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Wrong Lessons from Latvia for the Eurozone

By Mark Weisbrot

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This article was published in Al Jazera English on June 14, 2012. If anyone wants to reprint it, please respond to this email.

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Latvia, a Baltic country of 2.2 million that most people could not find on a map, has suddenly gotten more attention from economists involved in the debate over the future of Europe and the global economy.  I responded in a column last week to remarks by Christine Lagarde, IMF Managing Director, who on June 5 said that Latvia’s policies in response to the economic crisis had been a “success story.”  Paul Krugman has also weighed in several times, and has been joined by Harvard international economist Dani Rodrik, and now by the IMF’s Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard.

The reason it’s important to have an honest and realistic assessment of what happened in Latvia is that for the first time since the country suffered the world’s worst economic losses during the world recession (2008-2009), there are mainstream voices suggesting as Lagarde did, that it “could serve as an inspiration for European leaders grappling with the euro crisis.” Prior to the last week or so, it was only right-wing economists such as Anders Aslund who were willing to even consider this idea.

This is terrible because if there’s one simple lesson that most of the world – if not the European authorities – seems to be learning from the prolonged crisis in Europe, it’s that fiscal tightening is not the proper response to a recession.  So I hope the reader will forgive me for including more technical detail than normal in what follows, because it is important to get this straight.

First, all are agreed that the social and human costs of what Latvia did were huge for the country.  Latvia lost about a quarter of its national income. Unemployment rose from 5.3 percent to over 20 percent of the labor force and, counting the people who dropped out of the labor force or were involuntarily working part time, unemployment/underemployment peaked at more than 30 percent.  Official unemployment remains at more than 16 percent today, even after the economy finally grew by 5.5 percent last year (it is projected to grow just 2 percent this year).   And about 10 percent of the labor force has left the country. 

The first big question is whether Latvia could have done better with another strategy, which would have included a devaluation of its currency.  Blanchard says that we “we shall never know.”

Of course this is technically true, but not all that relevant.  For example, most economists would scoff at the idea, held by hardcore supply-siders, that if the U.S. Congress had given Ronald Reagan everything he asked for in terms of budget policy, the economy would have grown so fast that it would have  produced budget surpluses instead of huge deficits. 

In the case of Latvia, we can compare their results under “internal devaluation” – keeping the exchange rate fixed and going through a deep recession to lower wages -- to other countries that had financial crises and recessions associated with external devaluations.  These are shown in the table below.  As can be seen, some of these are large devaluations, with very severe financial crises – including the Asian financial crisis of 1997-99 (Indonesia, Thailand, South Korea, Malaysia) and Argentina (2001-2002).

The Argentine case is in many ways analogous to the choice that Latvia was facing when its economy began to shrink.  Argentina tried an “internal devaluation” for three and a half years, and the economy continued to worsen.  After its default and devaluation in December 2001/January 2002, the country suffered a serious financial collapse. But it only lasted for one quarter and was followed by rapid growth; within three years the country was back at pre-crisis GDP.

The table shows that Latvia’s decline under its austerity strategy was quite severe not only compared with Argentina, but to all of the other countries that devalued.  On average, they lost about 4.5 percent of GDP, while Latvia lost 24 percent.  Similarly, three years after devaluing, the average economy was up  6.5 percent of GDP from its pre-devaluation level of output, while Latvia was down 21.5 percent three years after its recession began; as Blanchard points out, it is still down 15 percent today.  And according to IMF projections, it will take a full decade (until 2017) to reach pre-crisis GDP.

Of course every case is different, and some countries, for example, adjusted current account imbalances before they devalued. But Latvia’s losses have been huge by any comparison with countries that devalued.   Blanchard’s statement that Latvia “satisfies some definition of success” because the economy is recovering, is misplaced.  I also disagree with Dani Rodrik’s  more qualified conclusion that it is “too early to say Latvia has been a failure.”  I think the relevant comparison is with what the country could have done – not whether the economy eventually recovered.  Almost all economies do eventually recover.

Blanchard lists a number of reasons why Latvia’s strategy wouldn’t work in the eurozone, and these are valid.  But it is important to see that the policies didn’t lead to recovery in Latvia, either. In fact Latvia might still be in recession if the government hadn’t abandoned the austerity policies that plunged the country into depression.

But the Latvian government didn't do the huge budget tightening that it promised the IMF in 2010.  Rather, the deficit was reduced after the economy started growing again.  This is also vitally important when considering whether the strategy “worked.” And there was also a burst of unanticipated inflation that changed the government’s monetary policy – which had been overly tight because the government was committed to keeping the pegged exchange rate – and lowered its debt burden.

Finally, the Latvian economy pulled out of recession without any help from its trade balance.  This completes the argument that “internal devaluation” didn’t work.  For an internal devaluation to work, the steep recession would have to lower labor costs enough to increase exports and/or reduce imports, to boost the economy through an improving trade balance.  Krugman provides further evidence that this didn’t happen, and isn’t happening in the eurozone.

Ironically, although Blanchard doesn’t say it explicitly but rather hints at it, the IMF itself was opposed to the Latvian government’s strategy, and favored devaluation.  Although devaluation also has costs and risks, if the IMF and European authorities were willing to provide funds to help manage the transition, it is likely that Latvia would have done even better than other countries in similar situations.  Of course the Fund may have been overruled in any case, since the Swedish banks – which own much of Latvia and also have a strong influence among the European authorities – may have rejected this route because of the losses they would have taken on lending there.

But the bottom line is that no country with three times the unemployment rate that it had before the world recession, and Latvia’s huge income losses, should be considered even a qualified success story.  It would be a shame if these unwarranted conclusions from Latvia’s experience were to help prolong theunnecessary suffering in the eurozone.

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Το κυνήγι μαγισσών δεν είναι μόνο ελληνικό φαινόμενο!!!

The War on Public Sector Workers

By Dean Baker

Politicians across the country are using heaping doses of the politics of envy to try to arouse the anger of workers. However, their targets are not the corporate CEOs pulling down tens of millions of dollars a year in pay and bonuses. Nor is it the Wall Street crew that got incredibly rich inflating the housing bubble and then took government handouts to stay alive through the bust. The targets of these politicians’ wrath are school teachers, firefighters and other public sector workers.

They are outraged that many of these workers still earn enough to support a middle-class family. Even more outrageous, many of these workers have traditionally defined benefit pensions that assure them of a modicum of comfort in retirement. Having managed to ensure that most workers in the private sector did not benefit much from economic growth over the last three decades, the same upward redistributionist crew is turning their guns on public sector workers.

There are two major deceptions in their story. First, after working to eliminate traditional pensions in the private sector, they now tell us that getting a pension in the form of a guaranteed benefit is hugely more valuable than having the same money placed in a 401(k) type defined contribution account. Second, after shoving stock down everyone’s throat in the bubble years, they now tell us we cannot expect a very good return from investing pension funds in the market.

Starting with the pension story, it is really touching to hear conservatives singing the virtues of defined benefit pensions. They argue that if a state or local government puts $1,000 a year in a defined benefit pension and guarantees the market return for its workers, this is hugely more valuable than if it takes the same $1,000 a year and puts it into a 401(k) type account.

Since most public sector workers still have defined benefit pensions, this is a central part of their story about public sector workers being overpaid. By their calculations, the $1,000 that a government puts into a defined benefit pension today should be counted as being worth close to $2,000 since the government guarantees the return. Doing the math this way goes a long way toward showing that public sector workers are overpaid.

There are a few points that jump out here. First, it is amazing to hear many of the same people who touted the replacement of defined benefit pensions with 401(k) accounts now tell us about the great value of a guaranteed pension. When we do the math their way, it means that ordinary workers have even less to show from economic growth over the last three decades, since so many workers have lost pensions in this period.

The complaints of these conservative economists also make great reading when put side by side with their plans to privatize Social Security and get rid of its guaranteed benefit. When we were talking about cutting back protections for hundreds of millions of workers and their families we were not supposed to take into account the value of a guaranteed benefit. Now that we are talking about cutting the pay of public sector workers, it is essential to include the value of the guarantee in the calculation. Is it any wonder that so many people have contempt for economists?

Finally, it is important to keep our eye on the ball here. The extra value comes from the guarantee. There is no gain to the government if it replaces pensions with 401(k) accounts as many have advocated and some governments have done. The argument is not that the state is paying too much; the argument is that the worker is getting too much because of the value of the guarantee. If we eliminate a guaranteed benefit we have just taken away the workers’ retirement security, we have not saved the taxpayers a penny.

The other part of the story is the claim that the returns being assumed by public pensions on their investments are overly optimistic. This one is really, really painful.

Some of us were making this argument at the top of our lungs back in the late 90s, when price to earnings ratios in the stock market were over 30. We continued to make this argument in the last decade when price to earnings ratios were still well into the 20s, far above historic averages. However we couldn’t get anyone to listen back then, because the complaint about exaggerated stock returns did not fit the agenda of the upward redistributionists.

Now that the upward redistributionists have put the attack on public pensions at the top of their agenda it is convenient to raise concerns about overly-optimistic returns. However now that the stock market has plunged (pensions have already taken their hits) their concerns are wrong. In fact, pension funds are being very reasonable in their return projections. Those familiar with arithmetic know that it would be almost impossible for them to earn a substantial lower rate of return, barring a complete collapse of the economy.

So, welcome to the latest episode in the long-running battle to redistribute ever more income to the rich. Having already achieved great success in depressing the pay of workers throughout the private sector, the call is to cut the pay and benefits of workers in the public sector. Won’t you join the cause?

--This article was originally published on April 16, 2012 byTruthout.

Ο πληθωρισμός ΠΡΕΠΕΙ να αυξηθεί!

