Políticas keynesianas en Venezuela, un comentario desde la heterodoxia.

Matías Vernengo escribe una respuesta heterodoxa a una reciente entrada de Ricardo Hausmann en project-syndicate.org , a nuestro parecer es bastante precisa, sobretodo teniendo en cuenta los momentos álgidos que vive Venezuela y el papel de ls políticas económicas implementadas antes y déspues de Hugo Chavez, a continuación el texto: 

NAKED KEYNESIANISM: Overdose of heterodoxy, failed Keynesian policies ...:

Ricardo Hausmann blames the situation in Venezuela to excessive heterodox policies. The piece is not particularly well written, but if you look for the deep cause of the crisis, according to Hausmann, then you must conclude that it is a fiscal one. The government spent too much, and got into too much debt. In his words:

So fiscal problems, too much spending and borrowing, too much money printing, which caused inflation and the currency crisis (the black market gap between the official and parallel value of the domestic currency). As I have discussed in many posts (too many to link) and in a recent paper causality is upside down. It is the external problem, the current account deficit (as I noted in the previous post) that is at the heart of the problem.

Actually, as far as I know the authorities remained for a long while very anti-Keynesian and not particularly in favor of spending. In the immediate aftermath of the global crisis in 2008-9 Venezuela did not pursue Keynesian anti-cyclical policies vigorously. If memory doesn't fail me Mark Weisbrot actually organized a symposium in which government officials encountered a few heterodox economists to try to convince them of the need of counter-cyclical policies. Mind you, many on the left also assume that the problem is the failure of Keynesian policies, like Michael Roberts suggests in a recent post.

On the problem of food shortages, it is important to note that for the most part the wealthy are fine. Only regulated products are scarce, and those tend to be the ones needed by the low income groups (see here; you can follow this guy who keeps showing how much food, and how well the wealthy live in Caracas here). Contrary to what Hausmann suggests nobody is dying for lack of food, even though the situation for the poor is incredibly difficult. And yes, the opposition and orthodox policies are all about making the life of the poor easier, aren't they?*

Again, the problems of Venezuela are perennial, and have to do with the excessive dependence on oil, and the need to diversify production, including probably having a preoccupation with food security, and diversifying exports. Hausmann should know, since he has been writing about the importance of what a country exports, or maybe he thinks that orthodoxy (laissez faire, in this context) would magically produce a more diversified export structure. History is not on his side on this.

* If you have any doubts see what happened in Argentina after Macri's election. That would be a guide (perhaps a moderate one) to what to expect if a Brazilian like parliamentary coup occurred in Venezuela.

Governments often struggle to balance their books, leading to over-indebtedness and financial trouble. Yet fiscal prudence is one of the most frequently attacked principles of economic orthodoxy. But Venezuela shows what happens when prudence is frowned upon and fiscal information is treated as a state secret... Venezuela used the 2004-2013 oil boom to quintuple its external public debt, instead of saving up for a rainy day. By 2013, Venezuela’s extravagant borrowing led international capital markets to shut it out, leading the authorities to print money.

La revolución Keynesiana, un comentario desde dos posiciones Postkeynesianas

Asad Zaman escribe The Keynesian Revolution and the Monetarist Counter-Revolution en el WEA Pedagogy Blog, más abajo un comentario interesante realizado por Paul Davidson, reproducimos ambos en extenso:

Before Keynes, Classical Economic Theory (CET) was based on three principles. The First Principle is that Unemployment is automatically eliminated by the free market. The Second Principle is the Quantity Theory of Money, which states that money supply makes no difference to real economic outcomes. The Third Principle is that private investors automatically find the right investment opportunities to create the best economic outcomes for future. The realities of the Great Depression of 1929 clashed violently with these three principles which hold only in an imaginary world bound by axioms and logic. Keynes followed scientific methodology to create a new theory which rejected all three axioms of CET, so that Keynesian theory would match the experienced realities of the Great Depression. This is the distinguishing feature of science, that theories are devised and changed in light of experience. In contrast, Greek axiomatic-logical methodology disregards conflict with observational evidence.

