MacroScope

A weekend packed with action to reflect on with more to come.

Top of the list was the formation (finally) of an Italian coalition government. Market reaction is likely to be positive, although Italian assets rallied last week, and today’s auction of up to 6 billion euros of five- and 10-year bonds should continue this year’s trend of being snapped up by investors. Italian bond futures have opened about a third of a point higher.

Prime Minister Enrico Letto will seek a vote of confidence in parliament at 1300 GMT, which presumably should go without a hitch. But a coalition with the centre-left and Silvio Berlusconi does not necessarily look like a recipe for smooth government. It is quite possible that the leftward part of the centre-left will find it too hard to stomach, eventually leading to a split. Letta is expected to try to pass at least a few basic reforms quickly including a change to Italy’s much criticised electoral laws and a cut in the size of parliament

As far as the markets are concerned, there shouldn’t be any nerve-jangling economic policy shocks although Letta has said debt-cutting is self-defeating. New economy minister Fabrizio Saccomanni said on Sunday he plans to cut taxes and public spending and lower borrowing costs. The rhetoric may have shifted but the reality for the euro zone’s high debtors is many more years of pain to come. But it’s probably true that more emphasis will now be placed on structural reforms.

German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble meets his Spanish counterpart, Luis de Guindos, in southern Spain and may have some goodies on offer. Last week, he hinted that he would support a joint programme to boost investment in small- and medium-sized companies – the fabled SMEs. Irish premier Enda Kenny will be there prior to flying to Lisbon. The European Central Bank is also looking at how to get credit flowing to smaller companies, although there is some internal wrangling about whether that is the work of a central bank. It’s interesting that Berlin is prepared to act bilaterally and the word is that similar mechanisms could be rolled out elsewhere.

Germany, despite standing firm against rhetoric suggesting the age of austerity is over, also appears content to see Spain and others in the euro zone get a year or two longer to meet their deficit targets. This begs two profound questions. Does this suggest Berlin is loosening up a little as its economic data suggests even it is struggling? And does acting bilaterally denote a loss of faith in the European Commission?

“Reality is sticky.” That was the core of Adam Posen’s message to German policymakers on their home turf, at a recent conference in Berlin.

What did the former UK Monetary Policy Committee member mean? Quite simply, that the types of structural economic changes that Germany has been pushing on the euro zone are not only destructive but also bound to fail, at least if history is any guide.

Posen, who now heads the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, argued Germany’s imposition of austerity on Europe’s battered periphery is the product of an instinctive but misguided fear of an inflation “ghost” that has haunted the country since the hyperinflationary spurt of the Weimar Republic in the 1920s and 1930s. However, Posen offers a convincing account of modern economic history that shows inflation episodes are rather rare events associated with major political and institutional meltdown — and not always around the corner.

We had thought the end-of-week EU summit was going to be a lacklustre affair but things are starting to bubble up.

Ireland announced last night it would issue its first new 10-year bond since it was bailed out in 2010. It sounds like the books on the syndicated issue will open today with dealers predicting strong demand. This is a crucial step in Dublin becoming the success story the euro zone desperately craves. Some European Central Bank policymakers have said the bank’s bond-buying programme could be deployed to help Ireland once it has demonstrated its ability to issue debt in a variety of maturities. Others, notably Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann, appear less keen on the idea.

With yields below four percent (they peaked above 15 percent in 2011) and needing to raise only a few billion in debt this year, it’s not clear that Ireland even needs ECB help to put the bailout behind it, but bond-buying support would certainly seal its exit and also show the ECB’s intent to markets. Further down the line, it will be worth pondering whether Ireland’s journey demonstrates that austerity was the right medicine. Plenty of euro zone policymakers will say so. The interesting question to address would be whether Dublin could have got there faster with more leeway to boost growth and therefore tax revenues.

Italy will continue to cast a long shadow and has clearly opened a chink in the euro zone’s armour. It looks like the best investors can expect is populist Beppe Grillo supporting some measures put forward by a minority, centre-left government but refusing any sort of formal alliance. That sounds like a recipe for the sort of instability that could have investors running a mile. The markets’ best case was for outgoing technocrat prime minister Monti to support the centre-left in coalition, thereby guaranteeing continuation of economic reforms. But he just didn’t get enough votes. Fresh elections are probably the nightmare scenario given the unpredictability of what could result.

The story of the last five months has been the bond-buying safety net cast by the European Central Bank which took the sting out of the currency bloc’s debt crisis. But now it has an Achilles’ Heel. The ECB has stated it will only buy the bonds of a country on certain policy conditions. An unwilling or unstable Italian government may be unable to meet those conditions so in theory the ECB should stand back. But what if the euro zone’s third biggest economy comes under serious market attack? Without ECB support the whole bloc would be thrown back into crisis and yet if it does intervene, some ECB policymakers and German lawmakers will throw their hands up in horror, potentially calling the whole programme in to question.