Επιμένω στο θέμα του πληθωρισμού...ο συγκρατημένος πληθωρισμός μπορεί να δώσει μία ανάσα στις υπερχρεωμένες οικονομίες,επιχειρήσεις και νοικοκυριά....Άλλο ένα σχετικό άρθρο!

Faith-Based Economics at the European Central Bank

By Dean Baker

In the build-up to World War II, the French military created the Maginot Line. This barrier, which utilized state of the art military defenses, was intended to defend France from a ferocious assault by Hitler’s armies. When the attack ultimately came, the Germans made quick work of the Maginot Line by going around it through Belgium.

The European Central Bank’s (ECB) obsession with a 2 percent inflation target can be seen as similar to the construction of the Maginot Line. The ECB sees achieving this inflation target as the sum total of the central bank’s responsibilities for maintaining stable growth in Europe, just as the French generals viewed the construction of the Maginot line as defending France from a German invasion.

The main difference is that after that German conquest, the French generals recognized their mistake. By contrast, even after their 2.0 percent inflation obsession led to economic disaster, the people running the ECB are still in charge and still pursuing the same policy.

At this point it is difficult to imagine what set of events in the world could persuade the ECB to pursue a different course. As the crisis demonstrates, an improperly regulated financial and economic system can produce massive asset bubbles. The collapse of these bubbles can lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment and below potential output of the sort that the eurozone, the United States and the United Kingdom are now experiencing.

This means that responsible central banks that are concerned with stable growth cannot just focus on a 2.0 percent inflation target. They must be prepared to take the steps necessary to counter the growth of asset bubbles before they get large enough to endanger the economy. This was evident to many before the crisis; it should be evident to everyone now.

Central banks also have the responsibility to shore up the economy and help to move it back toward full employment. This policy can include the sort of quantitative easing designed to lower long-term interest rates that has been pursued by the Federal Reserve Board and the Bank of England and less aggressively by the ECB.

It should also include targeting higher inflation rates in the range of 3-4 percent, as has been advocated by Paul Krugman, Ben Bernanke in his Princeton professor days, and Oliver Blanchard, the chief economist at the IMF. Ken Rogoff, a former chief economist at the IMF, has suggested inflation target as high as 6 percent.

There are two reasons for targeting a higher rate of inflation. First, it will reduce real interest rates. If businesses expect that prices will be 15-18 percent higher three years from now it will give them more incentive to invest today, since they will be able to sell what they produce at these higher prices. Higher inflation will also reduce debt burdens. If prices and wages rise on average by 15 percent over the next three years, many underwater mortgages will be back above water as the house price can also be expected to rise by 15 percent. Similarly, if wages rise by 15 percent then a fixed monthly mortgage payment will pose a much smaller burden.

These are reasons that the ECB and other central banks should be pushing for a higher rate of inflation. But instead of looking in this direction, the ECB is doubling down on its 2.0 percent inflation commitment. The fact that unemployment is high and rising across the eurozone seems to have no impact whatsoever on this policy.

In fact, the ECB is actually making things worse with the austerity policies that it is imposing on the heavily indebted countries across the eurozone. Reductions in government spending and tax increases in the middle of a recession have the predictable effect of slowing growth further. The ECB’s persistent refusal to act as a lender of last resort also exacerbates the crisis by raising interest rates, and therefore debt burdens, for highly indebted countries.

It has been roughly two years since the ECB has adopted the austerity route. The results have been almost uniformly negative. Unemployment rates have consistently come in higher and growth lower than had been projected. Needless to say, this also has meant that country after country has missed the deficit targets that were supposedly the main point of the austerity plans.

If we had serious economists setting policy at the ECB, this pattern would be a basis for reconsidering the policy. However instead of a rethink, we get a doubling down with the ECB’s leadership continually reasserting their commitment to stay the course. (It even produced a short propaganda piece about the “inflation monster” for the doubters.) It seems that there is no set of events in the world that can lead the generals at the ECB to question the wisdom of the Maginot Line.

--This article was originally published on April 11, 2012 by the Guardian Unlimited.

Ενδιαφέρον Blog εκτός "γραμμής" των νεο-κλασικών

http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/

The Rent Is Too Damn High: Apple Edition

The Rent Is Too Damn High: Apple Edition

By Dean Baker

The basic facts of inequality are beyond dispute: The top 1 percent sucked in more than 42 percent of the gains of economic growth over the last three decades, with the bottom 90 percent sharing less than 37 percent. This means that most of the population has seen little improvement in living standards over this period in spite of the great breakthroughs in technology and increases in productivity.

This background provides the fuel of the Occupy Wall Street movement and its sympathizers around the country. However there is a counter-story that the media continually bombard us with. This counter-story has its hero, Steve Jobs.

The counter-story is that under Jobs’ leadership, Apple has produced one breakthrough after another, revolutionizing the way that we use computers, listen to music, make phone calls and live our lives. Jobs died a very wealthy man because of his success in bringing great products to the market.

The pushers of the counter-story ask us if we would be happier if Steve Jobs had not been rich, but we didn’t have the iPod, the iPad, the iPhone and all the other products developed by Jobs and Apple over the last three decades. The moral of this counter-story is to shut up and eat your inequality.

This counter-story might provide good rhetoric, but it suffers from bad logic. The question is not whether we are better off with Steve Jobs getting very rich and all the products that Apple developed, or having Steve Jobs be poor and not having these products, the question is whether it was necessary for Jobs to get quite so rich in order to get these products.

The difference is the concept of economic rent. Rent is the additional money that Jobs collected beyond what would have been needed to get him to innovate great products. This rent was likely substantial in Jobs’ case and is probably even higher for other members of the 1 percent.

To see the logic of this issue, let’s imagine that firefighters were paid in a somewhat different manner. Instead of paying them a fixed monthly wage, suppose that fire crews would show up at the scene of the fire and then negotiate their payment with the property owner.

In this payment system it is likely that firefighters, or at least some of them, would become very rich. Imagine that a crew showed up at the burning home of a billionaire whose family was trapped inside of her house. No doubt she would be willing to give her fortune to the fire crew to save her family.

It could even be extremely lucrative to show up at the burning homes of middle-income families. After all, getting two or three hundred thousand dollars for a couple of hours work (albeit extremely dangerous work) is pretty good pay.

Of course we don’t pay our firefighters this way for the obvious reason that it would allow them to collect enormous rents. Firefighters generally get decent salaries, but none of them are pocketing millions of dollars a year.

But if we did pay our firefighters by negotiating million-dollar deals at the scene of the fire, the counter-story told by the defenders of the 1 percent would apply perfectly. After all, aren’t we better off having the firefighters get rich and having our families be saved than if the firefighters remained poor and our families were killed?

But that is not the question that serious economists ask. Serious economists ask whether we could get the same effort from the Steve Jobs of the world under different payment schemes. There is good reason to think this is the case for many members of the 1 percent.

Let’s start with the situation that is most analogous to the firefighters negotiating payment on the lawn of the burning house. Suppose we paid for the research and development of prescription drugs upfront rather than by giving drug companies patent monopolies. As a result of these monopolies, drugs that would sell for $5 per prescription in a free market sell for hundreds or even thousands of dollars. The savings from this switch could potentially save us more than $200 billion a year and provide us with better health care.

We could have a similar situation with software development. Some of the best software available in many areas has been developed as Free Software.

In some cases huge rents are not associated with anything of obvious value. For example, when the Goldman Sachs trader Fabrice Tourre (a.k.a. “Fabulous Fab”) designed a guaranteed-to-fail collateralized debt obligation and foisted it off on unsuspecting clients, it is not clear what productive purpose was being served. If Mr. Tourre was deprived of his seven- or eight-figure bonus, it doesn’t seem like the rest of us would suffer in any obvious way. Much of the financial sector has this character, which is why many economists are supportive of financial speculation taxes.

There are many other areas where it is possible to identify large rents that allow the 1 percent to profit at the expense of the rest of us. Honest economists would be looking to design mechanisms that whittle down the size of these rents so that the bulk of the population could enjoy more of the benefits of economic growth. However, if most economists are employed by rich firefighters, then the experts will tell us that the alternative is to watch our loved ones burn to death.

--This article was originally published on March 21, 2012 byAl Jazeera English.

Σωστή διανομή πριν την "αναδιανομή"

Do Progressives Have to Be Loser Liberals?

By Dean Baker

Last week Thomas Edsall had a column in the New York Times where he directly stated that the difference between conservatives and liberals is the extent over which they are willing to reverse market outcomes to redistribute money from winners to losers:

"...the two sides are fighting over what the role of government in redistributing resources from the affluent to the needy should and shouldn’t be."

This was annoying not only because it is so seriously wrong, but also because this statement came from one of the more astute observers of American politics alive today.

Anyone trying to understand the role of the government in the economy should know that whatever it does or does not do by way of redistribution is trivial compared with the actions it takes to determine the initial distribution. Rich people don’t get rich exclusively by virtue of their talents and hard work; they get rich because the government made rules to allow them to get rich.

To take an obvious example, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services we spend close to $300 billion a year on prescription drugs. If drugs were sold in a free market, without government-granted patent monopolies, we would spend around $30 billion a year.

The difference of $270 billion a year is more than five times as much money as is at stake with extending the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy. By making us pay far more for drugs, the government’s patent policy is redistributing a huge amount of money from ordinary people to the shareholders and top executives of the drug companies. We need a way to finance drug research, but there are far more efficient mechanisms than patent monopolies that don’t redistribute income upwards in the same way.