The experience of the Great Depression showed that free markets cannot eliminate unemployment. The role of expansion of money stock in the boom, and of restrictive money in the recession, became clear to economists. Keynesian theory incorporates this experience and asserts the extreme importance of money in the real economy, contrary to the Quantity Theory of Money. Also, Keynes argued that the future was unpredictable. Investor sentiment and expectations about future governed their investment decisions, but these could become artificially depressed. This would choke off investment and badly affect the future of the economy. In such situations, the government should step in with investments to compensate for shortfalls in private investments. This type of fiscal policy would be able to restore full employment and generate growth. This Keynesian prescription is diametrically opposed to the Third Axiom of CET which argues that governments should not intervene in economic activity. Keynesian theories were “scientific” in the sense that they were based on observations and economic experiences, and conflicted with the Greek axiomatic approach of CET.

Banks had lost fortunes, and wiped out lifetime savings of many depositors in the Great Depression. Soon afterwards, a strong set of laws were enacted which sharply regulated financial institutions, prohibiting them from speculation, and placing many other restrictions on their activities. Financial regulation restricted the power of the wealthy to generate income from their existing wealth. This meant a sharp reduction in money generated by non-productive financial activities like interest based loans. At the same time, the main thrust of Keynesian theory was that the government had the responsibility to maintain full employment, and undertake investments necessary for growth. Investments flowed to the real sector, instead of the financial sector, and full employment meant that all the productive capacity of the economy was utilized. Empowering the working classes, investing in growth, and restricting the financial sector, led to decades of prosperity in the Western world.

In order to understand what happened next, we have to look at the dramatic impact of the three Keynesian policies of financial regulation, full employment, and government investments, on the income distribution in the USA. From 1930 to 1980, the share of wealth accruing to the bottom 90% increased from a low of 15% to a high of 35%. At the same time, the share of wealth accruing to the top 0.1% decreased from a high of 25% to a low of 5%. This reversal of fortunes was not acceptable to the extremely wealthy, who plotted a coup against Keynesian theories with patience and persistence. Their last bastion and stronghold was Chicago University, which was virtually solitary in its advocacy of free market economics in the days of dominance of Keynesian theories. In their paper “Winning Ideas”, Sabena Alkire and Angus Ritchie have provided detailed information about the campaign to spread, popularize and implement free market ideas. One key strategy was the utilization of economic and political crises and disasters to rush in with revolutionary changes. Naomi Klein has documented this aspect in her brilliant book “The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism” which details how crises were used or generated all over the world as a means of introducing free market policies which could not be achieved by popular vote. 

In the USA and UK, the oil crisis in early 1970’s created an opportunity which was seized upon by the Chicago School to create the Monetarist Counter-Revolution against Keynesian ideas. All economic troubles were blamed on Keynesian policies and financial regulation, and a strong push was made for financial liberalization, and for restricting the authorities and power of the government. One weakness of Keynesian theory was that while macroeconomics was scientifically based on observed behavior of real world economies, microeconomics was based on an axiomatic-logical Greek approach to consumer theory. Progress would have involved changing microeconomic theories to match observations of real world consumer behavior. Instead of this, the monetarist counter-revolution succeeded in dislodging Keynesian theory by arguing that these macro theories were not consistent with the axioms for consumer behavior in microeconomic theories. This return to Greek axiomatic methodology effectively divorced economics theories from reality. Keynesian Nobel Laureate Robert Solow remarked:  “Since I find the fundamental framework [of Chicago economists Lucas & Sargent] ludicrous, … I respond by laughing.” Financial liberalization together with repeal of Keynesian economics had exactly the effects desired by the wealthy. The share of the top 0.1% has steadily risen from its bottom at 5% to the current 25% and is steadily rising. The share of the bottom 90% has fallen from its top value of 35% to its current 15% and is steadily declining. The Global Financial Crisis has wiped out the middle classes and further enriched the wealthy financiers. The use of a Greek methodology which confines economists to the study of an imaginary world is extremely helpful in perpetuating the current state of affairs as it prevents the public from noticing essential aspects of the economic system. This is why scientific methodology, which would be based on close observations of contemporary realities of the economic system, is shunned by economists.

