David McWilliams discusses the Irish version of the ‘Gavyn Davies’ sector financial balances graph in the Irish Independent today. He makes two points. The first is to highlight the restoration of the foreign sector balance in recent years, which he interprets as meaning that, absent the banking crisis, the government would not have needed to seek EU/IMF funding given the availability of sufficient domestic savings to fund the government deficit.
His second point is that the chart shows that austerity will not work because, if the private sector keeps saving, then either the government deficit remains high (as a result of a further contraction of the economy) or there is a build up in the current account surplus on the balance of payments, which he also sees as undesirable because it means that “we will export capital to the rest of the world for them to use, while projects in Ireland are starved of capital”.
While the first point may be true in the sense that the state would not have faced the downgrade on its sovereign debt in the absence of the banking crisis, I think the second conclusion is wrong.