Jackson Hole, EEUU.– Podrían pasar
10 años antes de que el crecimiento económico en Estados
Unidos y otros países vuelva a los niveles previos a la
recesión y las tasas de empleo podrían no recuperar nunca
el terreno perdido si uno revisa la historia, según un
estudio conocido este viernes.
El análisis de los economistas Carmen
y Vincent Reinhart fue presentado ante los jefes de los
bancos centrales del mundo en una conferencia anual
organizada por la Reserva Federal.
Las tasas de crecimiento del Producto
Interno Bruto (PIB) son significativamente más bajas
durante la década que sigue a una severa crisis financiera
de nivel global, como fue el caso de la reciente, según los
expertos.
Sus evaluaciones podrían afectar el ánimo
de los gobernadores de bancos centrales reunidos en el cónclave
anual de la Fed, que ya están nerviosos por la posibilidad
de que la recuperación desde la dolorosa recesión haya
quedado sin combustible y que se vean obligados a tomar más
medidas para estimular el crecimiento.
Los autores –Carmen Reinhart es
profesora de Economía de la Universidad de Maryland y
Vincent Reinhart fue director de la división de asuntos
monetarios de la Fed– llegaron a tales conclusiones tras
un estudio de crisis globales y nacionales específicas,
entre ellas el colapso hipotecario del 2007, la crisis del
petróleo de 1973 y la Gran Depresión de 1929.
Los estrategas deberían considerar que
la expansión, el empleo y el crédito podrían nunca
recuperar los niveles alcanzados antes del 2007, dijeron.
"Las recientes discusiones sobre
lo 'nuevo normal', en referencia al paisaje posterior a la
crisis, dan la impresión de que el ambiente previo a la
crisis era 'normal'", escribieron.
"De hecho, hay razones para pensar
que la década anterior a la crisis fijó una marca alta,
distorsionada por una variedad de fuerzas", agregaron.
Las tasas de desocupación son mucho más
elevadas en la década posterior a una crisis, dijeron los
autores. En 10 de los 15 episodios críticos que revisaron,
los niveles de empleo nunca regresaron a los niveles previos
a los de la crisis, afirmaron.
Otros indicadores de actividad económica
mostraron un patrón similar: los precios de las casas
tendieron a no recuperar el valor perdido en más de una década
y el endeudamiento doméstico declinó por cerca de siete años,
dijeron los autores.
"Si el desapalancamiento de la
deuda privada sigue el rastro de las crisis previas también,
la restricción del crédito minará al empleo y al
crecimiento por algún tiempo más", escribieron.
Jackson
Hole Debate on Recession Risk Shows
Bernanke Challenge
Economists
who decide when recessions begin and end in the U.S. are
divided over the odds of a renewed downturn, underscoring
the challenge faced by Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S.
Bernanke as he vows the Fed “will do all that it can” to
sustain growth.
“There’s
still a significant risk, maybe one chance in three, that
there will be a double dip,” said Harvard University
Professor Martin Feldstein, who sits on the Business Cycle
Dating Committee of the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Fellow panel member and Princeton University Professor Mark
Watson said those odds are “way too high” and puts them
instead at “one in 10 or maybe one in 20.”
Such
differences over the outlook marked discussions of policy
makers and economists gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyoming for
the Kansas City Fed’s annual symposium. The tone was set
by a reduced estimate of second–quarter growth and then by
Bernanke’s speech yesterday outlining possible options the
Fed could take to ensure the recovery continues.
“There
is a searching as to where events are going from here
because there has been a slowing in the pace of economic
growth,” Henry Kaufman, president of New–York based
Henry Kaufman & Co., said in an interview at the
conference. “The Fed is at a stage where it is tilting to
further accommodation, but it’s not guaranteed.”
Bernanke
spoke 90 minutes after the Commerce Department reported the
economy grew at a 1.6 percent annual pace in the second
quarter, down from an estimate of 2.4 percent issued last
month. Minutes before Bernanke’s speech, Intel Corp., the
world’s biggest chipmaker, cut its third–quarter revenue
forecast, citing weaker–than–expected consumer demand
for personal computers in mature markets.
Detailed
Analysis
The
Standard & Poor’s 500 Index gained 1.7 percent to
1,064.59 as of 4 p.m. in New York, after falling as much as
0.7 percent in the minutes after Bernanke’s speech was
released. Treasuries fell, sending the yield on the 10–year
note up to 2.65 percent from 2.48 percent.
“We
see a fragile economy that is growing at a slower pace,”
Feldstein said in an interview on Bloomberg Radio’s “The
Hays Advantage,” with Kathleen Hays. Writing in an opinion
piece in the Washington Post, Mohamed A. El–Erian, Pacific
Investment Management Co.’s chief executive officer,
called recent data “alarming” and a sign the recovery is
losing momentum.
Roubini’s
Outlook
With
its benchmark interest rate already near zero, the Fed has
few tools left to boost the economy, said Nouriel Roubini,
the New York University professor who forecast the U.S.
recession more than a year before it began.
“We
are running out of policy bullets,” Roubini said in an
interview on Bloomberg Radio from New York, adding that
additional large–scale purchases of securities won’t
jumpstart growth.
Bernanke
disputed the notion that the Fed is out of ammunition,
saying in his speech that “should further action prove
necessary, policy options are available to provide
additional stimulus.”
The
Fed chairman also provided his most detailed analysis yet of
three options open to the Fed: further purchases of
securities, a change in its policy statement and a reduction
of the interest rate the Fed pays on banks’ excess
reserves.
Securities
Holdings
The
Fed this month decided to keep its holdings at $2.05
trillion by reinvesting proceeds from maturing agency and
mortgage–backed securities in Treasuries to support a
slowing economic recovery. The Federal Open Market Committee,
which next meets Sept. 21, held the main interest rate
unchanged at zero to 0.25 percent, where it’s been since
December 2008.
Bernanke
may still be reluctant to ease monetary policy further with
unconventional steps in the near term, former Fed Vice
Chairman Alan Blinder said. “He is not on the verge of
doing anything,” said Blinder, who now teaches at
Princeton. “I thought he was relatively pessimistic about
the efficacy of the actions.”
Papers
published at the Jackson Hole conference reinforced the
gloom enveloping the world’s largest economy. It and other
advanced economies may face a decade of slow growth and high
unemployment if the aftermath of the 2007 financial crisis
tracks other post–crisis recoveries of the past century,
wrote Carmen Reinhart, a University of Maryland professor,
and husband Vincent Reinhart, a former Fed monetary–affairs
director.
‘Uplifting
Years’
“There
is little reason to expect that looking forward as we do,
the next seven years, the next 10 years, will be upbeat, or
uplifting years as far as growth and employment,” Carmen
Reinhart said in a Bloomberg Television interview.
In
a paper written with Harvard’s James Stock, Princeton’s
Watson concluded that the U.S. inflation rate by the second
quarter of next year is “expected to drop” 0.5
percentage point from the second quarter of this year as
disinflation forces build.
Stock
nevertheless said the economy will keep growing, while
Watson, another member of the NBER committee, said a renewed
recession is “quite unlikely” because of the absence of
a major shock. The NBER committee in April issued a
statement that it was too soon to declare an end to the
recession that began in December 2007.
“I
tend to be cautiously optimistic about growth,” said
Stock. “Everyone is disappointed, but it’s quite unusual
to see declines in the U.S. economy that are not associated
with major shocks.”
