The Great Debate UK
The euro is on life support, and the on-off switch is in Frankfurt
By Laurence Copeland. The opinions expressed are his own.
The short term solution to the problem of how to manage the euro zone crisis may now be right there in front of us. The central issue, as far as Germany is concerned at least, is how to reconcile bailing out the other member countries with keeping up the pressure on them to put their fiscal house in order. Quietly, without any official recognition of the fact, the ECB has taken charge of the situation and is now effectively running fiscal policy for most of the euro zone by simply buying enough Greek, Italian, Spanish and maybe French bonds to keep yields from going too high, but not buying so many as to reduce yields to anything like comfortable levels.
Moreover, treasury officials in every country will be only too well aware that what the ECB giveth, the ECB can take away. Any relaxation in austerity regimes can always be countered by an end to ECB purchases or even by ECB sales in the secondary market, driving yields back up in the space of a few minutes to 7%, 8% and beyond. In short, most of the euro zone members are now on a life support machine, and the on-off switch is in Frankfurt.
As a temporary situation, this suits everyone. Politically, it is far more acceptable both for Germany and its clients to conceal the fact that power in Europe is now shared only between Berlin and Frankfurt. Moreover, it conceals from the German electorate that the dreaded Transfer Union is already up and running, because they are in fact subsidising their neighbours via the ECB. With transparent subsidies ruled out – the European Financial Stability Fund has failed to get off the ground and Frau Merkel is unwilling to contemplate a Eurobond – the transfers are being made in the most opaque way possible.
Notice also that the current state of affairs is entirely consistent with developments in Greece and Italy, insofar as it means that technocrats are now running the euro zone too. For Europe, it is the culmination of the trend to unaccountable government that stretches all the way back to the Treaty of Rome in 1958.
Put the euro zone out of its misery
By Laurence Copeland. The author is a professor of finance at Cardiff University Business School. The opinions expressed are his own.
Let me make a wild guess – just a hunch, a vague feeling, the kind you get when you hear a football club chairman say “the manager has my full support”. My forecast is that the IMF monitors currently poring over the Italian government’s books will uncover a black hole somewhere, probably one big enough to swallow the euro zone, and the discovery will leave them as shocked as Captain Renault when he found there was gambling going on at Rick’s Bar in Casablanca.
Capitalism and democracy under threat from euro zone crisis
By Laurence Copeland. The author is a professor of finance at Cardiff University Business School. The opinions expressed are his own.
It takes quite a lot to make me feel sorry for politicians, especially the European variety, but I must say that Nicholas Sarkozy and particularly Angela Merkel have a right to be livid at the news that the Greek government now proposes to hold a referendum on whether they will agree to be given another gigantic dollop of aid. Having only reached agreement (of a very vague kind) at last week’s summit in the early hours of the morning, you can imagine how the French and German leaders must have felt when they discovered that their marathon negotiating sessions may all have been in vain. It seems the Greeks are now too wary of foreigners bearing gifts to accept their largesse without weeks or months of prior deliberation and debate.
A 6-1 defeat is not a draw
Michael Gove trying to laugh off Monday’s rebellion by 81 backbenchers sounds like a United supporter arguing that 6-1 was more or less a draw. For all the excuses, he can’t hide the fact that the government’s position is full of contradictions.
On the one hand, the PM has added his voice to the chorus calling for the euro zone to turn itself into a monetary-and-fiscal union, a proposal which certainly goes with the grain of the crisis. The idea has the support of the Americans and would probably be warmly welcomed in Asia too. In fact, it has great appeal everywhere except in the euro zone itself, where the main protagonists themselves have got a severe attack of cold feet.
Salvation through inflation: The British way out
By Laurence Copeland. The opinions expressed are his own.
Accusing policymakers of acting out of sheer desperation is a pretty standard jibe by critics trying to put them off their stride.
Unfortunately, the latest round of QE came wrapped in comments from the Governor of the Bank of England which amounted, more or less, to saying: “Look! I’m staying calm – but it’s taking a hell of an effort, believe me!”
