las cifras de la facturación intercentros en los hospitales que se privatizan

A estas alturas, parece claro que la Consejería no dispone de datos ni ningún estudio riguroso sobre los costes reales actuales de la atención especializada en las áreas afectadas por los hospitales cuya gestión se propone privatizar. En sí mismo, eso es suficiente para poner en duda sus pretensiones de ahorro mediante este cambio de modelo. También arroja dudas sobre la cifra de 441 euros por habitante por la que se realizará la concesión.
En particular, la muy importante partida de facturación intercentros parece envuelta en misterio. Según los cálculos de la voz del HULP, si la facturación intercentros (esto es, el coste de las derivaciones de casos complejos) supone, según dijo en su momento la Consejería, supone un coste añadido al presupuesto de los hospitales que ahora se privatizan de un 15%, entonces no existe ahorro alguno, puesto que el coste actual se situaría en 407€ frente a los 441€ de la concesión. Parece ser que la consejería luego rectificó y dijo que en realidad era nada menos que el 70%!. El HULP desarrolla los cálculos que concluyen que, para que eso sea así, por cada paciente dado de alta en estos hospitales, cuatro pacientes de mayor complejidad son derivados a centros públicos. Si eso fuera cierto, la capacidad resolutiva de estos hospitales sería rídicula. Las mejoras en la eficiencia que los nuevos gestores deberían realizar para reducir ese número y poder obtener un beneficio serían posiblemente inasumibles.
Imposible saber si ese es el caso. Con acceso a los datos anonimizados del Conjunto Minimo Basico de Datos, en poder de la Consejería, esos datos están disponibles, pero la opacidad en esto es inaceptable. Probablemente la cifra es falsa, puesto que de otro modo la Consejería la utilizaría a su favor, dado que se trataría de un argumento conduntente en términos de ahorro de dinero público.

Cómo se financian los hospitales públicos en Inglaterra

En un post anterior comparaba el modelo que quiere implantar el PP de Madrid (y Valencia) con el modelo canadiense.
Hoy compararé el modelo actual en la mayor parte de España con el modelo que originó los servicios de salud universales en el mundo: el National Health Service inglés.
Ambos modelos se financian mediante impuestos y prestan los servicios gratuitamente a los ciudadanos residentes legalmente en el país.
A diferencia de España, la atención primaria en Inglaterra la prestan grupos privados de médicos de familia (GP Practices) que tienen un contrato en exclusiva con el NHS. Por tanto son libres de gestionarse como crean conveniente, fijar sus remuneraciones y negociar con sus proveedores.
Los hospitales son organismos públicos, al igual que en España. Los médicos son por tanto empleados del Estado.
La gran diferencia es cómo se financian estos hospitales. En Inglaterra son conscientes de que es necesario implementar mecanismos que incentiven la eficiencia sin reducir la calidad asistencial. Es especialmente difícil para una empresa pública introducir eficiencia por sí misma.
La forma en que lo hacen es la siguiente: el NHS no financia directamente los hospitales. Los servicios hospitalarios son comprados por la atención primaria (los llamados Primary Care Trusts). Estos PCTs son responsables de evaluar las necesidades de salud de su región y contratar los servicios con los hospitales. El precio de cada servicio está en la mayoría de las ocasiones tasado en unas tarifas nacionales, aunque para algunos servicios los precios son negociados localmente. Estos servicios están catalogados con un código llamado HRG, y es similar al que se utiliza en otros países, donde se conocen como DRG. Hay unos 1400 códigos distintos, y cada uno captura la complejidad del servicio que se presta.
Los hospitales cobran por lo que hacen, pero el precio no depende de cuántos días permanezca hospitalizado un paciente o de cuántas pruebas se le hagan. Si un hospital es más eficiente que los demás "ganará" dinero. El hospital invierte este dinero en mejorar sus instalaciones o su equipamiento, o en contratar más personal. Los hospitales que "pierdan" dinero deberán recortar o ser más eficientes. Y, sí, en un caso extremo tendrán que cerrar.
Los hospitales son penalizados o premiados en función de su calidad. Existen bonos por seguir buenas prácticas y penalizaciones por cosas como reingresos (es decir, cuando un hospital se ve obligado a reingresar a un paciente al poco de darle de alta, lo que es indicativo de falta de calidad).
Existe un complejo ejercicio anual que todos los hospitales deben hacer en la que informan de sus costes para cada HRG. De esta forma, el NHS puede comparar la eficiencia de distintos hospitales y fijar las tarifas nacionales para el siguiente año. En general, los mejores hospitales tienen costes más bajos y van tirando hacia abajo progresivamente la tarifa nacional.
El NHS lleva años puliendo y perfeccionando el sistema. Es un sistema complejo y que requiere de mucha información. Pero es que la atención sanitaria es inherentemente compleja.
La introducción de las tarifas nacionales (que es relativamente reciente) está haciendo que la negociación entre los compradores (los PCT's) y los proveedores (los hospitales) se desplace de negociar precios a la baja a otros parámetros, como la calidad y la pronta atención.
En comparación con este sistema, los hospitales públicos en España carecen de incentivo para tomar las decisiones, a veces difíciles, que llevan a una mayor eficiencia. Los hospitales son directamente financiados por las Consejerías de Salud, basados en presupuestos anuales que se revisan indiscriminadamente a la baja., sin tener en cuenta si el hospital en cuestión está haciéndolo mejor o peor.
La sanidad en Inglaterra sale más cara que en España. Pero es principalmente debido a que el personal sanitario en Inglaterra está mejor pagado, no a que los hospitales públicos españoles sean modelos de eficiencia. Ciertamente no lo son.
El modelo inglés puede señalar un camino para gestionar mejor y  más profesionalmente los hospitales públicos sin necesidad de que sean entregados a empresas privadas.

