Category: European politics

Dublin Kapuscinski Lecture – ‘Climate Change and Development’

The Dublin Kapuscinski Lecture – ‘Climate Change and Development’ on 31st May 2011 at 1700-1900 in the UCD John Hume Global Ireland Institute. R.S.V.P. to Jean.Brennan@ucd.ie 

Website: http://ec.europa.eu/development/services/events/kapuscinski, 

The series is named after Ryszard Kapuscinski, a Polish reporter and writer who was a “Voice of the Poor” in his famous reportages and books covering the developing world.  The lecture series is organized jointly by the European Commission, the United Nations Development Programme and partner universities, in this case TCD and UCD.   Ms Barbara Nolan, Director of the European Commission’s Representation in Ireland will open the Dublin Kapuscinski Lecture 2011 on ‘Climate Change and Development’.

 Professor Dirk Messner, German Development Institute, will deliver the keynote lecture.  “The global development panorama is changing dramatically. The challenges of security and poverty are more interwoven than ever before. Yet, two thirds of the global poor people are now living in middle income countries like China, India and Brazil. What does this new global poverty map imply for European development policies? Development trends are also embedded in an overall global development challenge: – climate change. The world needs to learn to decouple wealth creation from burning fossil fuels. A great transformation to a global low carbon economy is necessary during the decades to come in order to avoid major and dangerous changes in the Earths system. What do these global shifts imply for Europe s role in the world? Europe needs to define its global interests. And it needs to be part of a global governance strategy to shape global development trends.”

 A panel discussion will follow, chaired by Prof. Patrick Paul Walsh (UCD Chair of International Development Studies). Panellists include Francis Jacobs, (Head of the European Parliament Office in Ireland), Cliona Sharkey,  (Trócaire, Environmental Justice Policy Officer), Tara Shine,  (Head of Research and Development, Mary Robinson Climate Justice Foundation, Joseph K.Assan, (TCD-UCD MDP Lecturer in Development Practice) and  Frank Convery ,  (UCD Earth Sciences Institute).

 The lecture series offers citizens of the European Union an unprecedented opportunity to learn and discuss development, and issues related to development cooperation.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Between Two Stools

In the Eolas piece I looked at Ireland’s policy options taking the European bailout/bail-in regime as exogenous (albeit uncertain).   Of course, a different question is what we would want that regime to be, one now being hotly debated given Greece’s new difficulties. 

A central focus in the recent debate is the proper extent of early private sector involvement (PSI) in bail-ins.   Looked at from an Irish perspective, a range of considerations come into this calculation: (i) the reputational damage in a debt restructuring/default; (ii) the ultimate reduction achieved through a restructuring in the net resource transfer; (iii) the risks associated with increased dependence on official creditors and their domestic politics; (iv) the risks of domestic and international contagion; and (v) the implications for future market access of a weakening of the implicit guarantee given to private creditors. 

 I think the last of these points deserves additional discussion.   At the moment we seem to be between two stools.   Early PSI is ruled out; but PSI is central to the post-2013 ESM regime, substantially weakening the implicit guarantee and scaring off potential new creditors.   Thus there is a certain incoherence at the heart of European policy.   It also is a particularly bad combination given the trade-off involved with any resolution regime: it is good to be able to share losses with private creditors ex post; but a regime with easier loss sharing will weaken the implicit guarantee and make you less creditworthy ex ante.   

We need European policy makers to move one way or the other, either allowing early PSI before a substantial amount of private debt is paid back, or providing clarity on the nature of the implicit guarantee that gives a feasible route back to the markets for countries that follow through on their adjustment programmes.   The ECB seems to be calling for a full guarantee by effectively ruling out defaults.   This seems neither likely nor desirable.   However, further clarity on the way PSI will be applied in the future, with a reasonable path to avoiding it, would give a country a chance of regaining market access and not having to resort to default.   It is probably unfortunate for us that policy precedents are being set in this area based on the quite different Greek situation. 

