“Reading and thinking. The beauty of doing it, is that if you’re good at it, you don’t have to do much else" Charlie Munger. "La cantidad de energía necesaria para refutar una gilipollez es un orden de magnitud mayor que para producirla" Paul Kedrosky «Nulla dies sine linea» Antonio Guarino. "Reading won't be obsolete till writing is, and writing won't be obsolete till thinking is" Paul Graham.
lunes, 9 de mayo de 2011
The new capitalist manifesto
La prohibición de fijar el precio de reventa sigue viva y coleando en los derechos estatales norteamericanos
Bioelements sells skin-care products for various needs, such as cleansing, anti-aging, and hydration. Bioelements sells these products through two channels—salon spas and authorized Internet resellers—with written agreements for dealers in each channel. Before the December 2010 challenge 2010, salon spas signed Bioelements agreements with an explicit minimum RPM provision: “Accounts shall not charge less than the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP).” The Internet-only dealers’ agreement had both a minimum and maximum RPM provision: “Accounts are prohibited from charging more or less than the Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP).” According to the California Attorney General’s press release about the case, however, the problematic provisions dealt only with online sales: the agreements required vendors “to sell Bioelements’ products online for at least as much as the retail prices prescribed by Bioelements. There were no express pricing requirements for products sold in person or in shops.
Quadra-Salcedo Janini sobre el significado de la libre circulación de mercancías en el Derecho Europeo
La idea fuerza que fundamenta la decisión Mickelsson y Roos –una medida nacional que restrinja al limite el uso de un producto constituye un obstáculo al comercio intracomunitario aun en el caso de que la medida no tenga por objeto ni por efecto tratar de manera menos favorable a los productos procedentes de otros Estados miembros– supone acoger aquella concepción que considera que los preceptos del TFUE que garantizan la libre circulación de mercancías tienen como objetivo promover el libre ejercicio de la actividad económica en el mercado interior y supone desechar aquella otra que considera que el objetivo de tales preceptos es más modesto, es la proscripción del proteccionismo económico.
La consecuencia fundamental de tal doctrina que convierte la garantía de la libre circulación de mercancías entre los Estados miembros en una garantía del libre ejercicio de la actividad económica dentro del mercado interior es la europeización de un ámbito regulatorio que hasta ahora era puramente nacional. En efecto, hasta ahora el derecho primario de la Unión Europea, tal como se venía interpretando desde Keck, proscribía el proteccionismo económico y –mientras el legislador europeo no regulase para suprimir las distorsiones de la competencia derivadas de la pluralidad normativa– la garantía de la libertad económica, del libre ejercicio de la actividad económica, era un ámbito puramente estatal.
El Tribunal de Justicia, máximo intérprete del derecho europeo, parece no estar de acuerdo con el limitado alcance que se le ha dado a la libertad de empresa en el Tratado de Lisboa y le ha buscado a la carrera un acomodo alternativo en aquellos preceptos que garantizan la libre circulación de mercancías… La justificación que deben hacer los poderes nacionales ante el juez europeo, es… mucho más exhaustiva que la que vendrían realizando hasta ahora al justificar la conformidad de las medidas referidas con el propio derecho nacional, pues la consecuencia práctica de extender el concepto de obstáculo al comercio intracomunitario a nuevos ámbitos … es el sometimiento de aquellas disposiciones nacionales que caigan bajo tal concepto al principio de proporcionalidad para determinar su aplicabilidad. Parámetro que es, en la práctica, más penetrante e incisivo que el parámetro utilizado, hasta ahora, por los poderes jurisdiccionales nacionales para comprobar la adecuación de las normas de los poderes públicos estatales a los derechos económicos (por ejemplo, la libertad de empresa) contenidos en las normas fundamentales nacionales.