España no necesita cambiar el modelo sanitario

El modelo sanitario español se conoce como el modelo Beveridge, que comparte con Reino Unido y los países escandinavos. Se caracteriza por la provisión pública de los servicios. Luego, tenemos el modelo Bismark (Alemania, Francia, Holanda,...) en que la provisión es privada y la financiación también, pero las aseguradoras no ganan dinero. El modelo Bismark es financiado conjuntamente por empresarios y trabajadores a través de retenciones en las nóminas. Tiene cobertura universal.
Luego está el modelo Canadiense, el National Health Insurance Model, copiado en Corea del Sur y Taiwan. Aquí el aseguramiento es público, financiado via impuestos y la provisión es privada. Es el modelo al que parece dirigirse el PP.
Los tres modelos funcionan, pero el modelo Beveridge, el nuestro, tiende a ser más barato, a diferencia de lo que cabría esperar, dado que la provisión privada debería introducir competencia y bajar los costes, pero por razones no muy claras esto no parece funcionar en la práctica. Los beneficios que obtienen los proveedores sanitarios deberían compensarse con mayor eficiencia, pero como digo no hay evidencia de que así sea.  En estas comparativas se utilizan dólares ajustados de acuerdo al llamado Purchasing Power Parity (PPP), es decir después de considerar la diferencia en el coste de la vida entre los países. El coste de la sanidad en España es de unos $3000 por persona y año, mientras que en Canadá la cifra es de $4300. La diferencia es menor si nos fijamos en el porcentaje del PIB en ambos países: Canadá gasta el 11.4% por el 9.5% de España. ¿Significa esto que el modelo canadiense es menos eficiente? En principio sí. La razón puede estar en que el personal sanitario en Canadá está bastante mejor pagado que en España en relación a otros trabajos, probablemente en una relación de 2 a 1 (es difícil conseguir estos datos).
Si esa superior remuneración del personal Sanitario en Canadá es una consecuencia o no de la diferencia entre modelos sanitarios es una cuestión que merece un estudio (que, si existe, no lo conozco). Pero la razón es probablemente más simple. En nuestro país tenemos muchos más medicos por cada 1000 habitantes (3.2 en España por 2.1 en Canadá). Más demanda de trabajo, menor salario. Así pues, no está claro que España tenga un sistema más productivo por hora trabajada, pero por el momento sale más barato al contribuyente.