Aquí el comentario de Paul Davidson:

The problem is worse than Zaman indicates. It was not only the University of Chicago that undermined Keynes’s revolution. 

Paul Samuelson’s Neoclassical Synthesis Keynesianism had the same microfoundations as classical economics and therefore undermined Keynes’s theory.

In Fact, as I show in my latest book POST KEYNESIAN ECOMOMIC THEORY AND POLICY, Samuelson is quoted as insisting that the only cause of involuntary unemployment was the stickiness of the money wage and administered prices. Ergo, the Chicago school is correct if we had a competitive free market — instead of unions controlling wages, the government forcing a legal minimum wage floor, and monopolists controlling prices– full employment is the inevitable outcome of free markets!.

The New Keynesians accepted Samuelson’s theory and added the rational expectations approach, where the future can be known with actuarial certainty — so that there is no uncertainty.

When will economists go back to what was Keynes’s general theory — as given in my textbook POST KEYNEIAN MACROECONOMIC THEORY. But I guess I am too naïve to think that economic professors who call themselves “Keynesians” will throw over the false Samuelson “Keynesianism” theory and learn and teach the students of today the correct General Theory of Keynes an its implication for the global economy we are in — and the Great Recession which policy makers can not figure out how to end!

Actualización
Egmont Kakarot-Handtke comenta la entrada de Asam, no conocía el trabajo de este economista, lo estaré leyendo en mis tiempos libres y si considero importante su trabajo lo presentare en este blog, saludos:

Keynes, the methodologistComment on Asad Zaman on ‘The Keynesian Revolution and the Monetarist Counter-Revolution’Keynes’s lasting scientific contribution relates to methodology. He spoke it out loud, so that every fellow economist could hear it: Throw over the classical axioms and put economics on new foundations: “For if orthodox economics is at fault, the error is to be found not in the superstructure, which has been erected with great care for logical consistency, but in a lack of clearness and of generality in the premises.” (1973, p. xxi)

With the revolutionary shift in mathematics and physics from Euclidean to non-Euclidean axiomatics (Hilbert, Einstein) right before his eyes, Keynes called his fellow economists to arms. “The classical theorists resemble Euclidean geometers in a non-Euclidean world who, discovering that in experience straight lines apparently parallel often meet, rebuke the lines for not keeping straight — as the only remedy for the unfortunate collisions which are occurring. Yet, in truth, there is no remedy except to throw over the axiom of parallels and to work out a non-Euclidean geometry. Something similar is required to-day in economics.” (1973, p. 16)

As Asad Zaman puts it: “Keynes followed scientific methodology to create a new theory which rejected all three axioms of CET [Classical Economic Theory], so that Keynesian theory would match the experienced realities of the Great Depression. This is the distinguishing feature of science, that theories are devised and changed in light of experience.” (See intro)

To change a theory means to change the axiomatic foundations. This is what a paradigm shift is all about. Consequently, Keynes formulated the foundational syllogism of the General Theory as follows: “Income = value of output = consumption + investment. Saving = income – consumption. Therefore saving = investment.” (1973, p. 63)This elementary two-liner, though, is conceptually and logically defective because Keynes did not come to grips with profit and therefore “discarded the draft chapter dealing with it.” (Tómasson et al., 2010, p. 12). As a result, the whole Post Keynesian theoretical superstructure is false (2011; 2014).

Because Keynes did not get the macrofoundations right the Keynesian Revolution ultimately failed. Just like the Walrasians, Keynes had no idea of the fundamental concepts of economics, viz. profit and income.In the neoclassical synthesis of Samuelson, Keynes’s new ‘non-Euclidean axioms’ and the old ‘Euclidean axioms’ of marginalism were cobbled together. Textbooks consisted of two well-balanced halves: micro and macro. Needless to emphasize that both halves did not fit together. Economic textbooks are blatantly inconsistent since 1947.Gradually, the majority of economists fell entirely back to the pre-Keynesian formal foundations of marginalism. As Krugman put it “most of what I and many others do is sorta-kinda neoclassical because it takes the maximization-and-equilibrium world as a starting point.”

