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Michelle Boldrin, Director de FEDEA, y Jorge Fabra Utray, miembro fundador de ECONOMISTAS FRENTE A LA CRISIS (EFC) debaten brevemente en TVE canal 24h, al hilo de las preguntas de la presentadora, sobre la crisis.

El debate fue interrumpido por las noticias y la conexión en directo de la investidura de A. Mas. El breve debate puede ser seguido, a partir del minuto 10′,30 en http://www.rtve.es/alacarta/videos/la-tarde-en-24-horas/tarde-24-horas-economia-24-20-12-12/1620809/

Obsérvese que Michelle Boldrin califica las nuevas estimaciones del FMI sobre el multiplicador Keynesiano con la siguiente expresión «Blanchard para decir chorradas se ha llevado la vergüenza mas…».

Blanchard es el economista jefe del FMI.

El FMI estima el multiplicador del gasto para los países europeos desarrollados en el 1,5 frente a sus anteriores estimaciones que lo situaban por debajo de la unidad. Esto es lo que Boldrin califica como una «chorrada»

Más información para comprender el alcance de la polémica en http://qwapo.es/UREUm1

y en O. Blanchard en http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2013/wp1301.pdf

En contraste con el comentario de Michelle Boldrin, merece la pena atender un breve comentario de Paul Krugman sobre Olivier Balnchard:

“Olivier Blanchard Isn’t Very Serious

And when you bear in mind that the Very Serious People have been wrong about everything, that’s a very good thing. What’s even better is that as the chief economist at the IMF, he’s helping make at least one international institution less austerity-mad than the others.

Blanchard’s blog post on what went wrong in 2011 is, in fact, totally sensible and on point.

Furthermore, if I am reading it right, it contains something of a bombshell:

 • Third, financial investors are schizophrenic about fiscal consolidation and growth.

 They react positively to news of fiscal consolidation, but then react negatively later, when consolidation leads to lower growth—which it often does. Some preliminary estimates that the IMF is working on suggest that it does not take large multipliers for the joint effects of fiscal consolidation and the implied lower growth to lead in the end to an increase, not a decrease, in risk spreads on government bonds. To the extent that governments feel they have to respond to markets, they may be induced to consolidate too fast, even from the narrow point of view of debt sustainability.

 (My emphasis)

If I have this right, Olivier is suggesting that harsh austerity programs may be literally self-defeating, hurting the economy so much that they worsen fiscal prospects.

This in turn means that the analogy to medieval doctors who bled their patients, then bled them even more when the bleeding made them sicker, is exactly right: austerity reduces growth prospects, leading to calls for even more austerity.

 Serious!”

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Difunde y apoya el Manifiesto de Economistas Frente a la Crisis firmando en http://wp.me/P1HlFd-1S