Odličen komentar Martina Wolfa, daleč najboljšega ekonomskega komentatorja med novinarji, v Financial Timesu. Wolf ima potrebno makroekonomsko znanje ter sposobnost povezati stvari (kar našim novinarjem, vsem po vrsti, hudo manjka). Problem prenizkega globalnega povpraševanja je v bilančni krizi, do katere je prišlo, ko so ob začetku krize medbančni kreditni trgi zamrznili, podjetja in gospodinjstva pa so ostala prezadolžena. V času krize zato kopičijo likvidnost in se razdolžujejo, zato ne investirajo in ne trošijo. Tudi če bi hotela, jim banke zaradi prezadolženosti ne bi dale kreditov. Iz tega seveda sledi dolgo obdobje prenizkega agregatnega povpraševanja in posledičnega upadanja tudi potencialne rasti, zaradi stagnacije zaposlovanja in produktivnosti. Slednjih ni mogoče pospešiti z nobenimi strukturnimi reformami, če se pred tem ne poveča povpraševanje.

Dokler tega politični voditelji ne bodo razumeli v polnosti, kot pravilno ugotavlja Wolf, ne bodo mogli pripraviti ustreznih ukrepov za izhod razvitih držav iz stagnacije. Monetarna stimulacija prek QE se je zelo očitno izkazala kot neučinkovita. Morebitna nova eksperimentiranja z monetarno politiko pa prinašajo zelo visoka tveganja.

How do we explain such weak demand, particularly in the eurozone and Japan? Only if we understand this do we have any hope of deciding on the right remedies. One can identify three sets of underlying explanations.

The first set stresses the post-crisis overhang of private debt and the damage to confidence caused by the sudden disintegration of the financial system. The by-now canonical response consists of cleaning up balance sheets and forced injection of capital into the banking system, supported by stress tests, to convince the public that the financial system is again creditworthy. To this should be added fiscal and monetary support for demand. In this view, a return to growth should be swift.

The second set of explanations denies this last proposition. It argues that the pre-crisis demand was unsustainable because it relied on huge accumulations of private and public debt – the former associated with bubbles in property prices. Japan suffered such a post-bubble reversal in private debt accumulation after 1990; the US, UK and Spain after 2008. The implication of this is that economies suffer not just from a post-crisis balance-sheet recession, but from an inability to generate credit-driven demand on the pre-crisis scale. Behind the unsustainability of pre-crisis demand lie global imbalances, shifts in income distribution and structurally weak investment. A symptom is a chronic financial surplus (excess of income over spending) in the private sector, as in Japan and the eurozone.

The third set of explanations points to a slowdown in potential growth, due to some combination of demographic changes, slowing rises in productivity and weak investment. But this last set of explanations feeds directly into the second. If growth of potential supply is expected to slow, consumption and investment will be weak. That will generate feeble growth in demand. If central banks fight this, they get bubbles. If they accept it, weak growth of supply turns into a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Vir: Martin Wolf, Financial Times