Category: Fiscal Policy

A report in this morning’s Sunday Independent flies the kite for a new State Agency to invest equity in private companies. Inevitably, this will remind some of Foir Teoranta, a state agency which was officieally described as a lender-of-last-resort to private companies in the 1970s and 1980s.

Founded in 1972, Foir Teoranta’s stated objective was “to provide reconstruction finance for potentially viable industrial concerns which are unable to raise capital from the normal commercial sources.”

I’m not aware of a systematic analysis of Foir Teo’s effectiveness in that period. Maybe readers can remember more. But my impression is that, on its dissolution in 1991, it was not widely regarded as having been a brilliant success.

So what would make a new company of this type successful? The Indo’s article confirms that it would be well-managed, so that’s all right. But what else? The intended emphasis is said to be on equity, rather than debt (which was Foir’s main instrument). But is that a strength or a weakness in the current climate? How would it complement the European Investment Bank’s EIF, which seems to be in the same territory?

Would it be better to think in terms of a partial credit guarantee scheme instead? After all, if the banks are to receive huge injections of government capital, should one not be thinking of them as a natural source of finance to keep viable firms going? Partial credit guarantee schemes have been the policy instrument of choice for governments wishing to expand credit to small and medium enterprises, and there is an astonishing number of such schemes around the world. However here too there are severe risks; my recent review of these schemes emphasizes the drawbacks and the need for careful scheme design, if damage is to be avoided.

Should the NPRF be used for bank recapitalisation? 

I have always thought the fund a good idea.   It helped increase national saving by reducing measured budget surpluses.   (These surpluses would have been difficult to sustain politically.)  And I believed it would make pension benefits more secure in the face of a rising tax cost as the population ages.  Along with many others, I thought the fund only a good idea if investment decisions were not politicized.   That seems almost quaint. 

I now think it serves another purpose that I simply did not appreciate.   Others were more prescient.   It provides a valuable bulwark against the tail risk of a real “run-on-the-country” kind of crisis (that includes both bank and government debt).   The risk is nicely captured by Larry Summers in his 2000 Richard Ely lecture on international crises.   As he says, in this kind crisis the mode of investment analysis shifts from “economics to hydraulics.”  Fundamentals become irrelevant as everyone tries to get their money out before everybody else.  

The existence of a large and relatively liquid NPRF makes falling into such a bad equilibrium less likely.   I therefore think the Government should be slow to commit a large chunk of the fund to bank recapitalization.  My sense is that it would be better to borrow the funds, notwithstanding the recently increased spread.   Having a substantial liquid sum on the asset side of the government’s balance is valuable insurance in perilous times.