Month: August 2010

Extending the Guarantees

In recent days the heads have AIB and Anglo have called for an extension of the bank guarantees.  (Colm Doherty’s conference call transcript here; Mike Aynsley’s interview with RTE here.) This has caused understandable dismay given the almost unimaginable costs the original blanket guarantee placed on Irish citizens.  But we should not allow the mistake of guaranteeing already locked–in funds for a period long enough to allow most of them to escape to colour the case against guarantees on new borrowing.   (It should be said that with the government’s effective “no–creditor–left-behind” policy, it is not obvious that losses would have been imposed on long-term creditors with or without the original guarantee.) 

In looking at the case for continuing with prospective guarantees it is important to consider how the credit system would evolve without them.  Without guarantees the cost of new funds would increase, leading to increased pressure to raise rates on new business and household lending.  Moreover, without guarantees there would be greater market pressure to increase capital ratios, which in the current environment is likely to be met by greater deleveraging.    The credit squeeze would worsen. 

I have thought since the outset of the crisis that balance-sheet constraints on credit supply have received disproportionate blame for the credit collapse relative to credit demand and borrower creditworthiness considerations.  But one factor I didn’t fully appreciate is how uncertainly about future credit supply can affect current demand.  Businesses will want to limit their debt exposure when there is a risk that their legs will be cut from under them when they try to refinance.   This may go some way to explaining Colm Doherty’s revelation that 40 percent of overdraft facilities are not being taken up.   (Simon Johnson makes a similar point in recent testimony before the U.S. Senate Budget Committee; this wide-ranging testimony is well worth a look more generally.)

The sustained deleveraging by banks, businesses and households risks a Japanese–style “lost decade” for the Irish economy.   The recent soft numbers, which have come in despite the stronger performance of broader European economy, could be an early warning.  Restoring confidence in the stability of credit supply is an important part of the policy challenge.   Unfortunately, guarantees on new bank liabilities will probably have to remain a while longer. 

Eurostat: Irish Deficit 36% of GDP in 2010:Q1

I know that the NTMA have already admitted as much but just in case there were any remaining doubts that Eurostat are counting the promissory notes towards this year’s budget deficit, the picture below is a screencap from Eurostat’s publicly available database. Yes, our deficit in the the first quarter of 2010 was 36.51% of GDP. I believe the figure for the year will be about 20%. (Yes it’s my first time using a picture! Perhaps now you can see why.)

Some Lessons for Fiscal Policy from the Financial Crisis

In this new paper, I argue that the current crisis calls for a re-assessment of the optimal conduct of macroeconomic policies during non-crisis normal times. In particular, the risk and costs of crises can be mitigated by macroeconomic policies that lean against the wind in the face of cyclical, sectoral and external shocks. In this paper, I discuss the challenges involved in deploying fiscal policy in pursuit of a broad definition of macroeconomic stabilisation. The main policy conclusion is that pro-stabilisation fiscal policies are likely to be more effective if fiscal policy is determined under a formal fiscal framework that combines a set of fiscal rules and a substantive role for an independent fiscal policy council.  (Forthcoming in Nordic Economic Policy Review.)

The Cross-Country Incidence of the Global Crisis

In this new paper (joint with Gian Maria Milesi-Ferretti of the IMF), we empirically examine the factors explaining the cross-country variation in the severity of the global crisis.  We find that the pre-crisis level of income per capita, increases in the ratio of private credit to GDP, current account deficits, and openness to trade are helpful in understanding the intensity of the crisis. International financial integration did little to shield domestic demand from the country-specific component of output declines, while those countries with large pre-crisis current account deficits saw domestic demand fall by much more than domestic output during the crisis.  (Forthcoming in IMF Economic Review.)

July Unemployment and Exchequer Returns

For an economy that’s supposedly in recovery, the unemployment figures seem to be puzzlingly weak. The July Live Register figures show an increase in the standardised unemployment rate from 13.4% in June to 13.7% in July. Slightly less negative were the July exchequer figures: Tax revenues had fallen from being on target in April to 1.6% behind target in June. The July figures reversed that trend to be only 1.4% behind target.

Still, both sets of figures raise a question. We keep hearing about how GDP figures are supposed to be coming in better than the assumptions penciled into the last budget: How is that to be reconciled with tax revenues being behind budget target and the unemployment rate coming in higher?  (The budget assumed a year average unemployment rate of 13.2%, which is the average for the year so far with the figure now moving in the wrong direction.)

Update: I was interested to hear Minister Eamon O’Cuiv explain the increase in the seasonally adjusted unemployment rate on seasonal factors. Sure unemployment always goes up in July, I heard him say on the radio. You’d think the CSO boffins would have factored that in to their calculations …