The Irish Economy

The Eurocrats are anxious not to waste the current debt crisis. In today’s Financial Times, Manfred Schepers of the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development proposes not one, but two new EU institutions, to be staffed by transfers from the senior civil services of member states, and promotions within the Brussels/Frankfurt bureaucracies. There will be a new European Monetary Fund, taking on the roles of the International Monetary Fund managing troubled sovereigns, but working on a permanent rather than temporary basis within the Eurozone. Then there will be a new European Debt Agency, managing debt issuance and deficit control for all member states. At a minimum, Schepers’ proposal will aid the Brussels and/or Frankfurt commercial real estate markets, since these bodies will need a lot of office space.
Schepers is keen to retain the ECB’s restricted mandate as a central bank without the ability to engage in quantitative easing, restricting its work to commercial bank liquidity provision and inflation control. He holds this view despite the growing evidence that this central bank design does not work, and the alternative, more flexible mandate of e.g., the Bank of England and US Federal Reserve, does work.
Much more sensible are the views (via a skype video) of Jeff Sachs suggesting that the IMF, together with a reformed ECB acting as a lender of last resort, be brought in to restore stability and confidence to the Eurozone, in the interests both of Europe and the world economy. We also get a glimpse of Professor Sachs’ chi-chi Manhattan kitchen in the background of the video.

The Central Bank have been publishing data on mortgage arrears for some time now.  On Friday, the Bank released some very useful additional analysis in the form of a paper by Anne McGuinness (press release here.) The paper provides new information on the extent of negative equity and also on buy-to-let mortgages, which are not covered in the Bank’s usual quarterly arrears figures.

The Irish Times ran a series on water services in Ireland.

The first article is perhaps the most interesting. It leaks the yet-to-be-published report on the water sector by PWC. PWC will apparently be fairly critical of the current system, which nicely fits with the plans by the Minister for a radical overhaul. There will be more investment in water infrastructure. There will be a water regulator. Word on the street has that the Commission for Energy Regulation will have its mandate extended to water (but not to transport). There will be national water utility. Bord Gais, Bord na Mona and the National Roads Authority are bidding to run Irish Water. Only Bord Gais has experience in mass retail.

The piece discusses the transfer of Shannon water to Dublin, but the Minister disappears from the story at that point. I would think that we first want to promote water conservation and fix the leaks.

The piece is silent on the future role of the county councils in water. If Irish Water runs the show, what will happen to the water infrastructure owned by the county councils? What will happen to the civil servants who run this?

Another article wonders what will happen to the private water schemes. Will they be nationalized? Will households with a private well and a septic tank have to pay the water charges? That would be grossly unfair.

The inspection fees for septic tanks are unfair too. Us city folk poo for free — or rather, waste water services are covered from general tax revenues. That is, septic tank owners pay for urban waste water, but city dwellers do not pay for rural waste water.

The second main piece is on drinking water quality, the problems with which are typically overlooked even though they are serious.

The third main article is on water meters. It is summarized in an editorial, and repeats a number of points I made in August. My main concern is the plan for the centralized roll out of water meters. I think that it makes more sense to have people install their own meters and let these meters use the same communication network as the smart electricity and gas meters. See the discussion here.

Conor Pope cites 1000 euro per household per year. I said that. If we maintain the current spending on water (incl. investment), if we keep the business rates for water as they are, and if we exempt those on private schemes from the water charges, then full cost recovery (as required by EU legislation) implies an annual charge of 500 euro per household per year.

On tonight’s edition of The Frontline on RTE, Gavin Blessing, Head of Bond Research at Collins Stewart made some comments about repayments of ELA liabilities by the IBRC (i.e. Anglo-INBS) that I’d like to elaborate on. Gavin pointed out that IBRC’s major liabilities are to the Central Bank of Ireland. Indeed, I estimate that IBRC now owes about €42 billion in ELA to the Central Bank.

