Category: European economy

The Impending EU\Greece Deal

It appears that a deal involving the EU and Greece is imminent. Greek bond yields hit their peak level in the current crisis, the ECB has altered its rules for collateral and the media are reporting that a deal is in place (here and here.)

The FT reports on the negotiations over the terms of the deal:

Officials added that Germany was sticking to its demand that the eurozone portion of the loans would have to be made at or near Greek market rates of 6 per cent or more, though this could lead to different rates being charged by other countries.

One said the agreement “reflects high rates … it is not a ‘subsidy’ and thus not a climbdown. Not even the Germans regard most recent rates as market rates”.

The FT also editorialises on this, blaming the Germans for failing to calm the bond markets sufficiently:

Berlin is also adamant liquidity support be given at market rates. This makes no sense: a rescue is needed precisely when debt markets cease to function and refuse to refinance Greece at sustainable rates. Insisting that a rescue takes place at “market rates” is to insist no rescue takes place at all. Market yields reflect this contradiction, and show that Europe has not yet put its money where its mouth is.

I have a tendency to question agreed wisdom so let me play the role of academic devil’s advocate here for a second. Ultimately, Greek fiscal stability will require a combination of lower spending and higher taxes. Yes, bond yields at current levels—if sustained—would be unlikely to be consistent with long-run fiscal stability.

However, a program that

(a) Made it clear that Greece would be able to roll over private sector debt because the EU will intervene to provide the funds

(b) Credibly lead to the adjustments in Greece’s structural deficit.

should stabilise the fiscal situation in Greece and lead to a return to lower borrowing rates for Greece. That the EU should charge a high interest rate for providing the funds for (a) and overseeing the program for (b) is, it could be argued, not unreasonable. Indeed, if the rates associated with (a) are not high enough to be painful then it may be difficult to get much traction going on (b).

Of course, the Greek government is going to look to get the interest rates on its assistant loans set as low as possible. But that doesn’t mean that a percent here or there on these loans is the key issue right now.

The other major unknown here is how any deal will affect the sovereign bond market’s attitude to Ireland.

Greek Bond Yields

The yield on Greek government bonds has now crept up to more or less where it was prior to all the EU meetings of the past few months (see here.) I’m not sure why the various annoucements haven’t helped and newspaper reports like this one and this one don’t explain as much as I’d like.

If the high bond yields are a sign of doubts about whether a rescue is actually going to happen, and thus the debt may be defaulted on, then the eventual arrival of the cavalry (in the form of the EU) to keep the debt rolling over would end up bring the yields down to more sustainable levels and hopefully stabilise the situation. A less sanguine interpretation of current events offered to me by a colleague is that the terms of the deal being offered by the EU—in which any lending would be at current market rates—doesn’t really offer Greece a route out of insolvency because bond yields at this level are not consistent with stabilisation of the public finances.

I’m more inclined to believe the former intepretation and that the EU will prevent Greece defaulting. Whether it should is a different matter.

US Financial Regulation Debate

There is a broad international process underway, via the G20, the BIS and the IMF, to come up with new capital and liquidity rules to be applied around the world to replace Basle 2 (see here). However, beyond re-working these rules, the financial crisis has still left lots of knotty issues unresolved, such as how to intervene and unwind large complex financial institutions that are in trouble, how to regulate derivatives and whether more severe limitations should be placed on the activities of banks (perhaps through a return to Glass-Steagal style restrictions.)

Now that healthcare reform is off the agenda, there is a pretty serious discussion in the US now about financial reform: Paul Krugman has devoted his last two New York Times op-ed columns to it (here and here.) Here’s a nice summary of the current state of play. As always with US legislation, the process is bizarrely complicated and riddled with horse-trading, with a House bill and Senate bill, potential reconciliation, and a role for the White House and Treasury Department. But, to be fair to them, the process usually ends up forcing a serious discussion of all the key issues.

It seems that if this kind of thing is going to happen over here, it will need to be done at EU level, presumably with an active role for the European Systemic Risk Board (which comes into existence when?) Perhaps I’m missing it but I don’t get a sense that there is a parallel process at European level that mirrors the current US debate. It may be too much to hope for that Europe, with its patchwork quilt of different types of banks, regulations and regulators, will ever get its act together on this front.

Axel Weber at IIEA

Bundesbank president Axel Weber gave a speech on “The Reform of Financial Supervision and Regulation in Europe” today at the Institute for International and European Affairs. The Institute has provided the text of Weber’s speech and an audio podcast here.

Update: Thanks to Michael Hennigan for noting that the impressive Mr. Weber also gave a completely different speech to Financial Services Ireland on the same day, titled “Making the Financial System more Resilient – The Role of Capital Requirements.”  Link here.

European Parliament Papers on Deficits and Global Imbalances

Here‘s a link to the latest set of briefing papers for the European Parliament’s Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee. One set of papers (including one by me) focuses on global imbalances and the role they played in the financial crisis. The other set of papers focuses on European fiscal issues. These papers include a summary by Daniel Gros (CEPS) of his proposal with Thomas Mayer (Chief Economist of Deutsche Bank) for a European Monetary Fund.

These briefing papers are provided to MEPs on the committee prior to a meeting they will have with ECB President Trichet on March 22nd at which these and other issues will be discussed.