MacroScope

In the more than two years that have passed since the start of Europe’s financial crisis, France has consistently aligned itself with Germany in pushing for greater austerity in so-called “peripheral countries” like Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy. German Chancellor Angela Merkel even took the rare and somewhat awkward step of publicly campaigning for French President Nicolas Sarkozy.

But a closer look at the country’s debt profile suggests France may be misjudging its own underlying financial conditions. Even beyond French banks’ considerable exposure to southern European sovereign bonds, analysts say the economic backdrop is remarkably similar to nations that have run into trouble.

Writes Christoph Weil of Commerzbank in a research note:

France has the same problems as the euro periphery. The French economy is struggling with a massive loss of competitiveness and rising unemployment, while the consolidation of government finances is progressing at a sluggish pace.  [...]

The French government has financed spending via ever-higher borrowing. In the 9 years since 2002, the French finance minister has exceeded the deficit limits of the Maastricht Treaty on 6 occasions. As a result, France is now deeply in the red. While sovereign debt was under the 60% of GDP threshold at the beginning of monetary union, it had risen to 85% by the end of 2011.

Oh la la. Or should we say, mamma mia?

Things are  looking a bit unsteady in the euro zone’s economy.  Just ask Olli Rehn, the EU’s top economic official, who warned this week of  “risky imbalances” in 12 of the European Union’s 27 members. And that’s doesn’t include Greece, which is too wobbly for words. 

Rehn is looking longer term, trying to prevent the next crisis. But the here-and-now is just as wobbly. The euro zone’s economy, which generates 16 percent of world output, shrunk at the end of 2011 and most economists expect the 17-nation currency area to wallow in recession this year and contract around 0.4 percent overall. Few would have been able to see it coming at the start of last year, when Europe’s factories were driving a recovery from the 2008-2009 Great Recession. And it shows just how poisonous the sovereign debt saga has become.

Not everyone thinks things are so shaky.  Unicredit’s chief euro zone economist, Marco Valli, is among the few who believe the euro zone will skirt a recession — defined by two consecutive quarters of contraction — in 2012. This year is “bound to witness a gradual but steady improvement in underlying growth momentum,” Valli said, saying the fourth quarter was the low point in the euro zone business cycle.

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.

Anyone worried about Greece and the potential impact of the euro debt crisis on the world economy should have a chat with Jim O'Neill. O'Neill, the head of Goldman Sachs Asset Management ten years ago coined the BRIC acronym to describe the four biggest emerging economies and perhaps understandably, he is not too perturbed by the outcome of the Greek crisis. Speaking at a recent conference, the man who is often called Mr BRIC, pointed out that China's economy is growing by $1 trillion a year  and that means it is adding the equivalent of a Greece every 4 months. And what if the market turns its guns on Italy, a far larger economy than Greece?  Italy's economy was surpassed in size last year by Brazil, another of the BRICs, O'Neill counters, adding:

"How Italy plays out will be important but people should not exaggerate its global importance.  In the next 12 months the four BRICs will create the equivalent of another Italy."

Emerging economies are cooling now after years of turbo-charged growth. But according to O'Neill, even then they are growing enough to allow the global economy to expand at 4-4.5 percent,  a faster clip than much of the past 30 years. Trade data for last year will soon show that Germany for the first time exported more goods to the four BRICs than to neighbouring France, he said.

At the epicenter of Europe’s financial crisis, Greece has taken a lot of heat for setting off the panic that now threatens to engulf the rest of the continent. One common story line is that inefficient Southern European states are dragging down a more industrious North, a theme we have previously questioned on this blog.

A research note from Marc Chandler, head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, highlights the disconnect between a negative perception of Greek workers with actual readings of hours worked from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

We’ll start with the picture, which pretty much tells the story:

Chandler suggests prejudice has gotten in the way of sound economic analysis:

The conventional narrative about the European debt crisis largely accepts the contention that the periphery of Europe have different work habits and these account to a large extent the economic and financial problems. Yet often time the discussion takes on such ethnocentric dimensions that sometimes it is difficult to see what is real.

