Living with the Euro

Cormac Lucey has a piece in Saturday’s Irish Times on the implications of EMU membership for Irish macroeconomic adjustment: you can read it here.

Clarification:  There is an important typo in Cormac’s article. “In January 2005, Rossa White of Davy Stockbrokers used the Taylor rule to estimate that European Central Bank interest rates were appropriate for Ireland.”  This should read: “In January 2005, Rossa White of Davy Stockbrokers used the Taylor rule to estimate that European Central Bank interest rates were inappropriate for Ireland.”    You can read Rossa’s original note here.

Canadian Enthusiasm for NAMA? Mountie Move Rules Out Nationalisation?

On various lunchtime news reports today, I heard commentators discussing how today’s announcement of Canadian interest in acquiring a stake in AIB was a sign of international confidence in NAMA and helped to rule out nationalisation, and about how this is good news for current shareholders.

It has now been reported that the bank in question appears to be Royal Bank of Canada. This would be the very same Royal Bank of Canada whose Capital Markets Division yesterday released a report including the following statements:

Irish banks are in a vegetative state, in our view. Earnings power is in atrophy and free capital to unsecured debt holders is low to non-existent. Allied Irish (AIB), Anglo Irish (ANGIRI) and Bank of Ireland (BKIR) appear to be on ECB life-support. All non-guaranteed debt holders are effectively subordinated to the ECB. The NAMA proposal alone is insufficient to address the business model challenges facing the banks. As such, all non-guaranteed debt-holders are at substantial risk of uncertainty regarding the requirements of the NAMA proposal, distressed exchanges and potential nationalizations.

And this:

Irish banks are on ECB life-support and the ECB may decide their fate, in our view. The ECB appears to be acting as the lender of last resort for the Irish banks as their funding models have collapsed. This lending is well overcollateralized. Liquidity generated by NAMA may be used to repay ECB borrowings, limiting its benefit to the wider economy. Nationalization could keep the ECB in the game and allow more liquidity to remain in Ireland.

And this:

NAMA alone may not restart lending, other actions could be required. Distressed senior debt exchanges may assist in recapitalizing the banking system. Irish Nationwide’s offer to exchange senior debt at a discount to par for Irish government guaranteed debt adds a new twist to bank recapitalization.

Perhaps those reporters preparing to explain this story to the Irish public this weekend might rely on statements from the horse’s mouth rather than speculating about what RBC might be thinking about NAMA or the prospects of nationalisation. 

While RBC’s interest in purchasing a stake is being taken as a sign that AIB isn’t going to be nationalised, RBC’s own report into the Irish banks says they are likely to be nationalised and that bond-holders are also likely to take a hit. A fairer reading of this story would seem to be that RBC are only going to be interested in buying into AIB after it has been nationalised.

Note — Bloomberg story on RBC Capital Markets report is here. 

Update: Well this story just gets messier. Despite the Indo reporting RBC as the interested bank, I did phrase it as “appears to be” rather than “is” because you can never trust this kind of reporting. Indeed, RTE are now claiming the bank in question is Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce. Of course, it is perfectly possible that CIBC have a completely different assessment of the Irish banking system than RBC but somehow I doubt it.

NAMA and Subsequent Private Equity Investment

Today’s Irish Times lead story on potential interest from a Canadian bank in taking a stake in AIB raises some important issues.  These are being well covered already in some comments at the end of the Carroll thread just below but I think they’re also worth hoisting up to the front page.

Continue reading “NAMA and Subsequent Private Equity Investment”

Investor versus Developer Risk – The Implications for NAMA

This is a guest contribution from John McCartney (former Head of Research at Lisney): you can read it here.

Price Inflation and Social Welfare Rates

Today’s inflation numbers show further falls in July for both the CPI and HICP. The falls sa are not as big as the raw nsa figs. The CPI is now (sa) 6.4% below the October 2008 peak. The HICP, which excludes mortgage interest and some other small items and which I prefer, is 2.6% off its November 2008 peak (sa).

There has been, understandably, considerable reaction to the Bord Snip proposals for cuts in Social Welfare rates. These were increased in last October’s budget by 3.1 to 3.3%, the increases effective from January. In the budget speech, the Minister predicted a positive inflation rate in 2009 of 2.5%. If he had instead predicted a zero rate, it is a fair guess that there would have been no change. It now looks as if the 2009 price level will work out perhaps 5% below what was assumed in the budget. 

If the proposal to cut rates by 5% were to be implemented from January next, the resultant rates in real terms, using the HICP rather than the CPI, would still be ahead of the October 2008 level, even if there are no further falls in the HICP. If the alternative 3% cut were implemented, the resultant rates would leave recipients better off in real terms than they were prior to the October 2008 increase. Of course, the big losers from the recession to date have been those laid off and newly reliant on Social Welfare (apart from ex-billionaires), and not the (far larger) group of long-term recipients.  

Richard Tol and David Madden have posted notes here drawing attention to the distributional impact of relative price changes which deserve a more extended response when time permits. For now, I would just like to make two comments:

(i) David notes that the lowest income deciles smoke cigarettes, and it has long intrigued me that the regressive impact of sharp recent increases in cigarette taxes attracted no negative comment from the political left. They should’nt smoke, you see.

(ii) Even the 5% reduction would still keep real HICP values at about pre-budget levels, if I understand Tol et al correctly. 

Finally, if all the €21 billion gross spend on social transfers were directed at the very lowest income groups, some of the more hysterical reactions would be reasonable (‘destruction of the welfare state’, no less). As a glance at the Household Budget Survey will confirm, significant entitlements reach well up the income distribution, reflecting the presence of substantial universal, as distinct from means-tested, expenditures.