Gavin then followed this up by saying that we would be “burning ourselves” if we cancelled these payments to the Central Bank. This is a complicated business and I fully understand Gavin Blessing expressing the situation in this way. However, I would like to emphasise that it is my understanding that there is no offsetting financial gain to the Irish state from the IBRC’s repayment of Emergency Liquidity Assistance to the Central Bank.

The details are below but I can summarise this issue as follows: Channelling taxpayer funds towards repayment of ELA is equivalent to burning public money.

Let me start by describing the information communicated by a central bank balance sheet, such as this one for the Central Bank of Ireland. Central banks could create money by following Milton Friedman’s analogy and dropping it from a helicopter. However, helicopter drops are neither efficient nor fair. So the long-standing tradition has been for central banks to issue money by acquiring assets via open market operations.

Central bank balance sheets thus show you the assets that a central bank has accumulated via its money issuance. At some point in time, somebody decided it was a good idea to place the money that was issued to acquire these assets on the “liability” side of this balance sheet. I’m not sure this was such a great idea as central bank balance sheets can cause a lot of confusion. Suffice to say, however, these liabilities are somewhat theoretical. If someone brings a banknote to the Central Bank, the only thing they can exchange it for is other banknotes that the cost the Bank almost nothing to print.

That over with, the accounting treatment for Central Bank’s issuance of ELA can be described as follows.

1. The Central Bank provided ELA by crediting, for example, Anglo’s reserve account that it holds with the Central Bank. This was just the Central Bank creating electronic money out of nowhere and this new money was counted as a liability on the Bank’s balance sheet.  In particular, this shows up in “Other Liabilities” on the CBI’s balance sheet.

2. On the other side of the balance sheet, the money that Anglo then owed back to the CBI as a result of the ELA is counted as an interest-bearing asset for the CBI.

Now consider the repayment of part of the ELA by the IBRC. For example, consider repayments funded by IBRC’s annual receipt of €3.1 billion in promissory note payments. One could imagine two possibilities for what happens next.

One possibility is that the following happens. A €3.1 billion repayment gets taken in by the CBI who can then, for example, buy German bonds with it and ultimately use the interest payments on these to pay money back the government when they make profits.  In this case, the amount of money created from the original operation doesn’t change and the Central Bank’s ELA asset gradually turns over time into other, more tangible, financial assets. It is likely that this is what Gavin Blessing thinks is happening.

The alternative possibility is less attractive. The Central Bank takes in the €3.1 billion repayment and then deducts this from the value of its ELA asset. On the liability side it reduces “other liabilities”—the idea is that taking in this €3.1 billion is effectively siphoning off part of the money that was created in the original ELA operation.  In this case, no new securities are purchased by the Bank. The €3.1 billion is effectively being burned.

The available evidence indicates that the latter, less attractive, mechanism is what occurs.

Earlier this year, the Irish government deposited a large amount of money in the Irish banks; this money was later converted from a deposit liability into equity when the banks were recapitalised. When the banks obtained these funds, they reduced their ELA debts to the Central Bank of Ireland.

A quick look at the Central Bank’s balance sheet shows that “other assets”  (which we know is mainly ELA) are down by €17 billion since February. Other liabilities are also down by €19 billion. There is no sign of any jump in the Central Bank’s holdings of other securities as a result of the ELA repayments. There is no hidden positive story at the end of the ELA rainbow.

So why repay it at all? Well, if we don’t repay this money, the Central Bank’s ELA operation will have been equivalent to flying a helicopter over the IBRC, dropping €40 billion and not asking for it back. A jolly good wheeze for the bondholders and depositors who got paid back but possibly not a good precedent for the Euro area. If every Euro area country could do that with their troubled banks, there would be no banking problems but there would probably be a decent amount of inflation.

So our European partners would consider failure to repay ELA to be bad form. But that still seems to leave the pace of repayment, and the funding of this repayment, as very much an open question. In the meantime, let’s not kid ourselves about hidden benefits from these payments.

