Author: John McHale

Colm can correct me, but I think the title of the article does not capture the substance of the piece.   I don’t think Colm is advocating abandoning the euro, but rather fixing its current inadequate structure, including putting in place an adequate banking union and effective lender of last resort to states.  

From the article:

The broken Eurozone project needs two sets of policy actions. The first, for the long term, is a re-engineered monetary union designed to survive, which means a banking union and a more centralised system of macroeconomic management. The second, and more contentious, is a clean-up operation to restore prospects of economic recovery, especially in the growing list of financially distressed members.

To date, the performance of the Eurozone political leadership has been dismal, inviting unfavourable comparisons to the more decisive actions of the US Treasury and Federal Reserve.

The clean-up operation needs a coherent macroeconomic strategy at European level as well as an acceptance that the debt burdens remaining on several Eurozone members need to be relieved. The macroeconomic strategy should see a relaxation of fiscal consolidation in those countries which retain good access to bond markets, as well as a deliberately expansionary monetary policy from the European Central Bank. Some weakening in the external value of the euro should be seen as a minor concern. If the current growth standstill continues it may ultimately weaken anyway.

It is fashionable in Germany to argue that Europe needs greater political union, permitting a more centralised fiscal policy. If the Eurozone were already a single country, with a normal central bank and a counter-cyclical macroeconomic strategy, it would already be seeking to bolster aggregate demand as the US has been doing. The zone as a whole does not face an imminent inflation threat, does not have a balance of payments deficit and has public debt and deficit ratios no worse than those in the US, the United Kingdom or Japan. But it remains committed to a policy stance that is exacerbating the downturn, particularly in the regions of the Eurozone facing financial distress.

In addition to a relaxation of policy at Eurozone level, a pragmatic approach needs to be taken to the debt-encumbered member states. Greece will have to undertake another debt restructuring, perhaps fairly soon. Several other countries may be unable to carry the burden of debt which has been accumulated. A partial mutualisation of excess debt burdens is the other essential component in the clean-up operation, preferably on a no-fault basis. This will likely happen in a messy and politicised manner anyway. Better to accept that debt burdens in excess of some agreed threshold be addressed, through further haircuts for private creditors in some cases, some monetisation by the ECB and some mutualisation by Eurozone rescue vehicles. Peripheral states in trouble could expect to see a reversal of capital outflows, with a consequent reduction in borrowing costs. If this kind of clean-up operation requires treaty changes, so be it. The Irish Government is understandably wary of changes given the mixed record on getting EU-related referenda passed, but if treaty change is the price of a durable solution it should be considered on its merits.

One place where I might disagree with Colm is where he calls for “further haircuts for private creditors in some cases”.   He is of course right that such haircuts cannot be ruled out; and, in the case of Greece, it is hard to see them being avoided.   But it is a truism to say that it is the fear of such haircuts that leaves a country struggling for creditworthiness.   Where there is a reasonable path through the crisis without such haircuts, the strategy should be to take the possibility off the table to the greatest extent possible.   This does not mean there should not be relief on official debts.   The Sunday Business Post piece “State edges closer to ECB deal on promissory note” (no link available) gives one encouraging note in today’s papers.

Dawn and Jonathan have been kind enough to reply to the post below.   Many thanks to regular commenter David O’Donnell for bringing the post to their attention. 

We are grateful to John McHale (and others on this site ) for these very thoughtful comments.

First, we should emphasise that NIESR does not have the detailed specific expertise on the Irish economy of many of those commenting here: given that NiGEM is a global macroeconometric model, the Irish economy component is inevitably quite stylised, and can’t take account of some of the specific features of the Irish economy which John and other commenters have rightly highlighted. The fact that our calculations suggest that fiscal consolidation is less damaging in Ireland than in other countries reflects relatively low estimated multipliers, even in current circumstances. But the NiGEM multipliers may well overstate the extent of import leakages, given the specific structure of Irish trade, so actual multipliers might be higher than our model estimates suggest. We should also note that the fact that, in contrast to other countries, our estimates suggest fiscal consolidation has in fact reduced debt-GDP ratios in Ireland does not any measure imply that we think it was the optimal policy (see below).

