MacroScope

The EU budget summit, which could turn into a marathon as it tries to nail down monies for the next seven years, begins today. With the euro zone repeatedly failing to nail down a Greek deal, the EU would be well advised not to let this negotiation fall apart too. Having said that, there is little sign of great concern in market pricing – presumably the ECB’s pledge to buy government bonds in whatever amount it takes to steady the bloc continues to suppress investor nerves and short sellers.

Net contributors to the budget including Germany, France and Britain want to cut 100 billion euros from the European Commission’s draft budget proposal, but differ over which areas to cut. Meanwhile, the main beneficiaries of EU funding such as Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic oppose cuts. The meeting is intended to lay the groundwork for political agreement on the budget by EU leaders at their final summit of 2012 in December. It will last two days, maybe more and it could well be that no agreement is reached. Officials say only a cut in real terms – for the first time ever – is likely to do the trick.

Back to Greece and prime minister Samaras will meet Eurogroup chief Juncker in Brussels although he is now largely a passive, angry bystander in this process. While Juncker’s assertion in the early hours of Wednesday morning that a deal was only held up by complex technical matters has some truth to it, there is a far deeper split to be closed.

The IMF is determined that the 2020 target date to cut Greece’s debt/GDP ratio to a “sustainable” 120 percent must be adhered to, the euro zone wants an extension to 2022, which would make the numbers far easier to add up. The IMF in turn thinks there may be no alternative to euro zone governments taking a writedown on their Greek loans (OSI), something they refuse to countenance at this point. Both are firmly held positions.

Tuesday’s Eurogroup meeting was told by the experts that they can have 2020 with OSI or they can go for 2022 without OSI but they can’t stick to 2020 without a debt writedown. Something has to give and it could well have been the IMF and its target date had Juncker not tried to railroad Christine Lagarde publicly in that direction at a joint news conference last week.

The “fiscal cliff” is widely seen as a massive threat looming over a fragile U.S. recovery. But with a little imagination, it is not difficult to see how the combination of expiring tax cuts and spending reductions actually presents an opportunity for tilting the budget backdrop in a pro-growth direction, even if political paralysis makes this scenario rather unlikely.

For Steve Blitz, chief economist at ITG in New York, the cliff presents a unique chance for the United States to avoid sinking deeper in the direction of Japan’s growth-challenged economy by shifting incentives away from consumption and towards investment:

If current negotiations end up simply turning the “cliff” into a 10-year slide an opportunity to help the economy regain a dynamic growth path and close the gap with pre-recession trend GDP would, in our view, be lost and raise the odds that, in the coming years, U.S. economic performance looks more like Japan’s. […]

So euro zone finance ministers conferred about Greece and Germany’s Schaeuble came out to declare significant progress although no deal yet. Eurogroup head Jean-Claude Juncker looked forward to a final settlement at the ministers’ face-to-face meeting on Nov. 12.
But a source with no particular axe to grind was much more downbeat, saying there was no real progress with Germany and the IMF at loggerheads over the need for euro zone governments and the ECB to take a haircut on the Greek bonds they hold in order to make the numbers add up.

The IMF is convinced it is the only way, Germany will not countenance it.  So all sides remain far apart and that is without even taking account of a knife-edge parliamentary vote in Athens next week on labour reforms to cut wages and severance payments, which the EU and IMF insist are a key part of a new bailout deal, but which the smallest party in the coalition government has pledged to vote against.

That leaves the two larger parties – New Democracy and PASOK – with a working majority of just nine lawmakers and on a less contentious vote on privatizations on Wednesday, a number of PASOK deputies rebelled.

With hundreds of billions worth of stimulus measures set to expire on Jan. 1, investors are all too aware that the United States is hurtling toward what economists are calling “a fiscal cliff.” It’s just that most seem to think Congress will execute one of its typical last-minute, hairpin turns to avoid plunging the economy over the edge.

As Russ Koesterich, global chief investment strategist at iShares told Reuters recently, “people are worried but they feel some sort of fix will get done.” Certainly the equity and bond markets back him up: the S&P 500 is up a healthy 12.7 percent this year while benchmark 10-year Treasury yields remain pinned beneath 2 percent.