Ireland’s rail gauge, the distance between two load bearing rails that make up a single railway line, has a strange history. The standard gauge is 4ft 8inches. Ireland’s is 5ft 3inches. During the 1800s, each new railway line chose its own gauge, and in 1845/6, a commission was set up to essentially split the difference, meaning that Ireland has one of the most unique (and uniquely expensive) rail gauge systems in the world.

Splitting the difference might work to get an issue through a committee, but it does not often help in solving practical problems.

In a similar vein, Ireland’s medium term fiscal plan has been published. The document is here. Looks like the government has not taken the ‘front loading of pain’ approach advocated by some commentators, nor the avoidance of austerity championed by others, and gone for a 3.8 billion euro, ahem, adjustment, this year.

I leave it up to commenters to judge the merits to this approach. The document makes for interesting reading. Chapter 4 in particular is an analysis of the debt position (and sustainability, obviously) of the State.

The talking point about repayment of Anglo bonds not costing the taxpayer any money had received a sufficiently wide rollout that it was clear that this was something government politicians were being told was a good thing to say. Via Constantin, here is a note from the Department of Finance apparently distributed to government TDs.

The note tells the politicians that “It is important to state that the redemption of the bond will be made by the IBRC. It will not be funded by the Exchequer.”

Is it really important to state that? Why? So someone sitting at home might think that we’ve stumbled upon some money that eases the burden of paying the bonds, even though the US assets were being sold at a loss? So they might forget that the alternative to using the money to pay off the bonds is to return it to the exchequer?

Anglo has lost all of its equity capital multiple times over and has been continually recapitalised by the state. Money is fungible. All resources being used to pay off the bonds are state resources.

This talking point doesn’t work. Time to give it a rest. Please.

Some readers may be interested in going along to this talk (”Credit Access for Small and Medium Firms: Survey Evidence for Ireland” by Martina Lawless and Fergal McCann) at the Royal Irish Academy this evening at 6.

I know the government are desperately in search for some good news stories. So how about this one: Our stake in AIB is worth €30 billion; we’re saved! On second thoughts, um, er, maybe not. Anyone got an explanation of Felix’s puzzle that goes beyond “well, markets are dumb, particularly illiquid ones”?

In advance of next week’s $1 billion Anglo bond repayment (congrats to all our international hedgie readers), the government talking point that repayment of this bond doesn’t cost the taxpayer a cent is now getting a full rollout, with Michael Noonan on RTE Radio’s News at One today and Leo Varadkar on Tonight with Vincent Browne both at it.

Both ministers were insistent that because the IBRC (i.e. the new Anglo-INBS institution) has sold loans worth €2.5 billion for a loss of €500 million, thus realising €2 billion, that paying the remaining €3.7 billion in unguaranteed senior bonds won’t cost the Irish taxpayer any money.

Let’s make this as simple as possible: Even if you wanted to view this repayment as costless because Anglo has its “own funds” to repay the bond, ask yourself who would be the beneficiary of these “own funds” if they weren’t used to repay unguaranteed bondholders. Every cent going to these bondholders is coming from Irish taxpayers.

Slightly less simplistically, Leo acknowledges that we are putting large amounts of money in the form of the promissory note payments (“the only money we’re putting in is the promissory note” – ah yes, “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln ….”). How did they arrive at the figure for the promissory note? The figure was arrived at by figuring how much money was required to keep Anglo solvent, i.e. paying back all its bonds debts. If we didn’t pay back the unguaranteed bondholders, then we could revise the promissory note payments down.

I know that the remaining unguaranteed bond debts are dwarfed by the approximately €40 billion Anglo owes in ELA but this talking point is irritating all the same. Honestly guys, please stop.

Here’s the official statement from last night’s summit. Other materials are here.

For those of you who missed the excellent Central Bank mortgage conference a couple of weeks ago, the presentations are available here. I’ve also written up my own comments from the day and posted them here.

Someone asked me today how a Greek-style haircut for private bondholders would impact on the Irish debt situation if applied here. Without any claim that this is a prediction for what could happen to Ireland, or a policy recommendation, here are the calculations.