Tomás de la Quadra-Salcedo Janini, La libre circulación de mercancías en los sistemas políticos descentralizados: ¿Garantía de la libertad económica o proscripción del proteccionismo? REDE 35(2010), pp 365-408.
domingo, 8 de mayo de 2011
El problema del capital de los bancos
Capital is a residual. It is the difference between the value of bank assets and liabilities. Because most bank liabilities – in general- are carried at cost, capital is heavily influenced by a bank’s asset selection criteria (origination standards); and second, the reliability of ongoing asset valuations, particularly impairment on loans and securities not held for trading, and “hard-to-value” assets carried in the trading book, where quoted market prices are not available. Herein lies the challenge. Both the quality of origination standards and price “discovery” for a substantial portion of bank assets, remains more art than science; and it is wholly reliant on the exercise of sound judgment –supported by critical analysis – by bank risk managers and bank supervisors. These qualitative factors cannot be appropriately addressed by simply increasing the minimum CAR.… a small change in asset values can have a disproportionate impact on the reported CAR… a 5% drop in asset values approximates a 48% decline in the minimum Basel III capital requirement, if capital is measured as a percentage of total assets. Even an increase in the minimum CAR to 15% will not materially alter this relationship.
Más sobre la deuda y el corralito norteamericano
(regla sobre el uso de hipervínculos: parece que incluir muchos reduce la atención del lector. Dado que el lector puede – botón derecho – ir directamente a la página correspondiente, su utilidad se reduce. Deberíamos utilizarlos sólo cuando queramos utilizar una expresión en un sentido determinado entre varios posibles o hacer una referencia concreta a un documento concreto, como una suerte de nota a pie de página),
Reforma de los bancos
“la batalla por los depósitos es principalmente un síntoma, no una causa de la debilidad del sector financiero español. El acceso limitado de los bancos a la financiación al por mayor es un reflejo de la incertidumbre respecto a los préstamos incobrables que todavía quedan en sus balances… y de las inquietudes… respecto a la deuda soberana”
¿Acuerdo unánime de los socios que genera responsabilidad de los administradores?
Matisse, Le café maure
Es la Sentencia de 20 de julio de 2010. Da la impresión de que el Tribunal Supremo ha intentado resolver un problema de dolo o inducción a error en la compraventa de unas acciones por vía de la acción social.
En los términos más simples,
- el consejero delegado, el director financiero y el secretario general de una sociedad se regalan una cantidad bastante abultada en forma de cheques para adquirir acciones de la propia sociedad como premio o retribución extraordinaria por los servicios prestados a la sociedad.
- Lo llevan a la Junta que, por unanimidad de todo el capital social (o sea, una Junta universal en la que votan a favor de la remuneración el 100 % del capital) aprueba dicha remuneración.
- Después de tal acuerdo, entran en la sociedad unas cuantas cajas de ahorro que son las que ejercitan la acción social. La impresión es que, al adquirir las acciones, las Cajas no se dieron cuenta de lo que habían hecho los directivos y, cuando lo descubrieron, intentaron recuperar esos fondos (o evitar que la Sociedad los abonara) por vía de la acción social.
Tres notas sobre la importancia del nivel de desarrollo económico para la elección de las reglas jurídicas
Cuando el Gobierno es, a la vez, el vendedor en Bolsa (Pettis)
A dramatic example of the impact of government behavior on value investing was China Telecom’s initial public stock offering in November, 2002. The offering was scheduled to come out at a time of weak international demand, and there was some concern that it might not be as successful as hoped. Because the meeting of the 16th Party Congress was taking place in Beijing during that time, a successful transaction would have helped validate government policies and a failure would have been seen as a loss of face. In an attempt to bolster demand the Chinese government pushed through a large and unexpected increase in international interconnection fees, which would result in higher profits for the company.
Instead of boosting demand for the stock, however, this actually had the effect of reducing demand. The deal, originally expected to raise over $3 billion, ended up raising only $1.4 billion, even after being priced at the bottom of the expected price range.