In a similar vein our policy on labor unions is incredibly one-sided in management’s favor. If a company illegally fires a worker for trying to organize a union, the complaint would go to the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB). It is likely to take months and possibly years before the complaint is settled. Even if the worker can prove their case (employers rarely admit that they fired someone because they were organizing a union) the fine to the company is trivial. As a result, breaking the law and getting rid of agitators can be very profitable for the company.

On the other hand, if workers stage a strike that violates the law, for example a wildcat strike at a time when a contract is in force or a secondary strike in support of other workers, a company can typically get an injunction immediately. If the workers continue their strike, their assets will be seized and their leaders thrown in jail.

Needless to say, this incredible asymmetry tilts the field in management’s favor. It is difficult for workers to organize unions and it is often difficult for organized workers to push for better wages and working conditions. That is not just a market outcome; this is the result of deliberate government policy.

The downturn we are currently suffering through is also the result of government policy. This is for two reasons. First, we got here because of the ineptitude of top policymakers in failing to recognize the housing bubble and the risks that it posed to the economy. The Federal Reserve Board just stood back and let the housing bubble grow to a size where its collapse would inevitably wreck the economy.

Furthermore, once the bubble burst, the Fed, Congress, and the White House have opted not to take the actions needed to restore full employment. While the Fed has taken steps to boost the economy, it certainly could have done more. Similarly, Congress did not approve a large enough stimulus package to offset the hit from the collapse of the housing bubble.

And, President Obama and the Fed have not tried to push down the value of the dollar to make U.S. goods more competitive in world markets. A lower-valued dollar could create millions of new jobs, most of which would be in manufacturing. However, because an over-valued dollar benefits powerful interest groups, like the financial sector, policy makers have been willing to allow the dollar to remain over-valued at the cost of millions of jobs for ordinary workers.

There are many other ways in which government policy has acted to redistribute money from ordinary workers to the 1 percent. This was done through the setting of the rules. And the amount of money at stake in designing these rules dwarfs the amount of money that we might fight over when we talk about tax policy that redistributes “resources from the affluent to the needy.”

If progressives restrict ourselves to fighting over the tax code, then we are playing in the sandbox. This is classic “loser liberalism.” The real battle is over setting the rules, not shuffling around a few crumbs after the fact.

The issue is not, as some have put it, leaving our neighbor by the side of the road. The issue is that our neighbor has been thrown off the bus. The first step toward getting him back on the bus is to say as loudly and clearly as possible exactly what happened.

--This article was originally published on January 24, 2012 by Al Jazeera English.

Ποιος είναι ο κατάλληλος φορολογικός συντελεστής για τα πολύ υψηλά εισοδήματα?

The 70% Solution
J. Bradford DeLong
2011-11-30

BERKELEY – Via a circuitous Internet chain – Paul Krugman of Princeton University quoting Mark Thoma of the University of Oregon reading the Journal of Economic Perspectives – I got a copy of an article written by Emmanuel Saez, whose office is 50 feet from mine, on the same corridor, and the Nobel laureate economist Peter Diamond. Saez and Diamond argue that the right marginal tax rate for North Atlantic societies to impose on their richest citizens is 70%.

It is an arresting assertion, given the tax-cut mania that has prevailed in these societies for the past 30 years, but Diamond and Saez’s logic is clear. The superrich command and control so many resources that they are effectively satiated: increasing or decreasing how much wealth they have has no effect on their happiness. So, no matter how large a weight we place on their happiness relative to the happiness of others – whether we regard them as praiseworthy captains of industry who merit their high positions, or as parasitic thieves – we simply cannot do anything to affect it by raising or lowering their tax rates.

The unavoidable implication of this argument is that when we calculate what the tax rate for the superrich will be, we should not consider the effect of changing their tax rate on their happiness, for we know that it is zero. Rather, the key question must be the effect of changing their tax rate on the well-being of the rest of us.

From this simple chain of logic follows the conclusion that we have a moral obligation to tax our superrich at the peak of the Laffer Curve: to tax them so heavily that we raise the most possible money from them – to the point beyond which their diversion of energy and enterprise into tax avoidance and sheltering would mean that any extra taxes would not raise but reduce revenue.

The utilitarian economic logic is clear. Yet more than half of us are likely to reject the conclusion reached by Diamond and Saez. We feel that there is something wrong with taxing our superrich until the pips squeak so much that further taxation reduces the number of pips. And we feel this for two reasons, both of them set out more than two centuries ago by Adam Smith – not in his most famous work, The Wealth of Nations, but in his far less discussed book The Theory of Moral Sentiments.

The first reason applies to the idle rich. According to Smith,

“A stranger to human nature, who saw the indifference of men about the misery of their inferiors, and the regret and indignation which they feel for the misfortunes and sufferings of those above them, would be apt to imagine, that pain must be more agonizing, and the convulsions of death more terrible to persons of higher rank, than to those of meaner stations...”

We feel this, Smith believes, because we naturally sympathize with others (if he were writing today, he would surely invoke “mirror neurons”). And the more pleasant our thoughts about individuals or groups are, the more we tend to sympathize with them. The fact that the lifestyles of the rich and famous “seem almost the abstract idea of a perfect and happy state” leads us to “pity…that anything should spoil and corrupt so agreeable a situation! We could even wish them immortal...”

The second reason applies to the hard-working rich, the type of person who

“devotes himself forever to the pursuit of wealth and greatness....With the most unrelenting industry he labors night and day....serves those whom he hates, and is obsequious to those whom he despises....[I]n the last dregs of life, his body wasted with toil and diseases, his mind galled and ruffled by the memory of a thousand injuries and disappointments....he begins at last to find that wealth and greatness are mere trinkets of frivolous utility....Power and riches....keep off the summer shower, not the winter storm, but leave him always as much, and sometimes more exposed than before, to anxiety, to fear, and to sorrow; to diseases, to danger, and to death...”

In short, on the one hand, we don’t wish to disrupt the perfect felicity of the lifestyles of the rich and famous; on the other hand, we don’t wish to add to the burdens of those who have spent their most precious possession – their time and energy – pursuing baubles. These two arguments are not consistent, but that does not matter. They both have a purchase on our thinking.

Unlike today’s public-finance economists, Smith understood that we are not rational utilitarian calculators. Indeed, that is why we have collectively done a very bad job so far in dealing with the enormous rise in inequality between the industrial middle class and the plutocratic superrich that we have witnessed in the last generation.

J. Bradford DeLong, a former assistant secretary of the US Treasury, is Professor of Economics at the University of California at Berkeley and a research associate at the National Bureau for Economic Research.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2011.
www.project-syndicate.org

Η κρίση της Ευρωζώνης: 4 επιλογές διαλέχτε και πάρτε, του N. Roubini

Eurozone Crisis: Here Are the Options, Now Choose

The announcement of the most recent EZ rescue package (acceptance of a bigger haircut for Greek private creditors, the recapitalization of EZ banks and the use of guarantees and financial leverage in the hope of preventing Italy and Spain losing market access) led to markets rallying for a day as the tail risk of a disorderly situation in the EZ, temporarily, diminished. By the next day, Italian yields and spreads were still close to their high, serving as a reminder—as we argued in “The Last Shot on Goal: Will Eurozone Leaders Succeed in Ending the Crisis?,” co-authored with Megan Greene—that the EZ’s fundamental problems will not be resolved by this trio of policy actions.

To put the latest package in context, we need to first assess the fundamental problems facing the EZ and the potential scenarios for the monetary union.

EZ Flow Problems

The EZ suffers from both stock and flow problems, which are related to each other. The flow problems were and/or are:

• Large fiscal and current account deficits in most members of the EZ periphery (Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Cyprus, Spain and Italy);
• Economic weakness, manifesting itself in renewed near recession or outright recession and weak actual and potential growth;
• The periphery’s long-term loss of competitiveness, driven by three factors: Loss of export market share to emerging markets (EMs) in traditional labor-intensive low-valued-added sectors; real appreciation, driven by wages growing more than productivity since the inception of the EZ; and the relative strength of the value of the euro in the past decade.

EZ Stock Problems

The stock problems are the large and possibly unsustainable stock of liabilities of: The government (in most of the periphery with the exception of Spain); the private non-financial sector (mostly in Spain, Ireland and Portugal); the banking and financial system (in most of the periphery); and the country (external debt), especially in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Cyprus and Ireland.

Stock vulnerabilities are the result of flow imbalances: A big fiscal deficit results in a growing and large stock of public debt (Greece, Italy, Ireland, Cyprus, Portugal) and in a large stock of foreign debt when private sector savings-investment imbalances are also large; a wide current account deficit—whether driven by private sector imbalances (like in Spain and Ireland) or public sector ones (Greece, Cyprus, Portugal)—leads to a build-up of foreign debt. In some cases, the excesses started in the private sector (housing boom and then bust in Ireland and Spain); so, initially it was a buildup of private debts and of foreign debts driven by large current account deficits. In other cases, the excesses started in the public sector (Greece, Italy, Portugal, Cyprus), leading to a large stock of public debt and of foreign debt—via current account deficits—in the subset of countries with fragile savings-investment imbalances in their private sectors (Greece, Portugal, Cyprus).

Until recently, Italy had a public debt problem but not current account and foreign debt problems as the high savings of the household sector prevented the fiscal deficit from turning into a current account deficit. But now, the sharp fall in private savings has led to the emergence of a current account deficit even there. In Spain and Ireland, the flow and stock imbalances started in the private sector leading to large current account deficits and foreign debts, but once the Spanish and Irish housing sectors went bust and resulted in sharp fiscal deficits—in part, due to the socialization of private losses—the ensuing rise in public debt created a sovereign debt sustainability problem.

