Edward Hadas

Once upon a time there were 11 prosperous merchants who lived in a land of peace and plenty. They decided to form a league that would work together for everyone’s greater good. But then a charming man in a fine suit came around with a tempting speech: “I love your project and trust your businesses. I will lend you money at a very attractive interest rate”. How nice, thought the merchants. Our customers will love us if we use the money we borrow to give them better deals.

All went so well that six other merchants were proud to join the league. Mr. Fine Suit seemed pleased. He reduced the already low interest rate on the loans. The merchants all planned to repay, but today was never quite right. Today, in fact, was always a good day to borrow more, while tomorrow always looked like a better day to raise prices.

Then one day Mr. Fine Suit changed his tune. “You know, you have a mighty nice little enterprise going here. But business is business, my friends. Interest rates are going to rise for some of you.” The merchants were angry, but what could they do? They promised to be more frugal, but still had to pay up. As the months went by, Mr. Fine Suit became more hostile. Just last week he came to the G-store, the most prosperous and prudent of all the merchants, with a really nasty threat. “You know, between us, I’ve never liked your stupid league. You’re much smarter than the rest. Leave the league and I’ll keep on lending you money at a low rate. If not, well, here’s a little reminder of what I can do.” He increased the interest rate by two notches before leaving the room with a menacing smirk.

The story is a parable of the euro zone debt crisis. The merchants are the member governments, the customers are the taxpayers and Mr. Fine Suit represents the banks, fund managers and individuals who lend to governments. These investors in government debt tend to think and act alike; just about two years ago their message to the euro zone changed from “We’re behind you all the way” to “Nice little monetary system you have here. It would really be a shame if something happened to it”.

The euro zone’s weaker members and the EU as a whole have responded to the threat with tougher budgets than were ever contemplated while investors were still friendly. But the investors have started to behave like an extortionist, demanding ever higher interest rates and threatening to withdraw funding totally. Even fiscally healthy Germany (the G-store) is now under threat. Of course, investors do not think of themselves as extortionists or even as malicious. They think of themselves as merely law-abiding professionals trying to protect the value of their investments, either by making sure the governments will be able to pay up or by selling before the governments default. But many sensible individual fears — “I don’t want to be caught out” — can add up to group menace– “You must meet our ever harsher demands – or else”.

The fable of Mr. Fine Suit could be elaborated to include the European Central Bank as policeman, but the addition would not change the moral: the mix of governments and financiers can easily become toxic. It has always been thus, at least as far back as the English King Edward III’s 1343 default bankrupted the lenders of Florence. The political-economic logic behind these recurrent crises is straightforward. On the one hand, governments which are too weak to cover current expenses with tax revenues are bad credit risks. On the other hand, when previously supportive lenders suddenly turn against profligate governments, they look arbitrary and rapacious.

In recent years, these basic truths have been obscured by the widespread acceptance of a principle associated with the British economist John Maynard Keynes — governments should sometimes spend a little more than they take in to keep the real economy humming along. Even if the Keynesian principle is right, it justifies neither the imprudent deficits which Greece ran up after it entered the euro zone nor the ease with which it was able to borrow to fund those deficits.

In the euro zone, Mr. Fine Suit is now on the rampage. In the United States, he is still very friendly. But the stubbornly large American deficits – currently more than twice as high as the euro zone’s as a share of GDP – are a sign of political inadequacy. Like Edward III and the government of Greece, the U.S. government has consistently decided to spend significantly more money than it is willing to demand from taxpayers. Unless Congress finds a way to balance revenues and expenditures, sooner or later America’s Mr. Fine Suit will be coming around with a baseball bat.

Photo: An employee at the National Bank of Belgium holds a new 500 Belgian Franc note (front) and two small reproductions of paintings by Belgian famous surrealist Rene Magritte. REUTERS/Nathalie Koulischer

Around 100 BC, a Roman nobleman calculated that it took about 100,000 sesterces a year to live comfortably. That was roughly 200 times the amount of money a poor city dweller needed to eke out a living. If an American needed the same multiple of the subsistence income to join the upper middle class today, the threshold would be $3.5 million. The United States economy has become less equal lately, but it remains much more egalitarian than the ancient Roman Republic.

The modern news on economic inequality is much more good than bad. The good news is very good. The greatest moral problem caused by inequality – the unequal access to the most basic economic goods, those which support life – has become less severe. The portion of the total population that suffers from this bottom-inequality is probably the lowest ever in history.