Why was the deal a failure? Much of it had to do, of course, with weak global markets, but the final sudden drop in demand came about largely because by its actions the government made it clear that they would allow non-economic factors to affect the company’s profitability. Value investors, who dominate the large international markets and who would have been the main buyers of China Telecom, felt that their ability to judge the company’s future cashflows had suddenly been damaged. They saw that the company’s profitability depended not just on economic factors, which they are able to judge, but also importantly on political factors, which they cannot. As a consequence they raised their discount rate – that is, they lowered the price at which they were willing to buy shares
El derecho de suscripción preferente es un signo de mercados poco desarrollados (Dam)
Whatever the pros and cons of the default-term approach, it seems obvious that preemptive rights have a smaller role in countries where there is a vigorous market for new stock issues among widely dispersed shareholders, compared with countries with primarily concentrated share ownership. In the absence of a vigorous market for new issues, preemptive rights reflect in part an assumption that new equity capital for an existing corporation will most usually have to come from existing shareholders. Preemptive rights also are a recognition that where share ownership is concentrated, the relative position of such owners is a major issue. In the absence of preemptive rights, a controlling shareholder could, for example, gradually squeeze out or otherwise disadvantage existing minority shareholders, including those who had major stakes but who, in the absence of a liquid stock market for the company, had little prospect of selling those stakes to anyone other than the controlling shareholder. Thus, the use of preemptive rights is a sign of a weak, not a strong, market for corporate equities.
Ventajas de las rules – reglas - versus standard – principios, cláusulas generales - en países pobres (Posner)
The relative simplicity of rules has two consequences for the kind of weak judiciary one is apt to find in a poor country. The first is that the application of rules places fewer demands on the time and the competence of the judges and is therefore both cheaper and more likely to be accurate. The accuracy is a little illusory, because it is a property of governance by rules that they never quite fit the complex reality that they govern. But this observation is consistent with their being more efficient than standards if administered by a judiciary that has a limited capability for the kind of nuanced and flexible decisionmaking that standards require. Second, rules facilitate monitoring of the judges and so reduce the likelihood of bribery and the influence of politics in the judicial process. The less discretion a judge has in making decisions, the easier it will be to determine whether a case has been decided contrary to law or whether there is a pattern of favoring one class or group of litigants over another.
¿Hay empresas que no deberían salir a Bolsa?
viernes, 6 de mayo de 2011
Reformar la Universidad sin copiar a los norteamericanos
La bondad/maldad de las cláusulas anti-OPA
We first establish which external governance provisions entail trade-o¤s: a sub-set of provisions that impose a delay on potential acquirers - "delay provisions" - should have both bargaining benefits and agency costs, while other provisions - "non-delay provisions" - should only have agency costs. This leads to two main comparative static results. First, we predict a larger bargaining effect of delay provisions in concentrated industries. The intuition for this prediction is simple: In concentrated industries, targets are relatively scarce. Thus, a potential acquirer is more concerned about losing synergy opportunities to industry rivals and may be willing to bid more in order to not lose the target. However, in the absence of a credible threat such as delay provisions that afford an industry rival an opportunity to jump in the fray and make a competing bid for the target, the acquirer will not up its bid. Second, we predict that delay and non-delay provisions should have an interaction effect with industry concentration on firm value. Specifically, the valuation effect of delay provisions, while overall ambiguous, should be unambiguously less negative in concentrated industries, and potentially positive if bargaining benefits are sufficiently high. By contrast, the valuation effect of non-delay provisions should be unambiguously negative, and more so in concentrated industries if agency costs are higher.
