Documents Brender, Anton 6 results

"This book provides an update to the major 2012 study by the same authors on the dual role of the public sector as the provider of the ultimate riskless asset and, at the same time, the source of a potential major systemic risk. In this second edition, Brender and his colleagues concentrate again on the tension between the need for the public sector to sustain demand in the face of a deleveraging private sector and the longer-term challenges of sustainability for fiscal policy in the major developed economies of the US, Japan and the euro area. In short, their principal thesis is that sovereign debt is in crisis.  This crisis is apparent in the euro area, but it is also real, if at present only latent, in the US and Japan. The book shows how this process has evolved in these three big developed economies – and how their policy choices impact on global financial markets."

"The world economy is just starting to recover from the most disastrous episode in the history of financial globalisation. Understanding what happened is essential. Anton Brender and Florence Pisani, both economists with Dexia Asset Management and teaching at Paris-Dauphine University, argue in this book that the main problems were deeply rooted and are to be found in two tightly linked developments that for many years were left largely uncontrolled: the increase in the intensity of international transfers of savings - the so-called 'global imbalances' - and a wave of innovations - globalised finance - that have changed the way savings and the risks associated with their investment can be transferred.

Globalised finance allowed continuously increasing amounts of emerging countries' savings, invested in 'risk-free' assets, to finance loans that were far from being risk-free. The risks attendant on those loans did not vanish of course: they were carried by the risk-takers of the globalised financial system. Hedge-funds, investment banks, off-balance-sheet vehicles, etc. functioned here as parts of a genuine alternative banking system, taking on the bulk of the liquidity, interest-rate and credit risks generated by the mismatch between the assets that emerging regions' savers were ready to - or could - invest in and the liabilities developed countries' borrowers issued. Unfortunately, no one was in charge of keeping in check either the quantity of risk being accumulated in this way or the quality of the loans generating those risks. The consequence was terrible: the only force that could finally rein in the continuous deepening of the global imbalances was the collapse of globalised finance."

"Crise asiatique, bulle boursière, crise des subprimes… La finance globalisée, à l'origine de ces éruptions successives, est-elle un volcan mal éteint dont il faut se protéger ou bien une force qui, domestiquée, pourrait être mise au service du progrès économique ?
La question mérite d'être posée car la vigueur de la croissance observée pendant une grande partie des années 2000 tient, pour une part au moins, aux mécanismes par lesquels la finance globalisée a permis à l'épargne dégagée en un endroit de la planète d'être utilisée en un autre. Ces mécanismes ne résultent pas de la seule libéralisation des mouvements de capitaux, ils sont aussi le produit d'une vague d'innovations qui a transformé partout la manière dont les capitaux, comme les risques liés à leur investissement, circulent et sont portés. La globalisation financière a ainsi doté l'économie mondiale de dispositifs d'une puissance étonnante, mais aussi d'une grande vulnérabilité.
Ce « Repères » éclaire le fonctionnement de ces nouveaux dispositifs et les enchaînements qui ont conduit à la première crise de la finance globalisée."

"Dans les pays les plus avancés, le progrès social est en panne. Face à la montée presque générale des inégalités, face à la stagnation des revenus d'une large partie de leurs populations, face aussi aux dommages de plus en plus visibles causés à la planète par leur développement passé, ce constat s'impose. En attribuer la faute au capitalisme, sur lequel ce développement s'est fondé, serait pourtant une erreur : il n'est pas plus responsable de la panne actuelle qu'il ne l'a été hier des progrès accomplis.
Au lendemain de la Seconde Guerre mondiale, les populations occidentales ont connu une amélioration, profonde et largement partagée, de leurs conditions de vie, parce que, au terme d'une longue et tumultueuse histoire, elles ont réussi à maîtriser la force productive du capitalisme. Les années 1980 ont toutefois été celles du triomphe de l'idéologie libérale : face à la mondialisation et aux changements techniques qui s'esquissent alors, les sociétés occidentales auraient dû redoubler d'efforts pour rester dans un rapport de forces favorable avec le capitalisme. Elles ont préféré laisser faire. Après quarante ans de dérive, est-il trop tard pour reprendre la barre ?"

"Debt continues to grow around the globe, regularly creating cause for concern. Are today's economies really nothing but a house of cards? The Covid pandemic has not helped matters: the debt of most Western governments has soared as a result. Will our governments go bankrupt, and who will foot the bill? While debt can be a catalyst for crisis, it is also crucial to economic growth, because one person's debt liability is another's debt claim. If nobody borrows, then nobody can set money aside. In a market economy, Aesop's fable does not hold true: the ants need the grasshoppers.

As long as households want to save more than private agents are willing to borrow, governments not only can, but should, continue to take on debt. They are not just ‘borrowers of last resort', they are also ‘insurers of last resort'. Faced with a future fraught with risks, borrowing gives governments a means of investing today to avert at least some of these risks and avoid taking on even more debt tomorrow. If they use their resources wisely, they will not go bankrupt.

This book tackles these issues in an original and thought-provoking way. By looking at the rise in debt from a macroeconomic and empirical viewpoint, the authors highlight the underlying forces while also pointing out the limits to public and private indebtedness."