À ESPERA DA ALEMANHA - 4

O Ministro Alemão das Finanças é muito claro no convite à saída da zona euro dos países incumpridores, confirmando o apontamento que esta manhã coloquei aqui. Palpita-me que um dia este texto se tornará histórico.

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Why Europe’s monetary union faces its biggest crisis
By Wolfgang Schäuble
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Greece has reached a crossroads. For the first time, we in the eurozone are engaged in full surveillance over the fiscal and economic policy of one of the member countries of the European monetary union.
Greece’s case admonishes us to draw lessons for monetary union. My thoughts are in no way directed at the specific measures to stabilise Greece. Nor do they relate to discussions about the need for a form of economic government to provide improved co-ordination on economic policy throughout the European Union. My thinking focuses on making monetary union more resilient to a crisis.
The euro has shown itself to be a reliable anchor of stability in the crisis. It has protected us from intra-European currency turbulence that would otherwise have aggravated the situation in Europe. Nevertheless, we in the monetary union now face a decisive moment. The fallout from the crisis is becoming ever more visible, labour markets in some countries are languishing and government debt almost everywhere is far in excess of permissible deficit limits. There is only one course of action: all eurozone members must return to adherence to the stability and growth pact as rapidly as possible. I underline this message because I have the impression that global financial markets seem to be speaking far more plainly than many of the voices from the political sphere.
Grave structural weaknesses have been revealed in some euro area states – weaknesses that have to be addressed by a long, painful process of adjustment. Economic and fiscal policy surveillance in the eurozone was insufficient to prevent undesirable trends in a timely manner. We must therefore make more decisive use of the instruments available. From now on, a member state with an excessive deficit should not receive EU cohesion funds if it is not making sufficient savings.
It is obvious that the European body of regulations is still incomplete. Monetary union is unprepared for extremely severe situations of the type we are now seeing and that demand a comprehensive intervention to avert greater systemic risks. In the faith that budget surveillance was effective, the disequilibrium today was held to be inconceivable.
If we wish the euro to be strong and stable on a lasting basis – our condition for bringing the DM and its high credibility into the euro fold – we have to be prepared to integrate further in the eurozone. Co-ordination between euro members must be more far-reaching; they must take an active part in each other’s policymaking.
I understand that a great deal of political resistance will have to be surmounted. Nevertheless, I am convinced that from Germany’s perspective, European integration, monetary union and the euro are the only choice. What is decisive is Europeans’ ability to co-operate in partnership to deal with adversities. For the first time, it has become clear that a monetary union member with weak economic fundamentals can quickly lose the confidence of global financial markets in an acute budget crisis. This raises questions about how it would be possible to offer a member state support and simultaneously avert the threat of default when that country is consolidating its finances.
Traditionally these are tasks that the IMF has assumed in many crises, and it has produced strong results. For a member of the monetary union, this approach is not without problems because a central policy area, namely monetary policy, has been pooled. The involvement of the IMF is therefore being hotly debated. It is better for the eurozone member states to forearm themselves for such crises and augment their institutional framework. We could build on experience gained from use of the EU’s facility for medium-term financial aid to non-eurozone member states. In May 2009, the funding was topped up substantially on account of the considerable economic difficulties faced by some central and eastern European member states. This helped curb the consequences of a crisis.
Eurozone members could also be granted emergency liquidity aid from a “European monetary fund” to reduce the risk of defaults. Strict conditions and a prohibitive price tag must be attached so that aid is only drawn in the case of emergencies that present a threat to the financial stability of the whole euro area. This effect should be further reinforced by excluding the country concerned from the decision-making process – aid must be the last resort. Political decisions about aid should be taken in the Eurogroup in agreement with the ECB. Emergency aid could also be coupled on a mandatory basis with stricter sanctions within the framework of budget deficit proceedings. Monetary penalties could be imposed immediately and, once the aid and cooling-off period end, enforced against the member state without any recourse to reclaim the fine. The prospect of emergency aid connected with hard corrective fiscal action would boost the confidence of financial markets, thus preventing a deepening of the crisis and obviating the eurozone members’ need to call upon the IMF in future.
Emergency liquidity aid may never be taken for granted. It must, on principle, still be possible for a state to go bankrupt. Facing an unpleasant reality could be the better option in certain conditions. The monetary union and the euro are best protected if the eurozone remains credible and capable of taking action, even in difficult situations. This necessarily means suspending an unco-operative member state’s voting rights in the Eurogroup. A country whose finances are in disarray must not be allowed to participate in decisions regarding the finances of another euro member. Should a eurozone member ultimately find itself unable to consolidate its budgets or restore its competitiveness, this country should, as a last resort, exit the monetary union while being able to remain a member of the EU.
The voting rights of a eurozone member should furthermore be suspended for one year if infringement proceedings establish that this country intentionally breached European economic and monetary law. The true extent of the Greek budget disaster only became clear when the manipulated statistics were uncovered last autumn. I favour the EU statistical office Eurostat having the right to inspect all public accounts where suspicion of manipulation is substantiated.
Without doubt, it will take a great deal of political willpower to adapt the rules of monetary union speedily to suit the new realities. Yet there is no alternative to monetary union. There are some people who might feel that their scepticism towards the euro has been vindicated. They are overlooking the strengths of Europe and the problems faced in other leading global economic zones.
Greater calm is needed. The euro is the DM’s equal in terms of stability, there is little inflation and financing costs are generally low. The euro is now the second most important reserve and investment currency. A major reason is that financial markets have a great deal of trust in the ECB. To maintain this confidence, the crisis must be surmounted rapidly. This credibility is advantageous to the monetary union in overcoming the financial crisis. If we are successful in putting fiscal policies in the member states back on the right course, the crisis will have brought about a change for the better.
The writer is the German finance minister

