MacroScope

Three big events today which will tell us a lot about the euro zone and its struggle to pull out of economic malaise despite the European Central Bank having removed break-up risk from the table.

1. The European Commission will issue fresh economic forecasts which will presumably illuminate the lack of any sign of recovery outside Germany. Just as starkly, they will show how far off-track the likes of Spain, France and Portugal are from meeting their deficit targets this year. All three have, explicitly or implicitly, admitted as much and expect Brussels to give them more leeway. That looks inevitable (though not until April) but it would be interesting to hear the German view. We’ve already had Slovakia, Austria and Finland crying foul about France getting cut some slack. El Pais claims to have seen the Commission figures and says Spain’s deficit will will come in at 6.7 percent of GDP this year, way above a goal of 4.5 percent. The deficit will stay high at 7.2 percent in 2014, the point so far at which Madrid is supposed to reach the EU ceiling of three percent.

2. Banks get their first chance to repay early some of the second chunk of more than a trillion euros of ultra-cheap three-year money the ECB doled out last year. First time around about 140 billion was repaid, more than expected, indicating that at least parts of the euro zone banking system was returning to health. Another hefty 130 billion euros is forecast for Friday. That throws up some interesting implications. First there is a two-tier banking system in the currency bloc again with banks in the periphery still shut out. Secondly, it means the ECB’s balance sheet is tightening while those of the Federal Reserve and Bank of Japan continue to balloon thanks to furious money printing. The ECB insists there is plenty of excess liquidity left to stop money market rates rising much and a big rise in corporate euro-denominated bond sales helps too. But all else being equal, that should propel the euro yet higher, the last thing a struggling euro zone economy needs.

3. Germany’s Ifo index (and a detailed breakdown of its Q4 GDP) follows a stellar reading for ZEW sentiment and a solid PMI earlier in the week. It all confirms that Germany has bounced back in the first quarter while its euro peers – including France – are doing anything but. The German GDP figures are already out, confirming the economy shrank by 0.6 percent but on the debt front the stats office reported a 0.2 percent budget surplus for the year – the first surplus in five years.   Key ECB policymaker Joerg Asmussen is giving Reuters an interview later, his  colleague Benoit Coeure is speaking in Lisbon and Belgium’s ECB representative, Luc Coene, is out saying the current euro level is no threat to growth prospects (growth prospects?).

Italy’s election denouement approaches. We get the final TV appeals by party leaders tonight before campaigning ends. Centre-left leader Bersani, maverick Grillo and Silvio Berlusconi are holding rallies.

Spain’s plans to revive Bankia with state money and sort out its regions’ finances have well and truly unnerved the markets. It seems that Plan A — to inject state bonds straight into the stricken bank so that it could offer them to the ECB as collateral in return for cash — was roundly rejectd by the European Central Bank, so Madrid rapidly produced a second plan which will involve the government raising yet more money on the bond market, not helpful to its drive to cut debt.

That leaves the impression that Spain is making up policy on the hoof, not something likely to endear it to the markets. That’s particularly unfortunate since it has actually done an awful lot on the austerity and structural reform front over the past two years. But not enough.

It’s not all one-way traffic. Madrid is pressing its insistence that the ECB should be the institution to deliver a decisive message to the markets that the euro is here to stay – presumably by reviving its bond-buying programme (highly unlikely at this stage).

With Spain’s banking system looking ever more parlous and the Damoclean Sword of Greek elections hanging over the financial markets, next week is not going to be for the faint-hearted.

Stock markets have endured another volatile week, rising early on before falling sharply just before the EU summit, then rising the day after – all this when very little changed on the euro zone landscape. Increasingly, the downward moves are sharper than the upward ones and there is little prospect of things settling before the June 17 Greek elections. It seems everyone is so nervous that if they are sitting on a day of gains, they cash them in double-quick.

Page one of the crisis management manual says get all the bad news out quickly. The handling of troubled Spanish lender Bankia has been an abject failure in that respect. First, the government said it would require about 9 billion euros to shore up, a few days on they are looking at 20 billion. One proposal doing the rounds is to create one nationalized bank out of a number of failed lenders. The big question, to borrow heavily from Louis XV, is: Apres Bankia la deluge?

Greeks smashing windows and setting fire to shops and banks in a fury of opposition to yet more austerity is gripping.  But it is hardly unique. A few years ago there were similar scenes for weeks after police shot a 15-year old schoolboy.  And back when I lived there, U.S. President Bill Clinton was treated to a similar welcome -- mainly because of his military assault on Serbia (a fellow Christian Orthodox nation) during the Kosovo conflict.

There are doubtless degrees. The latest level of destruction was the worst since widespread riots in 2008 -- and austerity being imposed on Greeks is very painful. But it is worth noting that there are two underlying elements than make such uprisings more common in Greece than elsewhere.

The first is a division in Greek society that goes back to at least the end of the second world war. The civil war that followed the end of the German occupation was brutal and split the country between those wanting western free market democracy and those favouring Soviet-style communism. This carried though into the 1967-74 junta.

"Will no one rid me of this turbulent central banker?"  Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban may not have voiced this sentiment but since he took power last year he is likely to have thought it more than once.  Increasingly, the spat between Orban's government and central bank governor Andras Simor brings to memory the quarrel England's Henry II had with his Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Becket, over the rights and privileges of the Church almost 900 years ago. Simor stands accused of undermining economic growth by holding interest rates too high and resisting government demands for monetary stimulus.  The government's efforts to sideline Simor are viewed as infringing on the central bank's independence.