In other words, until or unless a durable government is formed in Italy which can credibly say and do the right things, the euro zone crisis is back although not yet in the way it was a year ago when break-up looked possible.

For those who thought the euro zone had lost the power to liven things up, today should make you think again.

ITEM 1. The European Central Bank meeting and Mario Draghi’s hour-long press conference to follow. Rarely has a meeting which will deliver no monetary policy change been so pregnant with possibilities.

Draghi, the man tasked with becoming the European bank regulator on top of all his other tasks, will face some searing questioning on his time as Bank of Italy chief and what he knew about the disaster that has befallen the country’s oldest bank, Monte dei Paschi.

We’ve been saying for some time that while the immediate heat may be off the euro zone, therein lies a danger – that policymakers will relax their efforts to remould the bloc into a tougher structure that can withstand future crises, and possibly even allow this crisis to flare back into life.

Exhibit A has been the apparent backsliding on what we thought was a concrete plan to allow the euro zone rescue funds to recapitalize banks directly from next year, thereby removing the onus on highly indebted governments to do so. Over the weekend we got Exhibit B courtesy of a Reuters exclusive.

We reported that the European Central Bank had rejected Ireland’s solution to avoid the crippling cost of servicing money borrowed to rescue its failed banking system – debt servicing would amount to around 3 billion euros a year for the next 10 years. Dublin wanted to convert the promissory note into long-term bonds. The ECB decided last week that that crossed its red line of monetary financing.

Budget statements from Britain and Ireland take top billing today with UK finance minister George Osborne cutting an increasingly lonely figure in policymaking circles as an advocate of cutting your way back to growth. While the economic policy room for manoeuvre is limited this is a huge political moment. With elections due in 2015, a feeling of recovery must be entrenched in the public’s mind well beforehand if the Conservatives are to entertain hopes of governing alone next time. So measures now and in the 2013 budget in the spring are the best opportunity to change the game.

Osborne has already said he is sticking to his austerity plan – and having made it the government’s central policy plank he has little choice although the opposition Labour party have staked out the opposite ground and hopes to capitalise. Even so, Osborne is likely to have to admit that he will miss his debt-cutting targets so that the pain will have to last for longer, well into the latter part of this decade.

As the euro zone has shown, without growth cutting debt is nigh on impossible. Osborne came into government in 2010 saying the austerity drive would be complete by the time of the 2015 election. He is expected to say today that it will stretch to 2018. Labour’s significant opinion poll lead is widely seen as “soft” but it might not be for long.

Another week, another Greek debt deal. Third time’s a charm, EU and Greek politicians assure us. Under the agreement, Greece’s international lenders agreed to reduce Greece’s debt load by 40 billion euros, cutting it to 124 percent of gross domestic product by 2020 through a package of steps.

Marc Chandler, head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman, points out “an under-appreciated twist to the plot”: the Greek deal has potential implications for other bailed out European states like Portugal and Ireland.

European officials adopted a principle of equal treatment under the framework of the EFSF. Essentially, this means that consideration given out to Greece applied to the other countries who receive EFSF assistance, namely Ireland and Portugal.

The Greek standoff continues. The Democratic Left, a junior party in the government’s coalition, could not be swayed and said it would vote against labour reforms demanded by the EU and IMF, so a deal putting Greece’s bailout terms back on track remains elusive.

Just as worryingly, Reuters secured an advance glimpse of the EU/IMF/ECB troika’s report on Greece which showed the debt target of 120 percent of GDP in 2020 will be missed (surprise, surprise) and as things stand will come in at around 136 percent. In other words, more money – up to 30 billion euros –  is going to be needed be that via lower interest rates and longer maturities on loans and/or a writedown on Greek bonds held by the European Central Bank and euro zone governments.

We know the IMF is very keen on the latter, believing that is the only way the numbers can be made to add up. We also know that Germany and others are just as resistant. Other schemes, such as Athens using privatization proceeds to buy back bonds, which has inbuilt leverage since it can do so at a quarter of their face value, may yet come into the mix but don’t alone look like they’ll make enough of a dent in Greece’s debt mountain. Athens looks set to get the extra two years it requested to make the cuts demanded of it, which also falls into the “necessary but insufficient” category.

This morning, we exclusively report that Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy could be about to break another promise by freezing pensions and bringing forward a planned rise in the retirement age.

This latest austerity policy will be political poison at home but will give Madrid more credibility with its euro zone peers since that was one of Brussels’ policy recommendations for the country back in May. We know that at the end of next week the government will unveil its 2013 budget and further structural reforms which all smacks of an attempt to get its retaliation in first so that the euro zone and IMF won’t ask for any more cuts if and when Madrid makes its request for aid.

The pensions shift could well be kept under wraps until regional elections in late October are out of the way. It is less likely that the government can defer a request for help from the euro zone rescue fund, after which the ECB can pile into the secondary market, for that long given some daunting debt refinancing bills falling due at the end of next month.