Presidente do BCE prevê recuperação da economia ainda em 2013

Presidente do BCE prevê recuperação da economia ainda em 2013: O presidente do Banco Central Europeu, Mario Draghi, previu hoje "uma recuperação da economia na segunda metade de 2013" depois de uma estabilização a um nível muito baixo na zona euro.

Os 13 passos obrigatórios para um país abandonar o euro

Os 13 passos obrigatórios para um país abandonar o euro:

Numa altura em que a Grécia vê ameaçada a sua permanência na zona euro, Jonathan Tepper, editor chefe da Variant Perception, listou as medidas que um Estado será obrigado a tomar dias antes de abandonar o euro. Segundo o jornal Dinheiro Vivo, são as seguintes:

1. Organizar uma sessão parlamentar especial a um sábado, com o objectivo de aprovar legislação que inclua todos os detalhes da saída do euro. Entre os principais elementos que terão de ficar definidos está a introdução de uma nova moeda, o processo de saída de circulação da divisa anterior, bem como a criação de mecanismos de controlo de capital e a transferência da dívida existente para uma nova moeda. No caso de Portugal, a previsível desvalorização significativa da futura moeda, implicaria um aumento considerável do montante de dívida pública, que actualmente está em euros.

2. Criar uma nova moeda que, em princípio, significaria um regresso à divisa pré-euro. Para Portugal, o escudo. Todo o capital que esteja dentro das fronteiras nacionais passará a estar sob essa nova denominação. Dívida ou depósitos detidos por cidadãos nacionais, mas fora do país, não sofrerão qualquer tipo de alteração.

3. Voltar a colocar o banco central nacional (no nosso caso, o Banco de Portugal) à frente de toda a política monetária, sistema de pagamentos, gestão de reservas, etc. Tepper recomenda que o banco central não financie passivos orçamentais para manter taxas de juro e inflação baixas, embora refira que este último ponto não é essencial para a saída.

4. Impedir transferências de capital durante o fim-de-semana. Criar um mecanismo de controlo de capital para impedir uma fuga maciça de capitais para o exterior.

5. Declarar um ou dois feriados obrigatórios para os bancos, permitindo-lhes que façam as alterações necessárias na sua atividade.

6. Iniciar um processo gigantesco para marcar com tinta ou colar selos em notas de euro já existentes. Deverão ser criados balcões de troca de divisas por todo o país. As notas de euro passariam a ter o mesmo valor que a nova moeda.

7. Imprimir novas notas o mais rápido possível. Assim que existam notas suficientes para começar a circular, deve iniciar-se o processo de substituição das notas marcadas anteriormente.

8. Permitir que a moeda seja comercializada livremente nos mercados internacionais, deixando-a sujeita a flutuações. No caso do escudo, isso iria provocar uma desvalorização significativa do valor da divisa.

9. Criar mecanismos mais céleres de gestão de falências e dar mais recursos aos tribunais responsáveis por estes processos. Prevendo-se que os pedidos de falência disparem, será importante torná-los os mais ágeis possíveis.

10. Iniciar negociações para uma reestruturação da dívida, possivelmente intermediadas pelo FMI.

11. Notificar o Banco Central Europeu (BCE) e trabalhar em conjunto com a instituição liderada por Mario Draghi, de forma a criar mecanismos de segurança que actuem sobre os problemas que deverão emergir no sistema financeiro e no mercado interbancário.

12. Negociar com o BCE a avaliação dos actuais activos e passivos.

13. Por último, Tepper recomenda reformas no mercado laboral que rompam com o alinhamento dos aumentos salariais à inflação. Nos meses seguintes a uma saída do euro, a inflação deverá disparar. O seu controlo deve ser efectuado por meio de reformas estruturais de longo prazo.

Lucrar com a morte antecipada no Deutsche Bank

A crise tem destas coisas ....

Lucrar com a morte antecipada no Deutsche Bank: O Deutsche Bank tem um novo fundo de investimento que especula sobre expectativa de vida dos titulares de seguros.

What Inflation Really Means To Your Household

What Inflation Really Means To Your Household:

The Fed justified the previous round of quantitative easing "to promote a stronger pace of economic recovery and to help ensure that inflation, over time, is at levels consistent with its mandate" (full text).

In effect, the Fed has been trying to increase inflation, operating at the macro level. But what does an increase in inflation mean at the micro level — specifically to your household?

Let's do some analysis of the Consumer Price Index, the best known measure of inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) divides all expenditures into eight categories and assigns a relative size to each. The pie chart below illustrates the components of the Consumer Price Index for Urban Consumers, the CPI-U, which I'll refer to hereafter as the CPI.

