at the major French bank BNP Paribas.

[...]

One of the little ironies of this whole Great Recession is that the central banks of the world rolled out this policy on the 3^rd anniversary of the Lehman collapse. The Fed acted AFTER that crisis to provide liquidity. And we know the recession and bear market that followed.

The only reason for this move must certainly be that they are acting to prevent what they fear will be another Lehman-type crisis. Otherwise it makes no sense. They can give us any pretty words they want, but this was not something calculated to make the US voter happy. To do this, you have to be convinced that “something evil this way comes.” And to recognize the costs of not doing anything, and try to head them off.

My guess (and it is that, on a Friday night) is that the European Central Bank made a presentation to the other central bankers of the realities on the ground in Europe, and the picture was plug ugly. It should be no surprise to readers of this letter that European banks have bought many times their capital base in sovereign debt. The Endgame is getting closer [...]

Let’s look at just one country. French banks are leveraged 4 times total French GDP. Not their private capital, mind you, but the entire county’s economic output! French banks have a total of almost $70 billion in exposure to Greek public and private debt, on which they will have to take at least a 50% haircut, and bond rating group Sean Egan thinks it will ultimately be closer to 90%. That is just Greek debt, mind you. Essentially, French banks are perilously close to being too big for France to save with only modest haircuts on their sovereign debt. If they were forced to take what will soon be mark-to-market numbers, they would be insolvent.

[...]

Next, let’s look at the position of the ECB. They are clearly seeing a credit disaster at nearly every major European bank. As I keep writing, this could and probably will be much worse for Europe than 2008. So you stem the tide now. But for how long and how much does it cost? A few hundred billion for Greek debt? Then Portugal and Ireland come to mind. If bond markets are free, Italy and Spain are clearly next, given the recent action in Italian and Spanish bonds before the ECB stepped in.

[...]

The Fed is not lending to European banks or even to the various national central banks. Its customer is the ECB, which will deposit euros with the Fed to get access to dollars. Making the safe assumption that the Fed knows how to hedge currency risk (fairly easy), the only risk is if the ECB and the euro somehow ceased to exist. And these are swap lines. This is not a new concept; it has been authorized since May, 2010. The real difference is that previously it has been used only for loans with 7-day maturity, and now that is extended to 3 months. This gives the ECB the ability to lend dollars for 3 months, which they must think will entice US money-market funds back into at least short-term commercial paper. (Just stay one step ahead of the ECB and the Fed, and your loan is “safe.” We will see how enticing this is.) Now, this is not without costs. It is effectively another round of QE, although theoretically less permanent than the last rounds, as the swap lines have a finite and rather short-term end. [...]

Why do it? It is not for solidarity among central bankers. The cold calculation is that a European banking crisis would leak into the US system. Further, it would throw Europe into a nasty recession, when growth is already projected (optimistically) to be less than 0.5%. That means the market that buys 20% of US exports would suffer and probably push us into recession, too (given our own low growth), making a far worse problem for monetary policy in the not-too-distant future. [...]

Finally, I think that the end result of lending to the ECB will be to postpone the problem. The problem is not liquidity, it is insolvency and the use of too much leverage by banks and governments. This action only buys time. And maybe time is what they need to figure out how to go about orderly defaults, which banks and institutions to save and which to let go, which investors will lose, whether some countries must leave the euro, etc. Frankly, the world needs Europe to get its act together.

Quelle: TBP

Die Sache mit den "Schurken"-Tradern

Bei UBS hat es ein einzelner Trader geschafft, zwei Milliarden Dollar zu versenken. Wir wollen dessen individuelle Schuld nicht klein reden, aber sollte man sich nicht doch mal darüber Gedanken machen, warum sich derartige Fälle häufen? Ist es wirklich damit getan, solche Trader als böse Einzeltäter herauszugreifen, sich den Mund abzuputzen und einfach so weiter zu machen wie bisher? Dazu zwei Zitate, die zum Nachdenken anregen:

It’s very helpful for UBS to have an individual trader to blame. It distances the bank from the event, and the individual can be pilloried as the rotten apple in a barrel of perfect Golden Delicious. The truth, as the ever-lengthening line of these disasters demonstrates, is that the banks encourage reckless behaviour. Nobody gets fired for making $2bn from a rogue trade that comes right. If his bet on black comes up, he gets a life-changing bonus. If it’s red, it’s not his money.