Proportionality and Principled Balancing, Aharon Barak
foto: Mosaic Magazine
En este breve trabajo, se ocupa del tercer elemento del juicio de proporcionalidad: la proporcionalidad en sentido estricto o ponderación entre la “ganancia” social de conseguir el fin público o el respeto del derecho fundamental y el “coste” para el derecho fundamental limitado por la norma o decisión pública
Claramente, comparar un "beneficio" con una "limitación" es una tarea abrumadora. Cómo se puede comparar el beneficio para la seguridad del Estado con la limitación de la libertad de expresión? Teniendo en cuenta estas dificultades, parece oportuno comenzar aclarando dos extremos: Primero, la comparación no es entre las ventajas obtenidas al realizar el objetivo en conflicto con el efecto provocado por la limitación del derecho. Tampoco es entre la seguridad y la libertad. La comparación es entre el beneficio marginal a la seguridad y el daño marginal al derecho que causa la norma o decisión restrictiva. La comparación se refiere a lo marginal; a lo incremental.
En segundo lugar, debemos preguntarnos si existe una alternativa más proporcionada que logre sólo una parte de los objetivos y sea menos restrictiva del derecho. Si efectivamente existe una alternativa más proporcional, la comparación entre el beneficio marginal y la limitación marginal se realiza teniendo en cuenta y en comparación con la alternativa proporcional...
En un lado de la balanza donde se sitúa el derecho hay que ponderar... la importancia del derecho... (y)... el alcance de su limitación, su intensidad y sus dimensiones. Una limitación de un solo derecho es menos gravoso que la limitación de varios derechos. Una limitación próxima a los márgenes del derecho difiere de una limitación que se afecta a aspectos próximos al núcleo esencial del derecho. Una limitación temporal es menos severa que una permanente. Así, las consecuencias de la limitación de un derecho humano y su efecto en los derechos afectan a la ponderación del derecho mismo.
David Graeber: historia de la deuda
(En Mesopotamia) “most actual acts of everyday buying and selling, particularly those that were not carried out between absolute strangers, appear to have been made on credit. "Ale women", or local innkeepers, served beer, for example, and often rented rooms; customers ran up a tab; normally, the full sum was dispatched at harvest time. Market vendors presumably acted as they do in small−scale markets in Africa, or Central Asia, today, building up lists of trustworthy clients to whom they could extend credit. The habit of money at interest also originates in Sumer −− it remained unknown, for example, in Egypt. Interest rates, fixed at 20 percent, remained stable for 2,000 years”.
“This, however, led to some serious social problems. In years with bad harvests especially, peasants would start becoming hopelessly indebted to the rich, and would have to surrender their farms and, ultimately, family members, in debt bondage. Gradually, this condition seems to have come to a social crisis −− not so much leading to popular uprisings, but to common people abandoning the cities and settled territory entirely and becoming semi−nomadic "bandits" and raiders. It soon became traditional for each new ruler to wipe the slate clean, cancel all debts, and declare a general amnesty or "freedom", so that all bonded labourers could return to their families. (It is significant here that the first word for "freedom" known in any human language, the Sumerian amarga, literally means "return to mother".) Biblical prophets instituted a similar custom, the Jubilee, whereby after seven years all debts were similarly cancelled. This is the direct ancestor of the New Testament notion of "redemption". As economist Michael Hudson has pointed out, it seems one of the misfortunes of world history that the institution of lending money at interest disseminated out of Mesopotamia without, for the most part, being accompanied by its original checks and balances”
“Coinage, certainly, was not invented to facilitate trade (the Phoenicians, consummate traders of the ancient world, were among the last to adopt it). It appears to have been first invented to pay soldiers, probably first of all by rulers of Lydia in Asia Minor to pay their Greek mercenaries. Carthage, another great trading nation, only started minting coins very late, and then explicitly to pay its foreign soldiers”.
“The credit systems of the Near East did not crumble under commercial competition; they were destroyed by Alexander's armies −− armies that required half a ton of silver bullion per day in wages. The mines where the bullion was produced were generally worked by slaves”.
