Hugo Dixon

The austerity debate misses half the point. It is true that governments, especially in the euro zone, shouldn’t chase an austerity spiral ever downwards. But they can’t just sit on their hands. They must drive even harder for structural reforms.

The last few weeks have witnessed a sea-change in the debate over fiscal austerity. A seminal academic paper by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff, which purported to show that economic growth was impaired if government debt levels exceeded 90 percent of GDP, has been discredited.

Meanwhile, the European Commission has softened its line on the merits of further deep budget cuts in peripheral economies. Spain, for example, looks like it will get until 2016 to bring its deficit down below the European Union’s magic number of 3 percent of GDP. Portugal, Greece, Italy and France are also being shown greater leniency by Brussels. One of the first things Enrico Letta, Italy’s new prime minister, said last week was that country needed to focus on growth not austerity.

The change in attitude didn’t all happen in the past few weeks. The International Monetary Fund, which in the old days used to be considered the high priest of austerity, has been advocating looser policies for a good year. And, as more countries have got sucked into the austerity spiral – slamming on the brakes, which crushes the economy, making it harder to hit budget targets – the folly of continuing with the same policies has been hard to ignore.

It is astonishing to think that it was only in December 2011 that virtually the entire EU, including most countries outside the euro zone, signed up to the German-inspired “fiscal compact” – a misguided treaty which hardwires austerity into governments’ constitutions. It will be interesting to see whether this has any residual role or, like the euro zone’s original growth and stability pact, is viewed as a piece of waste paper.

Greece is not yet out of the woods. But there is a credible path that could lead the country back into the sunlight. That’s the main conclusion of a week I have just spent in the country.

Although the economy will have a terrible 2013, next year should be better. But the outlook is fragile: political crisis could yet rear its ugly head, tax evasion is rife and there’s the risk of external shocks.

Look first at the good news. Antonis Samaras’ coalition government has held together surprisingly well since it came to power last June following a period of political chaos, despite pushing through extremely unpopular measures. Samaras’ centre-right New Democracy party is neck and neck in the opinion polls with the radical left Syriza, the main opposition party. Samaras hasn’t suffered the plunging support of Spain’s Mariano Rajoy or France’s Francois Hollande.

The battle against Grexit – Greece’s exit from the euro – is far from won. Assume Athens is promised its next 44 billion euro tranche of bailout cash and some further debt relief when euro zone finance ministers reconvene on Nov. 26. Even then, the banks will still be hobbled, while another round of austerity is in the works and vested interests are rife.

It will be hard to restore confidence and, without that, there won’t be a return to growth. Meanwhile, without growth, Antonis Samaras’ fragile coalition government will fall. Alexis Tsipras’ radical left SYRIZA movement would then probably take over – plunging the country into a new hot phase of the crisis. What’s more, if investors and consumers fear such a scenario, they won’t start spending – making a continuation of the slump self-fulfilling.

Samaras, who became as prime minister in June, has been better than many feared. His strategy has been to do everything demanded of Greece by the “Troika” – the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund – with the aim of changing the perception that Athens cannot be trusted.

Investors have been obsessed with the notion of “Grexit” – Greece’s exit from the euro. But “Brexit” – Britain’s exit from the European Union – is as likely if not more so. The country has never been at ease with its EU membership. It refused to join its predecessor, the European Economic Community, in 1957; it was then blocked twice from becoming a member by France’s Charles De Gaulle in 1960s; and shortly after it finally entered in 1973, it had a referendum on whether to stay.

The euro crisis has put further pressure on this difficult relationship. David Cameron’s Conservative Party, the governing coalition’s dominant group, delights in pointing out the flaws in the single currency. The party’s eurosceptics feel vindicated because they have long believed that monetary union was only possible with political union.

But “I told you so” is never a good way of endearing oneself to others. What’s more, the idea that greater integration in the euro zone has “remorseless logic” – as Britain’s finance minister, George Osborne, puts it – directly undercuts the country’s national interest. The more the 17 countries in the single currency club together, the more the UK will be left out on the fringe.

Odysseus would recognise the dilemma faced by today’s Greeks as they must choose either the pain of sticking with the euro or the chaos of bringing back the drachma. The Homeric hero had to steer his ship between the six-headed sea monster, Scylla, and the whirlpool, Charybdis. Avoiding both was impossible. Odysseus chose the sea monster, each of whose heads gobbled up a member of his crew. He judged it was not as bad as having the whole ship sucked into the whirlpool.

As Greece heads to the polls on June 17 for the second time in just over a month, none of the options it faces are attractive. The economy has shrunk about 15 percent from its 2008 peak, unemployment stands at 22 percent and further austerity and reform are required as part of the euro zone/IMF bailout. But the lesser of two evils is staying the course.