Oswald Gruebel, the man who, six months ago, was warning against excessive regulation , says he found the news “distressing”, but it’s not personal distress. That’s for the shareholders, left to pay the bill and contemplate their plunging investment. If Grubel is genuinely shocked, then he really hasn’t been paying attention. Where does he think the profits come from? The mundane businesses of fund management and private banking are far too dull to produce the sort of returns investment bankers demand.

Quelle: FT Alphaville

But the reality is, the brains of investment bankers by nature are not wired for "client-based" thinking. This is the reason why the Glass-Steagall Act, which kept investment banks and commercial banks separate, was originally passed back in 1933: it just defies common sense to have professional gamblers in charge of stewarding commercial bank accounts.

Investment bankers do not see it as their jobs to tend to the dreary business of making sure Ma and Pa Main Street get their $8.03 in savings account interest every month. Nothing about traditional commercial banking – historically, the dullest of businesses, taking customer deposits and making conservative investments with them in search of a percentage point of profit here and there – turns them on.

In fact, investment bankers by nature have huge appetites for risk, and most of them take pride in being able to sleep at night even when their bets are going the wrong way. If you’re not a person who can doze through a two-hour foot massage while your client (which might be your own bank) is losing ten thousand dollars a minute on some exotic trade you’ve cooked up, then you won’t make it on today’s Wall Street.

Quelle: Rolling Stone

Die Angst vor einer Kreditklemme

Die Angst vor einer neuen Kreditklemme geht um. Wie soll eine solche verhindert werden?

Amerikanische Banken helfen europäischen Banken:

US banks have become the unlikely saviours of their ailing European counterparts, signing private agreements to lend them billions of dollars in recent weeks after an exodus of nervous money market funds left many without ready access to short-term funding.

Agreements worth tens of billions of dollars have been signed in the last month alone, according to bankers directly involved, who added that senior management of firms on both sides of the transactions have been closely involved with hammering out deals.

French lenders are among those using such facilities, say bankers, although deals have also been struck with UK and other European firms. Loans have been made as repo agreements, with banks posting assets such as corporate loans and mortgage portfolios as collateral.

“We were able to use some of our assets to get long-term repos,” said one board member at a French bank. “It was a move we made to monetise some of the assets we had on the balance sheet which were good, quality assets, and also to mitigate the withdrawal of money market funds.”

Such deals, struck behind closed doors, show how European banks have been forced to look elsewhere for funding in recent weeks following the partial closure of many traditional sources such as US dollar money markets and unsecured bonds.

Und die Notenbanken versuchen, weitere Liquidität zur Verfügung zu stellen:

The European Central Bank said it will lend euro-area banks dollars in three separate three-month loans to ensure they have enough of the U.S. currency through the end of the year. The European Central Bank said it will lend dollars to euro-area banks in a series of three-month loans as the region’s debt crisis limits market access to the U.S. currency.

The Frankfurt-based ECB said it will coordinate with the Federal Reserve and other central banks to conduct three separate dollar liquidity operations to ensure banks have enough of the currency through the end of the year.

Mehr als ein bisschen Zeitgewinn ist dadurch aber noch nicht erreicht.

Barry Ritholtz äußerte sich so über die jüngsten Notenbankaktionen:

Today is September 15 — three years ago, Lehman Brothers was allowed to do what insolvent companies are supposed to do — fail.

Hence, it is only fitting that five (Intergalactic) Central Banks arranged a massive liquidity operation to banks. There will be “three dollar-liquidity providing tenders before the end of the year in a coordinated move to offset shortages of dollars at European banks and businesses.”

Although this could be looked at as awful news — more economies and banks in such dire straights as to need yet another central bank bailout, moral hazard notwithstanding — the kneejerk response was relief. Dax is up 4%, US futures flipped positive, Dow now up 100.