Ethan Harris at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch isn’t so sure. After all, we’re talking about the same group of politicians who nearly forced the United States to default last year and earned it a credit downgrade from S&P in the process. This time, Republicans and Democrats will have just seven weeks to stitch up a deal, and they’ll have to do it while the wounds inflicted by a brutally negative a presidential election campaign are still fresh.

Judging by the heated political rhetoric, you would think there is a great divide in America over the proper role of government. The drama is played out in battles over budgetary policy where one side wants low taxes and small government, and the other favors taxing the rich to pay for government programs.

Interestingly Americans, when faced with making the tough fiscal choices themselves, are remarkably pragmatic.

The Committee for a Responsible Budget since 2010 has invited people to go to its website and figure out how they would cut the U.S. budget debt load, which is fast approaching 100 percent of GDP. They must make specific choices, such as whether to cut farm subsidies or Social Security payments and what tax rates to impose.

There is a groundswell building in the euro zone that austerity drives should be tempered.

France’s Francois Hollande, favourite to take the presidency next month, said last night that  leaders across Europe were awaiting his election to back away from German-led austerity, and even ECB President Mario Draghi called yesterday for a growth pact.

He was rather opaque on how – although he was clear the European Central Bank would not be doing anything more — but his colleague Joerg Asmussen was a little more forthcoming, saying some EU structural funds could be funneled to countries in crisis to boost employment. These sort of ideas are actively part of the mix and could well be enacted at the June EU summit.

The Netherlands has become the latest country to come into the firing line of the euro zone crisis.

The cost of insuring five-year Dutch debt against default jumped to its highest since January as the government’s failure to agree on budget cuts spiraled into a political crisis and cast doubt over its support for future euro zone measures.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte offered to resign on Monday, creating a political vacuum in a country which strongly backed an EU fiscal treaty.

An action-packed weekend with both good and bad news for the euro zone, which may — net — leave its prospects little clearer.

Item 1: The IMF came up with $430 billion in new firepower to contain the euro zone-led world economic crisis, although some of the money will only be delivered by the BRICS once they have more sway at the Fund. Nonetheless, the figure at least matches expectations and could give markets pause for thought. The official line is that it is for non-euro countries caught up in the maelstrom but no one really believes that. If a Spain is teetering, IMF funds will be there. Together with the 500 billion euros rescue fund set up by the euro zone, there is still barely enough to ringfence both Italy and Spain if it came to it. But will it come to it?

Item 2: Socialist Francois Hollande came out top in the first round of the French presidential election and is now a warm favourite to win. Some fear that could weaken the Franco-German motor which must be humming smoothly if further crisis-fighting measures are to be convincing. Others say he is essentially a centrist who, either way, will be constrained by the realities of the euro zone situation. Domestically, his focus on tax rises over spending cuts and a slower timetable for cuts could drive up French borrowing costs. Attempts by Hollande and President Nicola Sarkozy to woo the substantial votes that went to the far right and far left could lead to some nerve-jangling campaigning messages for the markets to swallow in the run-up to the May 6 second round.

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo says he can’t promise to carry his new budget’s 2 percent limit on spending into next year, when he likely will begin gearing up for a re-election campaign that might benefit from a bit of largess.

The spending cap issue arises partly because Cuomo, a Democrat now 15 months into his first term, is considered a 2016 presidential contender. This intensifies scrutiny of his policies and ability to manage New York’s government, long regarded as one of the nation’s most dysfunctional.

Further, the last New York governor to serve a full term, let alone win two more, is former Republican Governor George Pataki. After enacting fiscally restrained budgets in his first two years, the Republican dismayed conservatives by raising spending at more than double the inflation rate in successive budgets.

Big debt test for Italy which will sell 8 billion euros or more of longer-dated bonds. A short-term T-bill sale went okay on Wednesday but a day before, the secondary market reacted negatively to a sale of zero-coupon and inflation-linked bonds, pushing Italian yields higher.

The glut of ECB three-year money has ensured Italian and Spanish auctions have sailed out of the door so far this year but there will be no more largesse from the central bank so be on the look out for signs of that support fading. Analysts expect this sale to go well with Italian banks wading in again.

Euro zone money supply data on Wednesday showed Spanish and Italian banks stocked up on government bonds in February – and that was before the ECB’s second instalment of money creation to the tune of 500 billion euros. So bond sales should be underpinned for some time yet though it is clear that the central bank has bought policymakers time rather than solved the root problems.