True, we do not know how many ancient Romans were on the wrong side of the bottom-inequality, but statistics for the most recent decades are encouraging. In 1970, 26 percent of the world’s population suffered from hunger, according to the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation. The proportion is now 13 percent – still scandalously high, but the gain in food-equality is clear. Nor is food an isolated example. Electricity is a relative new development, but the Soviet dream of universal electrification has already nearly become a reality; more than 80 percent of the world’s population can plug in, according to the International Energy Agency. Health care and sanitary living conditions are now considered basic goods – and access to them has become more equal. The average life expectancy at birth is 65 or above in countries accounting for roughly 80 percent of the world’s population.

The bad news is on the other end of the income spectrum. There has been an increase in top-inequality – a widening gap between the elite and the rest – in the United States, the UK and a few other countries. The bottom 90 percent in the United States are not exactly suffering; they have been getting richer on average for the last few decades. But the rich, especially the very rich, have been getting richer much faster. The top 10 percent of earners took in 32 percent of the nation’s total income three decades ago. That has risen to 46 percent. The share taken by the top 1 percent has more than doubled, from 8 to 18 percent, according to the World Top Incomes Database. In the UK, the newly published report from the High Pay Commission points out that the top 0.1 percent’s portion has multiplied from 1.3 to 6.5 percent.

The increase in top-inequality is bad in principle. People are not different enough in their abilities or in their dedication to work to justify the recent increases in the gap between rich and relatively poor. The damage can be seen in practice. The commission makes a good case that top-inequality reduces social solidarity, making companies less efficient and slowing GDP growth. It also points out, along with the book The Spirit Level, that greater top-inequality is associated with societies which have more health and behavior problems.

Still, there are four mitigating factors:

First, the allocation of wealth within a society is usually best left to the collective judgement of that society. The people have not, not yet at least, definitively rejected the widening gap between rich and poor. That suggests the problem is not widely perceived as grave.

Second, the elite just might be able to do some good with their extra resources. The ancient Romans offered bread and circuses and renaissance princes sponsored artists. In modern industrial societies, the financially secure elite could be a helpful alternative to governments for cultural, social and economic initiatives.

Third, whatever the evil caused by top-inequality in rich societies, it is much less significant than the good news on bottom-equality. As the American and British masses get richer, it becomes harder to argue that they lose out in a morally significant way when the elite gain. Even the poverty which causes the social problems identified by The Spirit Level is arguably more spiritual and social than strictly material.

Finally, if the people do decide that the recent increase in top-inequality is unjust, the trend can be reversed with much less trouble than bottom-inequality. Major social changes are required to increase crop yields or trade in the remaining deprived parts of the world, but the rich can be curbed fairly easily in developed economies. Choose from the following list: shame, taxes, limits on the range of pay inside companies or income caps in the particularly lucrative financial sector. Even for the very rich, the sacrifices needed to reduce inequality would be mild. As Bill Gates pointed out, more money stops meaning much after the first few millions. In his words, “it’s the same hamburger”.

“The Owl of Minerva takes flight only as the dusk begins to fall.” Or, to speak more directly than G W F Hegel, we can only become wise about the direction of history late in the day. The aphorism is pertinent to the euro crisis. Is this the twilight hour for the single currency or are the clouds over the euro no more than an early morning mist in pan-European history? The euro’s fate will look inevitable in retrospect (that is Hegel’s point), but for now the balance of historical forces is far from clear.

The technicalities of the euro crisis are bewildering, even to financial professionals. There are rescue funds constructed with baroque techniques of financial engineering, arcane details of labor market reforms and political feuds that have festered for decades. But something much bigger is at stake – whether or not there should be, in the words of Angela Merkel, “more Europe.” If so, the crisis can be resolved relatively simply: lenders would accept the losses caused by their past mistakes and errant governments would promise to play by the fiscal rules henceforth.

But should there be more Europe? Most British politicians think not and most mainstream continental politicians are in favor, if only warily. The reasons on both sides are fundamentally Hegelian. It is a question of which historical forces should prevail.

The anti-euro case is based on one of the strongest forces of the last few centuries – nationalism. The sentiment is sometimes expressed in economic terms, as when the previous British government rejected membership of the monetary union. A multinational currency always goes directly against the nationalist flow, even where the economic case for it is strong. In order for the euro to succeed, Germans must abandon hopes of duplicating their super-strong national currency and Greeks and Italians must either abandon longstanding traditions of loose fiscal behavior or learn to tolerate interference from EU authorities.

On the pro-euro side, two grand historical forces have provided most of the support for both the European Union and its currency. Both are faltering.

The first is a peculiarly modern force, the fear of war (Hegel thought war was a major spur of historical progress). While Europeans still dread another conflagration, nearly seven decades of peace, including the non-violent fall of the Communist bloc, have been enough to render the threat of war largely theoretical, and irrelevant to the European monetary system.