Auch so kann ein Jahrestag begangen werden.

Die EU im Jahre 2011: Krise folgt auf Krise folgt auf Krise

George Soros schreibt in einem Artikel für die New York Review of Books:

It takes a crisis to make the politically impossible possible. Under the pressure of a financial crisis the authorities take whatever steps are necessary to hold the system together, but they only do the minimum and that is soon perceived by the financial markets as inadequate. That is how one crisis leads to another. So Europe is condemned to a seemingly unending series of crises. Measures that would have worked if they had they been adopted earlier turn out to be inadequate by the time they become politically possible. This is the key to understanding the euro crisis.

[...]

The seeds of the next crisis have already been sown by the way the authorities responded to the last crisis. They accepted the principle that countries receiving assistance should not have to pay punitive interest rates and they set up the EFSF as a fund-raising mechanism for this purpose. Had this principle been accepted in the first place, the Greek crisis would not have grown so severe. As it is, the contagion—in the form of increasing inability to pay sovereign and other debt—has spread to Spain and Italy, but those countries are not allowed to borrow at the lower, concessional rates extended to Greece. This has set them on a course that will eventually land them in the same predicament as Greece.

Die Finanzkrise der Jahre 2008-09 eröffnete die einmalige Möglichkeit, die notwendigen Reformen zur Stabilisierung der Finanzmarktarchitektur auf politischer Ebene durchzusetzen. Die öffentliche Stimmung hatte sich im Angesicht der dramatischen Lage vieler Banken zugunsten der Reformkräfte gedreht.

Die verantwortlichen Politiker haben diese Chance zur Reform leichtfertig vertan. Die getroffenen Regulierungsmaßnahmen stellen sich erwartungsgemäß als unzureichend heraus.

Für die schwelende Staatsschuldenkrise ist leider kein Mechanismus eingerichtet worden, der dazu beitragen könnte, für nachhaltige Beruhigung an den Finanzmärkten zu sorgen. Der EFSF wird nicht ausreichen, um das Worst Case Szenario abwenden zu können.

Französische Bankaktien fallen dramatisch

Die Aktien französischer Banken sind enorm unter Druck: SocGen und BNP rasselten in den letzten Wochen unaufhaltsam in den Keller.

Wir wissen, dass französische Banken viele Staatsanleihen aus EU-Problemländern halten; wir wissen, dass ihr Leverage sehr hoch ist; wir wissen außerdem, dass die von den französischen Banken gehaltenen Assets in Summe vier Mal so viel ausmachen wie das französische BIP, was eine Bankenrettungsaktion nicht gerade leichter machen wird.

Möge sich jeder selbst ein Bild machen. Es wundert jedenfalls nicht, wenn Sarkozy nicht müde wird, darauf zu pochen, dass Griechenland gerettet werden muss.

Sparprogramme und Arbeitslosigkeit

Der IWF hat ein neues Paper veröffentlicht, das sich mit den Auswirkungen von Sparprogrammen auf die Arbeitslosenrate beschäftigt:

In a new paper for the International Monetary Fund, Laurence Ball, Daniel Leigh and Prakash Loungani look at 173 episodes of fiscal austerity over the past 30 years—with the average deficit cut amounting to 1 percent of GDP. Their verdict? Austerity “lowers incomes in the short term, with wage-earners taking more of a hit than others; it also raises unemployment, particularly long-term unemployment.”

More specifically, an austerity program that curbs the deficit by 1 percent of GDP reduces real incomes by about 0.6 percent and raises unemployment by almost 0.5 percentage points. What’s more, the IMF notes, the losses are twice as big when the central bank can’t cut rates (a good description of the present.) Typically, income and employment don’t fully recover even five years after the austerity program is put in place ... if multiple countries are all carrying out austerity at the same time, the overall pain is likely to be greater.

