I mentioned on this site before how a number of academic economists, during the debate on whether Ireland should adopt the euro, referred to a design flaw that had been well recognised by US economists: the lack of a federal budget.
It was known that the Irish business cycle was out of sync with the eurozone core and that the timing of ECB interest rate changes would not be appropriate for Irish conditions. A large part of such asymmetries (or ‘region-specific shocks’) are offset in the US at the federal level: a $1 decline in US regional income relative to the national average induces a fall of around 25 cents in federal tax liabilities and an increase in inward transfers of about 10 cents.
Karl Whelan’s recent proposal re Irish bank debt was to federalise it. Morgan’s was similar to one I advocated recently on this site: monetize it. Both entail responsibility being shared at the federal (i.e. European) level.
Paul de Grauwe warned, as far back as 1999, that the “failure (to create a European government with similar responsibilities to present national ones) creates the risk of the break-up of the monetary union”.
I have just now stumbled on a speech made by ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet in Dublin in May 2004 which rejected claims of such a design flaw, as follows: “Moving to the second topic of my speech, i.e. fiscal policies, let me stress that we Europeans have been very bold in creating a single currency in the absence of a political federation, a federal government and a federal budget at the euro area level. Some observers were indeed arguing that without a federal budget of some significance the policy mix would be very erratic, depending on the random behaviour of the different national fiscal policies of the member countries. They were also arguing that without a federal budget it would be impossible to weather, with the help of the fiscal channel, asymmetric shocks hitting one particular member economy. In this respect, the very existence of the Stability and Growth Pact actually allows (us) to refute these two arguments: first, the Maastricht Treaty and the Pact provide a mutual surveillance by the “peers”- i.e. the Ministers of Finance – of national fiscal policies; second, by calling upon Member States to maintain their budget close to balance or in surplus over the medium term, the Pact allows the automatic stabilisers to play in full in countries facing an economic downturn, without breaching the 3 % ceiling for the deficit.”
The full text of Trichet’s speech is here.