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.

Colm McCarthy and many other commentators want the ECB to print euros to whatever extent is necessary in order to keep essentially-solvent Euro states from being unable to finance their deficits. Colm argues that this ECB-provided unlimited funding back-up can prevent an inefficient coordination-game outcome in which investors flee Euro bond markets … because other investors are doing likewise. Once the unshakeable resolve and money-printing firepower of the ECB is demonstrated clearly, the Euro crisis will diminish, in Colm’s view. Many other commentators, e.g, Gavyn Davies, Mervyn King, numerous Germans, argue that this money-printing solution will just generate an indirect subsidy of wasteful Euro governments by prudent ones, with Euro-wide inflation or eventual ECB capital losses serving as the income-transfer mechanism.
There is some talk in today’s papers of a Eurobond system linked to closer EU control over national finances. The EU’s record for governance of this type of national fiscal oversight is not good, and the core nations are rightly sceptical.
Why not a combination policy? The IMF agrees to run sovereign bailout programmes for any Euro countries as needed, with funding provided via IMF-issued, ECB-purchased bonds. The ECB gets a decent, non-exorbitant yield on all new Euros issued, and the IMF has access to an unlimited supply of Euro funding as needed. The guarantee from the IMF-ECB that Italy, Spain and France could be brought within this bailout process as needed, with no funding limits, would probably eliminate the need to bail them out at all (via the same “good equilibrium” mechanism that Colm suggests). To make it credible this programme would need to be ready to activate as needed without exception. Recalcitrant Euro governments who failed IMF programme criteria would be booted from their bailout programmes in the normal way.

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.

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.

Good news, it seems, from the Commission, allowing us to extend the maturities of our loans, and service them at much lower interest rates, essentially the cost of funds from the EFSM. It also looks like there will be a retrospective reduction (but that’s my reading of the text, I’m open to correction).

From the press release:

The Commission proposes to align the EFSM loan terms and conditions to those of the long standing the Balance of Payment Facility. Both countries should pay lending rates equal to the funding costs of the EFSM, i.e. reducing the current margins of 292.5 bps for Ireland and of 215 bps for Portugal to zero. The reduction in margin will apply to all instalments[sic], i.e. both to future and to already disbursed tranches.

Furthermore, the maturity of individual future tranches to these countries will be extended from the current maximum of 15 years to up to 30 years. As a result the average maturity of the loans to these countries from EFSM would go up from the current 7.5 years to up to 12.5 years.

Two comments. First, this is very welcome news, and well deserved given the levels of austerity we’ve endured and the cooperation the Irish State has given, relative to other EU countries. Second, were this proposal to come from the Irish side, rather than the Commission, in the current climate it would be seen as a call for a controlled default. The fact that we (and our Portugese cousins) are being allowed to do this shows that the EU Commission is aware that the sustainability of Ireland’s and Portugal’s public finances are in question, and they have decided to act decisively to change the probability of our finances becoming unsustainable in the medium term. So: a good news story for once. Commenters may have differing views, of course.

(Ht to Liam Delaney for showing me this)

Here’s the latest from Willem Buiter and Ebrahim Rahbari on the future of the Eurozone.

Reuters report Minister Noonan as saying:

“There is a commitment that if countries continue to fulfill the conditions of their program the European authorities will continue to supply them with money even when the program is concluded,” Noonan told Irish state broadcaster RTE.

“The commitment is now written in that if we are not back in the markets the European authorities will give us money until we get back in the markets.”

In the event that the State cannot fund itself on the open markets, this statement would seem to imply the Minister readily expects more cash than previously agreed with the EU, IMF, UK, and Sweden. But apparently that’s not a new bailout.

Presumably this statement was intended to reduce uncertainty about Ireland’s post-2013 funding position. But these statements inject more uncertainty.