Quelle: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/ezra-klein/post/imf-austerity-boosts-unemployment-lowers-paychecks/2011/09/12/gIQAl5ebPK_blog.html

via Calculated Risk

Der Fall von Lehman Brothers, ein düsteres Jubiläum. Das Wissens- und Expertenproblem

Nachdem sich die Terrorangriffe des 11. September heuer zum zehnten Mal jährten, steht auch schon ein weiteres düsteres Jubiläum an: Der Kollaps der US-Investmentbank Lehman Brothers jährt sich dieser Tage zum dritten Mal. Seit dem Ausbruch der Finanzkrise, die in den USA ihren Ausgang nahm und sich bald zu einer globalen Wirtschaftskrise auswuchs, ist also schon einige Zeit ins Land gegangen. Wie kann es sein, dass Europa ebenso wie die USA weiterhin mit erhöhter Arbeitslosigkeit und einer schwachen Konjunktur zu kämpfen hat? Wie ist es möglich, dass drei Jahre nach der in höchster Not abgewendeten Kernschmelze des globalen Finanzsystems die Frage aufgeworfen werden muss, welche wirtschaftspolitischen Maßnahmen gesetzt werden können, um einen Rückfall in die wirtschaftliche Rezession (Double Dip) zu verhindern?

Das hätte niemals passieren dürfen. Eigentlich hätten wir es besser wissen müssen. Wir hätten die uns zur Verfügung stehenden Mittel nutzen müssen, um eine tiefe, ausgedehnte Krise, die viel wirtschaftliches Leid über die Bevölkerungen Europas und der USA bringt, zu verhindern. Und wenn wir schon nicht dazu in der Lage gewesen sind, eine Krise zu unterbinden, so müssten wir doch eigentlich die wirtschaftspolitischen Instrumente haben, um wieder in ruhige Fahrwässer zu gelangen. Richtig? Richtig, wenn man sich die Überzeugung vor Augen führt, die von weiten Teilen der Berufsgruppe an Ökonomen und Wirtschaftsexperten in den Jahren vor dem Ausbruch der Krise vertreten wurde. Der amerikanische Wirtschaftsnobelpreisträger Robert Lucas tat in einer Rede im Jahr 2003 kund, dass es der Volkswirtschaftslehre gelungen sei, das zentrale Problem der Prävention wirtschaftlicher Depressionen zu lösen:

“Macroeconomics was born as a distinct field in the 1940s, as a part of the intellectual response to the Great Depression. The term then referred to the body of knowledge and expertise that we hoped would prevent the recurrence of that economic disaster. My thesis in this lecture is that macroeconomics in this original sense has succeeded: Its central problem of depression-prevention has been solved, for all practical purposes, and has in fact been solved for many decades.”

Mit dieser Aussage war Lucas nicht allein auf weiter Flur; er brachte vielmehr die unter Ökonomen verbreitete Mehrheitsmeinung zum Ausdruck. Doch nicht nur die berufsmäßig mit der Ökonomie beschäftigten Wissenschaftler wähnten sich im Besitz überragender Kenntnisse, die es möglich machen würden, Krisen in Zukunft im Keim zu ersticken. Nach der Jahrtausendwende, während der Jahre, die der Subprime-Krise vorausgingen, legte auch ein Großteil der Finanzmarktteilnehmer nicht gerade eine bescheidene Verhaltensweise an den Tag, die auf ein Bewusstsein der Lehren vergangener Finanzmarktkrisen hätte schließen lassen. Und so konnte nach dem spektakulären Platzen der Dotcom-Blase bereits die nächste Preisübertreibung Einzug halten: Die Preise an den amerikanischen Häusermärkten schossen förmlich in den Himmel, woran allerdings nur sehr wenige Marktanalysten und Ökonomen etwas zu beanstanden hatten. Ein geschärftes Bewusstsein für die Gefahren von völlig überteuerten Vermögenswerten sieht anders aus; um diese Feststellung kommt man wohl nicht herum. Dabei hätte man annehmen können, dass die schmerzlichen Erfahrungen aus dem kollektiven Dotcom-Rausch den Investoren und Marktbeobachtern noch in lebhafter Erinnerung sein hätten müssen.

