A crise cambial e o ajuste fiscal

Abstract

RESUMO Acreditamos que a literatura de crise da balança de pagamentos pode oferecer a base para entender a atual turbulência econômica no Brasil. De acordo com nossos cálculos, a taxa de câmbio real requer uma desvalorização de 15% a 20%, a fim de garantir que a restrição intertemporal da balança de pagamentos não seja violada. Essa moeda apreciada (e a política cambial projetada para reduzir a valorização) impõe um fardo pesado à política monetária: a paridade de juros cobertos implica em altas taxas de juros domésticas reais para financiar a conta corrente. Eventualmente, a defesa da taxa de câmbio exige um aumento adicional nas taxas de juros, aceitas pelo governo, o peso da estabilidade na função de perda do governo parece ser muito maior do que o atribuído ao desemprego (ou crescimento). No entanto, apesar dessas preferências, a existência de um grande déficit orçamentário impõe limites objetivos ao uso das taxas de juros como forma de defender a moeda. Na ausência de um acentuado ajuste fiscal, a política monetária não será mais plausível. Nesse sentido, o ajuste fiscal é um elemento crucial para sustentar a atual política cambial.

Currency Crisis or Overproduction? A Marxian Analysis of the Exchange Rate Peg Collapse in Brazil

“…In a rational expectations analysis, Schwartsman (1999) advocates that foreign economic agents could foresee when public debt growth would become unsustainable, causing a reversal of capital flow and a large depreciation of the real after the collapse of the exchange rate regime. Assuming perfect information, since every agent could make that prediction, each one of them wanted to get ahead of the others in the run on reserves, anticipating the exchange rate peg collapse.…”

“…If, on the one hand, authors such as Schwartsman (1999) argue that, in spite of the heavy burden imposed by the monetary policy, the fiscal adjustment by itself would be enough to maintain macroeconomic stability, on the other hand, an expressive part of the authors from the aforementioned second group understands that the stabilization plan was doomed from the very beginning. Kregel (1999) and Saad-Filho and Morais (2002) are examples of those authors.…”

“…With analyses that seem to be based mainly on the canonical framework of Krugman (1979) and Flood and Garber (1984) and on second-generation orthodox models such as Obstfeld and Rogoff (1996) and Velasco (1996), the first group is more homogeneous than the second and can be well represented by the work of Schwartsman (1999). According to the referred author, the fiscal adjustment was the key to maintaining the macroeconomic stability.…”

“…As the fiscal policy became looser and the net debt of the public sector grew, Schwartsman (1999) argues, the increase of the interest rate stopped being enough to overcompensate the risk increase, since economic agents started to fear the default. This insufficiency of capital inflow can effectively be seen in figure 1 from 1997 onward.…”

“…If, on the one hand, the stabilization plan’s success is unquestionable, then on the other, it appears to be unequivocal to most economists that it was also the cause of the Brazilian late 1990s crisis (Kregel 1999; Schwartsman 1999; Saad-Filho and Morais 2002; Saad-Filho and Mollo 2002; Giambiagi and Além 2016; Giambiagi et al 2021). In both the mainstream and part of the heterodoxy, this understanding derives from the currency crisis or balance of payments crisis theories (Falcão Silva 2002).…”