The Minister expects there will be more cash if we are good boys and girls. Ok, I can accept that. But there are important follow on questions: That’s more cash, for the same terms? On different terms? Cash from whom, using what mechanism (EFSF/EFSM/IMF/Something else)?. When, if not in 2013, will Ireland return to the markets? Is there a Greece-style road map somewhere for Ireland?

Can we see it?

These are just some of the questions raised, on the night at Macgill Summer School we hear the Taoiseach proclaiming Ireland’s intention to repay all of its creditors. which, if we’re Greece 2.0, wouldn’t be correct at all.

Colm McCarthy writing on these, em, pages, a few days ago explained that Europe’s Plan A–no banks will go under, no states will default on their debts, fiscal consolidation plus recapitalisation will see us through–is being quietly dropped in favour of Plan B. Today at the EU Debt Summit we got a glimpse of what Plan B will look like. (updated to official version).

Briefly, Greece is being allowed to selectively default, but this won’t harm Greek banks (nor their French owners) because the greek bonds will be guaranteed by an enhanced European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) that can intervene in secondary markets amongst other new powers. Other debt-laden member states, including Ireland, will have access to cheaper funds from the uber-EFSF at longer maturities.

The markets liked it too, with bank shares enjoying a nice bounce. There’s some evidence the bounce we saw on the markets was just short equity positions being cleared out, so I wouldn’t take that too seriously as an indicator of how well this new plan will go down. I don’t think many people were surprised at Greece’s default. As macroeconomic events go, the default was pretty well expected, hence the lack of jitters when it was announced.

It is to be welcomed that the Greek default is somewhat orderly and buttressed by other member states’ guarantees to reduce (or avoid completely) balance sheet contagion. What’s not so welcome are some of the phrases used in the draft document. They are vague enough to allow lots of leeway should policy makers require it, but precise enough to guarantee action of some shape or form. All this does is move debate away from ‘what will they do’ to ‘how are they going to do it’, which is unhelpful given the seriousness of the situation. This is, after all, the tenth time EU leaders have met to sort the problems in Europe out ‘once and for all’.

Paragraph 7 of the draft contains the following rather ominous sentence:

To improve the effectiveness of the EFSF and address contagion, we agree to increase the flexibility of the EFSF, allowing it to:

- intervene on the basis of a precautionary programme, with adequate conditionality

That is really worrying language. Does it mean, for example, that the EFSF can require states to implement austerity measures without negotiation with the sovereign? The language is vague enough to be quite scary.

The composition of the new beefed up EFSF isn’t reported. The only place Italy is mentioned in the draft is to get a pat on the back for its recent fiscal consolidation. Is Italy, in its current fragile state, expected to keep its share of the EFSF up? Look at the table on page 1 of this document from the EFSF showing the contributions of member states. Italy is expected to pony up up to 78 billion euros if required. More information on just where this money is coming from would be most welcome.

Another slight worry is that Ireland has agreed to talk about the common consolidated corporate tax base (ccctb), meaning that perhaps there has been a movement in the government’s position on this issue, though agreeing to talk does not mean that Ireland’s corporation tax rate (a different beast) is under threat just yet.

All in all, a lot to discuss in today’s announcements, but I don’t personally feel the EU has solved its problems to the satisfaction of all, though commenters may of course disagree.

Colm is at his best in this Sindo column. Best bits:

Plan A has failed to create circumstances in which the three ‘rescued’ countries can return to the markets, the over-riding objective of any programme of official support. Their traded debt has collapsed in price and all three are rated junk by at least one of the bond-rating agencies. They will not be graduating from the programmes of official support anytime soon and the verdict of the markets, the only verdict that matters, is that Plan A is also junk.

The essence of Europe’s Plan A, as first applied to Greece, is to pretend that the problem is less serious than is actually the case, avoid any element of debt relief and insist that budgetary stringency alone will do the trick.

…

Persistence with Plan A and blaming the markets and ratings agencies is not a viable option should Spain and Italy go under. The game is up. Plan A is being quietly abandoned. In this sense, this has been a good week for Ireland.