So far, attacks on Simor have ranged from alleging he has undisclosed overseas income to stripping him of his power to appoint some central bank board members. But  the government's latest plan could be the last straw -- proposed legislation that would effectively demote Simor or at least seriously dilute his influence. Simor says the government is trying to engineer a total takeover at the central bank.  "The new law brings the final elimination of the central bank's independence dangerously close," he said last week.  
 
The move is ill-timed however, coming exactly at a time when Hungary is trying to persuade the IMF and the European Union to give it billions of euros in aid. The lenders have expressed concern about the law and declined to proceed with the loan talks.  But the government says it will not bow to external pressure and plans to put the law to vote on Friday. That has sparked general indignation - Societe Generale analyst Benoit Anne calls the spat extremely damaging to investor confidence in Hungary. "I just hope the IMF will not let this go," he writes.

Central banks and governments often fail to see eye to eye. But in Hungary, the government's attacks on Simor, a respected figure in central banking and investment circles,  is hastening the downfall of the already fragile economy. For one, if IMF funds fail to come through, Hungary will need to find 4.7 billion euros next year just to repay maturing hard currency debt. That could be tough at a time when lots of borrowers -- developed and emerging -- will be competing for scarce funds.  Central European governments alone will be looking to raise 16 billion euros on bond markets, data from ING shows. So Orban will have to tone down his rhetoric if he is to avoid plunging his country into financial disaster.

Will the euro zone finally act decisively?

Investors are hoping for something big from European leaders at the EU summit on Oct. 23 and of the Group of 20 on Nov. 3. But they also know the 17 nations of the euro have a habit of offering delayed, half-hearted rescues that have cost them credibility.

So there's been a lot of "urging" and "warning" in Brussels lately -- politicians and central bankers have all been demanding Europe act as international alarm grows that its sovereign debt problems may drag the world into recession. "Further delays are only aggravating the situation," said European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet on Tuesday in his last appearance at the European Parliament, before he hands over the post to Mario Draghi on Nov. 1.

A day earlier, Germany's Deputy Finance Minister, Joerg Asmussen, at the parliament to promote his candidacy to join the ECB's board, made his call, saying "cooperation has to be increased," across the euro members, divided as to who should pay to rescue the heavily indebted nations of southern Europe. "I want to see a solution for debt sustainability for Greece," Asmussen said. So do so many others, especially Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou, who in Brussels on Thursday said it was a "crucial element to make the necessary decisions concerning Greece."

In the space of a few weeks, the idea of creating a European Monetary Fund to rescue financially troubled EU member states has gone from being a high-level brainwave from a pair of economists to a major policy initiative backed by powerbroker Germany. In EU terms, that's Formula One fast.

Yet while German Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to be behind the concept, even if she has concerns about a possible need to change the EU's treaty, no one has put much flesh on the bones of the idea apart from the original proponents -- Daniel Gros of the Centre for European Policy Studies and Thomas Mayer, the chief economist of Deutsche Bank.

Gros and Mayer set out their proposal in an academic paper and synthesised it in a column in The Economist last month. In essence the idea -- and it remains to be seen if EU policymakers take it up wholesale or develop something along different lines -- is fairly straightforward.

“I’d be Carrie, I guess, since I like to write,” he told the Finnish newspaper Helsingin Sanomat when asked about which character in the show he most resembles.

In the TV series, the promiscuous Bradshaw searched for true love and its meaning in the contemporary world in her newspaper column.

But while Bradshaw — played by Sarah Jessica Parker — thought her native New York was the centre of world and felt out of place in Paris, Rehn set her straight.  “The world revolves around Mikkeli,” Rehn said, referring to his hometown with a population of 49,000 in southeastern Finland.

The European Central Bank’s President, Jean-Claude Trichet, has torpedoed a request for a new 30 euro banknote, backing up the rejection with ice-cold historical and mathematical reasoning.

European Parliament member and former Irish deputy finance minister Jim Higgins had asked Sharon Bowles, chairwoman of the parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs, whether a 30 euro note could be introduced.

She passed the question on to Trichet, but instead of dismissing the question out of hand, the ECB boss answered the question with a typically analytical approach.

The European Commission has been pretty gloomy about the prospects for European Union economies in recent days. Its latest forecast last week was for the 15 countries of the euro zone to grow by just 0.1 percent next year. For the 27-nation EU as a whole – this time incorporating the likes of Britain, Poland and Sweden – the number was only slightly better at 0.2 percent.  In fact, the Commission said the outlook was bleak. “The horizon,” said Monetary Affairs Commissioner Joaquin Almunia, “is dark.”

Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Centre for European Reform, reckons it may be even darker than the Commission expects. The Commission, he says in an article, has a tendency to be slow to downgrade its forecasts, and much of what it said last week was already looking out of date when released. “The indications of an unprecedented slump in economic activity are multiplying all the time.”

Tilford reckons the forecasts for Germany and Spain — the euro zone’s first and fourth largest economies, respectively – are among the most out of sync. Germany, for example, is seen standing still. But Tilford asks where such strength as even that will come from given the economy’s reliance on exports and a projected dive in global trade volumes. As for Spain, he wonders how a decline in output can be held to the Commission’s minus 0.2 percent with unemployment rising rapidly, industrial production tanking and construction and housing activity collapsing.