En resumen,tenemos un sistema público que arroja buenos resultados de salud en relación a la media de la OCDE  (esperanza de vida, mortalidad infantil, etc) y que, hoy por hoy, es más barato que la media.
Cabe preguntarse, pues, qué mueve al PP a buscar el modelo canadiense (que es excelente, por otra parte). Puede ser un asunto puramente ideológico. Por otro lado, el nivel de corrupción en la vida política española nos ha hecho desconfiados y es lícito pensar que puede haber intereses ocultos. Si el PP desea cambiar el modelo, podría explicarlo claramente, pero no lo hace. Esto despierta la sospecha de que se pretende un sistema viciado, en el que los proveedores privados traten pacientes rentables y coexistan con centros de provisión pública adonde se derivarían los casos de alta complejidad bien a coste cero para el privado o a un precio inferior al coste. Tal cosa sería un fraude a los ciudadanos, suponiendo una transferencia indebida de fondos públicos a los bolsillos de los empresarios. El PP debería dar seguridades a los ciudadanos de que no es eso lo que persigue.
El hecho que empresas privadas hagan dinero con la prestación de servicios sanitarios financiados públicamente es un tabú social en España, excepción hecha de Calaluña, donde este sistema coexiste con una red de provisión pública desde hace muchos años. Sin duda, una de las razones es la profunda desconfianza del español ante los beneficios de las empresas, que considera generalmente sospechosos. En Inglaterra, cuna del liberalismo económico, el beneficio empresarial es aplaudido. Allá, la provisión de la atención primaria es privada, mientras que los hospitales son entidades públicas. Ambos niveles asistenciales son financiados públicamente. Recientemente se ha comenzado a expandir la red privada de hospitales que conciertan con el Servicio Nacional de Salud (NHS), parecido a lo que pretende el PP aquí. En Escocia, en cambio, se está siguiendo el camino opuesto, limitando la participación privada en la sanidad pública.

A veces se esgrime el argumento de que el sistema de provisión privada es necesariamente más inseguro para el paciente. Es evidente que el motivo del beneficio supone un riesgo y, sin control, la codicia del empresario inducirá a recortes peligrosos. Este asunto no es nuevo, pero se han desarrollado mecanismos para contrarrestarlo a través de auditorías independientes de calidad. Por supuesto, el buen funcionamiento de un sistema así requiere un nivel de transparencia que puede darse en Canadá, pero es difícil creer que se daría aquí. Antes de acometer un cambio en el modelo, habría que realizar unas auditorías independientes de la calidad de la asistencia con unos parámetros bien definidos, de forma que puedan resultar comparables a través del tiempo. Esto no existe en España. Es evidente que el encargo de esos estudios es una bomba política, dado que necesariamente sacaría a la luz miserias que todos los implicados prefieren que queden ocultas. Sin esas auditorías, sin embargo, nunca habría forma de saber si la calidad mejora o no. Así, aún si se redujesen costes, cabría la sospecha si se ha conseguido a expensas en la calidad. En un país donde incluso parámetros sencillos como las listas de espera están envueltas en un halo de misterio (especialmente en la Comunidad de Madrid), ¿quién puede creer que se van a realizar auditorías completas de calidad en la provisión?

En resumen: si bien el modelo de provisión privada y financiación pública puede funcionar perfectamente con buenos niveles de calidad, no está claro que vaya a suponer un ahorro, lo que plantea un interrogante sobre los motivos para cambiar el modelo. Sin unas auditorías independientes de calidad, y sin reglas claras sobre las derivaciones de pacientes, el cambio de modelo resulta oscuro y sospechoso. Más allá de los vociferantes posicionamientos ideológicos a priorísticos y un tanto demagógicos, la sociedad española necesita tener un debate racional y sosegado sobre esta cuestión. Conociendo mi país como lo conozco, antes encontraré un olmo que dé peras.

Why banks need to be rescued or the story of a giant fraud

The reason that private corporations such as banks have to bailed out with public money is the story of a giant fraud that came to be accepted as legal without any good reason.
We don't question it any more, even in the face of catastrophic systemic failures of the banking system and the moral hazard that is so disgusting to economic liberals.

Modern banking did not originate from lenders, who were people that lent out their money and received interests in return. Rather, it began with goldsmiths. They started offering people a service to keep their gold safe from burglars. You entrusted them with your gold, and got a warehouse receipt. Receipts from reputable goldsmiths were exchanged instead of the gold itself and became a medium of exchange. It is much easier to protect, store and transport receipts than the gold itself. That is, the receipts became money.