Dem war offensichtlich nicht so. Der Mensch ist vergesslich; er vergisst besonders schnell, wenn ihm die Gunst des Vergessens neue exorbitante Wertsteigerungsgewinne verspricht. Investoren sind begeisterungsfähig, sie sind sprunghaft und handeln irrational. Und sie sind gierig, allzu gierig. Bis zum Platzen der Subprime-Blase trieb die Überzeugung, diesmal sei alles anders, ungehindert Blüten. Ganz fest redete man sich ein, die explodierenden Häuserpreise beruhten auf einem gesunden ökonomischen Fundament. Gleichzeitig grassierte im wissenschaftlichen Bereich der von Lucas vertretene Glaube, dass das historische Studium von Finanz- und Wirtschaftskrisen die Experten dazu befähige, die Fiskal- und Geldpolitik so zu steuern, dass es zu keinen schweren wirtschaftlichen Abschwüngen mehr kommen könne. Wirtschaftspolitiker seien mittlerweile dazu in der Lage, die erforderlichen Maßnahmen zu ergreifen, um schwerwiegende volkswirtschaftliche Probleme zu lösen oder gar im Keim zu ersticken. Die traumatischen Erfahrungen der Großen Depression in den 1930er-Jahren würden sich niemals wiederholen können, nicht einmal annähernd; das sei schlicht undenkbar.

Vor dem Hintergrund dieses unbändigen Vertrauens in die Selbstregulierungskräfte der Märkte auf der einen und in die Wirksamkeit des zur Verfügung stehenden wirtschaftspolitischen Instrumentariums auf der anderen Seite ist es umso bemerkenswerter, dass es weder in Europa noch in den USA gelungen ist, eine ausgedehnte Krise zu verhindern. Natürlich sollte man sich davor hüten, Europa und die USA einfach in einen Topf zu werfen. Denn auch wenn viele Probleme auf beiden Seiten des Atlantiks auf sehr ähnliche Weise auftraten – Notwendigkeit der Bekämpfung der Bankenkrise, Schwierigkeiten bei der Implementierung fiskal- und geldpolitischer Maßnahmen, Reaktion auf die sprunghaft ansteigende Verschuldung der öffentlichen Hand usw. –, so ergeben sich aus den unterschiedlichen volkswirtschaftlichen Strukturen und institutionellen Rahmenbedingungen doch erhebliche Differenzen, die im Einzelnen berücksichtigt werden müssten, wenn detailreich über wirtschaftspolitische Bereiche diskutiert werden soll. Nichtsdestotrotz kommt man kaum um die allgemeine Feststellung herum, dass die wirtschaftlichen Verwerfungen die USA ähnlich unerwartet und unvorbereitet trafen wie Europa. Da wie dort wiegten sich die Entscheidungsträger in die trügerische Illusion, diesmal sei alles anders: Krisen passieren nicht bei uns. Entwicklungsstaaten sind unangenehmerweise immer wieder von Finanz- und daran anschließenden Wirtschaftskrisen betroffen, so unter anderen einige asiatische Staaten in den späten 1990er-Jahren; ebenso Mexiko oder Argentinien. Aber wir, die hochentwickelte westliche Welt, mit all unserem überlegenen Know-how, mit all unseren wissenschaftlichen Erkenntnissen... nein, uns kann eine solche Krise nicht mehr widerfahren; dafür sind wir viel zu weitsichtig, viel zu klug, unser Wissen ist dafür viel zu ausgereift.

Heute, drei Jahre nach dem Zusammenbruch von Lehman Brothers, sollten wir es besser wissen. Die Grenzen unserer ökonomischen Prognosekompetenzen und wirtschaftspolitischen Steuerungsmöglichkeiten sollten sich uns eingebrannt haben. Doch ist die Einsicht, dass wir es in den Jahren der Entstehung der Krise mit einem dramatischen Experten- und Wissensproblem zu tun hatten, wirklich gereift? Sind die Verantwortlichen gewillt, dies anzuerkennen und ihre Geisteshaltung zu ändern? Anlässlich des traurigen Jahrestages, an dem wir des nur durch massive staatliche Interventionen verhinderten Scheiterns des westlichen Finanzkapitalismus gedenken, sollten wir innehalten und uns mit aller gebotenen Ehrlichkeit diese Fragen stellen.