The Irish Financial System – Conferences

The papers from today’s ESRI Renewal conference are here.

The site for the Central Bank’s SME conference on Friday is here.

By the way, details of Dublin’s Central Library Lecture Series on the Irish Crisis are here.

Ireland to hold Fiscal Compact Referendum

The report is here.

IMF: Ireland and Automatic Stabilizers

The new IMF press release is available here.  An important segment is

At the same time, the challenges Ireland faces have intensified since the outset of the program, with growth expected to ease to about ½ percent in 2012 owing to a slowing in trading partner activity. The Irish authorities have responded by raising the fiscal consolidation effort adopted in Budget 2012, and the budget remains on track to meet an unchanged general government deficit target of 8.6 percent of GDP. If growth should weaken further, the automatic stabilizers should be allowed to operate to help avoid jeopardizing the fragile recovery.

This point has also been raised in this blog’s discussion of the new Fiscal Compact. If the government implements €X of discretionary fiscal adjustments in a given year T, the realised deficit/GDP ratio in year T will also depend on what type of (positive or negative) cyclical shocks affect GDP in year T  (in addition to the direct impact of fiscal policy on GDP).   Just as positive cyclical shocks would deliver an ‘over-performance’ in terms of the deficit/GDP ratio, so negative cyclical shocks would deliver an ‘under-performance’.  The spirit of the Fiscal Compact is that such deviations should average out to zero over time, rather than being eliminated within-the-year through mini-budgets.

In the current Irish case, there are some extra considerations:

  • spending/revenue plans for this year might include some implicit contingency funds, so that the 8.6 percent target can be attained even in the event of an under-shooting of GDP
  • given the downside risk, the government might have explicitly planned a larger fiscal adjustment, with the consequence that that the 8.6 target could be met even in the event of an under-shooting of GDP

2012 TINA Award Winner: Laura Noonan

One of the most depressing aspects of the Irish banking crisis has been the consistent insistence of most of our financial journalists that any action that ran counter to government policy would result in disaster. There was simply no alternative.

I remember countless reports that nationalising any more banks after Anglo would result in torrents of frogs and locusts in the streets of Ireland. Today we have many economic problems but I doubt if the nationalised status of AIB and ILP would make the top ten.

I remember, time and again, journalistic reports that you couldn’t nationalise a bank because the ECB couldn’t lend to such a bank because of the monetary financing clause. Only this was blatantly false.

Even more common was the insistence that if any senior bank bond was defaulted on, the Irish people would be reduced begging in streets for scraps for a millennium. Of course, Brian Lenihan ended his period as Minister for Finance looking to get haircuts applied to senior bank bonds and Michael Noonan spent most of 2011 arguing that this was the right thing to do.

It’s early days yet, but the status of runaway favourite for the 2012 “TINA Award” must go to the Irish Independent’s Laura Noonan for her appearance on last night’s Vincent Browne show. Despite Michael Noonan’s consistent statement of his hope that the promissory note could be renegotiated, Laura insisted that There Simply Was No Alternative to making the €3.1 billion on March 31.

Among the reasons why we “Had to Make this Payment” were:

  • Eurostat have insisted on it (yes, Eurostat, who knew they were the real powers behind the throne, huh?)
  • Failing to make the €3.1 billion payment would, via some mysterious process, trigger the need to pay the full €28 billion that was outstanding on the notes.
  • Failing to make the €3.1 billion payment would also trigger the need to pay all of Anglo’s outstanding bonds.
  • And all of AIB’s guaranteed bonds.
  • And all of Bank of Ireland’s guaranteed bonds.
  • I think the frogs and locusts appeared again at some point.

Anyway, exciting stuff. All complete nonsense of course. There is nothing preventing the note being restructured in any number of ways, provided the ECB Governing Council are willing to go along with it. And none of Laura’s appalling vistas are remotely relevant.

I guess the more interesting question is whether Laura is passing along what she’s been told by DoF spinners or whether she came up with this exciting stuff all on her own.

Those interested in checking out this Olympic-level TINA performance can check it out here (in particular, after 26 minutes in.)

Update: Laura has written to me to say the following: “A few points of fact: I never said that the Government could not restructure the pro note, in fact I said repeatedly that efforts were under way to restructure the pro note, and that they were progressing well. I said that the pro note repayment for this March would have to be made, with the benefit of more airtime I’d have qualified that it will have to be made unless the pro note is restructured before then. I did not say that there was no alternative to make the pro note payment every year to maturity – the whole point of the restructuring is that the pro note payment schedule would be changed.”

So I’m happy to say that Laura was only saying that the March 31 payment had to be made and that failure to do so would trigger these consequences. I have edited the post to remove any implication that Laura said  the note couldn’t be renegotiated at some point in the future.

An Integrated Framework for Financial Positions and Flows on a From-Whom-to-Whom Basis: Concepts, Status, and Prospects

The interpretation of sectoral debt data is a major issue in understanding the Irish economy – this new IMF WP should be helpful.

Summary: The global crisis of 2008 highlighted the need to understand financial interconnectedness among the various sectors of an economy and between them and their counterparties in the rest of the world. However, application of this kind of analysis has been hampered by the lack of adequate data. This paper sets the background for promoting internationally coordinated efforts for compiling and disseminating data on sectoral financial positions and flows on a from-whom-to-whom basis within the framework of the System of National Accounts. It draws on actual experiences in compiling these kinds of data and provides guidelines for their development in the future.