But then the goldsmiths could not resist the temptation. They secretly started  lending the gold in their vaults, as if it were theirs and getting a good interest on it, without letting their depositors know. Even better, the goldsmiths did not even have to physically remove the gold from their vaults. The simply wrote fake receipts and gave them to the borrowers. The need for secrecy for the goldsmith is obvious. If his depositors got wind of what was going on, they might come en masse with their receipts and demand their gold back, and he didn't have it - at least not all of it. Normally, though, if they kept enough money in their vaults for the occasional customers who claimed their gold, nobody would know. It is difficult to know for how long this situation persisted.
It is clear that eventually the depositors became aware of this practice and were complicit in it. That is why depositors did not pay the goldsmith for their safekeeping services, but rather the goldsmith payed them some interest if they allowed him to keep their gold. This is proof that depositors knew that the goldsmith was lending out their gold. But the goldsmith could do this on condition that when the depositors came back with their receipts, the goldsmith would instantly give them their gold. This is the start of so-called fractional reserve banking, practically the only type of banking in existence today.
If you see a contradiction in these terms (promising to return something that may not be there), it is because there is one. The only reason both the depositor and the goldsmith-become-banker could agree on these terms rests on the law of averages. Not all depositors would ever need their gold at the same time. In fact they hardly ever needed the physical gold at all, because they could use their receipts as if it were the gold itself. Nevertheless, this situation was inherently fragile. A wave of panic could bring the whole scheme down.
The legal question of whose money it is when you give it to your banker was not clear for a long time.
Then, as late as 1848 in England, a legal case was heard, Foley v. Hills and Others. The sentence established that the customers of the banker, Foley, had not given him the gold for safekeeping, but as a loan. They were lending the money to Foley, so that  their money was now the property of the bank. In this infamous ruling, Lord Cottenham wrote:

"The money placed in the custody of a banker is, to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases; he is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it; he is not answerable to the principal [depositor] if he puts it into jeopardy, if he engages in a hazardous speculation..."

This was an astonishing decision. If the banker could not repay their depositors, then he was not a criminal, he was merely insolvent.At any rate, the ruling of Lord Cottenham settled the matter. Bankers were finally given charte blanche  to proceed with their business and fractional reserve banking started in earnest.
The waves of panic indeed happened, and happened often. They were called bank runs, and caused the demise of many early banks.
The inherent fragility of this system continues to this day, because that is how modern banks operate all over the world. A few things have changed since the age of goldsmiths, but the principle of fractional reserve banking is still the same.
Now gold has disappeared from the scene. Bank notes are no longer issued by banks. The bank notes in circulation are just paper money, and they cannot redeemed. The Central Bank has the privilege of issuing these notes. Bank notes (either in physical form or as electronic deposits that banks have with the Central Bank) now play the role that gold used to play.
Banks still play the same game by  lending out the money from their depositors and retaining only a fraction of their depositors money in case they claim it back. It is the same concept, only played with at a higher level of abstraction. The fraction they keep (their mandatory cash reserves) has been diminishing over the years. Paradoxically, for most of the second half of the 20th centuries, bank runs have been rare. One reason was the appearance of Central Banks, who act as a lender of last resort for their banks in the country.
When the bank cannot repay its debts, it can request an emergency loan from the Central Bank. The Central Bank can never run out of money. That is because they have the legal power to create money out of thin air. This unlimited supply of money has a consequence. When more money is created and pumped into the economy, inflation ensues. Inflation makes us all poorer, because our savings and wages have now less purchasing power.


Today, you no longer have the option to go to a bank and tell them that you just want them to keep your money safe. You go to a bank and lend them your money for them to use it as they see fit. And the bankers do indeed engage in hazardous speculation with it. And because mostly everybody needs a bank account to function in today's world, we all become forced lenders to private companies over which we have no control.
Because all the savings of ordinary citizens are in the power of banks, a collapse of a bank affects many individuals. That is why banks need to be rescued by the Central Bank
These days, bank deposits are guaranteed by Central Banks, up to an amount. So, it's okay, isn't it?
Well, no. Let's see why.
The reason Central Banks can guarantee deposits is not because they have a lot of money. It is because they have the power to create as much money as they need out of thin air. A Central Bank, it is said, has control of the printing press. The Central Bank's newly created money generates inflation and makes all of us poorer. So, it is all of us who pay for it.
The second problem with publicly insured deposits is that creates an incentive for banks to behave recklessly and put our money at risk.The less money from their depositors that they keep without lending it out, the more profit bankers make. In the old days, depositors were aware of the risk of their bank going under, so they exercised certain caution. Today, the safety of your deposits in a given bank is taken for granted, and all you care about is the return you get and other minor services. In effect, all banks are more or less the same with regard to the risk of losing your deposits - virtually nil. And all is well, until all of a sudden disaster strikes.

This system is partly responsible for the booms and busts of the business cycle. And of course of the special protection status of banks. That is why they need to be rescued, because if they were simply left to default like any other business,  millions of depositors would lose their savings.

Today, you no longer have the option to go to a bank and tell them that you just want them to keep your money safe. You go to a bank and you lend them your money for them to use it as they see fit.


Surely, they pay you an interest for your loan, but the thing here is that you have no choice. And you may think that all is well, because having the money under your mattress is silly, as it will devalue because of inflation. But inflation is mainly created by this inherently fraudulent banking system. So it first creates the problem and then offers you a partial relief in the form of interest payments.

Is it now impossible to end the fractional reserve system?

Not at all. In fact, changing this state of affairs is actually much easier than it sounds. The alternative is called full reserve system. Under this system, bankers are not allowed to lend money in their checking accounts. They are limited to lending money in the savings accounts and time deposits. That is, money that has been trusted to them by investors, who are willing to take a risk and be rewarded accordingly.

To do this, a lot of new money would have to be created. This because banks do not have enough money to repay all the money they owe to their checking accounts depositors.
Creating huge amounts of money is something that the Central Bank can do by just typing it into a computer. This money would be directly given to the banks in the form of reserves in the accounts the keep with the central banks. Each bank would receive enough money so that they totality of the bank's balances of their checking accounts would be equal to the sum of their current amounts in cash in their vaults plus the bank's own capital plus the reserves they hold with the central bank.

From then on, banks would only be allowed to lend out the money from investors, not from the general public.

But hang on! Wouldn't this massive creation of new money generate a lot of inflation? Actually no, it would no effect on inflation at all. This is because the effect on money supply would be nil. In technical terms, all that would happen is that now M0 would equal M1. What does this mean? Well, the money you have in your account with the bank is not there at all. It has been lent to some other person who has the same money  in their current accounts. So the same amount of money is counted not twice, but by a factor of 5 or 10. This is known as the money multiplier effect and is the direct consequence of the fractional reserve system.
This is why banks are said to create money. In a sense, this is absolutely true. But the phrase "create money" may be misleading. After all, if banks would be able to create money, why should they need help when in trouble? Actually, banks cannot create hard money (M0). This can only be created by the Central Bank. But they do create enormous amounts of soft money (M1) every time they make a loan. M1 is real money out there in the economy. It's what you have in your checking account.
Under the full reserve system, banks would lose their privilege to create money, so that M0 would be exactly equal to M1.
The benefits would be huge: all the instability of varying interest rates by the central banks to control inflation would be quite unnecessary, bank runs would be an impossibility, the booms and busts of the economic cycle would mostly disappear.

Banks would continue to do business as usual, but they would only risk the money of people that know full well what they're getting themselves into, and not the money of the hapless wage-earner that only need a service to keep their money safe and access to it on demand. So no more bank rescues: insolvent banks would be no different from any other insolvent business. If they go belly up, so be it.
One consequence would be that banks would have to charge checking account customers for the service of keeping their money, rather than paying them interest. If you want to get interest, you would have to explicitly make a loan to the bank, losing your right to claim it back on demand, and explicitly authorising the bank to lend it out and sharing the profits of the loans. Or you would make a time deposit, in which you know you cannot claim your money back after the specified time has expired. Both are considered investments rather than bailments. 

I know you don't believe me. Surely, this can't be so easy. Any respectable economist will laugh his head off after reading this. But as I said in an earlier post, I am not alone in proposing this. This is not a crazy idea that just occurred to me. Full reserve banking is supported by many economists, like the Austrian School. Mainstream economists don't even want to discuss it. In the rare occasions that they do, their arguments are surprisingly weak. Full reserve banking is considered heterodox economics these days.