..

Minister Noonan should now be seeking European support for an end to payments to holders of bonds, guaranteed or unguaranteed, in the Irish banks. Every cent paid to them is at the expense of the holders of Ireland’s sovereign debt, who have been treated in quite cavalier fashion at the behest of the European Central Bank and apparently in response to threats from this unique organisation.

ECB officials come and go but sovereign states need sovereign credit forever. It would be an unmitigated disaster if Ireland’s act of faith in Europe were to result in the first-ever default on the sovereign obligations of the State.

The pre-2007 Irishman abroad in Europe had a little swagger to him. He thought his economy was a Tiger. When abroad in Europe, he spent like crazy, and generally annoyed his European counterparts with his brash ways. (Of course I’m not thinking of anyone in particular). The reverse is happening at the moment. We’re humble little chappies. My French and German friends are sending me emails with pictures of the Book of Kells saying ‘please take care of our investment’ and ‘are you enjoying your bailout?’ and ‘we’re still waiting for the thank you card’.

They’ll be waiting a while longer. When I say our European friends should be thanking us, they assume it’s a throwback to the hubris of pre-2007 Ireland or something to do with keeping eyes off the balance sheets of German and French banks. It’s not, and here’s just one reason why.

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The Commission’s proposals for the EU budget’s next Financial Framework (MFF) for 2014-2020 can be found here. Judged against the parameters I proposed to evaluate the MFF proposal from an Irish perspective, then the proposal is as good as we could have hoped for. RTE reported that “The Government has given a cautious response to the European Commission’s proposed 2014 to 2020 budget” which, given that this is the start of a difficult set of negotiations, is about as close to saying “we are delighted” as you are likely to get.
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Given the recent discussions of  the views of Professor H-W Sinn on this site it seems only right to point out that there are also other opinions in Germany. A number of current and former German politicians (Helmut Schmidt, Joschka Fischer) have been critical of the leadership provided by key politicians. Now the former finance minister Peer Steinbrück (still an active opposition politician) has found some clear words: “Greek default is inevitable - lets call a debtors conference.”

On Wednesday (June 29th) the Commission is scheduled to reveal its proposals for the next Multi-annual Financial Framework (MFF) which will set out the scale and composition as well as the proposed financing of the EU budget over the period to 2020. However, some reports suggest that Commission President Barroso is putting aside two days for the Commission College to agree the proposal so it may be later in the week before it sees the light of day. This is an important issue for Ireland, and this post discusses the issues to watch for in the Commission’s proposal.

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Hans-Werner Sinn replies to his critics in relation to Target 2 balances here.  Readers of this blog will undoubtedly draw their own conclusions.  At the heart of his fallacy is the conceptual  absurdity of separate regional credit policies in  a monetary union with perfect capital mobility.

With things heating up in Greece, Lorenzo Bini Smaghi today outlines his case against debt restructuring in Greece. He argues four points:

First, as I already mentioned, it would not be a way to prevent taxpayers from suffering the consequences of bad investment decisions. In our Monetary Union, given the integration of financial markets and the single monetary policy, the taxpayers of the creditor countries would suffer in any case. According to the Financial Times, for instance, a default on Greece’s debt would cost the German taxpayers alone “at least €40 billion”.

Second, this would be a way to punish patient investors, who are sticking to their investment and have not sold their bonds yet, and are confident that with the adjustment programme the country will get back on its feet. Restructuring would instead reward the investors who exited the market earlier or short-sold the sovereign bond, speculating that they would gain out of a restructuring.

Third, it would destabilise the euro area financial markets by creating incentives for short-term speculative behaviour. Given that markets are forward-looking, they would try to anticipate any difficulty faced by a sovereign by short-selling their positions, thus triggering the crisis. This would discourage investment in the euro area because of its potential volatility and perverse market dynamics.

