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.”
Category: European economy
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.
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.”