Some of this misery was inevitable. Greece’s current account and fiscal deficits each reached around 15 percent of GDP in 2008 and 2009, and had to be cut. But successive Greek governments have managed to make the situation worse than it needed to be.

Greece needs to go to the brink. Only then will the people back a government that can pursue the tough programme needed to turn the country around. To get to that point, bailout cash for both the government and the banks probably has to be turned off.

It might be thought that the country is already on the edge of the abyss. This month’s election savaged the two traditional ruling parties which were backing the bailout plan that is keeping the country afloat. Extremists of both right and left gained strength – voters liked their opposition to the plan. But nobody could form a government. Hence, there will be a second election on June 17.

Will this second election express the Greeks’ desire clearly: stick with the programme and stay in the euro; or tear up the plan and bring back the drachma? That is how Greece’s financial backers in the rest of the euro zone, such as Germany, are trying to frame the debate. But the electorate doesn’t yet see the choice as that stark. Roughly three quarters want to stay with the euro but two thirds don’t want the reform-plus-austerity programme.

When euro zone policymakers are asked if there is a Plan B to cope with a Greek exit from the single currency, their typical answer goes something like this: “There’s no such plan. If there were, it would leak, investors would panic and the exit scenario would gather unstoppable momentum.”

Maybe there really is no plan. Or maybe policymakers are just doing a good job of keeping their mouths shut. Hopefully, it is the latter because, since Greece’s election, the chances of Athens quitting the euro have shot up. And unless the rest of the euro zone is well prepared, the knock-on effect will be devastating.

The Greeks have lost their stomach for austerity and the rest of the euro zone has lost its patience with Athens’ broken promises. But unless one side blinks, Greece will be out of the single currency and any deposits left in Greek banks will be converted from euros into cut-price drachmas.

Investors are feeling more optimistic about the euro crisis. So are policymakers. That much was evident last week at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting in Davos. There was much satisfaction over the early performance of the Super Mario Brothers – Mario Draghi, president of the European Central bank, and Mario Monti, Italy’s prime minister. What’s more, a deal may be in the works to build a bigger firewall against contagion, constructed out of commitments from euro zone members and the International Monetary Fund. And it looks like there will be another short-term fix for Greece.

But three bad fairies were lurking at the Davos feast. Spain and France are relatively new problems and Greece is an old one. All three are powerful menaces.

Madrid is staring at a particularly vicious version of the austerity spiral afflicting most of the euro zone. The last government missed its fiscal targets, leaving the country with a budget deficit of 8 percent of GDP in 2011. The programme agreed with the European Union commits Spain to cutting this to 4.4 percent in 2012. Doing so would be hard in good times. Trying to reach this target when GDP is set to shrink by at least 1.5 percent and the unemployment rate is already 23 percent would be nearly suicidal.

Watch Athens more than Standard & Poor’s. The biggest source of immediate trouble for the euro zone could be the one country the ratings agency didn’t examine in a review that led to the downgrade of France and eight other states. Even if the short-term shoals can be navigated, the rest of the zone won’t find it easy to get by Greece.

The points S&P made when stripping France and Austria of their triple-A ratings and knocking two notches off the ratings of the likes of Italy and Spain were valid. It is true, for example, that policymakers can’t agree what to do to solve the euro crisis and that “fiscal austerity alone risks becoming self-defeating.” But these points, as well as the prospect of S&P downgrades, were already in the market.

Meanwhile, what Mario Draghi said last week about “tentative signs of stabilization” is true. The European Central Bank (ECB), over which Draghi presides, is itself partly responsible for that stabilization by virtue of providing 489 billion euros of three-year money to banks just before Christmas. Mario Monti’s promising beginning as Italy’s prime minister is the other main factor. The Super Mario Brothers have got off to a good start.

When confidence in a regime’s permanence is shaken, it can collapse rapidly. The fear or hope of change alters people’s behavior in ways which make that change more likely. This applies to both political regimes such as Hosni Mubarak’s Egypt and economic regimes such as the euro.

Fear that the single currency may break up now risks becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. Banks and investors are beginning to act as if the single currency might fall apart. Politicians and the European Central Bank need to restore belief that the single currency is here to stay. Otherwise, it could unravel pretty fast.

Until a few weeks ago, the idea that the euro wouldn’t survive the current debt crisis was a fringe view. Since the euro summit on Oct. 26-27, it has become a mainstream scenario. So much so that last week risk premiums on the bonds of even triple-A rated countries such as France and Austria rose to record levels, while Spain became the latest country to be sucked into the danger zone.