With Southern Europe getting so much of the blame for the continent’s financial crisis, it is refreshing to see someone highlight the other side of the coin. That’s just what Joshua Rosner, managing director of Graham Fisher & Co., did in testimony on Thursday. Asked to discuss the potential risk to U.S. taxpayers of the ongoing political battle over a frayed monetary union, Fisher began his remarks by debunking the reigning narratives being used to describe the crisis:

To fully assess the risks to the United States and our proper role in the euro zone  crisis it must first be clear what the crisis is and is not. It is not a bailout of the populations of the weaker European economies such as Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Spain, Hungary or Belgium. After all, the populations of those countries are being forced to give up portions of their sovereignty in the name of austerity toward a fiscal union.

Rather, I would contend, it is a bailout of banks in the core countries of Europe, of their stockholders and creditors who, failing to gain sufficient access capital markets, would need to be recapitalized by their host country governments. It is a transfer of losses from banks and corporations onto the backs of ordinary people without requiring any recognition of losses by those banks whose risk management and lending practices created the problem. It is as much a tale of over lending as it is of over borrowing and, just as nobody should feel undue sympathy for those who miscalculated the amount of debt they could service, nobody should feel for those who miscalculated their lending risks.

This time it was going to be different. A make-or-break, comprehensive, grand, “bazooka” solution would draw a line under the euro zone debt crisis.

But the plan agreed by all EU states except Britain to pursue stricter budget rules and a stronger fiscal union did little to soothe bond markets. Ten-year Italian yields rose as far as 6.8 percent, prompting the European Central Bank to intervene in the secondary market, and German Bunds rose more than 100 ticks on the day.

Among the short-falls, the capacity of the euro zone’s bailout fund was capped and it was not granted a banking license. For now, this puts more pressure on the European Central Bank to help contain the crisis by stepping up bond-purchases. The bank however has repeatedly resisted a bigger crisis-fighting role and last week dampened expectations that it could ramp up a program which has tried to keep borrowing costs affordable. The legal basis of a new accord to enforce debt and deficit rules also still needs to be worked out.

By Robert-Jan Bartunek and Robin Emmott

French statesman Charles De Gaulle once famously said “Treaties are like roses and young girls — they last while they last.” Germany seems to have decided that the European Union’s Lisbon Treaty, which only entered into force after a fair amount of upheaval in December 2009, has lost its perfumes and must be reworked to ensure the euro zone’s debt crisis can never be repeated.

European Council President Herman Van Rompuy’s proposal to modify the treaty via a little-known section called protocol 12 has so far been unable to convince German government officials, who warned against a “bad compromise” of small steps or “little tricks.”

Van Rompuy’s sense is that changes to the protocol, which would strengthen legislation to prevent countries running up big budget deficits, could be agreed quickly and send a message to investors that the euro zone is embarking along a path to bring back confidence and resolve its crisis.

Any lingering illusion that the European crisis could be contained to so-called peripheral countries with high debt levels was shattered on Wednesday. German government bonds, which had thus far been seen as a safe-haven, slumped sharply after investors shunned the country’s auction of new 10-year debt.

Germany drew significantly less bids than the amount on offer for its Bunds, with investors deterred by very low yields. There is a growing view the euro zone powerhouse will pay a high price whatever the outcome of the regional debt crisis. If the crisis spirals out of control, some fear that it could reach a magnitude that would hit Germany as well by sending it into a deep recession. On the other hand, any solution to the crisis is likely to involve a higher fiscal bill for Germany.

Marc Ostwald at Monument Securities in London describe the auction as “a complete and utter disaster.” He continued:

One of the more bizarre aspects of the euro zone crisis is that the currency in question -- the euro -- has actually not had that bad a year, certainly against the dollar. Even with Greece on the brink and Italy sending ripples of fear across financial markets, the single currency is still up  1.4 percent against the greenback for the year to date.

There are lots of reasons for this. The dollar is subject to its country's own debt crisis, negligible interest rates and various forms of quantitative easing money printing -- all of which weaken FX demand. There is also some evidence that euro investors are bring their money home, as the super-low yields on 10-year German bonds attest.

Finally -- and this is a bit of a stretch -- some investors reckon that if a hard core euro emerges from the current debacle, it could be a buy. Thanos Papasavvas, head of currency management at Investec Asset Management, says: