Ashoka Mody and Damiano Sandri summarise their recent paper for the Economic Policy panel in this VOXEU article.
The members of the Irish Fiscal Advisory Council were in front of the Oireachtas Joint Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform last week – the transcript is here.
I will talk on this topic on Thursday at 6pm at the Royal Irish Academy.
Update: I will post the paper and slides early next week.
Abstract
Ireland’s net external liability position expanded in dramatic fashion during 2008- 2010, despite relatively small net financial flow during this period. Understanding the the source and persistence of this negative shock is critically important in as- sessing the future path for the Irish economy but data analysis is made difficult by the confounding impact of Ireland’s major role as an international financial centre, such that the “core” international balance sheet remains obscure. However, there is considerable indirect evidence to believe that a substantial component of this decline is genuine and relates to the internationally-leveraged structure of the financial port- folios of domestic Irish residents.
Harvard’s Gita Gopinath is interviewed on these topics in the Review of Economic Dynamics Newsletter here.
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.