Pôr do Sol em Lisboa em Novembro Fonte: Mário Proença/Bloomberg
As más notícias para Portugal correm o mundo. A manter-se o rumo da economia europeia e das políticas económicas que vêm sendo seguidas parece cada vez mais provável que Portugal se veja forçado a adoptar medidas de austeridade adicionais e a avançar com um plano de reestruturação da sua dívida.
Ontem, em artigo de opinião aqui no Negócios – uma novidade onde me arriscarei com posições mais subjectivas e pessoais que as dos textos que publicamos aqui no massa monetária –, defendi a urgência de uma análise independente à sustentabilidade das contas públicas, sublinhei o risco de Portugal se ver, em breve, na situação grega e de ser por isso necessário debater e preparar o cenário de uma reestruturação da sua dívida. Hoje, o Wall Street Journal escreve que os mesmos banqueiros que estão a negociar com a Grécia duvidam do plano de ajustamento nacional (especificamente na capacidade de Portugal regressar ao mercado em 2013) e pensam que um segundo “bailout” é inevitável. O WSJ cita ainda analistas que dizem não ter dúvidas sobre a necessidade de uma reestruturação. Este é um cenário também dado como provável por dois economistas que se têm destacado na análise da crise europeia. Simon Johnson (ex-economista-chefe do FMI) e Peter Boone deixam ainda um outro diagnóstico: Portugal vai precisar de muita mais austeridade. Aqui ficam os principais excertos dos dois textos.
Do Wall Street Journal, primeiro a avaliação do representante dos bancos nas negociações da reestruturação grega e depois um analista de mercado (bolds meus):
The program assumption that the government can begin issuing longer-termed bonds again in 2013 also looks problematic,” the Institute of International Finance, which represents the private creditors in their talks with the Greek government, said in a report on Portugal. “With yields on Portuguese government bonds still above 12%, despite recent declines, this assumption looks unlikely to be realized, even if fiscal deficit targets are met
“Bondholders must surely realize that Portugal has very little realistic prospect of paying back its debts in full,” said Michael Derks, chief strategist at global foreign-exchange broker FxPro. “Discussions will commence regarding the size of haircuts that Portuguese bondholders might need to take,” he added. “Some suggest it could be up to one-third. Right now, that seems like the best-case scenario.”
O recente artigo de Simon Johnson e Peter Boone, publicado no Peterson Institute for International Economics, em Washington, faz um diagnóstico alarmante para Portugal. As posições destes dois economistas ajudam a perceber o que vai na cabeça de muitos dos que integram a troika e o FMI (também aqui bolds meus):
The available evidence from the outcomes of the troika programs in Portugal, Ireland, and Greece, as well as the recently announced budget plans in Italy and Spain, suggests current policies will fail at this task ['regain competitiveness through price and wage cuts, while even more sharply cutting budget spending']. These programs all plan for gradual reductions in budget deficits, implying continued buildup of total government debts, while partially substituting private debt for official debt. In Portugal and Ireland the programs rely on external financing until 2013 when it is anticipated the program countries will reenter markets to finance ongoing budget deficits and ever higher debt stocks at modest interest rates.
With sovereign risk premiums rising, and capital flowing out of the periphery from banks while deficits and competiveness improve little, it is not surprising that peripheral economies are in trouble
Figure 5 shows the pattern of unemployment across the euro area. The stark contrast between Germany and the periphery reflects the dynamics of the crisis. The strong core is becoming stronger, while Greece, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain have high unemployment.
While preemptive restructuring seems attractive, the needed extent and scope is unclear. Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff argue that countries with no lenders of last resort typically run into problems when debt levels reach 60 percent of GDP.16 Even if we assume advanced European economies could manage more debt, it would not be higher than the 90 percent that Reinhart and Rogoff flag as a threshold for developed markets. Such figures imply that greater than 50 percent writedowns of nonofficial debt in Portugal and Ireland may be needed, while Italian debt writedowns might be close to 50 percent.
Five measures are needed to enable the euro area to survive: (1) an immediate program to deal with excessive sovereign debt, (2) far more aggressive plans to reduce budget deficits and make peripheral nations “hypercompetitive” in the near future, (3) supportive monetary policy from the ECB, (4) the introduction of mechanisms that credibly achieve long-term fiscal sustainability, and (5) institutional change that reduces the scope for excessive leverage and consequent instability in the financial sector.
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