There are two important general points John makes.

First, he points out that while our simulations show that debt-GDP ratios will be higher in 2013 (in all countries except Ireland!) than they would have been without fiscal consolidation, primary deficits will be lower, and in the long run the binding solvency constraint is the intertemporal government budget constraint. This is absolutely correct. Postponing fiscal consolidation doesn’t mean that it isn’t ultimately necessary in EU countries – almost all of them – that have significant structural primary deficits. The main point of the paper is that the negative impact on GDP, and hence on the amount of consolidation required, is much larger if you frontload consolidation during a period when multipliers are much larger. Later consolidation could have been both smaller and less damaging. We have not attempted to illustrate such an alternative path (and of course the “optimal” path depends on future economic developments) but certainly delaying would have been better. This is also true for Ireland.

Second, he notes that we omit any analysis or discussion of hysteresis. We agree entirely that this is a very important issue when considering the impact and timing of consolidation. In an earlier paper, Bagaria et al (see Vox here) we perform a similar, but more detailed, analysis for the UK, incorporating labour market hysteresis effects (but ignoring spillovers). In this (in contrast to Delong and Summers), we do exactly what John suggests, which is to assume that hysteresis effects matter but decay over time. Ideally we would indeed do the same for Ireland and other EU economies, but this is a somewhat more complex exercise.

As the note by Holland and Portes linked to earlier by Stephen is likely to be influential in the fiscal policy debate, it is worth taking a closer look at the findings with the Irish case in mind.   The note is based on a more detailed (and very useful) analysis by Dawn Holland (available here). 

Although the main message on the impact of (coordinated) fiscal adjustment is quite negative, the fact that Ireland is the only country for which the adjustment leads to a (small) fall in the debt to GDP ratio might appear to give some comfort.   But I don’t think we can take comfort on the score.   Not surprisingly, the reason Ireland stands out as an outlier in this analysis is because of relatively small (normal-case) multipliers.   (The multipliers are assumed to be higher in the context of the current crisis, but the precise “crisis multipliers” used for Ireland are not given in the paper.)  The assumed normal-case multiplier is -0.36 for a decrease in government consumption and -0.08 for an increase in income taxes.   I would guess that the relatively low assumed normal-case multipliers for Ireland reflect Ireland’s high imports as a fraction of GDP.   But as discussed here, a large fraction of imports in Ireland are used as inputs into the production of exports.   As a result, the high import share can give a misleading view of the marginal propensity to import out of domestic demand.   Controlling for exports, a simple regression shows that a one euro increase in domestic demand is estimated to raise imports by 0.23 euro, indicating substantially less leakage from expansions in domestic demand than the crude import share would suggest. 

While I don’t think we can get any comfort from Ireland being an outlier in the analysis, I do have concerns about the broad conclusion of the paper.   This conclusion is that fiscal adjustment has actually raised debt to GDP ratios.   To the extent that the debt to GDP ratio is critical for creditworthiness, this suggests that efforts have been self-defeating on this central measure. 

On the Private Debt Relief thread, commenters Brog and John Gallagher (same person?) usefully draw our attention to the debate on participation of the GSEs (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) in the HAMP-PRA programme (Home Affordable Modification Program – Principal Reduction Assistance).   

The federally sponsored GSEs hold a substantial fraction of US mortgages, and so their position is somewhat analogous to Ireland’s state-owned banks.   The GSEs are administered by the independent Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA).    John draws our attention to correspondence from the US Treasury to the agency, urging its participation in the HAMP-PRA programme.    (See here; speech by head of FHFA at the Brookings Institution here.) This program, one of a number in operation to improve the functioning of the US housing market, provides subsidies to mortgage holders for principal reductions.   The gist of the correspondence is that such reductions could, depending on the case, have a positive net present value for the owner of the mortgage.   Indeed, it is argued that the gains in NPV would more than cover the cost of the subsidy, resulting in a net gain to taxpayers.   The correspondence also discusses strategic default concerns. 