Recent Policy Actions Start to Deal With Some Stock Vulnerabilities

The recent EZ package starts to deal with some—but by no means all—of the stock imbalances in the EZ periphery. First, public debt—in some (Greece) but not all of the countries where it is unsustainable (Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, Italy)—will be reduced (50% haircut on private creditors, though the July plan will have to be completely scrapped, and the new details are lacking at this point). Second, the excessive amount of debt relative to the equity/capital of EZ banks will be partly addressed—to prevent insolvency—by recapitalizing EZ banks (both in the periphery and the core). These banks suffer from low capital ratios and potential erosion of their capital through losses, given exposures to sovereigns, busted real estate and rising non-performing loans as a result of the growing recession. But the capital needs of EZ banks, given these tail-risk losses, are much larger than the €100 billion of recapitalization needs that the EZ has identified. Third, illiquidity—of banks and sovereigns—risks turning illiquidity into insolvency as self-fulfilling bad equilibria of runs on short-term liabilities of banks and governments are possible. Thus, the ECB’s full allotment policy would prevent such a run on bank liabilities in principle only for banks that are illiquid but solvent, but in practice even possibly for insolvent banks.

For sovereigns that have lost market credibility—and whose spreads could blow to an unsustainable level—“catalytic finance” to use the traditional IMF terminology (see my book “Bailouts vs. Bail-Ins”) or the “big bazooka” of the financial equivalent of Powell’s doctrine of “overwhelming force” is necessary to provide time and financing for the flow adjustment—fiscal and structural—to restore market confidence and reduce spreads to sustainable levels. In each case, assumptions need to be made about whether a country is a) illiquid but solvent given financing to prevent loss of market access, time and enough adjustment/austerity (possibly Italy and Spain); b) illiquid and insolvent (Greece, clearly); or c) illiquid and near insolvent and already needing conditional financing given that market access has already been lost (Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus).

But even if Italy and Spain were illiquid and solvent given time, financing and adjustment, the big bazooka that the EZ needs to backstop banks and sovereigns in the periphery is at least €2 trillion and possibly €3 trillion rather than the fuzzy €1 trillion that the EZ vaguely committed to at the recent summit. So, on all three counts, the recent EZ plan falls short of addressing the stock problems of highly indebted sovereigns, the capital needs of EZ banks and the liquidity needs of EZ banks and sovereigns; it also does little or nothing to restore competitiveness and growth in the short run.

Critical Role of Flow Factors in Resolving Stock Sustainability Issues

To make stocks sustainable, it is crucially important to address flow imbalances, for several reasons. First of all, without economic growth, you have a dual problem: a) The socio-political backlash against fiscal austerity and reforms becomes overwhelming as no society can accept year after year of economic contraction to deal with its imbalances; b) more importantly, to attain sustainability, flow deficits (fiscal and current account) and excessive debt stocks (private and public, domestic and foreign) need to be stabilized and reduced, but if output keeps on falling, such deficit and debt ratios keep on rising to unsustainable levels.

Second, restoring growth is also important because, without growth, absolute fiscal deficits become larger rather than smaller (given automatic stabilizers). Third, restoring external competitiveness is key as that loss of competitiveness led—in the first place—to current account deficits and the accumulation of foreign debt and to lower economic growth as the trade balance detracts from GDP growth when it is in a large and growing deficit. So, unless growth and external competitiveness are restored, flow imbalances (fiscal and current account deficits) persist and stabilizing domestic and external deficits becomes “mission impossible.” Finally, note that, unless growth and competitiveness are restored, even dealing with stock problems via debt reduction will not work as flow deficits (fiscal and current account) will continue and, eventually, even reduced debt ratios will rise again if the denominator of the debt ratio (debt to GDP), i.e. GDP, keeps on falling. Growth also matters as credit risk—measured by real interest rates on public, private and external debt, which measures the default risk—will be higher the lower the economic growth rate. So, for any given debt level, a lower GDP growth rate that leads to a higher credit spread makes those debt dynamics more unsustainable (as sustainability depends on the differential between real interest rates and growth rates times the initial debt ratio).

The Current Account Flow Deficit Problem in the EZ Periphery

While the issue of fiscal deficits and public debt has been overemphasized in the recent policy debate about the problems of the EZ, one should not underestimate the role of external—current account—imbalances. These imbalances are now becoming unsustainable as the “sudden stop” and “reversal of private capital inflows” that the periphery has suffered implies that such deficits are now not financeable in the absence of official finance. These deficits are the result of savings-investment imbalances in both the private (Spain, Ireland, Portugal) and public sectors (Greece, Portugal, Cyprus, Italy); they are also the result of the real appreciation of these countries following a decade of declining export market share, the growth of wages in excess of productivity growth and the strength of the euro. Some of these deficits are now cyclically lower given that the collapse of output/demand has led to a fall in imports. But, on a structural basis, unless the real appreciation is reversed, the restoration of growth to its potential level would result in the resumption of large—and now not financeable—external deficits.

So, the modest reduction in current account deficits in the periphery that has been seen since 2009 is deceptive: It doesn’t—for the most part—reflect an improvement in competitiveness; it is only the result of a severe and persistent recession. Real depreciation is required to restore such competiveness while ensuring sustained economic growth. An inability to restore competitiveness and thus growth would eventually undermine the monetary union as private creditors are now—after a sudden stop—unwilling to finance such deficits. So, eliminating the external current account deficit is as critical to restoring debt sustainability as reducing flow fiscal deficits. And fiscal deficits are not the only explanation of the external deficits as real appreciation and loss of competitiveness are as important, if not more important, than fiscal imbalances, in explaining such external imbalances.

The Recent EZ Package Does Little or Nothing to Restore, in the Short Term, Growth and Competitiveness, Which Are the Key to Sustainability

The latest economic data—such as the EZ PMIs—strongly suggest that the EZ—not just the periphery, but also the core—are falling back into a recession. This is very clear in the periphery where some countries never got out of their first 2008 recession, while the others are plunging back into recession after a very moderate recovery. But even in the core of the EZ, the latest data suggest that a recession is looming.

The recent EZ package (a bigger Greek haircut, bank recaps and a levered European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), together with more fiscal austerity and a push toward structural reforms) does nothing to restore competitiveness and growth in the short run. In fact, it actually exacerbates the risk of a deeper and longer recession. Fiscal austerity is necessary to prevent a fiscal train wreck, but, in the short run (as recent IMF studies suggest), raising taxes, reducing transfer payments and cutting government spending (even inefficient/unproductive expenditure) has a negative effect on economic growth, as it reduces aggregate demand and disposable income. Moreover, even structural reforms that will eventually boost growth via higher productivity growth have a short-run negative effect: You need to fire unproductive public employees; you need to fire workers in weak firms and sectors; you need to shut down unprofitable firms in declining sectors; you need to move labor and capital from declining sectors to new sectors in which the country may have a comparative advantage. This all takes time and, in the absence of a rapid real depreciation, what are the sectors in which a periphery country has a new comparative advantage? Even necessary structural reforms—like fiscal austerity—reduce output and GDP in the short run before they have beneficial medium-term effects on growth.

To restore growth and competitiveness: The ECB would have to rapidly reverse its policy hikes, sharply reduce policy rates toward zero and do more quantitative and credit easing; the value of the euro would have to sharply fall toward parity with the U.S. dollar; and the core of the EZ would have to implement significant fiscal stimulus if the periphery is forced into necessary but contractionary fiscal austerity (which will have a short-term drag on growth).

Options for Dealing with Stock and Flow Problems

Stock imbalances—large and potentially unsustainable liabilities—can be addressed in multiple ways: a) high economic growth can heal most wounds, especially debt wounds given that fast growth in the denominator of the debt ratio (i.e. GDP) can lead over time to a lowering of debt ratios; b) low spending and higher savings in the private and public sectors can lead to lower fiscal deficits and lower current account deficits (lower flow imbalances) that, over time, reduce the stocks of public and external debt relative to GDP; c) inflation and/or forms of financial repression can reduce the real value of debts; the same can occur with unexpected depreciation of the currency if the liabilities are in a domestic currency; d) debts can be reduced via debt restructurings and reductions, including the conversion of debt into equity. The last option is key: If growth remains anemic in the EZ; if savings lead to the paradox of thrift (a more severe short-term recession) and if monetization, inflation or devaluations are not pursued by the ECB, the only way to deal with excessive private and public debts becomes some orderly or disorderly reduction of such debts and/or their conversion into equity.

Flow imbalances are more difficult to resolve as they imply a reduction of fiscal and current account deficits that are consistent with sustainable growth and with the restoration of competitiveness, which requires real depreciation. To reduce external current account deficits—the key to restoring competitiveness and growth—you need both decreases in expenditure (private and public) and expenditure-switching through a real depreciation. Such real depreciation can occur in four ways: a) a nominal depreciation of the euro large enough to lead to a sharp real depreciation in the periphery; b) structural reforms that increase productivity growth while keeping a lid on wage growth below productivity growth and thus reduce unit labor costs over time; c) real depreciation via deflation—a cumulative persistent fall in prices and wages that achieves a sharp real depreciation; and d) exit from the monetary union and return to a national currency that leads to a nominal and real depreciation. The key issue here is—as we will discuss in detail below—that achieving the real depreciation via route a) is unlikely, as there are many reasons why the euro will not weaken enough; getting it via b) may take way too long—a decade or more—when the sudden stop requires a rapid turnaround of the external deficit; achieving it via c) may also take too long and would be associated with a persistent recession, while leading to massive balance-sheet effects; thus the d) option—exit from EZ—becomes the only available one if the other three are not feasible/desirable.