PIIGSU

PIIGS, o acrónimo que os britânicos inventaram para, perjurativamente, designarem os países mais endividados e com maiores défices nas suas contas públicas (Portugal, Irlanda, Itália, Grécia e Espanha) tem de ser actualizado, considerando o que já se sabia e anotei aqui, e que continua a ser notícia:

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Unicredit has alerted investors that Britain is at a serious bond market and sterling debacle and faces even more intractable budget woes than Greece.

The Italian-German group, Europe's second largest bank, said Britain's tax structure will make it hard to raise fresh revenue quickly enough to restore confidence in UK public finances.
"I am becoming convinced that Great Britain is the next country that is going to be pummelled by investors," said Kornelius Purps, Unicredit 's fixed income director and a leading analyst in Germany.

Mr Purps said the UK had been cushioned at first by low debt levels but the pace of deterioration has been so extreme that the country can no longer count on market tolerance.
"Britain's AAA-rating is highly at risk. The budget deficit is huge at 13pc of GDP and investors are not happy. The outgoing government is inactive due to the election. There will have to be absolute cuts in public salaries or pay, but nobody is talking about that," he told The Daily Telegraph.
"Sterling is going to fall further over coming months. I am not expecting a crash of the gilts market but we may see a further rise in spreads of 30 to 50 basis points."
Yields on 10-year gilts have already crept up to 4.14pc, compared to 3.94pc for Italian bonds, 3.48pc for French bonds, and 3.19pc for German Bunds, though part of this reflects worries about higher inflation in Britain.
Ian Stannard, currency strategist at BNP Paribas, said markets are fretting over how the UK will cover its deficit following the pause in quantitative easing by the Bank of England. The Bank has absorbed £200bn of debt, more than total Treasury issuance over the last year.

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EMBARAÇADA

Os dois artigos que transcrevi na íntegra aqui e aqui debruçam-se sobre a mesma realidade através de janelas opostas: No primeiro, da autoria de Barry Eichengreen, professor em Berkeley, a situação da Grécia ( e dos outros países que perjurativamente começaram no UK a ser designados por PIIGS : Portugal, Irlanda, Itália, Grécia e Espanha) é comentada como um embaraço que pode obrigar a parir uma boa solução: uma integração política mais avançada na União Europeia. A ideia está longe de ser nova e, muito provavelmente, esteve na mente de quem gizou um cortejo aparentemente ao contrário colocando o carro à frente dos bois. Ainda há dias, Krugman afirmava num artigo que coloquei no Aliás (The Making of a Euromess)

..." the only way out is forward: to make the euro work, Europe needs to move much further toward political union, so that European nations start to function more like American states."

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No outro, Rodney Jefferson comenta no portal da Bloomberg as perspectivas nada risonhas que se colocam ao futuro próximo da libra inglesa e da situação difícil em que se encontram a economia e as finanças britânicas. O Reino Unido, que não se encontra no euro, não terá grandes razões para se rir dos PIIGS uma vez que se encontra em sério risco de lhes vir a fazer companhia. Aliás, há dias transcrevi aqui um outro artigo que advertia os britânicos, por outras razões, dessa forma:

Não se riam!

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Afinal o euro não será assim tão culpado do embaraço da União Europeia quanto alguns o querem culpar.

