segunda-feira, 2 de junho de 2014

My little footnote


Há meses decorreu em Lisboa, no IDEFF (where else?), uma conferência com Mark Blyth. A partir daí mantivémos por e-mail uma simpática correspondência. 

Eu discordei dele na questão do mandato do BCE (com base nas minhas anotações no artigo “One size fits none” publicado no "A Austeridade Cura...A Austeridade Mata ?", em resposta a mais um de tantos gentis convites do Professor Doutor Eduardo Paz Ferreira) e disse-lhe.

Ele, como é anglo-saxónico, respondeu à letra  e, como fez questão de me comunicar, as nossas turras mereceram uma inflexão de posição, no seu “The Sovereign Debt Crisis That Isn’t: Or, How to Turn an Lending Crisis into a Spending Crisis and Pocket the Spread” apresentado na Princeton University. Cá fica, para minha memória futura: 

The treaty provisions in question actually say something quite different from what was often reported.

Article 127 of the Treat on the Functioning of the European Union says that, “the primary objective of the European System of Central Banks (hereinafter referred to as ‘the ESCB’) shall be to maintain price stability.” Further, it continues that “without prejudice to the objective of price stability, the ESCB shall support the general economic policies in the Union with a view to contributing to the achievement of the objectives of the Union as laid down in Article 3 of the Treaty on European Union.” So what does article three say? It says, inter alia, that “The Union shall…work for the sustainable development of Europe based on balanced economic growth and price stabilityaiming at full employment and social progress, and a high level of protection...It shall promote economic, social and territorial cohesion, and solidarity among Member States.” The inclusion of the goals of growth, full employment, protection and solidarity, opens the tent to some rather large interventionist elephants into the fiscal tent alongside price stability. That the ECB chose not to do more given its statutes can be sustained. That it was unable to do more given its statutes is simply unsupportable.[1]






[1] I thank Marco Capitão Ferreira of the University of Lisbon Law School for this key insight into the crisis.