I know this is a message in a bottle. The lack of general awareness of this is astonishing. And I don't even think it is a conspiracy. Some day things will change, but it will require a lot of public demand and political will. At present I don't see how this can happen. 

Money as debt. A case for monetary reform.

If you have the time, check out this video (it's 47 min long!). The beginning may be a bit boring, because it is something that you may know already. But it gets more interesting as the video progresses. You may get lost as some point, as it happened to me, so I had to rewind. I started watching this thinking it would be just another nutty conspiracy theory, but it's not that. It is a proposal for a complete overhaul of the world's monetary system. I have been trying to find some fatal flaw in the logic but could not find any. It seems to make sense. 
The video is from 2006, before the big collapse of the banking system.


... Seen it? Well, while not everything is completely accurate (according to the author, simplifications were made in the interest of understandability). It is sad that those inaccuracies have given critics fuel to brand this work as a conspiracy theory. More information about those criticisms, and their response by the author, can be found in www.moneyasdebt.com.


At the heart of the problem lies the fractional reserve system, which we have all come to accept as the way things are, and need to be. There was a detailed proposal for a full reserve system following the Great Depression. Called A Program For Monetary Reform, it was widely supported by most economists. 
The Austrian School of Economics advocate a full reserve system. The views of this school within the economics profession have been considered heterodox for some time now, but many of its theories have been subsequently adopted by mainstream economics.


At any rate, the silence on this topic is strange in the face of recent systemic failures of the banking system. Public awareness of a possibility of a huge monetary reform is necessary and this debate needs to be had. 

What's a free market anyway?

In 1819, a new law was passed in the British Parliament. It was the Cotton Factories Regulation Act, and stipulated that employment of children under the age of nine was banned and that children aged between ten and sixteen had a limit of twelve working hours per day. There was great controversy, as opponents argued that the government was meddling with the free market. After all, if children needed to work and their parents were ok with it, why was the government interfering? It went against the free market principles.
When current restrictions on what can be sold and bought were introduced, the same principle of free market was invoked by opponents. There was a time when it was legal to manufacture and sell medicines with no supervision. It was perfectly legal to buy votes or government jobs.
In fact, our free markets are nothing but. Even in the sanctuary of free trading, the Stock Exchange, you can't just show up with some shares and start selling them. Before a company can be legally traded in the stock exchange, they must comply with strict rules and audits for a number of years. And then only registered brokers can buy or sell them.
A free market is then a market with rules and restrictions that we're just used to comply with. They have been put there, one after the other, in order to curb the natural excesses of markets left to their own devices.

Don't get me wrong. Adam Smith's invisible hand is an efficient mechanism to allocate resources and set prices. It works - up to a point. It is like a force of nature that we can use to the advantage of society as a whole. But it needs to be tamed and controlled, lest it wreaks havoc. Regulation should be a Goldilocks kind of thing: not too much, not too little. It has to be sensible and smart.
You need to understand its power and its dangers, like steam power. There is nothing sacred about it.

Inequality and meritocracy

I have prepared a couple of graphs comparing several rich countries inequality levels and the effects on meritocracy. Inequality is measured by the Gini coefficient (1= total inequality, 0=total equality).
The first graph shows how the redistributive effect of taxes always lower the levels of inequality, but in some countries the effect is much larger than in others.The effect is most pronounced in Germany and Italy, and small in the United States.

 Meritocracy is measured by how strong is the correlation between the income of your parents and your own income later in life. The stronger the correlation in a society, the less meritocratic it is. It means that the poverty trap is more difficult to escape, whereas the rich kids will probably stay rich in adulthood.
The second graph shows a strong correlation between inequality and meritocracy, as can hardly surprise anyone.
There are a few odd things, however. Canada manages to achieve much more social mobility than Spain with very similar levels of inequality. This is possibly due to their exceptional education system as evidenced in their high scores on PISA. France's relatively low levels of social mobility has probably other factors, such as a significant exclusion zones in the banlieues. The three countries with less social mobility (Italy, UK and USA) are also those with higher inequality of income after redistribution of taxes. As for the USA, the data show that the American dream is alive and well - if you live in Norway.

