AM | @agumack"... a de facto fourth branch" — Paul McCulley
Estuve escuchando este muy buen podcast de Bloomberg con Paul McCulley, economista y ex-asset manager de PIMCO, ahora Fellow en Cornell Law School (*). McCulley saltó a la fama con la expresión "Minsky moment" en plena crisis de Lehman Brothers, una referencia al economista Hyman Minsky, autor de otra frase memorable: "Stability is destabilizing". McCulley se auto-define como 'capitalista', pero está claramente a la izquierda de la enorme mayoría de sus ex-colegas de Wall Street. La idea principal de McCulley es su original caracterización de la economía como 'mixta'. Los elementos de esta mezcla son capitalismo y democracia. Primero van mis notas, y luego un par de comentarios.
* * *
Our economy is a mixture of capitalism and democracy. The two are supposed to be in conflict all the time, but the tie that binds them is the rule of law. Capitalism requires an enforceable rule of law. And only democracy can bring it. It's the one thing that capitalism can't do on its own. So, democracy's gift to capitalism is the rule of law, which is grounded in justice. And it's a true gift. With the rule of law, both can flourish. The trade-off that we hear about all the time between capitalism and democracy is a false trade-off because they have to coexist. They need each other.
Democracy also needs capitalism, because it needs efficiency. And capitalism is a master at creating efficiency. A good example is the efficiency created, in the monetary realm, by independent central banks. Independent central banks are a de facto fourth power. That said, we are evolving towards a better, more sustainable mix between capitalism and democracy—and it's going to involve more democracy. While monetary policy is very efficient, it works by driving up asset prices. And assets are owned by rich people. Also, central bank independence creates an inherent deflationary bias that favours holders of financial assets, not workers.
Monetary policy's weak point is its inherent impossibility to reach 'Main Street' quickly and efficiently. And 'Main Street' is the home of democracy. Once we hit the zero-bound in terms of short-term interest rates, monetary policy has to work in tandem with fiscal policy. In other words: the argument in favor of a rigid central bank independence gets weaker. All of this was present well before the Covid-19 pandemic. But the pandemic puts them in technicolor in a very striking way.
Over the last 40 years, capital has done much better than labor, both domestically and internationally. To show the tremendous impact of the bull market in valuation, I use the Gordon formula for the value of a stock with perpetual growth:
Where r is the discount rate, g the growth rate and DIV1 is next year's dividend per share. The collapse in interest rates brought about by the deflationary policy of central banks, and by other developments in the world economy, has driven up valuations in asset prices, favouring the rich. But if that pattern were to continue for the next 5 to 10 years, it would mean that democracy has failed. And that's not something you really want to contemplate.
Asset managers pueden escuchar el podcast con provecho. Pero lo que nos interesa aquí es el punto de vista político. El Sr. McCulley no es el único analista financiero con inclinaciones 'de izquierda' (†). Dudo que sea un gran lector de Tucídides y Aristóteles. Pero su 'mezcla' de capitalismo y democracia refleja bastante bien la idea del gobierno mixto brevemente presentada por Tucídides al final de su obra, y analizada en detalle por Aristóteles—el mejor gobierno, la πολιτεία de Aristóteles, combina oligarquía y aristocracia.
Con esta perspectiva en mente, el problema de la independencia del banco central se soluciona: basta pensarlo en términos de gobierno mixto (en el sentido clásico), y no de separación de poderes. Al final, el podcast de Paul McCulley me lleva a recordar el notable discurso del líder demócrata Atenagoras de Siracusa, presentado por Tucídides en 6.39 como 'protector del pueblo' (προστάτης του δῆμου): el pueblo manda, pero debe aceptar el asesoramiento de 'los mejores', y no debe manejar las finanzas de la polis.
Over the last 40 years, capital has done much better than labor, both domestically and internationally. To show the tremendous impact of the bull market in valuation, I use the Gordon formula for the value of a stock with perpetual growth:
P0 = DIV1 / ( r — g )
Where r is the discount rate, g the growth rate and DIV1 is next year's dividend per share. The collapse in interest rates brought about by the deflationary policy of central banks, and by other developments in the world economy, has driven up valuations in asset prices, favouring the rich. But if that pattern were to continue for the next 5 to 10 years, it would mean that democracy has failed. And that's not something you really want to contemplate.
Asset managers pueden escuchar el podcast con provecho. Pero lo que nos interesa aquí es el punto de vista político. El Sr. McCulley no es el único analista financiero con inclinaciones 'de izquierda' (†). Dudo que sea un gran lector de Tucídides y Aristóteles. Pero su 'mezcla' de capitalismo y democracia refleja bastante bien la idea del gobierno mixto brevemente presentada por Tucídides al final de su obra, y analizada en detalle por Aristóteles—el mejor gobierno, la πολιτεία de Aristóteles, combina oligarquía y aristocracia.
Con esta perspectiva en mente, el problema de la independencia del banco central se soluciona: basta pensarlo en términos de gobierno mixto (en el sentido clásico), y no de separación de poderes. Al final, el podcast de Paul McCulley me lleva a recordar el notable discurso del líder demócrata Atenagoras de Siracusa, presentado por Tucídides en 6.39 como 'protector del pueblo' (προστάτης του δῆμου): el pueblo manda, pero debe aceptar el asesoramiento de 'los mejores', y no debe manejar las finanzas de la polis.
(*) Joe Weisenthal & Tracy Alloway: "Paul McCulley on the Profound Change Coming to the Economy", Bloomberg, 3 de septiembre 2020.
(†) Ver, por ejemplo, Martin Sandbu: "ECB must follow the Fed's embrace of a second mandate", Financial Times, 31 de agosto de 2020, y Matthew C. Klein & Michael Pettis. Trade Wars are Class Wars: How Rising Inequality Distorts the Global Economy and Threatens International Peace. Yale University Press, 2020 [ver] y la reseña de Martin Wolf: "Conflict Economics", Financial Times, 20-21 de junio de 2020. Menos interesante me ha parecido el artículo (en su versión de abstract) de Wolfgang Merkel (2014): "Is Capitalism Compatible with Democracy?", Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Politikwissenschaft, Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 109-128. Me aburre el uso de una noción tan imprecisa como 'neo-liberalismo'.
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