[R-P] [en inglés, intro en castellano] Se nos viene una recesión más larga y profunda todavía

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

El texto en inglés que sigue a continuación explica porqué la crisis 
mundial no solo no ha cesado sino que marcha hacia una profundización. 
Que la Argentina esté capeándola con cierta soltura (aunque no sin 
graves problemas) dice algo sobre el gobierno de Cristina Kirchner y sus 
políticas anticíclicas...

-------- Mensaje original --------
Asunto: [Marxism] A Longer, Deeper Recession Looms
Fecha: Tue, 22 Dec 2009 14:23:00 -0500
De: Greg McDonald <sabocat59 en gmail.com>

http://www.counterpunch.org/lindorff12222009.html

Behind the Happy Talk
A Longer, Deeper Recession Looms

By DAVE LINDORFF

If you google “recession easing,” you will find articles all the way
back to April quoting Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke as saying
that the recession is easing, and that the economy is “improving
modestly.” Newspapers too, on their own, have written rosy-tinged
stories about how things are bad but getting better.

Spins get put on every hint of good news, as when last month “only”
11,000 jobs were lost (a story that was quickly followed by an
“unexpected” jump in new unemployment claims by 474,000 in early
December.)

What didn’t get widely reported was a report by the Association of
Financial Professionals</a>, a trade association that includes CFOs,
treasurers, comptrollers, and risk managers of mid-sized and large
corporations, which asked over 1000 of these executives the question:
“When do you expect your company to begin hiring again?”

The answer tells you all you need to know about the depth of the
current economic crisis, and blows all the media and government happy
talk out of the water.

This Outlook Survey by the APF, which was funded by Wells Fargo Bank,
shows that 26 percent of executives expect to see their company
payrolls continue to shrink in 2010, while 46% more expect employoment
to stay at current low levels.  Put another way,only 25% of companies
surveyed expect to return to pre-recession hiring levels in 2011,
while 32% don’t expect a hiring rebound until 2012. And fully 30% “do
not expect their organizations ever to return their payrolls to
pre-recessionary levels.”

And here’s another troubling bit of news. The same survey respondents
say that their companies’ access to credit--the willingness of banks
to lend--has barely budged. In fact only one in six reported that the
had found credit a little easier to obtain in the last six months,
while one in five actually reported that it had become harder to
obtain credit. So much for the Obama administration’s and the Federal
Reserve’s vaunted efforts to throw so much money--literally trillions
of dollars--at the banks that they would start lending.

More than half of the executives responding to the survey said that if
credit doesn’t become more accessible by mid-2010, their firms will
have to take steps to conserve cash--steps which could include cutting
capital spending (68%), freezing or cutting hiring (62%), cutting
inventory (25%), delaying payments to suppliers (23%), tightening
credit offered to customers (23%) and drawing down existing credit
lines (22%).  Note that all of these steps are things that would put a
further drag on the economy and could push it into a second downward
spiral.

Remember this survey the next time you read that President Obama or
Fed Chief Bernanke or Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner says the
economy is coming back, or that the unemployment situation, while bad,
is about to start turning around.

The executives who are making business plans for their companies, and
who are looking at the cash flowing out and the empty order books,
aren’t so sanguine about the future. And if those hiring plans are
correct, this is a recession from which the economy simply is not
going to recover, at least for many working people whose jobs are
never coming back.

The bad news from finance executives lends added weight to a warning
by Nobel economist Joseph Stiglitz who says there is a "significant
chance" that the US economy will slip back into a decline in the
coming year, going from a U-shaped recession to a "W-shaped" one--a
dreaded double-dip recession, with slumping economic activity leading
to worsening layoffs, more bankruptcies, and more pressure on the
government to finally take dramatic action on jobs.

Currently a professor at Columbia University, Stiglitz, a former chief
economist at the World Bank, says the government should act now to
help state and local governments, which are running out of money, and
to create new jobs. He warned the Obama administration, "If you don't
prepare now, and the economy turns  out to be as weak as I think it's
likely to be, then you'll be in a very difficult position."