Regaining Creditworthiness

Much of the pessimism about Ireland’s predicament has centred on the challenge of stabilising the debt to income ratio.   Undoubtedly this will be challenging, with good outcomes on nominal GDP growth and fiscal adjustment capacity required.    Of course, it has been made much more difficult by the massive bank losses the State has had to absorb.   But I think a focus on the stabilisation challenge misses a critical issue, which is regaining market access at a high if stable debt to GDP ratio (probably somewhere in the region of 120 percent of GDP).   

Martin Wolf’s column from last week provides a useful starting point for a diagnosis of the problem – an article that garnered all of one comment on the blog (from DOCM).   It draws on Paul de Grauwe’s insightful work on the susceptibility of countries in a monetary union to a debt crisis (see here), where a country without its own currency and central bank to act as lender of last resort is vulnerable to self fulfilling expectations that it will not be able to roll over its debts.   The EFSF/ESFM/ESM were put in place to help fill this LOLR gap, but have so far proven to be a poor substitute.   It is understandable that Germany and other likely net funders want to eventually reinstate market discipline, and so demand losses are borne by private creditors as part of any new bailout.   It is also understandable that they want to protect themselves from losses under the permanent bailout mechanism (the ESM) by demanding preferred creditor status.   But it is becoming increasingly evident that crisis-hit countries will find it extremely hard to regain market access with a half-hearted LOLR facility in place given any doubts that they will not be able to pass a debt sustainability test under the ESM. 

The official funders have to be willing to take on some additional risk if a mutually damaging combination of default and ongoing dependency is to be avoided.   One element is to clarify the way the debt sustainability test will be applied.   A current problem is that austerity measures weaken growth, thus making it harder to pass the test.   A useful amendment would be to assess growth in the debt sustainability calculation assuming a neutral fiscal stance.   Another useful amendment would be to set a ceiling on the size of any haircut, thereby limiting the uncertainty faced by potential new investors.   

As a quid pro quo for these amendments the government could offer to speed up the fiscal adjustment (along the lines recommended by the ESRI in its Spring QEC).   Of course, more fiscal adjustment is the last thing the economy needs as it struggles to pull out of recession.   Yet a quasi-permanent loss of creditworthiness and dependency on unreliable official support looks to be the bigger threat, as it saps confidence and undermines the perception of the economy’s stability.   Those resisting fiscal discipline must realise that the situation changed profoundly when Ireland’s creditworthiness disappeared in the second half of last year.   Some observers are putting forward the same fiscal policy prescriptions as they did when bond yields were around 5 percent.   They must see that the ground has fundamentally shifted.  

It is hard to see how further public sector pay cuts could not be part of any balanced additional adjustment.   A credible new regime for long-run fiscal discipline is also essential.  

The government should take the offensive in pointing out the incoherence of the current international support approach, while avoiding playing a self-defeating grievance card.   What is needed is a hard-headed look for a mutually advantageous set of policies that allow Ireland to shed its dependency.    The first step is a proper diagnosis of creditworthiness challenge. 

The ECB is leading Europe to disaster

Colm McCarthy makes some important political points in today’s Sunday Independent. He points out, quite correctly, that the ECB’s policy of favouring an Irish sovereign default later over a private banking default now (and it is important to be clear that this is exactly their position, whether or not they publicly admit it) is going to make it very difficult, if not impossible, to get public buy-in for the further austerity measures coming down the line; and is also virtually certain to lead to increasing anti-EU sentiment here (and in the rest of the periphery as well).

But it’s worse than that. By confusing fiscal and banking crises in the public mind, the ECB is also fuelling anti-EU sentiment in the core, since core taxpayers understandably resent the notion that they should subsidize feckless peripheral taxpayers. By contrast, greater honesty about the fact that we have a Europe-wide banking crisis would make taxpayers everywhere realise that they have common interests, and a common enemy, namely an out-of-control financial sector. In such a scenario, ‘Europe’ might be seen by ordinary voters as having something positive to contribute, since cross-border banking requires cross-border regulation. Right now, however, ‘Europe’ is seen as a big part of the problem, in the case of the ECB correctly so.

Like Colm says, it really is a slow motion train wreck.

John Bruton: Time to turn our attention to the things we can change

John Bruton writes today on the downside of grievance and the upside of a positive surprise on the deficit-reduction effort: Irish Times article here.