Opinions & Ideas

Category: Joe Stiglitz

The Euro,  and its threat to the future of Europe

 

euroThe Nobel Prize winning author of “Globalisation and its Discontents” has set his sights on the euro in his latest economic polemic.

He sees the euro as a product of what he calls “neo liberal economics”, which he believes was in the intellectual ascendant in 1992, when the detailed design of the single currency was put in place.

Given that the idea of an Economic and Monetary Union in Europe goes back to the late 1960’s, and that one of the central drivers of the project was a French Socialist, Jacques Delors, this claim is contestable.

The flaws in the design of the euro derive more from poorly thought out compromises between France and Germany, and from wishful thinking, than they do from ideology.

Wishful thinking lay behind the decision to have a single Europe wide money, but to leave the supervision of banks, who create the money in the form of credit, to 17 different national authorities. This happened because Germany wanted a German authority to supervise German banks, and not a Europe wide one.  And it was these poorly supervised German banks who led the way in the mistaken cross border lending to Greece, Spain, Ireland and Portugal.

It is easy to see that mistake now, but the problem at the time was persuading Germany to give up its beloved DM at all, in favour of the euro. The mistake arose from national pride rather than economic ideology.

Obviously, if there was to be a single currency, there had to be common rules for preventing any one country issuing too much of it, and thereby creating inflation and devaluing everyone else’s money. In this case, the mistake was made of assuming that the only risk of this happening was through governments borrowing and spending too much. This lay behind the 3% of GDP limit on government borrowing in the Maastricht Treaty.

But no similar, centrally supervised, limit was placed on private sector money creation through the banks. As we now know, it was cross border private sector credit creation, through banks, that created the problems in Ireland, Spain and Portugal, whereas it was only in Greece that government borrowing was primarily to blame.  Stiglitz argues that this focus on controlling government borrowing, and ignoring private sector banking activity, arose from an ideological bias in favour of the private sector. He has a point.

He also points out that imbalances arising from trade deficits and surpluses within the euro zone were ignored in the original Maastricht rules. Before the crisis, the Irish and Spanish balance of payments deficits, and their counterpart German balance of payments surplus, were signals of the same underlying problem. The excessive private sector borrowing in Ireland and Spain was stimulated by the excess of German savings. Germans were earning more than they were spending, so they sought a return on their money by lending it to the Irish and the Spaniards. The persistence of this imbalance was a warning signal that was ignored. The new EU macroeconomic imbalance procedure belatedly attempts to deal with this, but it remains to be seen whether it will be implemented properly.

More profoundly, Stiglitz argues that, for the euro to work well, there must be a consensus among policy makers in all euro zone countries of what makes an economy grow. That consensus is missing. German and French economic views differ as much now, as they did when the euro was launched.  Germany does not believe that governments should provide fiscal stimulus when there is a down turn, whereas, in France, the political consensus would favour stimulus in almost all affordable circumstances.

Stiglitz, like the French, believes that reducing deficits should not be a priority, when the economy is slowing.  This may be good advice in theory, but there are two difficulties with it.

The first difficulty is that it presupposes that governments will pay for what they spend in bad times, by cutting back in good times. But that is usually politically impossible. This is a practical flaw in Keynesian economics.

The second difficulty concerns a fundamental fact that is not mentioned once in Stigltz’s 350 pages. This is the ageing of the population of all EU countries over the next 40 years. This reduces the ability of EU states to borrow and spend for other things.  The extra costs of pensions and health care for Europe’s ageing population will, if policies remain as they are, mean that the debts of EU governments will rise from around 90% of GDP today, to 400% by 2060. That prospect leaves little room for stimulative borrowing today.

In the 1990’s it was different. Then Europe had a younger population, there was an annual growth rate in world trade that was twice the present one.  There were growth promoting options then that do not exist now, and are not likely to exist in the near future. This limitation is ignored by Stiglitz, who blames everything on the euro.

He argues convincingly that the EU needs greater political integration, if the euro is to be a success. But some of the ideas he canvasses lack political realism, for example a tax on German trade surpluses, and a 15% EU wide income tax on incomes above €250,000 (on top of national income taxes)!

He argues that the euro is, to some extent, now being held together by fear. A currency break up would be so unpredictable that no one wants to try it. But fear is not a healthy basis for European integration. Ultimately a shared European patriotism, and a greater degree mutual trust between euro zone electorates, are needed if these electorates are willingly to put their savings at risk to insure one another against unexpected shocks.

Understandably, as an American and an economist, Stiglitz does not address how this might be done.  That is a task for Europe’s politicians, and so far they have failed to come up with many original ideas.

But if that task is successfully undertaken, the economic rewards for Europe of having its own global currency, and its own system of mutual financial protection for its member states and its banks, could be very great indeed. There are opportunities here, as well as threats, but this book unfortunately only looks at the latter.

Stiglitz might also have given greater weight to the improvements that have been made in the management of the euro in the past three years-in the form of better banking supervision, new bailout funds for states and for banks, and more subtle economic rules.

But this is not enough.

Some of Joseph Stiglitz’s other suggestions- a common bank deposit insurance system, a write off of some Greek debt, and a partial sharing of unemployment insurance costs- should be acted upon. They are needed to ensure that the euro is able to withstand the next economic shock, and should not be postponed until after the German, or any other, General Election.

