This year has brought spring swallows, sunlight, increased temperatures, pollen allergies and some green shoots that have unleashed the euphoria of pathological optimists.
is true that the brutal pace of global economic downturn has slowed. But one thing is seen through the lens of a microscope the birth of a small green shoots and a lawn mower to start preparing in case.
At the moment the macro numbers remain a concern, it is true that they have ceased to be catastrophic, but the rates that comes from USA (retail, housing demand, industrial production ...) are still not encouraging. If we look at other latitudes, the Chinese giant still wake up and your neighbor Japan continues with flat encephalogram (IMF forecast to drop of GDP in 2009 from -7%). The European locomotive (Germany) has got the reverse and the railway Merkel does not know how to change the trend (IMF forecast, -6% this year). With all that world GDP will shrink 1.3% this year and live in the greatest contraction of world trade (-9%) from the Normandy landings. To all this must be added that these forecasts from the IMF are characterized by progressively worsen. At the moment the picture is horrible, within three months we must look for another qualifier (and quarter after quarter we are depleting them.) Because by the time we only have one thing clear: each new forecast has worsened significantly earlier.
Yet there are people who see this slowdown in the fall a sign of optimism. Okay, you can assume you have hit rock bottom (which is far presume), but an outbreak can only grow green disappear around all the weeds that hinder their development. Optimists say that the global economy will hit bottom this year. But that's not the crux of the matter. The key is determining when recovery and what their pace.
I do not agree with the description made by some of the current situation. We are not the "season of green shoots" but, rather, in the "eye of the hurricane." The
eye is a circular area cleared at the hurricane center. At its heart is calm while all around the elements of nature unleashed its wrath.
Perhaps in the coming months will witness a GDP growth boosted by the long period of decline in consumption that we have experienced (people are lazy) and the dramatic momentum of interventionist government policies (the U.S. rescue plans, the helps the automotive sector in Europe, E Plan in Spain, etc..) But the storms have not disappeared and after crossing the eye if the already damaged vessel that represents the global economy will be faced again with the hurricane. Because
the hurricane, despite the false sense of serenity you experience when your eye goes, is still there. Some act like the child that separates the look of something like that thinking that something disappears. They think that if you ignore the crisis will disappear. But it is not easy to ignore one of the worst recessions in history.
Nor can we ignore that for any economic policy measures have been adopted (despite their variety and magnitude) have managed to arrest the fall (just slow it down) and, as I said in another post, the source of this great depression (the problem with the banking system) remains unresolved. For if one already does not remember everything this mess begins with the valuation of assets. At the moment no one knows yet the volume of the same and the problem is unlikely to be solved in the short term and that this will have to retrieve the real estate market (so that assets are reorganized.)
The second phase of the crisis (after the parenthesis of the eye) will have different consequences in the same way they are different causes. If the first part of the cyclone's winds were generated by the deadly combination of the bursting of the housing bubble and the international financial crisis, in this second phase, the catalyst will be the unemployment problems (Crisis 2.0)
enter 2010 with five million unemployed and an unemployment rate of 20%. The forecast for this year are even talking about 22%. As they are completed the temporary contracts of the summer and people who are digging ditches and tiling walks through the great idea of \u200b\u200bthe government, unemployment (which saw her bleeding has slowed in May and will remain so over the next two months) will ride as the fifth horseman of the apocalypse threatening his scythe to the ailing English economy.
The first to pay the consequences of this second phase of the crisis are the banks and savings banks. Late payments, so far contained, is loose. In the first part of this sainete the problem for banks is liquidity, now turn it is to the credit and late payment. To date, the balance sheets of banks and building societies have been assisted by governments to get by, but the underlying problem remains: Spain is leveraged. The debts of households, SMEs, municipalities .... Are still there. And while no money in the market and Spain was not desapalanque, banks will have trouble paying, people to consume and businesses to invest. Families and businesses up to their eyeballs in debt who are seen as an extension of goods purchased by its commitments to the banks, lower monthly price (from houses to cars).
liquidity Many see the manna. They say that once the banks lending again will solve many problems, the prices will stop falling, households consume, invest companies, unemployment will fall ... Right. But nobody seems to answer the main question: where are they going to get banks to lend money? Banks have gone very touched by the first part of the crisis ... and so I doubt poor showing to survive (many of them) to the second, once we abandon the calm eye of the hurricane.
brick debt to banks (the toxic assets made in Spain) is spectacular (one million-odd empty flats may take five years to be sold). English banks and savings banks are keeping thousands of homes, factories, land ... to make up their balance sheets to the inability of developers to repay their loans. A desperate measure has been taken not find an answer to the question: Who will buy now to the banks and those floors?. An entity originally reserved these "bargains" exclusively for their employees. To sell only three apartments on the beach and two parking spaces, have begun offering their customers good deals. And not with such an apartment is sold. For two reasons: people think that, despite the discount, the price of Flats will continue to fall, and he who does not think so and decided to buy, find a bank to lend him. As I said earlier, the measure makeup the balance sheets of banks (but will only serve to delude themselves) and sacrificed their liquidity, already battered by limiting their ability to continue providing credit. Do not ask me what else could have made the banks because I have no answer.
Five million people receiving unemployment benefits will stop shaking state coffers. The fiscal deficit (each forecast exceeds the previous all odds) can exceed 10%! Social Security enter into deficit within a few months. Panorama horrible, but what will happen as the five million people no longer perceive their employment subsidy? Late payment will trigger bank, social conflicts will be unsustainable (and is significantly increasing crime), we will see violent demonstrations (in some cities such as Vigo, and are attending the preamble), strikes ... The Prime Minister has already made clear that any of this happen: they create social wage, will increase the delivery periods, etc.. The deficits being ballasted to our country for a generation and we will see a decline in social services that both have evolved in recent decades: health, education, culture, transport ...
will not be so easy to see how the green shoots of the English economy become buds (more likely to be the reverse and the face of some of our acquire the key leaders of the skin of Shrek) without serious reforms (which for the moment no one want to lie) and without reducing our debts (which for the moment no one can do.) Keep thinking that things will be resolved by themselves is foolhardy. It is unpopular to talk about reducing wages, benefits, pensions, spending ... but a stagnant economy (if not sinking) as English does not hold the weight that has taken over many months. The good times are gone. ... And take a long time back. Admitting the truth is the first step to finding solutions.
The other day a student asked me if I see the recovery of the English economy in the first or second half of 2010. I replied that in the second half of 2010 we will be able to tell if the English economy will recover (or not) in the medium term and in case of a hit that recovery would come in 2015. A few (the most optimistic) my response I was amused, others (most pessimistic) almost makes them mourn. A good navigator not the one who waits for favorable winds, but one that has the ability to navigate adjusting to the wind to come, regardless of its strength and direction. It is concerned not to laugh or mourn, but to enhance our skill as sailors.
Enrique de la Rica, School of Business ESEUNE (http://www.eseune.edu) Evolutionary Blog (http://eseune.blogspot.com) 
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