Additionally, if growth and competitiveness are restored in short order, this is the best way—on top of decreased expenditure via fiscal austerity—to reduce both the fiscal and current account imbalances as well as the relative ones (i.e. as a share of GDP). In other terms, fiscal austerity and structural reforms eventually restore growth and productivity, but they are, in the short run, recessionary. Thus, other macro policies are needed to restore growth, which is critical to make the adjustment politically and financially feasible. Therefore, macro policies consistent with a rapid return to economic growth are the key to resolving flow problems.

Four Options to Address the Stock and Flow Problems of the EZ

Given the above analysis of the structural and fundamental problems faced by the EZ, there are four possible options to deal with the bloc’s stock and flow problems; each option implies a different future for the monetary union. Each reduces unsustainable debts and restores growth and competitiveness and reduces flow imbalances via a different combination of the policies discussed above

1. Growth and Competiveness Are Restored. In this first option, policies are undertaken to rapidly restore growth and competitiveness (monetary easing, a weaker euro, core fiscal easing and the reduction of unsustainable public and private debts in clear insolvency cases), to reduce flow deficits and to restore private, public and external debt sustainability, all while the periphery undertakes continued painful austerity and structural reforms. In this scenario, the EZ survives in the sense that most members—maybe with the exceptions of Greece and possibly Portugal—remain in the EZ and most members—again, with the exceptions of Greece and possibly Portugal—avoid a coercive restructuring of their public and private debts. This solution requires a nominal and real depreciation of the euro and, for a period of time, higher (lower) inflation in the core (periphery) of the EZ than the current ECB target to restore, via real depreciation, the competitiveness of the periphery and rapidly eliminate its unsustainable current account deficit.

2. The Deflationary/Depressionary Route to the Restoration of Competitiveness. Growth and competitiveness are not restored in the short run as the core/Germany imposes an adjustment based on deflationary and depressionary draconian fiscal austerity and structural reforms that, in the absence of appropriate expansionary macro policies, makes the recession of the periphery severe and persistent and doesn’t restore its external competitiveness for many years. This depression/deflationary path becomes politically and socially unsustainable for most—but possibly not all—of the EZ periphery as it implies five-ten years of ever-falling output to restore competitiveness via deflation and eventual structural reforms. And with output falling in the short run and a fall in prices/wages, stock problems worsen for a while (as both nominal and real GDP are falling) until the restoration of growth eventually takes care of the stock imbalances. Since, for most EZ members, Option 2 becomes politically and socially unfeasible, in the absence of a path that leads to Option 1, Option 2 evolves into Options 3 or 4.

3. The Core Permanently Subsidizes the Periphery. If Option 1 does not materialize while Option 2 becomes politically-socially unsustainable, the only other way to avoid Option 4 (EZ break-up) is not just via a reduction of the unsustainable stocks of liabilities in the periphery (a capital levy on the core of creditors), but also via a permanent subsidization of the uncompetitive periphery by the core. Since the lack of a restoration of growth/competiveness implies a permanent external deficit (trade deficit) in the periphery with a trade surplus in the core that implies an unsustainable current account deficit in the periphery, the only way in which the core can prevent the periphery from exiting the EZ (even after a debt reduction that doesn’t resolve the current account flow deficit problem) is to make a unilateral permanent yearly transfer payment (of the order of several percentage points of core GDP, possibly as high as 5% of GDP) to the periphery to prevent the trade deficit from turning into an unsustainable current account deficit that in turn leads to the accumulation of even more unsustainable external debt. Such a unilateral transfer sustains the GNP of the periphery while its GDP remains permanently depressed as competitiveness is not restored. So, stock problems are addressed via repeated restructurings, extensions and haircuts of privately held debt (bonds) and bilateral/multilateral loans as well as via recapitalizations of banks that include some conversion of debt into equity. Meanwhile, flow problems are addressed via a permanent yearly subsidy to the periphery from the core.

4. The EZ Experiences Widespread Debt Restructurings. Members of the periphery react to the Option 2 (depression/deflation) that is currently imposed on them by Germany and the ECB by, first, losing market access (or not regaining it) and are thus forced, once official finance runs out (because of political and/or financial constraints in the core), to coercively restructure their public and also their private debts (say, of banks and financial institutions). Even such a debt reduction is insufficient to restore growth and competitiveness as it partially deals with stock problems, but does not deal with flow problems. If, then, the flow problem is not resolved via a permanent subsidization of the income of the periphery by the core (Option 3), then the only other way to restore growth and competitiveness is via exit from the monetary union and a return to the national currency. The EZ can survive the exit of its smaller members (Greece, Portugal, Cyprus), but if debt restructurings and the exit of Italy and/or Spain become necessary/inevitable, the EZ effectively breaks up, with only a small core—Germany and a few core members—remaining in a smaller and much damaged monetary union.

An Assessment of the Likelihood of the Four Options

Option 1: Most Desirable But Quite Unlikely as Contrary to the Goals and Constraints of Germany/the ECB

Which one of these four options is most likely? Option 1 appears the most desirable as it leads to the survival and success of the EZ. However, it is not necessarily the most likely option as it would imply radical, rapid and presumably unacceptable changes in the core’s macro-policy.

First, the ECB would have to reverse its policy tightening and aggressively cut rates; even that would not be sufficient as aggressive quantitative easing (QE) would be necessary to restore growth and provide unlimited lending of last resort (LOLR) to sovereigns—such as Spain and Italy—that are possibly illiquid but solvent if given enough time and liquidity to resolve their problems. Even traditional QE would not be sufficient as unconventional credit easing may be necessary to restore credit growth to smaller firms and households subject to a credit crunch. This is obviously not acceptable to the ECB and Germany as it would require a radical change (maybe via a treaty change) to the ECB’s formal mandate (the bank is currently supposed to only pursue the goal of price stability). The ECB—and eventually Germany as a recap of the ECB would fall to Germany/core—would also take a significant risk in becoming (for a while) the LOLR for Italy and Spain, which may turn out—even with massive liquidity—to be not just illiquid but also insolvent (there are many future paths via which the latter could happen).

Second, the value of the euro would have to fall sharply compared with current levels, possibly toward parity with the U.S. dollar to reverse the loss of competitiveness of the periphery. This would imply that inflation would rise in the core—starting in Germany—for a number of years above 2% to allow the real depreciation of the periphery to occur. This doesn’t look like being politically acceptable to Germany and the ECB. Also, with Germany being uber-competitive and with a large external surplus, while the U.S. dollar needs to a weaken given the large U.S. current account deficit, it is not obvious that the euro would fall as sharply as the periphery needs, unless the ECB aggressively pursues QE and credit easing and jawbones the euro down with verbal and actual intervention: All very unlikely outcomes given the ECB’s current mandate and the German/ECB goal of restoring the periphery’s competitiveness via deflation (“internal devaluation”).

Third, the core would have to accept and implement a fiscal stimulus to compensate for the recessionary effects of the fiscal austerity of the periphery. But Germany and the core are vehemently against back-loaded fiscal austerity let alone fiscal easing of the type that even the IMF is now suggesting to them. Germany/the core is of the view that the problems of the periphery were self-inflicted even when private imbalances (like in Spain and Ireland) rather than public ones were at the core of financial difficulties. So, austerity and reform are viewed by the core as a must for both the periphery and also for the core.

Option 2: Socially-Politically Unacceptable as Implies a Persistent Recession-Depression in Most of the Periphery

Option 2 is the type of adjustment that the ECB and Germany would like to impose on the periphery, but it would be socially and politically unacceptable for most. It is thus not a stable equilibrium but rather an unstable disequilibrium that would eventually lead to Options 3 or 4. Since fiscal deficits are excessive, they need to be rapidly reduced via front-loaded austerity to make public debts sustainable. Current account deficits will be partly reduced via the reduction of public dis-savings. The rest of the external imbalance will be corrected via deflation (internal devaluation) and via accelerated structural reforms that increase productivity growth, while keeping a lid on wage growth below such higher productivity growth will progressively reduce unit labor costs and restore external competitiveness.

The problems with the German/ECB solution to the growth/competitiveness issue are multiple. First, fiscal austerity is necessary, but if implemented by the entire EZ it makes the periphery recession worse, deeper and longer and thus undermines the restoration of growth that is necessary to make the debts sustainable. Also, such recession damages attempts to reduce fiscal deficits; and it improves external balances only temporarily via a compression of imports, not via a true restoration of competitiveness; structural external deficits mostly remain.

Second, reducing unit labor costs via accelerated reforms that increase productivity growth—while keeping a lid on wage growth below such rising productivity growth—is easier said than done. It took 10 to 15 years for Germany to achieve its reduction of unit labor costs via that route. And since German unit labor costs have fallen by 20% since the inception of the EZ, while they have risen by 30% in the EZ periphery, the unit labor cost gap between Germany and periphery is now about 50%. So, if the EZ periphery were to accelerate reforms that actually depress output in the short run, the benefits will start to show up after five years or so; and no country can accept five years of recession or depression before it returns to growth. Also, a reduction in unit labor costs via a rise in productivity growth above positive wage growth—as in Germany in the past 15 years—is politically more feasible—as it is associated with growth rather than recession—than a recessionary adjustment where wages need to fall in nominal terms as productivity growth remains stagnant while output stagnates for a number of years. Given the nominal downward rigidity of wages and prices, outright deflation is extremely hard to achieve in the absence of a severe and persistent depression.

Third, deflation/internal devaluation is not politically-socially feasible if it leads—as is likely—to persistent recession. Deflation—a 5% fall in prices and wages for five years leading to a cumulative compound reduction of prices and wages of 30% that undoes the loss of competitiveness of the periphery—would be most likely associated with a continued recession for five more years, likely turning into a depression.

