Year: 2010

€74 Billion in Guaranteed Bank Debt Maturing Before October

Last week, I provided calculations from annual reports showing that at the end of 2009, the banks covered by the State guarantee owed €71 billion in various types of bank debt (bonds, commercial paper, interbank loans) that matured before the end of the year (the reports did not provide information on how much matured prior to expiry of the guarantee at the end of September.)

The Department of Finance have now provided figures as of the end of April on how much covered debt expires before October. In a written answer to a question from Joan Burton, the Department have stated that €74.2 billion in bank debt expires before the end of October, €57.8 billion of this being senior debt and €16.4 being interbank deposits.

ECB Sovereign Bond Purchase Program

It’s hard to fully assess at this point the relative importance for the reduction in Irish government bond spreads of the €750 billion bailout fund committed to by the EU and IMF versus the ECB’s decision to purchase sovereign bonds on the secondary market.  However, the ECB’s presence or withdrawal from the secondary bond market may prove very important in relation to Ireland’s ability to keep issuing primary debt and staying out of the hands of an EU-IMF deal.

So, three weeks in, what do we know now about this program? A bit more than a few weeks ago but not as much as I’d like.  This speech from President Trichet appears to be the most comprehensive discussion of the rationale for the program.

Continue reading “ECB Sovereign Bond Purchase Program”

The Impact on the Exchequer

Ok, I promise this is the last time I’ll write about promissory notes for a while.

Pat McArdle, still keen to minimise the link between the cost of bank bailouts and our fiscal problems, writes:

That is not to say that large subventions to the banks were not needed – more than €10 billion has gone into Anglo alone. However, the Minister has been quite clever in the way this has been done. He has issued promissory notes which deliver the capital bang upfront but will be drawn down piecemeal over the next 10-15 years. As a result, the exchequer has had to raise only €200 million to capitalise the banks this year.

And also:

Nama, too, has been structured to minimise the impact on the exchequer. Though it is likely to pay over €40 billion for the assets bought from the banks, this will not be in the form of cash and so will not have to be funded in the markets.

I find it funny that the issuing of promissory notes is now regularly described as, like NAMA bonds, a stroke of genius on the part of the Department of Finance: Last year, advocates of NAMA often told us that overpaying for assets was the best way to recapitalise the banks because if we didn’t do it that way we’d have go out and get “real money” by borrowing on the sovereign debt market, i.e. that banks couldn’t be recapitalised with promissory notes. 

It is certainly true that promissory notes and NAMA bonds do not require going to the sovereign bond market to borrow the money. However, this stuff is debt and the people who have been worried about our ability to pay back all our debts (and they seem to getting worried again) are well aware that we are accumulating extra debts in the form of promissory notes and NAMA bonds. In this sense, they have the exact same “impact on the exchequer” as regular borrowing.

Note, however, that the promissory note route will put more pressure on the Irish state to come up with money for the banks in the coming years than would a normal debt issuance. €10 billion in ten-year bond issuance requires forking over interest of about €500 million a year over the next ten years before the full amount has to paid off on maturity, hopefully via issuing another ten year bond. An interest-free promissory note for €10 billion would require average payments of €1 billion a year over the same period.

At the end of the day, debt is debt and those who lend to us aren’t easily fooled. I’d prefer to let history judge exactly how clever this debt issuance has been.

The Lisbon Agenda: An Assessment

The CPB has come a long way since it was founded, as the Central Planning Bureau, by Jan Tinbergen shortly after WW2. Besides giving solicited and unsolicited advice to the Netherlands Government — polite but frank — it is acquiring a similar role in Europe. Their latest publication is bafflingly in Dutch, but relevant to anyone in Europe. It is an assessment of the Lisbon Agenda.

At the beginning of the decade, European politicians promised all sorts of wonderful stuff for 2010. The CPB report wonders what came of that, comparing progress in the period 1990-2000 to the period 2000-2010.

Here’s a summary:

-Income per capita (Geary-Khamis): Economic growth in EU15 was slower after 2000 than before; ditto for Ireland; US and Australia show same pattern, but economic growth accelerated after 2000 in China, South Korea, Japan and New Zealand

-Labour participation (share population 15-65): Increase in EU15 was slower post 2000; ditto for Ireland

-R&D expenditures (share GDP): Increase in EU15 was slower post 2000; ditto for Ireland; US increase before 2000 but decline after 2000; China decline before 2000 but sharp increase after 2000; Japan and South Korea small increase before 2000 and sharp increase after 2000

+Education expenditure (share GDP): Fell in EU15 before 2000, rose after 2000; ditto for Ireland; US and China increase before and after 2000; Japan increase before 2000 but decrease after 2000

+Domestic waste (kg/cap): Rose in EU15 before 2000, fell after 2000; rose in Ireland before 2000, rose very rapidly after 2000

+Particulate matter (load): Rose in EU15 before 2000, fell after 2000; fell in Ireland before and after 2000

-Carbon dioxide (kg/cap): Fell in EU15 before 2000, stationary after 2000; rose in Ireland before 2000, fell after 2000; US, Canada, New Zealand increase before 2000 and decrease after 2000; China decrease before 2000, virtually no change since 2000; Japan increase before and after 2000

-Trust in peope: Fell in EU15 before 2000, stationary after 2000; ditto for Ireland; US, Canada, South Korea fell before 2000, rose afterwards; Japan rose before 2000, fell after 2000

+Corruption: Increased in EU15 before 2000, stationary after 2000; increased in Ireland before and after 2000; increased in US before and after 2000; increased in China before 2000 but fell after 2000; decreased in Japan before 2000 but rose after 2000

-Poverty (share of population under poverty line, before transfers): Fell in EU15 before 2000, rose after 2000; ditto for Ireland

-Poverty (share of population under poverty line, after transfers): Fell in EU15 before 2000, rose after 2000; rose in Ireland before 2000, fell after 2000

-Children in jobless families (share of population 0-17): Fell in EU15 before 2000, fell slightly after 2000; fell in Ireland before 2000, rose after 2000

That’s 8 negatives and 4 positives for EU15, and 8 negatives and 4 positives for Ireland (albeit different positives and negatives).

Irish Banking Policy

Brian Lucey writes on this topic in today’s Irish Independent – distributed over three articles:

Part I

Part II

Part III