The second force is the desire for ever greater prosperity. This force, which has come into prominence during the last two centuries, influenced the European leaders who wanted to bring Europe together after the Second World War. They thought the economy was the most promising domain for cooperation, and they were right. European politicians and voters alike have proved willing to sacrifice national traditions and rivalries for the sake of European prosperity. The EU now has free trade, standardized regulation and almost unconstrained mobility across borders. The single currency was supposed to be the culmination of economic integration.

The bitterness surrounding the euro crisis shows that the lure of prosperity is now, at best, barely enough to inspire European governments to change their ways. While most politicians still believe that the euro will eventually bring their nations more wealth and economic stability, they and their voters are seriously in doubt whether those goods are worth more than national self-determination.

Philosophers of history might speculate that the desire for prosperity is a waning force today because it no longer has the same power to inspire the comfortable citizens of the EU as it once inspired the impoverished men and women scraping a living amidst the rubble of post-war Europe. Whatever the reason, the euro will not survive the next crisis (even if it scrapes though this one) unless European leaders make a stronger effort to identify their project with historical forces more politically compelling than ever more material gain.

The stakes are high. If the member nations retreat on the euro, further disintegration is likely. That owl of wisdom will probably look down on the movement towards European unity as no more than a wrong turn on history’s path.

But the euro and indeed the entire European project could draw on stronger forces. You don’t have to be a Hegelian to see that Europe as a whole, rather than individual jurisdictions, has been shaped and guided by such great ideas as Christianity and the philosophies of Greece and the Enlightenment. More recently, the entire region has striven to realise the dreams of democracy, honest government, economic security and educational opportunity.

Supporters of the euro and of “more Europe” might look to the French revolutionary call for liberty, equality and fraternity. These are ideals which erase neither national borders nor local customs, and so they can co-exist peacefully, if somewhat delicately, with nationalism. But the euro does indeed have the power to enhance the liberty that comes with effective economic management: the equality of citizens protected by fiscally sound governments and the fraternity that binds the strong and weak.

PHOTO: German Chancellor and leader of Germany’s conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU), Angela Merkel gives her closing speech of the party convention at the fairground in Leipzig, November 15, 2011. REUTERS/Tobias Schwarz

“Our culture must be one where the interests of customers and clients are at the very heart of every decision we make; where we all act with trust and integrity.” The words are from a recent speech by Bob Diamond, chief executive of British bank Barclays. In a way, this is just the usual corporate guff. No boss will tell the world about untrustworthy workers who try to harm customers. But Diamond’s aspirations are a particular challenge for the financial industry.

Not that finance itself is an ignoble activity like drug dealing or contract killing. On the contrary, finance has a noble goal, the support of a just and effective economic community. Banks, fund managers and the like collect funds that is surplus to the owners’ current requirements. The funds are then made available to organizations and individuals which can make good use of them. The gains from that good use are justly shared between provider and user, with the intermediary taking a small fee for its valuable services.

That is a pretty picture, but in the pre-crisis finance world, the intermediaries often lost sight of their economic purpose. Customers came third, after employees and shareholders. Bankers, banks and other institutions were misled by a particular form of greed, the belief that finance is more about gaining than sharing.

These days bankers are often called greedy. The opprobrium is basically merited, but financiers are not that different from other players in the financial game. Investors are greedy whenever they try too hard to outperform the economy, especially when they don’t invest in new projects but only trade financial instruments. Homeowners are greedy when they expect to become richer by doing nothing more useful than borrowing money. Governments, and the voters they try to please, are greedy when they borrow to offer more services than taxpayers are willing to pay for. And shareholders are greedy when they ask for profits which cannot be earned without taking advantage of customers.

Financial greed permeated the economy before the crisis – and it has hardly diminished since. Of course, like lust or pride, greed lurks wherever people are found. But in most parts of the economy, higher aims keep greed in check. Yes, airlines are run to maximize profits and passengers try to minimize fares, but the planes would not stay in the air if safety were not everyone’s first priority. Yes, workers rarely say, “I don’t deserve or need that raise,” but the economy would grind to a halt if workers did not mostly try to do a good job, whatever the level of pay.

Finance really is different. Financial greed is not merely tolerated; it is lauded. Star investors are treated as heroes. Politicians, fund managers and homeowners all welcome sharp increases in the prices of stocks or houses, even though the gains are unearned and asset price inflation benefits the rich and leaves the poor behind. Financial regulation provides little help. It generally aims at making the game fair, not encouraging moderation among the players.

Barclays’ Diamond is on the right track; financial institutions should promote a new attitude. But bank employees do not work in a vacuum. Unless most of their clients also accept that greed is really not good – and regulators stand ready to take a firm moral stance – memories of the last debacle will fade and regulations will be circumvented. The lure of excessive financial gain will soon lead to excess in the markets – followed by collapse and new calls for moral introspection.