The international experience of “internal devaluations” is mostly one of failure. Argentina tried the deflation route to a real depreciation and, after three years of an ever-deepening recession/depression, it defaulted and exited its currency board peg. The case of Latvia’s “successful” internal devaluation is not a model for the EZ periphery: Output fell by 20% and unemployment surged to 20%; the public debt was—unlike in the EZ periphery—negligible as a percentage of GDP and thus a small amount of official finance—a few billion euros—was enough to backstop the country without the massive balance-sheet effects of deflation; and the willingness of the policy makers to sweat blood and tears to avoid falling into the arms of the “Russian bear” was, for a while, unlimited (as opposed to the EZ periphery’s unwillingness to give up altogether its fiscal independence to Germany); and even after devaluation and default was avoided, the current backlash against such draconian adjustment is now very serious and risks undermining such efforts (while, equivalently, the social and political backlash against recessionary austerity is coming to a boil in the EZ periphery).

The other cases of successful reductions of large external and fiscal deficits and debts in the European member states in the 1990s—Belgium, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, etc.—are just as irrelevant as Latvia’s example as they occurred against a background of growth (not the current EZ recession), falling interest rates as expectations of EMU led to convergence trades (not the current blowing up of sovereign spreads and loss of market access) and, in some cases, via nominal and real depreciations within the flexible terms of the European Monetary System (not the rigid constraints of a monetary union where there is no national currency and the value of the euro remains excessively strong).

Some EZ periphery members—notably Ireland—are undergoing a degree of internal devaluation, but it is too slow and small to rapidly restore competitiveness: A fall in public wages may, in due course, push down private wages in traded sectors and eventually reduce unit labor costs.

Finally, the deflation route to real depreciation—even if it were politically feasible—makes the private and debt unsustainability problem more severe: After prices and wages have fallen 30% after a painful deflation, the real value of private and public debts would be 30% higher, making the case for a sharp reduction in unsustainable debts even more compelling.

Some EZ countries—notably Ireland—may have a better chance of restoring their competitiveness via internal devaluation than others—Portugal, Greece, Cyprus. Ireland has a large and productive manufacturing base—as two-thirds of its manufacturing industry is owned by multinational firms—many in tech or high-value-added sectors—that made a lot of FDI in Ireland in the past two decades to create an industrial base—in a low corporate tax economy—for their European and international production activities. So, Ireland, with some difficulty, could regain its competitiveness in due time if the fiscal adjustment more rapidly leads to a change in the relative prices of traded to nontraded goods.

But, in the case of Greece, Portugal and Spain, the problems of competitiveness are much more chronic and un-resolvable without a nominal currency depreciation: They have permanently lost export market shares in labor intensive and low-value-added sectors—textile, apparel, leather products, light labor intensive manufacturing—to EMs with much lower unit labor costs (Asia, Turkey, Eastern Europe) and they don’t have the high-value-added tech industries of Ireland, for example. Also, in these periphery countries (unlike in Ireland), productivity growth was mediocre even in the years of positive economic growth and restoring comparative advantage without a sharp and rapid real depreciation looks less likely to be achievable.

Spain and Italy are in between Ireland on one side and Greece/Portugal/Cyprus: They experienced as much of an increase in unit labor costs as the rest of the periphery (especially Spain) and they have permanently lost export market share in traditionally labor-intensive sectors. Italy has implemented more structural corporate restructuring than Spain—which restored some competitiveness in higher-value-added sectors—because Spain, growing rapidly during its unsustainable real estate bubble, had little incentive to improve the competitiveness of its traded sector. Also, until recently, Italy did not have the unsustainable current account deficit of Spain as its private saving compensated for the dis-savings of the public sectors. Spain, instead, faces a massive stock of private sector foreign liabilities—held by households, corporate firms, banks and financial firms—that are not easily re-financeable as an external sudden stop has now occurred. But, in the past year, Italy’s current account deficit has now significantly increased, despite depressed economic activity: A worrisome signal of a loss of competitiveness.

Option 3: Not Acceptable to the EZ Core as it Implies Permanent Subsidies to a Large Part of the Periphery, I.e. a Transfer Union Rather Than a Fiscal Union

Option 1 implies a policy adjustment that is biased against Germany/the core/the ECB as it implies that these agents/countries take on significant credit risk and accept higher inflation to adjust inter-EZ real exchange rates; thus, it is unacceptable to them. Option 2 implies that all the burden of adjustment is born by the periphery in terms of many years of fiscal belt-tightening and, worse, a deflationary recession that could turn into a depression. Thus, it eventually becomes unacceptable to the EZ periphery. Then, the periphery would be tempted to unilaterally reduce its debt burdens via coercive debt restructuring first and via exit from the EZ next, as exit, on top of debt reduction, becomes necessary to restore competitiveness and growth.

Then, if the EZ would want to prevent a disorderly break-up of the EZ, it would not only have to accept a reduction of the periphery’s unsustainable debts that imposes a capital levy on the core creditors (something that becomes unavoidable to resolve the stock problems), but, more importantly, it would also have to permanently subsidize the periphery’s chronic trade deficits to prevent such deficits from causing unsustainable current account deficits that are no longer financeable. Thus, a unilateral permanent fiscal transfer by the core to the periphery would be necessary to boost the periphery’s GNP given its depressed GDP and maintain a current account balance in both the core and periphery, despite the persistent trade imbalances between the two regions. If Germany/the EZ core were to run a permanent trade surplus of say 4-5% of GDP relative to that of the EZ periphery, then a permanent yearly transfer of up to 4-5% of GDP from the core to periphery would be necessary to “bribe” the periphery to stay in the EZ rather than exit the monetary union.

Such unilateral transfers from rich to poor regions are not very common, but they aren’t altogether exceptional in the context of nation states where there is a political union. In Italy, the north has transferred income to the south (“the Mezzogiorno”) for decades via the fiscal system. Similarly, West Germany has paid for unification with East Germany with massive transfer payments and government spending on reconstruction that have lasted for over 20 years now and that are not over yet (like the still-existing income tax surtaxes to pay for massive reunification costs). In Australia, the fiscal system permanently transfers income to Tasmania, which is the Australian equivalent—in terms of poverty/low incomes—of the Italian Mezzogiorno or East Germany. But even in the context of unified nation states with a common national identity, such permanent transfers become politically and socially unacceptable as the rich regions resent such transfers and eventually revolt against them: In Italy, for example, political movements representing the rich north (notably, the Lega Nord) have become influential and are now imposing a form of fiscal federalism that will, over time, significantly reduce transfers from the north to the south. And concerns are now being expressed that such fiscal reform will lead to a sharp political backlash in the south; even, in the extreme, threats of secession or national breakdown. So, permanent unilateral transfers of income from rich to poor regions become politically problematic even in a unified political union with a homogenous national identity.

This suggests that the idea that Germany or the core of the EZ would accept a permanent—several percentage points of its GDP—transfer of its income to the periphery as a condition for the periphery not exiting the EZ runs against political trends and is extremely unlikely to occur. The EU has a system of structural payments from rich to poor states (southern and new eastern European members), but these transfers are relatively modest (less than 0.5% of the core’s GDP). Ramping them up by a factor of 10 to bribe the periphery into staying in the EZ would be totally unacceptable—politically and otherwise—to Germany and the rest of the core. Also, it would not make economic sense: Until now, the excess of income (spending) over spending (income) in the core (periphery) that has taken the form of a current account surplus (deficit) in the core (periphery) has been financed with debt that, in principle, is an asset of the core and should be paid back with interest by the periphery over time.

Now, instead, the core would have first to accept a capital levy on its accumulated assets over the periphery (its foreign assets accumulated through decades of current account surpluses) to allow the reductions of the periphery’s unsustainable foreign private and public debts. The EZ core is now grudgingly accepting some of this capital levy (losses on EZ creditors coming from the debt reduction in Greece), but similar capital levies are unavoidable for the debts of Portugal, Ireland and Cyprus, and may become unavoidable even for Italy and Spain.

But even this much larger capital levy would not be enough as the persistent chronic trade deficit of the periphery would next have to be financed not via debt-creating flows, but rather unilateral transfers within a currency union. Providing a system of vendor financing from the core to periphery may have made sense for the core for a while to sustain its export and GDP growth even if it eventually leads to a capital levy when the debtor is unable to pay. But a system of unilateral transfers from the core to periphery where the excess of spending over income of the periphery is financed by permanent grants—not loans—from the core doesn’t make any economic sense for the core: It is a permanent reduction of income and welfare and consumption for no sensible reason apart from the vague goal of keeping the EZ together.

The discussion above suggests that the usual recent argument—i.e. that the EZ needs to become a fiscal union to survive its crisis—is partially wrong and confusing. There is a substantial and critical difference between a fiscal union and a transfer union. In a fiscal union, there is true risk-sharing and no permanent transfer of income from one state/region to another. Where revenues and spending are partially shared at the federal level, there is risk-sharing: When an idiosyncratic shock occurs in one region (such as a recession in one state of the union, but not in other states), risk-sharing implies that revenues and transfers/spending are adjusted to reduce the effect of that temporary state-specific shock to the output (GDP) of that state on its income (GNP). If such state-specific shocks are random—sometimes hitting one region/state, sometimes hitting another region/state of the union—the worse-off region subject to the negative output shock gets partially and temporarily subsidized by the region/state that is temporarily better off. And over time—like in any actuarially fair insurance scheme—mutual insurance smoothes shocks to income that are driven by shocks to output. No region/state permanently subsidizes another one. This is a fiscal union where risk is pooled and shared.

