Towards a New Form of Undemocratic Capitalism: Introducing Macro-Equity to Finance Development Post COVID-19 Crisis

Sustainable Development Goal 16 talks about Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions, and goal 10 talks about reducing inequality. A major problem exposed by the COVID-19 crisis is that public deficits seem to be the normal state in the business cycle’s booms and downturns, limiting capacity for emergencies. Corporate capitalism has an incentive to perpetuate deficits to increase growth, provide risk-free interest income to financial institutions, and to increase inequalities and economic injustice. To counter this problem, the purpose of this communication is to suggest that countries need to issue equity capital, which we term macro-equity. This macro-equity will give dividends to its shareholders in times of public surplus and issue new shares in times of public deficits. The communication is written as a mind experiment, debating the issues that may arise. This proposal raises many questions of an ethical and moral nature that will lead to passionate debate. The use of macro-equity will reduce countries’ stress, created by high public debt. With appropriate incentives, it may create an entrepreneurial mindset in political leaders that may even reduce corruption and promote redistribution. The moral and ethical issues need to be weighed against the street violence in the absence of any change.

Albania

Albania continues to be severely affected by the aftermath of the November 2019 earthquake and the COVID-19 pandemic. The authorities responded promptly to the shocks, and macroeconomic and financial stability have so far been maintained. The economy is expected to contract sharply in 2020, followed by a gradual recovery in 2021-22. The outlook is subject to major uncertainty and rising downside risks as a second wave is gripping many countries in Europe. Albania’s capacity to repay the Fund is adequate, but risks have risen in light of the shocks. Aside from a more severe pandemic, key risks stem from elevated public deficits and debt, weaknesses in public finances, and a relatively high level of non-performing loans (NPLs) and euroization.

Debt patterns of the peripheral economies of Europe: from the increased growth post-implementation of the Euro to the Great Recession

<p>The main purpose of this article is to outline the specificities of the indebtedness process of each country of the European periphery — Greece, Italy, Ireland, Portugal, and Spain — that guided the behavior of the demand and the indebtedness of the domestic economic agents from 2000 to 2017. The main results indicated that from 2000 to 2008, all of the countries had foreign sector surpluses (current account deficits), which characterized distinct indebtedness processes of the domestic economic agents. The reversal of these processes was accompanied by larger public deficits and the replacement of private debt with public debt. With the exception of Ireland, the positive impacts on the economic performance of these countries between 2009 and 2017 came from the foreign sector through the devaluation of the euro in the period.</p>

Deficit Financing in Contemporary Economies: Effects and Implications

Ann Pettifor’s paper on deficit financing elucidates how Keynesian policies in times of economic slumps reduce public deficits. A public misconception is that during economic downturns, increasing government expenditure will worsen the deficit. Deficit financing aims to increase economic output via creating/salvaging jobs and increasing productivity. Thus, the temporary increase in spending creates a longterm increase in economic output, so the size of the deficit in relation to GDP ultimately decreases. However, effective targeting of government expenditure is critical if it is to benefit the economy. Evidence from the United States, Taiwan, and Bangladesh, shows how deficit financing used effectively, and not solely to gain political capital, is necessary to produce economic growth.

BRAZILIAN FINANCIAL CRISIS IN THE 1980S: HISTORICAL PRECEDENT OF AN ECONOMY GOVERNED BY FINANCIAL INTERESTS

ABSTRACT Beyond representing coordination or government failures, the Brazilian financial crisis in the 1980s characterized the dominance of financial interests on public policies. This paper shows that such dominance began with the external debt negotiations in 1982, which put international creditors’ interest first. It argues that the imposed external adjustment - specially the exchange rates devaluation, public investment cuts and the hike in real interest rates - generated recession and financial instability (notoriously inflation), which would threat depreciating private wealth. Therefore, both the external adjustment and the private wealth protection only turned possible due to the increasing public deficits and debts - including by transferences of debt from private to public sector. The dominant perspective, found in the literature on the period, blaming government deficits and debts for the financial instability of the 1980s is wrong. Economists, even heterodox ones, still believe that Brazil’s financial crisis in the 1980s resulted from budget deficits and public debts. This paper shows, contrary to the dominant view, that once the public sector had to allow private wealth adjustment to the external conditions imposed by foreign creditors, public deficits were the only possible outcome in that conditions.