Salirse del euro es difícil, pero no imposible

A estas alturas pocos economistas creen que el euro sea bueno para nadie. Desde luego, no para España. Pero existe la opinión generalizada de que el euro es irreversible. Que salirse es imposible.
Bobadas. Claro que es difícil, pero de imposible, nada.
La historia reciente está trufada de uniones monetarias que se han disuelto. Un ejemplo es Irlanda y el Reino Unido (disuelta en 1979). O Rusia y los estados de la antigua Unión Soviética (de 1991 a 1993).
A primera vista, la cosa parece fácil: Vd. cobra 50.000 euros al año. A partir de mañana, cobra 50.000 nuevas pesetas. Las tiendas pasan sus precios a nuevas pesetas. El Banco de España devalúa la nueva peseta un 20%, volvemos a ser competitivos, los turistas acuden en masa y comienza la recuperación.
¿Y qué pasa con su hipoteca de 100.000 euros? Si se queda en euros se vuelve muy cara y no la va a poder pagar... Bueno la hipoteca también pasa a ser de 100.000 nuevas pesetas. ¿Y esos ahorillos de 40.000 euros?
Pues también pasan a ser de 40.000 nuevas pesetas. Pero aquí viene el problema. Vd, que sabe que eso va a pasar, retira del banco los 40.000 euros y los deposita en un banco alemán, con lo que ganará un 20% de la noche a la mañana. Buen negocio. El problema es que tendríamos un pánico bancario, en el mejor estilo de Mary Poppins. Para evitarlo tendríamos un corralito.
Pero es peor. Si el banco que le concedió a Vd la hipoteca es holandés, Vd le estará pagando en nuevas pesetas, devaluadas, mientras que el banco debe a sus depositantes lo mismo que antes - en euros. El banco puede quebrar fácilmente.
La mera sospecha de que esto pueda pasar ha provocado ya una fuga de capitales desde los países del sur al norte de unos 350.000 millones de euros. La situación puede ser peor si las sospechas ganan fuerza.
Y luego están los contratos entre empresas españolas y alemanas, por ejemplo. Su empresa le debe a una empresa alemana un millón de euros por unas mercancías. De repente, su deuda pasa a ser de 1.200.000 nuevas pesetas, sin que sus ingresos aumenten. Cuando se hacen contratos en una moneda extranjera, las empresas se aseguran contra el riesgo de devaluación contratando un seguro de cambio, pero claro, en este caso no se hizo (y ya es tarde).
Es evidente que debe hacerse por sorpresa. Las transacciones bancarias quedarían suspendidas por unas horas, mientras se procede a la devaluación. Se extreman los controles fronterizos para evitar la fuga de billetes físicos. Los billetes en poder de los bancos son estampados con una marca de forma que sólo sean válidos en España, mientras se procede a la impresión de nuevos billetes. Esto no soluciona el problema de nuestro pobre banco holandés, ni sus 200.000 euros extra de deuda a la compañía alemana. Pero para esos problemas hay un poco más de tiempo. Ahora mismo hay mucha gente pensando soluciones de este tipo. Pero por supuesto que se puede hacer.

Flying over Kabul

I wake up and the cabin is dark. Everybody seems to be sleeping. I am flying back to London from Sydney after calling on Bangkok. I look at the screen and I can see that we are roughly above the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. I look out of the window. There is a full moon and no clouds. Below I can see the barren, mountainous terrain bathed in an eerie, silvery, slanting moonlight. There is no sign of life. We are flying over an alien planet. I am hypnotized. I glance at the screen, and the flight path suggests we are going to fly over Kabul.

Sure enough, the mountains give way to an endless plain. The first scattered signs of human habitation begin to show. A few dim lights here, and what seems to be a dirt road there.

After a while, here is Kabul itself. It looks deceptively peaceful in the night. I shudder as I see what looks like a brightly lit military compound. TV news video clips of death spring to my mind instantly. Down there is where it all happened. A minute later, I am overflying the outskirts of the city: an expanse of a million minute dim lights from the houses where ordinary Afghans live, die, kill.

A few minutes go by. Kabul is gone like a dream. Now the terrible, bleak, snow-capped mountains of this unforgiving country fill the view.

I look around me. Passengers sleeping or trying to or watching a movie. Down the aisle, two flight assistants are killing time chatting the night away. I think I will try and get some sleep myself.