“the creation of new media of exchange −− coinage appeared almost simultaneously in Greece, India, and China −−appears to have had profound intellectual effects. ... The most remarkable pattern, though, is the emergence, in almost the exact times and places where one also sees the early spread of coinage, of what were to become modern world religions: prophetic Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Confucianism, Taoism, and eventually, Islam. While the precise links are yet to be fully explored, in certain ways, these religions appear to have arisen in direct reaction to the logic of the market. To put the matter somewhat crudely: if one relegates a certain social space simply to the selfish acquisition of material things, it is almost inevitable that soon someone else will come to set aside another domain in which to preach that, from the perspective of ultimate values, material things are unimportant, and selfishness −− or even the self −− illusory”
“One common expedient, for example, was the use of tally−sticks, notched pieces of wood that were broken in two as records of debt, with half being kept by the creditor, half by the debtor”
“Western Europe was, as in so many things, a relative late−comer in this regard: most of the financial innovations that reached Italy and France in the 11th and 12th centuries had been in common use in Egypt or Iraq since the 8th or 9th centuries. The word "cheque", for example, derives from the Arab sakk, and appeared in English only around 1220 AD”.
Historically, ages of virtual, credit money have also involved creating some sort of overarching institutions −− Mesopotamian sacred kingship, Mosaic jubilees, Sharia or Canon Law −− that place some sort of controls on the potentially catastrophic social consequences of debt… Almost invariably, they involve institutions … to protect debtors.
CAT sobre cárteles
Este párrafo de una sentencia reciente del CAT refleja bien cómo debemos decidir cuando sancionar un cártel del que forman parte empresas que, en junto, no tienen una elevada cuota de mercado:
However, in our judgment the OFT was right to emphasise that agreements with the object of price-fixing and a collective boycott of a new entrant into the market are of their nature among the most serious kinds of infringement. Although the combined market share of the parties to the CRF was estimated by the OFT to be only “at least 13.6%”22, this was a highly fragmented market. The infringement comprised the largest players in the market: Indeed the participants were selected by the director of Hill McGlynn & Associates Ltd who organised their meeting at the outset on the basis that they were the key players in the sector and the agencies likely to be involved in Master Vendor and Neutral Vendor arrangements: In evidence called by Hays for its appeal, a director of Vinci plc testified that the participants in the infringement included the agencies whom he regarded as important for any PSL put forward.
El resto de la sentencia se ocupa, sobre todo, del modo de calcular las multas, en particular, sobre el volumen de ventas relevante (si hay que descontar o no determinados ingresos de las empresas sancionadas).
Sorprende a primera vista que un cártel que reunía a menos del 15 % del mercado pudiera tener efectos distorsionadores de la competencia. Pero, como explica bien el CAT, los miembros del mismo y la existencia de un segmento de clientes en el mercado que se relacionaban especialmente con los miembros del cártel, justifica la calificación de la conducta como especialmente grave. Por lo demás, aquí si que podemos dejarnos llevar por la presunción: si el acuerdo no podía tener efectos sobre el mercado ¿por qué se molestaron las partes en reunirse y celebrarlo en primer lugar?
VS Naipaul’s Rules for Beginners
1. Do not write long sentences. A sentence should not have more than ten or twelve words.
2. Each sentence should make a clear statement. It should add to the statement that went before. A good paragraph is a series of clear, linked statements.
3. Do not use big words. If your computer tells you that your average word is more than five letters long, there is something wrong. The use of small words compels you to think about what you are writing. Even difficult ideas can be broken down into small words.
4. Never use words whose meaning you are not sure of. If you break this rule you should look for other work.
5. The beginner should avoid using adjectives, except those of colour, size and number. Use as few adverbs as possible.
6. Avoid the abstract. Always go for the concrete.
7. Every day, for six months at least, practice writing in this way. Small words; short, clear, concrete sentences. It may be awkward, but it’s training you in the use of language. It may even be getting rid of the bad language habits you picked up at the university. You may go beyond these rules after you have thoroughly understood and mastered them.
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