While the figure grabbing the headlines is the 50%-60% haircut for private holders of Greek sovereign bonds, it appears that the bonds bought by the ECB will not be written down, nor will the IMF loans. FT Alphaville discuss a UBS report that calculates that a 50% haircut for private bondholders actually implies a 22% reduction in total debt.

In Ireland’s case, the latest EU Commission report estimates (page eight) that our year-end general government debt will be €172.5 billion or about 110 percent of GDP. The report also estimates that by the end of this year, we will owe €38.2 billion to the EU and IMF.  (Table 4 on page 23).

We don’t know how much Irish sovereign debt the ECB own but it’s believed to be a large amount. I do remember a report from Barclay’s claiming they owned €18 billion by June 2010. Let’s say ECB owns €22 billion of Irish debt (that’s just a guess, I really don’t know). Combine that with €38 billion from EU-IMF and you have €60 billion in debt that wouldn’t be getting a haircut. Better guesses of ECB holdings of Irish sovereign debt are welcome.

Now apply a 50% haircut to the remaining €92.5 billion of our debt and you reduce the debt by €46.25 billion, or 29 percent of GDP, getting the debt ratio down to 81 percent. (Of course, we’d still be running large deficits, so it would start increasing again.)

So that’s the answer. Perhaps worth noting, however, is that an alternative method of writing down Ireland’s debt by close to 30 percent of GDP without haircutting private bondholders at all would be to have Anglo’s ELA debt to the Central Bank of Ireland written off.

According to its interim report Anglo owed €28.1 billion in ELA at the end of 2010 but this had risen to €38.1 billion by the end of June. This is because Anglo transferred €12.2 billion in NAMA senior bonds to AIB in February to back the deposits that were being moved out of the bank.

On July 1, Anglo was merged with Irish Nationwide Building Society (INBS) to form what is now called the Irish Bank Resolution Corporation (IBRC). As of the end of 2010, INBS had €7.3 billion in loans from the ECB. However, €3.7 billion of this was backed by NAMA bonds and other assets that were transferred to Irish Life and Permanent. INBS has been in receipt of ELA since February to replace this lost funding. While this has been admitted by a Department of Finance official (see this story) the exact figure has not been released. I assume it is about €4 billion.

So my estimate is that the IBRC now owes about €42 billion in Emergency Liquidity Assistance to the Central Bank of Ireland. If the European authorities ever decide they like the idea of haircuts for Irish debt, it would be fair to ask which of a fifty percent haircut or a write-off of ELA would be more likely to damage Ireland’s reputation or cause financial market contagion.

Via NAMA Wine Lake, I came across this very important statement from An Taoiseach on September 28 about repayment of Anglo bonds

If the Anglo bondholders are paid, they will be paid from their own resources. This will not come from the taxpayer. The Minister for Finance has been dealing with this situation at the ECOFIN meetings.

This is really good news. I had been under the impression for some time that all of the funds used to pay Anglo bondholders came from the taxpayer. But apparently that’s not the case. Phew, that’s a relief. Hats off to the Minister for his excellent work at those ECOFIN meetings.

Update: In case anyone thinks Enda’s on his own here with this idea of Anglo bondholder payouts not coming from the taxpayer, listen to Leo Varadkar on RTE’s This Week today (32 minutes and 25 seconds in). When asked about the looming payout to bondholders, Leo says

Well that’s not quite the case. What’s happening in relation to the Anglo bondholders is they’ll be paid from Anglo’s own resources, from the sale of its own property assets, for example. The only money that is being put into Anglo Irish by this government is the promissory notes, the €3 billion a year that we are required to give to Anglo, or what is now the IBRC, as a result of the deal made by Fianna Fail and the Greens, and we are trying to have that changed. That is our major objective at the moment.

I recommend strongly that the government retire this particular piece of spin immediately. Every cent that is given to bondholders is an additional cent that will have to be poured into Anglo by the Irish tax payer, whether as promissory note payments or some rejiggered version of these notes.