Book Review for the “Irish Times” Author; Joseph E Stiglitz  Publisher; Allen Lane

SHOULD THE GREEK VOTERS PAY HEED TO AMERICAN ECONOMISTS?

Paul Krugman, in the “New York Times”, urges the Greeks to vote “No” in the referendum next Sunday. So does Joe Stiglitz, in another article in the “Guardian”. Is this serious advice, or an unhelpful extension to Europe of an ongoing American polemic?

Paul Krugman says the Euro was a “terrible mistake” because he claims it failed to insulate the public finances of the states of the euro zone from bubbles in particular countries, like he says the US system does. In fact, the US only does this to a limited extent, and, unlike the EU, it has no general bailout fund  for states.

If I recall things correctly, our present collapse in confidence originated in the United States, in a housing bubble in a small number of US states, that eventually engulfed the whole world! The US system did not prevent that.

Puerto Rico, a US dependency which is in the dollar zone, has got itself into a Greek style debt trap, without the US monetary union, which is much older and stronger than the EU one, being able to prevent it. 

Krugman says that “most of what you hear about Greek profligacy is false”.

He makes this bizarre claim on the basis that Greece has made cuts and tax increases since 2010. He completely ignores the profligacy, poor tax collection, and the debt accumulation, that went on for decades before that, when Greece erected a completely unsustainable pension regime, on the strength of borrowed money.

He says that, since 2010, the Greek economy has collapsed because of “austerity”.
He fails to outline what the Greeks might have used for money since 2010 if, as he seems to advocate, they had continued with their previous “non austere” spending policies. They would not have been able to borrow the difference on commercial markets. Where would they have got the money? Just because a country is in the euro zone it does not mean it can have an unlimited call on the taxes  or loans of other euro members.

While there is more to do, like euro area wide deposit insurance, the EU has remedied many of the initial design flaws in the euro, something Paul Krugman does not acknowledge.

He says that “even harsher austerity is a dead end”, as if cuts and tax increases were all that the EU has been urging unsuccessfully on the Greeks.

Product and labour market reforms, opening up the professions, better tax collection, and privatisations, have been an important part of the recipe urged on Greece by the EU, and these would greatly improve the allocative efficiency of the Greek economy, and promote growth. Greece needs to move its human resources out of unproductive activities, into areas that will earn money from abroad and the EU reforms will assist that.

Another Nobel Prize winning economist, Joe Stiglitz, in his article in  “Guardian” also calls for a “No” vote, but is more extreme.

He claims the euro zone was ”never a democratic project”. He seems to have completely forgotten that the Maastricht Treaty, which created the legal basis for the euro, was approved by the elected parliaments of every state that is currently a member. It was approved in referenda in several countries, including France and Ireland.

Furthermore each of  the Eurogroup of Finance Ministers, who make all the key decisions, represent democratically elected governments.

Greece was not forced to join the euro, in the conditions, and at the time, that it did. This was a free choice of the Greek government.  Now, governments everywhere would sometimes like to repudiate some decisions of their predecessors, but if that luxury is to be afforded it would destroy the basis for credit and inter state relations.

He makes a more substantial point when he says that a good deal of the money, lent to Greece by the taxpayers of other EU countries and the IMF,  has gone to help them pay debts they owe to private creditors. But he fails to point out that, unlike those of Ireland and Portugal, Greece’s private creditors have been obliged to take a haircut.

It is true that the money from the EU has  been used in part to repay banks money they had put into Greek government bonds. Some of these banks were indeed French and German. But some were from outside the euro zone altogether, including from Professor Stiglitz’s own country and from the UK, in one of whose newspapers he is writing.

Back in the 2010/2012 period, thanks the crisis which started after Lehman Brothers went south, there was a legitimate public interest, a public good, in preventing a run on ANY of these banks. 
There remains a justifiable argument, however, that it was unfair that the taxpayers of a few countries should now be bearing a disproportionate share of the cost of this public good, which the whole world has enjoyed.

Yes, the taxpayers of the rest of the euro zone should, in moral terms, bear more of the burden.

But if that is so, so also should the taxpayers of non euro zone countries like the US and the UK, whose banks were also saved when Ireland, Greece and Portugal got help. 
Why should German taxpayers, whose personal incomes have grown more slowly than elsewhere in Europe, and who face substantial extra costs in the near future due to ageing, be the focus of all the wrath?

But then neither Professor Krugman, nor Professor Stiglitz are writing for German, Slovak, Latvian public opinion.

They are writing in journals, published in countries, whose governments are not being asked to write more and more cheques for a Greek Government, that seems to blame everyone else for home grown problems. 

There is, I believe, an argument for a comprehensive debt conference to consider whether the burdens of dealing with the aftermath of the Lehman collapse, have been fairly distributed between the governments of the world.

But the convening of any such conference, and eligibility for any help from it, should be something that might happen five years from now, and be conditional on growth promoting reforms, and budget balancing, already having been fully implemented by governments seeking debt relief from it. Perhaps a Third Party might put such a proposal forward, as a way of getting out of the terrible situation Greece is bringing upon itself.



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