It is pretty obvious to anyone with a modicum of scientific instinct that the axiomatic starting point of the neoclassical paradigm is methodologically unacceptable (2013). By sticking to the obsolete microfoundations Orthodoxy violates scientific standards that hold since the ancient Greeks introduced the axiomatic-deductive methodology.

As Morgenstern reminded economists already back in 1941: “In economics we should strive to proceed, wherever we can, exactly according to the standards of the other, more advanced, sciences, where it is not possible, once an issue has been decided, to continue to write about it as if nothing had happened.” (1941, pp. 369-370)Orthodox economists will burn in scientific hell because they stick to microfoundations that are false since Jevons/Walras/Menger. Post Keynesian economists will burn in scientific hell because they stick to macrofoundations that are false since Keynes.

The axiomatic foundations of economics are provably false since more than 140 years. Because of this, economic policy advice of BOTH Walrasians AND Keynesians has no sound scientific foundation (2015).

Egmont Kakarot-Handtke

ReferencesKakarot-Handtke, E. (2011). Why Post Keynesianism is Not Yet a Science. SSRN Working Paper Series, 1966438: 1–20. URL http://ssrn.com/abstract=1966438.Kakarot-Handtke, E. (2013). Confused Confusers: How to Stop Thinking Likean Economist and Start Thinking Like a Scientist. SSRN Working Paper Series, 2207598: 1–16. URL http://ssrn.com/abstract=2207598.Kakarot-Handtke, E. (2014). The Three Fatal Mistakes of Yesterday Economics: Profit, I=S, Employment. SSRN Working Paper Series, 2489792: 1–13. URLhttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2489792.Kakarot-Handtke, E. (2015). Major Defects of the Market Economy. SSRN Working Paper Series, 2624350: 1–40. URLhttp://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2624350.Keynes, J. M. (1973). The General Theory of Employment Interest and Money. London, Basingstoke: Macmillan.Morgenstern, O. (1941). Professor Hicks on Value and Capital. Journal of Political Economy, 49(3): 361–393. URL http://www.jstor.org/stable/1824735.Tómasson, G., and Bezemer, D. J. (2010). What is the Source of Profit and Interest? A Classical Conundrum Reconsidered. MPRA Paper, 20557: 1–34. URLhttp://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/20557/.  

Revista Circus: Massimo Pivetti: Las implicancias de la renuncia a...

Revista Circus: Massimo Pivetti: Las implicancias de la renuncia a...: Posteamos un pequeño video sumamente interesante del Profesor Pivetti, sobre los efectos de la adopción del Euro por los países de Europa....

Lecturas del Post-Keynesian Economics Study Group (PKSG)

El Post-Keynesian Economics Study Group (PKSG) me acaba de enviar su Reading List (Lecturas) introductorias al pensamiento Postkeynesiano, con el tiempo subiré las mismas al blog y las comentare cuando así me sea posible.

Les recomiendo que se suscriban al mailing list del grupo para recibir más información sobre eventos, papers y demás.

Primer Escolio

Los hombres cambian menos de ideas que las ideas de disfraz. En el decurso de los siglos las mismas voces dialogan.

Nicolás Gómez Dávila

(Escolios a un texto implícito).

Nuestra primera entrada no será de economía, finanzas, sociología, demografía, urbanismo, arte, ciencia, política o similar, sera de lo más simple, la base de todo lo anterior el pensamiento. Y para ello, inauguramos oficialmente este blog con un el "Escolio" que inspiró la creación y nombre de esté blog, su autor, un colombiano casi desconocido e ignorado por sus contemporáneos y hace pocos años vuelto a valorarse: Nicolás Gómez Dávila.

Les dejo su obra para su consulta y deleite, esperando sea el inicio de varias y muchas entradas más.