Reading Paul Krugman’s recent posts (here and here) reminded me that I forgot to write a post about my recent trip to Iceland. I presented at a very interesting conference on sovereign debt organised by Reykjavik University. Here is a link to slides and papers, which were presented on October 7 and 8.

My presentation was titled “One Letter and Six Months? Ireland and Iceland Three Years On”–the slides are here. One issue I discussed was whether Euro membership ultimately helped or hurt Ireland.

Much of the discussion surrounding Iceland in 2008 focused on the fact that they were outside the Eurozone and so could not obtain liquidity support from the ECB. While this was viewed as a negative factor, one could argue today that the (enforced) Icelandic approach avoided the mistakes associated with confusing a solvency crisis with a liquidity crisis. My conclusion: Without a clear policy on bank resolution, the Eurozone is not a good place to have a systemic banking crisis.

A reminder that this well-timed Central Bank conference on the Irish mortgage market takes place today.

New mortgage lending in Ireland in 2011 is on course to set record lows, with the number of new mortgages lower than any year back to the early 1970s. The conventional wisdom is that this is due to a temporary reluctance on the part of Irish domestic banks to issue normal amounts of normal-quality residential mortgages. Under this conventional view, Irish domestic banks must currently pass up otherwise profitable mortgage opportunities because of the banks’ temporary shortage of liquidity and the need to shrink their balance sheets. They are operating under a liquidity constraint. They cannot issue many residential mortgages even though they would profit from doing so. In the circumstances they are rationing their constrained liquidity, only issuing unusually high-quality (that is, super-safe) “gold-plated” residential mortgages to the first tier of very-low-risk applicants. Under this conventional view, once liquidity in the Irish domestic banks is back to normal, the banks will return to issuing normal amounts of normal quality mortgages, servicing a much broader range of customers.

The conventional view may be correct, but I wonder? Is it possible instead that the “normal” Irish residential mortgage is gone forever? Might the “gold-plated” mortgages of 2011 become the only ones available? If so, there are many policy implications, hence it is advisable to consider the possibility. I will give three reasons for speculating that “normal” Irish mortgage contracts might not come back until after Godot.
(more…)

The lead story in today’s Irish Times carries the headline “Overseas deposits at Irish banks increase significantly”. Well, here’s a chart showing non-resident deposits for the three definitions of the Irish banking sector published by the Central Bank: All Banks, Domestic Group (which excludes IFSC banks) and Covered Banks.

How many of you can see the series increasing significantly at the last data point, in the usual sense of the word, meaning a large increase? It appears the headline reflects the following wording provided by Dan O’Brien (who would not have written the headline): “The small but significant increase in deposits …” In other words, Dan is saying that overseas deposits didn’t rise significantly but the small uptick could potentially be a good sign for the future.

Beyond the headline (sub-editor screwups seem to be very common at newspapers) what’s odd about the story is that even though the latest data on overseas and resident deposits don’t show much more than a continuation of recent trends, the rest of the piece treats the release as though something interesting has happened, including the obligatory crowing from Minister Noonan:

The Central Bank statistics on deposits point to a stabilisation of the Irish financial system. Responding to the developments, Minister for Finance Michael Noonan said the “deposit figures illustrate growing national and international confidence in the Irish banking system. It is particularly impressive that the deposit position of the Irish banks has improved at a time of such global uncertainty.”

He described the cash inflows as an “an endorsement of the Government’s restructuring of the banking system. This restructuring has reduced the cost of the banks to the State and has also seen the banks beginning to access international money markets without the benefit of the State guarantee.”

For those interested in actually seeing what’s going on with deposits (yes I know the chart above is rubbish — I don’t know how other people get decent quality graphs up on this site!) here’s a Powerpoint presentation (also here in grimer PDF) with charts for total deposits, non-resident deposits, resident deposits, and private sector resident deposits. In addition to the Total/Domestic/Covered breakdown, I’ve provided charts for an IFSC/Domestic Non-Covered/Covered breakdown.

I surmise from these charts that the non-resident withdrawals have largely tailed off and that the trend for resident deposits in the covered banks remains a downward one.