A transfer union is a very different animal: it is not a fiscal union aimed at sharing, insuring and smoothing temporary regional output shocks. It is instead a mechanism that uses fiscal resources—taxes, transfer payments and public spending—to permanently transfer income from richer region/states to poorer regions/states. Transfer unions are politically problematic even in unified nations that are political unions and are nationally homogenous. They are much more problematic when a political union does not exist and where the arguments for a permanent transfer union are not acceptable. For a German to accept a permanent transfer of her income to the Greeks as a condition for Greece remaining part of a monetary union doesn’t make any sense.

Transfer unions also don’t make sense because they breed moral hazard. Even if one could make the argument that initial differences in per-capita income between different regions/states of an economic union were explained by exogenous factors different from endogenous policy/economic efforts, the existence of a permanent transfer union would obviously breed—over time—moral hazard. The weak/poor region might not want to make much economic/policy/fiscal effort to improve its economic/fiscal conditions as it is permanently subsidized by the richer region.

Moral hazard is thus the reason why fiscal unions come with binding rules that limit the risk attached to the transferee being fiscally undisciplined, to prevent a fiscal union becoming a transfer union. This is also the reason why the current efforts of Germany/the core EZ to help the periphery are subject to strict fiscal and structural conditionality: Only if the periphery does significant and painful fiscal austerity and structural reforms, will the core help the periphery to overcome its temporary fiscal and financial problems. This is also the reason why any inter-EZ debate on future quasi or full fiscal union comes with the express request by Germany/the core for binding fiscal rules (balanced budgets over time, balanced budget amendments, sanctions against deviant states) to prevent such a fiscal union from turning into a transfer union.

In conclusion, Option 3 is highly unlikely and undesirable for the core EZ as it would imply the creation of a transfer union, rather than a fiscal union. But if Option 2—deflationary depression—is unacceptable to the periphery, only a transfer union prevents the periphery from being tempted to avoid a persistent recession, from considering exiting the monetary union and restoring its growth and competitiveness via a return to its national currency.

Option 4: Widespread Debt Reductions and Eventual EZ Break-Up—Becomes the More Likely Outcome as the Other Three Options Are Not Likely or They Are Not Desirable or Sustainable

The core of the EZ is unlikely accept a symmetric adjustment—Option 1—that restores competitiveness and growth in the periphery via monetary and fiscal easing and a weaker euro that implies higher inflation for a period of time in the core, a persistent LOLR role for the ECB and significant credit risk for the core if some periphery members end up being both illiquid and insolvent. It is instead pushing for Option 2, recessionary deflation in the periphery, which is not politically acceptable in most of the periphery. Then, the only way to keep the periphery in the EZ becomes both a capital levy on the core creditors to make the debts of the periphery sustainable and, on top of that, unilateral transfers in the form of a transfer union that permanently subsidizes the depressed income—of the EZ periphery (caused by the permanent loss of competitiveness that remaining in the EZ implies).

But such a transfer union is not politically or economically acceptable to the core. Then, the only other option is first a capital levy imposed by the periphery on the core—in the form of a reduction of unsustainable foreign private and public liabilities—to reduce such unsustainable debt. But even that debt reduction is not sufficient to restore competitiveness and growth. And if competitiveness cannot be restored via Option 1 (a much weaker euro), or Option 2 (depressive deflation or too-slow structural reform) or Option 3 (where the incipient permanent loss of income via a permanent loss of competitiveness is permanently subsidized by the core via a transfer union), the only other option left is the one of exiting the monetary union and restoring growth/competitiveness via nominal and real depreciation resulting from ditching the euro and returning to a national currency.

Exiting the monetary union is not a costless action, including—among other problems—the complex and costly process of converting previous euro assets and liabilities into the new national currency i.e. “pesification” or “drachmatizaton” of euro debts. In a separate paper (“Greece Should Default and Abandon the Euro”), I discussed the pros and cons of returning to a national currency and how to limit both the collateral damage of a unilateral exit and of the contagion from such an exit to the remaining EZ members.

Arguing that the EZ may eventually break up usually leads to angry reactions among the supporters of the EZ who argue that such an option would lead to disastrous consequences for the exiting country, the other EZ members and the overall global economy. We don’t deny that a disorderly break-up could be a shock as severe—or even more severe—than the disorderly bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. But as the Lehman example shows, disorderly shocks do occur from time to time. And the history of financial crises suggests that very costly crises do occur with a virulence and frequency that is rising. So, arguing that a break-up of the EZ is impossible to fathom is not logical.

Also, the oft-heard argument that the EZ was more a political project—unifying Europe and permanently roping in Germany in a European construct—than an economic one and thus it will survive regardless of its economic viability is a logical non-sequitur. Political considerations may lead the EZ to last longer or reduce—everything else equal—the probability of a break-up. But political logic doesn’t suspend the laws of economics: If a monetary union becomes unsustainable it will eventually break up, regardless of its political benefits.

Which Outcome Is Most Likely? Further Sequential Debt Restructurings and a Partial Break-Up

Also, we have not argued that a break-up is the only feasible outcome. Option 1 restores growth and competitiveness via an adjustment that is more symmetric than asymmetric—both the core and periphery need to make some sacrifices to allow the survival of the EZ. And, eventually, both Germany and the ECB may accept such a more symmetric option rather than let the EZ be destroyed if political considerations are important in considering the costs and benefits of alternative policy options. Also, internal devaluation plus structural reform may work for some EZ members such as Ireland. A formal transfer union is unlikely, but the core is willing to accept some stock capital levy on its claims on the periphery—debt reduction for Greece and possibly other EZ members—and it may accept some partial transfer payments—various bailouts that have a subsidy component embedded in them—if the periphery makes policy efforts (both fiscal and structural) to fix some of its problems. And arrangements that start as quasi-fiscal unions have a tendency—over time—to absorb components of a partial transfer union (an incentive-compatible or moral-hazard-proof form of a partial transfer union).

Also, note that Option 4 can be something short of a formal full break-up of the EZ. In some variants of Option 4, only some of the weakest members of the EZ exit: Greece, Portugal and Cyprus. Suppose that Italy and Spain were to be successfully ring-fenced: i.e. buying a year of time via the bazooka of the levered EFSF were to be sufficient for Italy and Spain to undertake credible fiscal austerity and reforms, change their governments to more credible ones and partially restore their growth and competitiveness so that a year from now they can borrow at sustainable spreads without any additional official support. Then, if Italy and Spain are out of the woods and a year from now Greece and/or Portugal/Cyprus require not just debt reduction, but also exit from the EZ, a smaller EZ without Greece and/or the other two weak members would be feasible and manageable. If two or three of the smallest members were to exit while Italy and Spain were able to survive and eventually thrive within the EZ, a partial break-up of the EZ would be feasible and possible without destroying the entire monetary union. But if either Italy and/or Spain were to need a coercive restructuring of their public debt and, even after that disruptive action, would still need exit to restore growth/competitiveness, than an effective break-up of the EZ would become likely. Even then, Germany and a small group of core countries might maintain a monetary union. But in that outcome, it is not obvious that even the fiscally and structurally fragile and reform-less France—which would lose its triple-A status and also become the victim of severe collateral damage and contagion from debt restructurings and/or exit of Italy/Spain—would remain part of that “core” EZ.

Political Benefits of the EZ May Not Trump Its Eventual Economic Costs

Regarding the political costs of a break-up of the EZ, it is clear that Germany and France—and other core EZ members—would be seriously damaged by such a break-up and would see the major project of economic and eventual political unification of Europe destroyed. But Europe and the EU would not be destroyed even if the EZ were to partially or fully break up. Some EU members never joined or were allowed to opt out of the EZ (Sweden, Denmark and the UK) and some eastern/central members of the EU may never qualify to join the EZ. So, an EU where some countries are members of the EZ and others are not is totally feasible and better and more viable than an EZ that includes some members that should have never joined in the first place.

In spite of the political benefits of the EZ and the political costs of a break-up, neither Germany/the core nor the periphery would accept the costs of a persistent EZ if its economic/financial costs were to hugely exceed its benefits. It is clear that Germany is ready to pull the plug on Greece—and if necessary on Portugal and Cyprus—if Italy and Spain are successfully ring-fenced. Germany/the core has already accepted the principle and practice of accepting a capital levy on its assets—those of the private German creditors of Greece—rather than further fully socialize the cost of a full and persistent bailout of an insolvent sovereign such as Greece. It would be willing to accept similar capital levies on its claims of other near-insolvent small EZ members such as Portugal and Cyprus. Germany would also accept—and even manage—an orderly exit of Greece and other smaller EZ member from the monetary union if/when Italy and Spain are successfully ring-fenced. So, a smaller EZ is still possible and viable.

The open issue is what Germany will do a year from now if, after an attempt to provide catalytic finance to Italy and Spain via a levered EFSF, either Italy and/or Spain are not able to borrow at sustainable rates without official support if their growth and competitiveness and sovereign viability are not otherwise restored. Would Germany/the core double down and try for another year of Plan A—catalytic finance of even larger size—when that approach has already failed once or would it opt for the preferable Plan B (debt restructuring, eventual exit)?

The German Assessment of the Costs and Benefits of the EZ

The usual argument is made that even Germany then would have no choice to again backstop Italy and Spain as the alternative—collapse of the EZ—would be even more costly to Germany and the global economy. But if Plan A—assuming that Italy and Spain are illiquid but solvent given time, financing and adjustment—has failed, then what is the purpose—for Germany/the core or even the international community (IMF/the U.S./the BRICs) —of doubling down on a failed strategy?