The slices are listed in the order used by the BLS in their tables, not the relative size. The first three follow the traditional order of urgency: food, shelter, and clothing. Transportation comes before Medical Care, and Recreation precedes the lumped category of Education and Communication. Other Goods and Services refers to a bizarre grab-bag of odd fellows, including tobacco, cosmetics, financial services, and funeral expenses. For a complete breakdown and relative weights of all the subcategories of the eight categories, see the link to table 1 near the bottom of the BLS's monthly Consumer Price Index Summary.

The chart below shows the cumulative percent change in price for each of the eight categories since 2000.



Not surprisingly, Medical Care has been the fastest growing category. At the opposite end, Apparel has actually been deflating since 2000. The latest Apparel number is the first fractional nudge above zero in about nine years. Another unique feature of Apparel is the obvious seasonal volatility of the contour.

Transportation is the other category with high volatility — much more dramatic and irregular than the seasonality of Apparel. Transportation includes a wide range of subcategories. The volatility is largely driven by the Motor Fuel subcategory. For example, the spike in gasoline above $4-a-gallon in 2008 is readily apparent in the chart.

The Ominous Shadow Category of Energy

The BLS does not lump energy costs into an expenditure category, but it does include energy subcategories in Housing in addition to the fuel subcategory in Transportation. Also, energy costs are indirectly reflected in expenditure changes for goods and services across the CPI.

The BLS does track Energy as a separate aggregate index, which in recent years has been assigned a relative importance of 8.553 out of 100. In other words, Uncle Sam calculates inflation on the assumption that energy in one form or another constitutes about 8.55% of total expenditures, about half of which (4.53%) goes to transportation fuels — mostly gasoline. The next chart overlays the highly volatile Energy aggregate on top of the eight expenditure categories. We can immediately see the impact of energy costs on transportation.

The next chart will come as no surprise to families footing the bill for college tuition. Here I've separately plotted the College Tuition and Fees subcategory of the Education and Communication expenditure category. Note that the steady staircase in this cost matches the annual cost increases in late summer for each academic year.

Core Inflation

Economists and policy makers (e.g., the Federal Reserve) pay close attention to Core Inflation, which is the overall inflation rate excluding Food and Energy. Now this is a somewhat peculiar metric in that one of the exclusions, Energy, is an aggregate that combines specific pieces of two consumption categories: 1) Transportation fuels and 2) Housing fuels, gas, and electricity. The other, Food, is the major part of the Food and Beverage category. I should explain that "beverage" for the BLS means alcoholic beverages. So coffee and Coca Colas are excluded from Core Inflation, but Budweiser and Jack Daniels aren't.

The next chart shows us the annualized rate of change (solid lines) and the cumulative change (dotted lines) in CPI and Core CPI since 2000.



Consumers, especially those who've managed expenses over several years, are most closely attuned to the top line.

Inflation and Your Household

The universal response is to moan over price increases and take delight when prices are cheaper. But in reality, households vary dramatically in the impact that inflation has upon them. When gasoline prices skyrocket, a two-earner suburban family with long car commutes suffers far more than the metro family with short subway commutes. And the pain is even more extreme for low income households whose grocery money shrinks with gas prices rise. And remember, Uncle Sam excludes energy costs from Core Inflation.

Households with high medical costs are significantly more vulnerable than comparable households with low expenses in this category.

The BLS weights College Tuition and Fees at 1.493% of the total expenditures. But for households with college-bound children, the relentless growth of tuition and fees can cripple budgets. Often those costs get bundled into loans that saddle degree recipients with exorbitant debt burdens. Consider the following numbers from the CollegeBoard.com website:

Public four-year colleges charge, on average, $8,244 per year in tuition and fees for in-state students. The average surcharge for full-time out-of-state students at these institutions is $12,526.

Private nonprofit four-year colleges charge, on average, $28,500 per year in tuition and fees.
Of course, Mr. Bernanke would point out that, with a healthy dose of Core Inflation (extended of course to wages), those debt-burdened college grads will pay down the loans with inflated dollars.

Which brings us back to the Fed's efforts to manage the level of Core Inflation. At the macro level, Mr. Bernanke and his Federal Reserve team can doubtless make a theoretical argument for playing puppet master with inflation. But will their efforts — ZIRP and Quantitative Easing — achieve the desired goal?

The one thing we can be certain about is this: An increase in inflation will have a painful effect on lower income households, those on fixed incomes, those with higher ratios of transportation costs, and any household whose discretionary spending is more dream than reality.

The post original appeared on Advisor Perspectives.

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Bancos podem ter de pagar o dobro de impostos em dois anos

Bancos podem ter de pagar o dobro de impostos em dois anos: O aumento da tributação em sede de IRC, o fim da Zona Franca da Madeira e a subida do IVA sobre a eletricidade vão aumentar a tributação efetiva sobre a banca. Clique para visitar o dossiê Orçamento do Estado 2012