There is a better way, and it does not require the exercise of superhuman virtues. Ethical finance demands no more trust, integrity or respect for clients than is already found among airlines. What it does require is a clear understanding of the purpose of the trade: the mutual benefit of all.

That understanding is hardly new. It was accepted by most local banks (think of the community support offered by Bailey Savings and Loan in It’s a Wonderful Life) and it inspired mutually owned financial institutions, which were common – and mostly successful – until a generation or two ago. The mutual structure (banks owned by their customers) makes economic sense, since bank depositors and borrowers are basically the same people and institutions, just in different phases of their economic life.

Demutualization, which turned careful depositors into greedy shareholders, was a theme during the decades of financial excess. A return to the practice and culture of mutuality should be at the top of an anti-greed financial agenda. The rest of the agenda is a topic for future columns, but Diamond does not go far enough. Nothing will work unless all of us – not just bankers – are committed to trust and integrity. In the words of George Bailey: “We can get through this thing all right. We’ve got to stick together, though.”

By Edward Hadas The opinions expressed are his own.

A child is born. For almost every parent, everywhere and always, the entry of a new person into the world is a welcome wonder. But economists generally have a different outlook on births. They prefer hard numbers to hope. And this week they have a big demographic number to discuss: the world’s population has just reached 7 billion.

When economists talk about demographics, Thomas Malthus usually comes up. The early 19^th century British thinker decided (without providing any reasons) that people would always have more children than the physical world could possibly support. Population growth would always be restrained by death from want. At the time he wrote, the world’s population was about 1 billion. By the 1960s, the population had increased to about 3 billion people, and Malthus’s gloom was often cited. Some ecologists then claimed that the combination of industrial production and overpopulation would inevitably lead to environmental catastrophes – and many deaths from want.

And yet up to now, Malthus has been wrong, in two basic ways. First, human resourcefulness has proved much greater than he imagined. The economic story of the last two centuries has been one of increase – of people and production. The most recent years have been particularly impressive. The 135 million births this year will be almost 30 percent more than 50 years ago, according to UN data. Those lives will be longer; this year’s children can look forward to an average 68 years of life, 18 more than newborns a half-century ago. And the current crop will receive much more of the goods of industrial prosperity, from clean water and adequate food to free education and mobile phones.

Second, Malthus was wrong to assume that women would always bear just about as many children as physically possible. In the last 40 years, the total fertility rate, the number of children the average woman could be expected to bear, has declined from five to 2.5. The fertility reversal has reduced the annual rate of global population increase from 2 to 1.3 per cent since 1980. The UN expects that to fall to 0.1 per cent by 2085. An absolute population decline is quite possible. It is happening already in Japan and Russia.

Still, it cannot be proven that Malthus was wrong, that the world will never run out of stuff or that humanity’s resourcefulness will always rise to environmental, economic and social challenges. And yet – even though there is no way to persuade fervent Malthusians – after two centuries of steady progress the dire predictions look unduly pessimistic. The demographic slowdown reduces the danger of exhausting the earth’s physical resources. And while grim environmental forecasts are still easy to find, demographers these days talk more about the stresses that come with ageing and declining populations.

There will be shrinking pains, of course, and the economic and political standing of low fertility nations is likely to fall. Still, the practical challenges can be met easily. Prosperity has freed up so much labor that unemployment is now a more serious problem than poverty in most of the world. Some of those searching for work can find it caring for the old and weak. Pension promises made when populations were increasing quickly will have to be reduced, but that requires little toil; financial arrangements can be changed with a stroke of the pen.

Instead of worrying, economists should take the latest demographic milestone as an opportunity to stop thinking like Malthus – that when it comes to people, more is generally worse than less.

A good starting point would be to stop relying on GDP per capita when comparing the wealth of nations. In this calculation of average income, population is the denominator. If that increases, the per capita GDP will fall, unless the numerator – production – increases commensurately. In effect, this measure makes each new person an economic drag.

That is unfair. A new person is indeed a consumer who will need to work to avoid being a net drain on the world’s resources. But he or she is also a wonder worth celebrating. Parents know it, and economists should recognize that reproduction is a sort of production – brought forth through maternal labor and parental care. Economic activity should aim at the promotion of life, not merely at the production of stuff.  John Ruskin, a fierce 19^th century critic of Malthusian thinking, declared, “There is no wealth but life… That country is the richest which nourishes the greatest number of noble and happy human beings”. The parents of Danica May Camacho, the Philippine infant identified by the UN as the 7 billionth, would surely agree.

PHOTO: Thomas Malthus. Wikimedia Commons.