Il cambio yuan/dollaro e il protezionismo di Krugman. Le valutazioni dei mercati immobiliari. Aggiornamento all'1 gennaio 2010.

BUM!

Paul Krugman invoca il protezionismo per difendersi dalla politica cinese del cambio! Ecco cosa scrive su New York Times di oggi

Second, there’s the claim that protectionism is always a bad thing, in any circumstances. If that’s what you believe, however, you learned Econ 101 from the wrong people — because when unemployment is high and the government can’t restore full employment, the usual rules don’t apply.
Let me quote from a classic paper by the late Paul Samuelson, who more or less created modern economics: “With employment less than full ... all the debunked mercantilistic arguments” — that is, claims that nations who subsidize their exports effectively steal jobs from other countries — “turn out to be valid.” He then went on argue that persistently misaligned exchange rates create “genuine problems for free-trade apologetics.” The best answer to these problems is getting exchange rates back to where they ought to be. But that’s exactly what China is refusing to let happen.
The bottom line is that Chinese mercantilism is a growing problem, and the victims of that mercantilism have little to lose from a trade confrontation. So I’d urge China’s government to reconsider its stubbornness. Otherwise, the very mild protectionism it’s currently complaining about will be the start of something much bigger.

...accidenti! Il problema è il cambio fissato tra il dollaro e il renminbi: dopo una svalutazione di circa il 15% in 3 anni, dall'estate del 2008 il cambio è costante a circa 6.8 yuan per dollaro. Date un'occhiata al grafico su google finance


All'estremo opposto delle posizioni di Krugman, sul tema della crescita USA abbiamo invece quello che mi pare un mirabile esempio di faciloneria economica: ah se fosse tutto così semplice come sostiene il signor Karlgaard...ascoltatelo e decidete da soli se vi sembra convincente oppure no.




Sull'ultimo numero dell'Economist c'è un'interessante analisi del mercato immobiliare: 
il titolo mi pare abbastanza significativo

House prices are still far above their fair value in many countries—though no longer in America

L'idea dell'Economist per valutare il fair value dei mercati è di considerare il rapporto tra il prezzo delle case e gli affitti, in analogia con il rapporto prezzo/utili per le azioni.  Scrive l'Economist:

Shares are deemed pricey when the p/e ratio is above its long-run average. Similarly,  homebuyers are likely to be overpaying for property when the price-to-rents ratio is higher than normal. By that yardstick house prices seem low in only a handful of countries in our survey, as the final column in the table shows. One is Japan, where steadily falling property prices mean the price-to-rents ratio is 34% below its average since 1975. Switzerland’s ratio is also less than its long-run average. Germany looks cheap as well, and since our valuation benchmark goes back only to 1996 and so misses out a period when German house prices were frothier, may be cheaper still. (...)

No valuation measure is perfect. One flaw with the price-to-rents gauge is that it takes no account of shifts in real interest rates. (...)
Partly for this reason, fair-value gauges can also be sensitive to how far back the figures go for each country. Ireland may look less overvalued than Spain because the available data go back only to 1990 and omit a period of less bouncy markets. If the average price-to-rents ratio is calculated from 1990 onwards, Spain’s market is overvalued by 24%, rather than the 55% shown in the table (based on figures from 1975). That would make both markets similarly overpriced.
In spite of these blemishes, the price-to-rents gauge is a useful check on how puffed-up property markets are. A housing boom turns into a bubble when prices are driven up by expectations of future price gains. Scarcity of supply or population shifts are often used to rationalise high house prices, but such fundamentals should push up rents, too. That house prices in America are back in line with rents suggests the worst of its correction is over (although a further downward leg is possible since past housing busts have pushed prices below their fair value and there is a large stock of unsold houses to clear). Europe’s housing correction, however, seems far from over.

Sempre sul sito dell'Economist
trovate qui i dati relativi ai mercati immobiliari in 20 paesi, inclusa l'Italia, dal 2000 ad oggi, grazie ai quali potete produrre dei grafici simili a quello riportato qui accanto.






Infine, ecco l'aggiornamento settimanale alla data del 1 gennaio 2010.