Finally, such a measure would delay any return to the market by a sovereign, because no market participant would be willing to start reinvesting in the country for a long period if they know that this kind of investment might at some stage be penalised. This would thus discourage private sector involvement and oblige the official sector to increase its financial contribution.

These don’t strike me as very strong points.

On the first point, well yes “taxpayers” in Germany who own Greek bonds will lose out but the bonds are already trading at a huge discount to face value so, for many, the losses have already been taken and the price of the bonds factors in a restructuring.

The second point amounts to saying we should reward people who make wildly inaccurate judgments about the Greek macroeconomic situation, i.e. those who “are confident that with the adjustment programme the country will get back on its feet” should be rewarded. Should those investors who believe in Santa Claus get cheques from the EU and the IMF at Christmas?

The third point that investors would look to sell sovereign bonds of peripheral countries in anticipation of a restructuring appears to ignore that this has already happened. For example, Irish sovereign bond pricing is based on the assumption of a restructuring.

The final point, that a restructuring would delay Greece’s return to the market is debatable. Even if debt ratios stabilised over the next few years, private creditors will still see huge risks. A restructuring that restores sustainability, however, would be more likely to restore access to private bond markets.

If these are the best points the ECB have, you can see why they’re losing the argument.

Via FT Alphaville, here’s a draft copy of Portugal’s “Memorandum of Understanding on Specific Economic Policy Conditionality.”

See the following contribution here from Hans-Werner Sinn.  It is certainly original but frankly alarmist.  It focuses on the fact that National Central Banks within the euro system are lending bilaterally to each other though without changing the monetary base as a whole.  Sinn jumps from there to draw apparently worrying conclusions:  that these are “forced capital exports”; that they are the counterparty to current account deficits and that “the PIGS would have had a hard time finding the money to pay for their net imports”.

There is not a scintilla of evidence that the private non-bank sector in the PIGS has lost access to normal European financial markets.  If the Bundesbank lends to the Central Bank of Ireland, it does not, in any sense, expand the availability of credit to the private non-bank sector in Ireland.  Similarly, German households and firms do not suffer a credit contraction.  This is, of course, because there is free movement of capital within the single currency area.

The second non-sequitur in Sinn’s article is the association of accumulated current account deficits in the PIGS with these bilateral loans.  Ireland has, of course, a current account surplus so the point is completely irrelevant to at least one of the PIGS.  Sinn notes that Italy has not availed of these inter NCB loans, despite its current account deficit, but mistakenly attributes this to virtuous policy on the part of the Italian authorities!  It is of course because Italy so far has not yet suffered from a banking or sovereign debt crisis.  And for no other reason.

My suspicion is that Target 2 credit is ultimately guaranteed by the ECB: that the Bundesbank loans to the Central Bank of Ireland should be considered as contingent items on the ECB balance sheet.  In short, that Target 2 credit is simply a mechanism for implementing ECB policy.  But I remain to be corrected on this.

The UK Budget was published yesterday. One of the noteworthy changes announced as part of this is a reduction in corporation tax:

“a reduction in the main rate of corporation tax by a further one per cent. From April 2011, the rate will be reduced to 26 per cent with further yearly reductions of one per cent until 2014 when it will reach 23 per cent”.

In addition the UK Treasury has published a consultation document entitled Rebalancing the Northern Ireland Economy, which specifically considers the potential for, and costs and benefits of devolving the power to vary the corporate tax rate in Northern Ireland, potentially reducing the rate in Northern Ireland to the 12.5% that applies in the republic of Ireland.

In the context of the pressure from France and Germany for the Republic of Ireland to raise its corporation tax rate, both the reduction in corporation tax rates in the UK and the potential harmonisation of the corporation tax rate to 12.5% on the island of Ireland are an interesting development.

The Commission’s new proposals for a Common Consolidated Corporate Tax Base (CCCTB) are available here.