OUTRO

GREECE NOW, NEXT UK
By Rodney Jefferson

March 1 (Bloomberg) -- While the eyes of the world focus on Greece’s debt crisis, investors in Edinburgh are busy preparing for the U.K. to be next.Turcan Connell, which caters to rich families, expects the pound to lose between 20 percent and 30 percent against the dollar once investors turn their sights on Britain as the government sells a record amount of debt. Sterling slid to a 10- month low versus the U.S. currency today.
“Alarm bells were ringing in Greece for a long time and when it happened, it happened very quickly,” Haig Bathgate, head of strategy at Turcan Connell, said at the company’s offices in the Scottish capital. “The U.K. is in a similar predicament. It could be hit very hard.”
Money managers in Edinburgh, where investment decisions have been made on behalf of insurers, pensioners and the wealthy for two centuries, are maneuvering to protect assets from the U.K. economy as it limps out of its worst recession on record.Bruce Stout, whose Murray International Trust Plc in Edinburgh has doubled over the past five years, said the chance of a plummeting pound are “better than even” and his biggest holdings are in Asia and Latin America. He called sterling a “very vulnerable currency.”U.K. fund managers at Aegon Asset Management and Scottish Widows Investment Partnership, together responsible for more than 30 billion pounds ($45 billion), said in January they are buying companies that do the bulk of their business abroad.
‘Very Dire’
“When there’s a fiscal crisis, the markets tend to punish that country very quickly,” said Bathgate, who is responsible for 560 million pounds. “I don’t think Britain is in nearly as bad a position as Greece. We’ve got a good taxation system, however the position of the economy is very dire.”The U.K.’s budget deficit is roughly the same as Greece’s, both exceeding 12 percent of economic output. Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s said last week they may cut Greece’s credit rating as the five-month-old government struggles to curb spending and control its debt.
Concern that Greece won’t be able to cut its deficit helped send the euro 5.6 percent lower against the dollar this year. The euro today strengthened to a three-month high against the pound, trading above 90 pence.British Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s government in December increased its planned gilt sales for the financial year ending this month to a record 225.1 billion pounds from the 220 billion pounds announced in April. Moody’s Investors Service said in December the U.K. may “test the Aaa boundaries.”
Hung Parliament
Brown must call an election by June and some polls signal that no party will emerge with a clear majority.
The pound fell below $1.50 today for the first time since May last year, taking this year’s decline to 8 percent. A YouGov Plc poll published yesterday showed Brown’s Labour Party only two percentage points behind the opposition Conservatives, the narrowest margin for more than two years.
A so-called hung parliament or signs retail sales and economic growth aren’t recovering as expected might be the catalysts for the pound to accelerate declines, Bathgate said. The Office for National Statistics last week revised up the rate of economic growth for the fourth quarter to 0.3 percent from a previous estimate of 0.1 percent.
“There could be a number of triggers,” he said. “If there’s indecision about how you deal with a problem, that’s when things start to fall apart. We could be in the position where the spotlight turns to the U.K.”
UBS Report
The pound may fall below parity with the euro and drop to the lowest level against the dollar since the mid-1980s should the U.K. cut spending too quickly, Mansoor Mohi-Uddin, chief currency strategist at UBS AG, said in a Feb. 24 report.
Sterling slid to a nine-month nadir against the dollar last week, trading at $1.52. Zurich-based UBS, the world’s second- biggest currency trader, predicted it could fall “quickly back” to $1.05 or below.The pound may come under further pressure with the Bank of England resuming its quantitative-easing program, a process of injecting new money into the economy, within the next three to four months, Bathgate said. Policy maker Adam Posen said Feb. 24 the central bank may expand the 200 billion-pound asset-purchase plan should the economic recovery prove weaker than expected.
“If it comes back then we’re likely to be the only people doing that in the world at that time,” said Bathgate. “My strong view is the government is trying to create inflation and devalue the currency.”Selling Bonds
Bathgate said he sold conventional U.K. government-bond investments at the end of 2008 and only holds index-linked securities because of concern inflation may accelerate.The firm also has reduced holdings in corporate bonds because of the potential “knock-on impact” from a decline in government securities.
The yield on the benchmark 10-year gilt dropped 24 basis points to 4.03 percent last week. The yield on Greek 10-year bonds fell 6 points to 6.39 percent. German bunds, the region’s benchmark debt, declined 18 points to 3.10 percent.Turcan Connell, whose clients typically have at least 5 million pounds to invest, was founded in 1998 and oversees about 1 billion pounds in total. Bathgate is responsible for allocating money to different funds, and half is currently in stocks portfolios with 30 percent in hedge funds and other so- called alternative investments.

