Papers are available here.
Category: Banking Crisis
The conference on macroprudential regulation originally scheduled for September 4th has been postponed to Friday, January 29th, 2016. See here for all details on the conference. A full programme will be provided closer to the date.
Yesterday, former Minister for Finance Charlie McCreevy appeared before the Oireachtas banking enquiry. His refusal to answer whether or not he believed Ireland suffered a property bubble that burst in 2007 was not only great TV, it also brings up some important issues. For example, the Irish Independent reports:
The conflict arose when Mr Doherty asked the former minister if he believed there had been a property bubble in the previous 15 years before the financial crisis. Mr McCreevy insisted he would only answer for his time in office and there had been no property bubble during that time… [after legal advice] Mr McCreevy said from 2003 to 2007 house prices grew at an extraordinary rate. He supposed that was a bubble. But he said: “I don’t believe the policies I pursued helped to create that bubble.”
The clear implication is that Mr McCreevy believes that, if there was any housing bubble at all, its roots do not lie in decisions made in the period 1997-2004, and that in reality there was no bubble at all. Given the title of my doctorate at Oxford was called “The Economics of Ireland’s Housing Market Bubble”, you might not be surprised to learn that I disagree.
First, I think it is important to note that there are two ways of diagnosing bubbles. They can be thought of as statistical bubbles and economic bubbles. A statistical bubble is one where the growth rate in the price of an asset, such as housing, grows at a rate that is unsustainable for any reasonable period of time. Between 1995 and 2007, house prices in Dublin increased by 300% in real terms (i.e. stripping out inflation), or 12.2% a year. Between 1997 and 2004, McCreevy’s term in office, the increase was 136%, or 13.1% a year. (Nationwide figures are comparable, although slightly lower for the period as a whole, although not necessarily in every year.) Thus, by any statisticians metric, it was a bubble – put another way, if 12% growth had continued for 25 years, a house costing €100,000 in 1995 would have cost €1.7m by 2020.
Yesterday, the First of July, was Canada Day.
Discussing the crisis in the Eurozone with some visiting Canadian relatives led to the question How stable is the Canadian currency union?
At first sight it seems to be much more stable than its European counterpart. The Canadian banking system is renowned for its solidness. It is dominated by five national banks that operate coast to coast, supervised by the much-admired Bank of Canada. There is a large national budget that includes important elements of inter-provincial fiscal equalization. Internal labour mobility is relatively high.
But on the other hand the provincial governments are not constrained in their borrowing, there are enormous differences between the economic structures of the provinces, and there is always the Quebec question.
In fact, to a surprising extent, the stability of the Canadian union appears to depend on the fact that, as the author of this article puts it,”there are no Greeces here”. He draws attention to flaws in the design of the Canadian currency union that could come home to roost some day.
Some commentators wrongly claim there is little value in the long and (moderately) expensive banking inquiry. There is much to learn from the inquiry. One important message can be gleaned from the testimony of Central Bank and Financial Regulator executives this past two weeks: the coalition needs to appoint a first-rate economist (like Honohan) as his successor as central bank governor. The coalition should scour the globe and not compromise on analytical firepower.
Brian Lenihan pushed through the appointment of Honohan against the tradition of promoting someone from the senior ranks of the civil service. If the tradition had been followed, the Irish economy might still be wallowing in financial instability. A central bank governor without first-rate economic expertise could have made a total hash of the financial restructuring and recovery programme of the last five years. For example, a former senior civil servant would not have made the phone call to RTE Morning Ireland in November, 2010, getting the Troika programme quickly started. Other painful actions taken in recent years, such as the PCAR and PLAR exercises, and the time-consuming and expensive improvements to the financial sector database, might have never started or been botched. The job requires a highly-competent, well-trained and experienced economist.