Of course, given the differences in the housing markets – e.g. the relative importance of non-recourse loans in the US – the estimations are at best suggestive for the Irish case.   But the broad approach to thinking about the issue is useful.  

One issue that is not explicitly taken into account is the possible macroeconomic benefit of facilitating household balance sheet repair.   Here again the Irish situation is different given the state creditworthiness challenge and the importance of avoiding further losses at the banks.   A programme that ends up with a net cost to the state (from combination of any subsidy and the need to inject further capital into the banks) would further erode the financial position and creditworthiness of the state.   To the extent that weaker creditworthiness (and the associated “fear of default”) feeds back to higher interest rates and lower growth this would be a macroeconomic cost.   Nevertheless, it is worth looking at how these issues are being addressed elsewhere. 

Wolfgang Munchau has another thought provoking piece in Monday’s FT.   While he believes that the announcement of the ECB’s OMT programme has stabilised things for the near term, he remains pessimistic that the crisis – which he sees as fundamentally one of solvency rather than liquidity – is on a path to being resolved. 

Although I share many of Wolfgang’s concerns, my take is a bit different.    My starting point on the solvency issue is also quite pessimistic.    Defining state solvency is not easy.   A necessary condition is clearly that the debt to income ratio is not on an explosive path.   In terms of levels, we see that some countries (Japan being the most dramatic case) appear to be able to roll over debt and fund deficits even at debt to GDP ratios in the region of 200 percent.   On the other hand, low-income countries can struggle to be creditworthy with debt to GDP ratios of 20 to 30 percent.    Lacking their own central banks that can lend to governments in their own currency in extremis, euro zone countries with high debt/deficits and weak/uncertain growth prospects have been revealed not to be creditworthy.   In a very real sense these countries would not be solvent without official sector support – and are unlikely to become so for some time.   The important question then is whether official sector policies can be designed to allow countries to be robustly creditworthy.   Designing these policies faces a double credibility hurdle: that the support will be there (if only as a backstop) if countries meet the conditions for eligibility; and that it is credible that the countries availing of the actual/backstop support can meet the conditions. 

The requirements for effective official support policies seem to be the following:  (1) Supports must be reliable – countries must be able to rely on the support being there without forced PSI as long as they continue to meet the conditions.  Where PSI is deemed to be unavoidable, this should be recognised early and done decisively so that it can be taken off the table to the maximum extent possible.    (2) The conditions must be reasonable – taking into account underlying growth prospects and the negative impacts of fiscal adjustment on growth, the required adjustments must not push the political capacities of governments to push through large adjustments beyond the breaking point.  (3) The conditionality must be flexible – unanticipated adverse growth outturns should not lead to requirements for ever larger adjustments.   And (4) the link between banking-sector losses and state debt must be broken.  

Euro zone crisis resolution policies are moving slowly in this direction, although there is some way to go on both reliability and flexibility in particular. 

Following the IMF’s new analysis on the likely size of fiscal multipliers in a liquidity trap, there is a need to revisit the appropriate conditionality regarding fiscal adjustment.    But where the current policy stance leaves huge uncertainty over whether the crisis will be resolved, this must also act as a huge break on growth.   (I discuss this further in an Irish Times piece last week.) 

Of course, the policy mix described above is a big ask for stronger countries, either directly or through the ECB.   They are being asked to take on large risks and put a lot of faith in the willingness of countries to meet the conditions.   The development of the necessary crisis resolution and prevention policies must be seen as a two-way process, where all euro zone countries submit to tighter rules on budgetary management and more intrusive surveillance (see Mario Draghi’s recent comments in an interview here).   Much of the debate in the run up to the fiscal treaty referendum seemed to completely miss this point, reaching its nadir in complaints about a “blackmail clause” regarding access to the ESM. 

I believe the crisis can be resolved.   But only if the stronger countries recognise the kind of ongoing official support regime that is required to robustly restore creditworthiness, and all countries recognise the necessary pooling of sovereignty that is required to make this regime politically feasible.