UM CAVALO DE TRÓIA EUROPEU

O CAVALO DE TRÓIA EUROPEU

Barry Eichengreen

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A Europa está, inevitavelmente, a avançar para um resgate à Grécia. Vai haver um financiamento de emergência, com condições, e o Governo de Atenas vai ser obrigado a fazer promessas. Isto vai permitir que as autoridades gregas cumpram os compromissos da sua dívida. Os mercados vão acalmar. As consequências de longo-prazo não vão ser agradáveis mas esses problemas ficam para outro dia. Muitos vão afirmar que o erro principal foi deixar a Grécia aderir ao euro. Devia ter ficado claro que o país não estava preparado. As suas políticas orçamentais já estavam fora de controlo quando o país aderiu à união monetária em 2001 e os sindicatos pressionaram o Governo para elevar os salários para níveis europeus, apesar da produtividade ser inferior à europeia. Mas esta resposta é muito simples, já que estes sinais disfuncionais não se limitam à Grécia. A Espanha, com uma taxa de desemprego de 20% e um défice orçamental explosivo, vê na Grécia uma imagem do seu próprio futuro. Ou se não vir, os mercados vêem. Portugal e Itália estão um pouco melhor. Tal como a Grécia, estes países enfrentam drásticas reduções orçamentais. Tal como a Grécia, não podem desvalorizar a moeda para impulsionar as exportações. Tal como a Grécia, enfrentam recessões profundas. Tal como a Grécia, vão sentir-se tentados a pedir ajuda. Tudo isto leva-nos a uma pergunta óbvia: a criação do euro foi um erro? Dado que fui um dos poucos norte-americanos que apoiou a criação de uma moeda única europeia, é legitimo que me perguntem se eu mudei de opinião. A minha resposta é não. A criação do euro não foi um erro mas pode ainda vir a ser. A crise grega mostra que a Europa está apenas a meio caminho da criação de uma união monetária viável. Se continuar nesta direcção, a próxima crise pode fazer com que esta pareça uma brincadeira de crianças. Para completar a sua união monetária é necessário que a Europa crie um mecanismo adequado de financiamento de emergência. Actualmente, os Estados-membros só podem ajudar a Grécia se contornarem as regras, que os impedem de ajudar outros Estados-membros a não ser em casos de desastres naturais ou em circunstâncias alheias ao país. Isto aumenta a incerteza. Quando os líderes europeus prestam ajuda, isso leva a opinião pública e os mercados a pensar que estão a ser desonestos. Se o Tratado de Lisboa está a criar estes problemas, então deve ser alterado. Além disso, a ajuda deve ser dada, não apenas, com condições mas com a existência de um controlo temporário das contas públicas por uma comité de "especialistas" nomeados pela União Europeia. A história diz-nos que as promessas de quem recebe a ajuda não são suficientes. Não há dúvida que os países aos quais se aplicarem estas medidas vão expressar o seu desacordo. Ninguém os obriga a aceitar o dinheiro. Preocupados com o risco moral? Aqui está a vossa solução. Saliento ainda que este mecanismo de disciplina seria muito mais eficaz que o defunto Pacto de Estabilidade e Crescimento. Podem perguntar: como se sentiriam os californianos se os obrigassem a colocar, temporariamente, o seu défice orçamental nas mãos de um especialista nomeado pela Administração do Presidente Barack Obama? Provavelmente, não iriam ter problemas com isso. O especialista nomeado não seria um californiano mas um norte-americano. As pessoas iriam entender que ele estava a agir em benefício do Estados e do país. Além disso, iriam sentir-se reconfortadas pelo facto da Califórnia enviar representantes a Washington, D.C., de onde este especialista daria as suas ordens. Os europeus não fazem isto porque, em primeiro lugar, consideram-se gregos ou alemães. Não interferem nas "prerrogativas soberanas" de outros Estado-membro. A Alemanha é, especialmente, relutante, devido às suas memórias da II Guerra Mundial. Mas se a Europa leva a sério a sua união monetária terá que superar o seu passado. Precisa, não apenas, de maiores vínculos económicos mas também políticos. Quem gerir o mecanismo de financiamento de emergência terá que ser extremamente responsável e responder perante um Parlamento Europeu forte. Os votantes da chanceler alemã Angela Merkel detestam os resgates financeiros porque sabem que são eles que o vão pagar. Detestam qualquer coisa que soe a integração política europeia. Mas, nesta crise, a Alemanha não está isenta de responsabilidades. Exigiu um banco central extraordinariamente independente e autónomo que hoje aplica uma política monetária demasiado rígida, que agrava os problemas do PIIGS (Portugal, Irlanda, Itália, Grécia e Espanha). O enorme excedente da conta corrente alemã agrava ainda mais os seus problemas. A Alemanha tem feito muito pouco em termos de estímulos orçamentais para apoiar a economia europeia. A Alemanha beneficiou enormemente com a criação do euro. Deveria devolver o favor, impulsionado a criação de um mecanismo de crédito de emergência e tornando possível a integração política. Deveria fornecer mais apoio orçamental. E quem está melhor posicionado para exigir um Banco Central Europeu mais responsável? A crise grega poderia ser o "cavalo de Tróia" que leva a Europa a uma integração política mais profunda. Sonhar não custa.

Barry Eichengreen é professor de Economia e Ciência Política na Universidade da Califórnia, Berkeley.