The euro zone marriage is over
By Laurence Copeland. The opinions expressed are his own.
Under the Arc de Triomphe, tourists can gaze up at the engraved list of Napoleon’s great victories: Austerlitz, Jena, Wagram… Perhaps a similar triumphal arch should be built in Brussels to commemorate the string of victories won by a tiny band of heroic Eurocrats over the mass of their combined electorates: Rome, Maastricht, Lisbon, Wroclaw, and now Berlin, where, to nobody’s surprise, the integrationists in the Bundestag have easily seen off the opposition to their plan to bolster the EFSF. Cue the now-familiar backslapping in Europe after each of their knife-edge victories over the forces of democracy.
The starting point for these Eurocrats/integrationists is that the popular will is simply an obstacle on the road to the ultimate destination of a United States of Europe. Whenever they encounter one of these inconvenient roadblocks, they fume, argue among themselves about the merits of alternative routes until they finally swerve triumphantly round the obstacle, congratulating each other for their ingenuity and skill.
Geithner’s fudge won’t kill the euro zone debt Ouroboros
U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Timothy Geithner (R) leaves after talks with Polish Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski in Wroclaw, September 16, 2011. Geithner urged euro zone ministers to leverage their 440 billion euro bailout fund and free more resources to tackle the debt crisis. REUTERS/Mieczyslaw Michalak/Agencja Gazeta
The frosty reception given to US Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner at the ECOFIN meeting in Poland last week tells you all you need to know about what is wrong with the EU. The hostility was directed not at the feebleness of the advice he had to give, but at the right of an American passport-holder to offer any advice at all to the policymaking elite of Europe, who are so obviously capable of handling the crisis themselves without any outside assistance.
Germany at the crossroads
By Laurence Copeland. The opinions expressed are his own.
Baby-boomers like me, who grew up in the shadow of World War II, have to acknowledge with gratitude that the Germany which again dominates Europe is in most respects a model democracy – multiracial, prosperous and contented. However, there is one worrying aspect of the German mentality which seems to have survived intact from its unhappy history, and it is an aspect which is likely to be tested to the full in the coming weeks and months.
From the moment when the Maastricht Treaty was dreamed up in the early 1990s to the inception of the euro zone in 1998, Germany had any number of opportunities to kill the project off and indeed, time and again, policymakers in Bonn or Berlin or Frankfurt voiced their reservations in public. The Bundesbank, in particular, with its overwhelming prestige, spoke out forcefully against what it saw as the dangers of premature monetary union.
What message is the CDS market sending us?
By Laurence Copeland. The opinions expressed are his own.
Not many people seem to have noticed, but something almost unthinkable has happened in the Credit Default Swap (CDS) market recently. It is now one point cheaper to insure against a default by Her Majesty’s Government than by the Federal Republic of Germany. Given that only a few months ago, Markit was quoting twice as much to insure against a default on gilts as on bunds, this is a major change – but what is it telling us?
The message is unclear, but my guess is it is not quite the one which Britain’s Chancellor, quite reasonably from his point of view, would have us believe. Yes, the market has faith in our ability and willingness to repay – but that is far from the whole story.
Why is the West bankrupt?
By Laurence Copeland. The opinions expressed are his own.
The UK, USA, the PIIGS (Ireland and Italy are together in the same stye), France is in poor fiscal shape – OK, Germany is ostensibly living within its means, but it looks a lot less solvent when you remember that it has underwritten the rest of the euro zone (in large part, to protect its own irresponsible banks). In any case, as I have argued in previous blogs, this or a future German Government is likely to cave in to the pressure from its own electorate and from inflationist economists at home and abroad to join the party and spend, spend, spend. Only Australia and Canada, riding high on the commodities price boom, and a handful of small countries, look stable.
Where will it all end?
With inflation, almost certainly, but beyond that, it is hard to say. However, there is one prediction I would offer for the medium to long term outcome, and it applies not only to the euro zone, but to Britain and America too – in fact to the whole of the comfortable, complacent industrialised world – and it is this.