Germany and the ECB have so far hoped that their view of the crisis is correct: The periphery is in trouble because of a lack of fiscal discipline and structural reforms. So, fiscal discipline and structural reforms are the necessary solutions even if they imply painful adjustment and sacrifices for the periphery for a number of years. Germany and the ECB may turn out to be right, but this paper suggests that the painful medicine will be—however necessary over the medium term—too painful and recessionary in the short run and for long enough that it will not be viable. Also, the EZ periphery’s fundamental loss of competitiveness—manifesting itself in now unsustainably large current account deficits—requires a real depreciation that will not be achieved quickly enough with reforms and deflation that depress output for too long before they restore growth. Thus, debt reductions and real depreciation via an EZ exit and a return to national currencies will become—however costly—unavoidable and less painful than the alternative of recessionary deflation.

Then, if this analysis is correct, Germany will eventually have to make tough choices: Either allow a strategy that changes the nature of the ECB and restores growth through a weaker euro and higher inflation in Germany for a period of time; or permanently subsidize the depressed EZ periphery; or allow the debt reductions of most periphery members and their exits from the EZ. Again, if only a small Greece and/or Portugal/Cyprus exits, the process would be—however costly and ugly—manageable, But if the crisis doesn’t spare—in spite of all current adjustment and financing efforts—Italy and/or Spain, Germany/the core EZ could find that further backstopping of Italy/Spain would be too costly and also “mission impossible” if Plan A has failed and repeating it isn’t likely to make it more successful.

Indeed, soon enough, Germany would have to worry about its own fiscal sustainability and the risks involved in endlessly backstopping more EZ members. Today, its taxpayers’ taxes backstop the German public debt. But even Germany has a large fiscal deficit and a large stock of public debt. And, given the ageing of its population, it also has additional implicit long-term fiscal debts/liabilities. Add to that the fiscal cost of recapitalizing many of its insolvent or near-insolvent financial institutions: The Landesbanken, IKB, West LB, Commerzbank and others. The German taxpayers’ money is now also partially backstopping the public debt of Greece, Ireland and Portugal through the IMF, EFSF, EFSM and ECB.

But the public debt of Greece is “only” €300 billion. The public debt of Italy and Spain is close to €3 trillion, or 10 times that of Greece. Germany will now—via the expanded and levered EFSF—partially guarantee part of the Italian and Spanish debt. But about €200 billion of the implicit liabilities of a levered EFSF is already a large risk for an overleveraged Germany. If, a year from now, the bazooka of the levered EFSF has not worked to restore the sustainability of Italy and/or Spain, the idea that Germany would accept taking an additional €3 trillion credit risk by fully backstopping Italy and Spain is quite far-fetched. Since Germany needs to consider that, under some scenarios (whatever their probability), Italy and Spain don’t make it and need both debt restructuring and to exit, Germany must protect itself now for the fallout that a disorderly break-up of the EZ would entail.

And some of the caution that Germany has shown in terms of committing more financial resources to backstopping the periphery has to do with the German need to save some precious bullets—or some dry powder—in case all goes wrong and the EZ breaks up. Using all of its chips now to backstop the periphery would not be rational for Germany, even if doing so raises the odds of Italy and Spain eventually getting out of the woods. Keeping some powder dry for the extreme tail scenarios is a rational strategy for Germany and the core as the financial and economic fallout and costs of a break-up would also be severe for them.

Cost-Benefit Analysis of EZ Membership for the EZ Periphery

A similar cost-benefit analysis of staying in the monetary union applies to the periphery members. Currently, none of them— not even hopeless Greece—is seriously considering exiting the monetary union. But, as we have argued above, if Germany/the ECB insist on an adjustment that is deflationary/recessionary, the social/political backlash against that depressionary adjustment may become overwhelming. Already in Greece, daily demonstrations, strikes and other popular resentment against the austerity may lead the government to collapse in the next few months; and this scenario is becoming more likely as there will now be a referendum on the austerity measures, with all the attached risks. Then, if Greece goes even further off track in terms of its commitments to its “troika” of creditors (the IMF, EU and ECB), the troika would have to pull the plug on Greece and a disorderly default and exit from the union would become inevitable. Even if exit is postponed for another year, chronic and ever-deepening recession will sooner rather than later trigger a government collapse and a possible exit from the EZ.

Also, the alleged benefits of remaining in the EZ may now be less convincing for most periphery members: Initially, the EZ led to interest rate convergence when market discipline was not operational; this was a significant benefit as nominal and real interest rates were low and falling and making the cost of debt for both private and public sectors low. Now, with market discipline in full swing and sovereign spreads high and rising, this major benefit of the monetary union has disappeared and has rather become a major cost/burden. Worse, remaining in the EZ implies ceding from now on a significant part of—if not all—fiscal autonomy to the core: Soon enough, the troika will decide most of the taxation and government spending in the periphery, including social safety nets, social security systems and the matters and details of the privatization of public assets. Germany/the core may also effectively take over part of the periphery’s financial systems if the only way to recapitalize periphery banks is by using EFSF resources. Also, the ECB’s monetary and exchange rate policies have now clearly gained—after over a decade of experience—an anti-growth and an anti-competitiveness bias, focusing instead on the strict achievement of price stability. When national currencies existed, rising differentials in competitiveness—because of differentials in unit labor costs—could from time to time be remedied through nominal and real depreciation of national currencies. Now, that benefit is gone and only recessionary deflation is available.

Cost of EZ Membership May Eventually Outweigh Benefits, Thus Triggering Exit

So, what are the alleged benefits of staying in the monetary union if the costs seem to be rising while the benefits are shrinking? Periphery members are still blinded by the potential stigma of an embarrassing exit, especially policy makers who would lose power if a shameful exit that suggests failure were to occur. So, they are desperately avoiding even the thought of exit rather than seriously and rationally considering its benefits as well as its considerable—but manageable—costs. But populations will not meekly accept year after year of sacrifices, job losses, rising unemployment and hopelessness about an economic recovery. If there is no light at the end of the tunnel or the only light is from the approaching train wreck of a deflationary recession with no hope of a short-term recovery, debt reductions and exits from the monetary union will become necessary, desirable and unavoidable.

Options and Scenarios for the EZ (see map below)

In a recent RGE piece (“The Last Shot on Goal: Will Eurozone Leaders Succeed in Ending the Crisis?,” co-authored with Megan Greene), we outlined three possible scenarios for the EZ in the next 12-24 months. In Scenario 1, the current EZ plan somehow works and Italy and Spain are successfully ring-fenced via the levered EFSF and exogenous factors that restore growth after a 2012 recession. Then Greece and/or Portugal/Cyprus experience debt reductions and possibly exit the EZ, but the EZ survives if Italy and Spain survive and thrive. In Scenario 2, Plan A does not work and, once the levered EFSF bazooka has run out of money and pressure on Italian and Spanish spreads has not abated as recession becomes entrenched, Italy and Spain may have to experience debt restructuring and eventually even exit the EZ. Even in Scenario 2, once Plan A has failed a year from now, Germany/the core/the ECB/the international community could still double down on keeping Italy and Spain afloat even if that becomes unlikely and very expensive if Plan A (catalytic finance) has failed. In Scenario 3, things unravel for the EZ inside 12 months as a disorderly collapse of Greece prevents Plan A (buy time on Greece by keeping it on life support until Italy and Spain are successfully ring-fenced and then pull the plug) from even being tried, before it is given a chance to succeed (Scenario 1) or fail (Scenario 2).

In terms of the four options in this paper, Option 4 is analogous to Scenario 3 (widespread defaults and the break-up of the EZ), which in our view will become more likely over time. Scenario 1 is, in our view likely to succeed only if Option 1 (macro policy reflation of the EZ) is implemented soon, yet Germany/the core/the ECB want to achieve Scenario 1 by implementing Option 2 (deflation, austerity and reforms). We have argued that Option 2 is very unlikely to lead to Scenario 1 for most EZ periphery members as it will lead to entrenched recession that will last for years and a too-slow restoration of competitiveness. Option 3 is not politically feasible as it implies that the core accepts both a massive capital levy on its current claims on the periphery and an additional permanent subsidization of the periphery’s income. Thus, Option 3 corresponds to a notional “Scenario 4,” to which we assign a near-zero probability in our scenario analysis.

Of course, among the six eurozone countries in trouble so far (Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Cyprus, Spain and Italy), a subset of them will experience restructurings and reductions of their public debts and private debts as a way to resolve their stock imbalances. And a different subset of these six countries may also eventually decide to exit to resolve their flow imbalances. So, many different permutations and combinations of outcomes/scenarios are possible. But our four options and the related policies associated with them provide a map of how one can potentially resolve stock and flow imbalances in the EZ. And our three scenarios provide a timeline of how, over the next 12-24 months, economic and financial conditions will evolve in the EZ. Some countries will for sure restructure their debts and some will most likely exit the EZ. If enough of them restructure and exit—especially the two big ones in the periphery (Italy and Spain)—this would effectively represent a break-up of the EZ.

Our point is that we cannot rule out Option 4 becoming more likely: i.e. Scenarios 2 and/or 3 materialize, so the next steps of these scenarios are widespread debt restructuring and eventual exit from the EZ of enough member states such that a break-up of the EZ turns out to be necessary and unavoidable. In terms of this non-linear set of scenarios, the periphery will push for Options 1 or 3 as a way to avoid Option 4; but if Germany/the core/the ECB stick with Option 2, Scenarios 2 or 3 rather than 1 will materialize and the EZ will eventually end up with Option 4, i.e. debt reductions, exit from the monetary union and the break-up of the monetary union.

This paper—and its companion piece—outlines the options available to the EZ, the accompanying policy actions and the scenarios that will result from the complex, dynamic, high-stakes game being played. Various options are available at each node, with the chosen policies leading to a variety of different outcomes, grouped under our three main scenarios.

http://www.economonitor.com/nouriel/2011/11/09/eurozone-crisis-well-at-least-we-have-options/