debt crisis – Warren's space

SALT—More press nonsense on tax reform

The elimination of State and Local Tax (SALT) deductions from the proposed tax reforms working their way through Congress has become a hot topic. Fine, but please keep the discussion honest. Sadly my local newspaper, The Washington Post, is not setting a good example: “In-towns-and-cities-nationwide-fears-of-trickle-down-effects-of-federal-tax-legislation”

First a word about tax reform vs tax reduction. We are now in the 9th year of economic recovery, one of the longest on record. It won’t go on forever. Ideally the Federal government’s budget should balance its expenditures and revenue over the business cycle. That allows for aggregate demand stimulating deficits during business downturns. These deficits result from so called automatic stabilizers—the fall in tax revenue from the fall in taxable income plus increased transfer payments to the unemployed. But a cyclically balanced budget also requires budget surpluses during the business expansion phase. The U.S. economy is now fully employed (in fact, unfilled vacancies exceed those looking for work). The Federal Reserve has finally increased inflation to its target rate of 2%. We should now have budget surpluses to make room for the deficits that will follow during the upcoming downturn.

But our fiscal situation is much worse than that. The large increase in “entitlement” expenditures for my greedy generation as we retire (greatly increasing unfunded social security and health benefits) will push our fiscal debt held by the public, now at 77% of our Gross Domestic Product (GDP), to over 150% of GDP within 30 years if current laws remain unchanged. See the figure below.

Taxes will either need to be increased (not reduced) or entitlement expenditures reduced (which means increased less than current law provides). My point is that reducing tax revenue at this time is irresponsible without at least matching expenditure cuts. The proposed tax reforms now in congress would increase the debt by $1,500 billion dollars over the next ten years on a static forecast basis, meaning without taking into account the increased growth and thus tax revenue that might result from the tax reforms, which no one expects to wipe out all of the static forecast of $1,500 billion.

Congressional Budget Office forecasts

While it is irresponsible to cut tax revenue at this time, it is highly desirable to reform how that revenue is raised. The existing taxes distort the economy and thus reduce our incomes in a number of ways. They grant favors to many special interest groups via allowing them to deduct specific expenditures from their taxable incomes (i.e. from the tax base). These so called tax subsidies encourage activities over what the private economy would otherwise under take. One very damaging example is the deduction of interest payments by businesses and individuals, which has encouraged excessive borrowing and indebtedness. The most popular of these is the mortgage interest deduction by homeowners. This tax subsidy benefits homeowners relative to renters, i.e. it benefits the wealthier at the expense of the poor. How well meaning middle and upper income American’s can justify this with a straight face is beyond me.

But what about the SALT deductions? By eliminating such deductions, i.e. by broadening the tax base, the same revenue can be raised with a lower tax rate. Other things equal (such as revenue), lower tax rates are good because they influence taxpayer decisions less. For example, companies are more likely to invest in the U.S. rather than abroad if the corporate tax rate is reduced from its current 35%, virtually the highest in the world, to 20%, which is closer to the rate in most developed countries.

Reducing tax subsidies to state and local governments is also good because it reduces an artificial encouragement for larger state and local government expenditures. If Californians are willing to pay more state taxes for larger state expenditures they are welcome to do so. But there can be no justification for transferring federal tax revenue from states with lower expenditures and matching taxes to California and other high spending states. To a large extent the existing SALT deductions transfer income from poorer states to wealthier ones. Who can support that with a straight face?

How information is presented can have a significant effect on how it is understood or viewed. How did Renae Merle and Peter Jamison of The Washington Post (see link above) report the proposed elimination of the SALT deduction? They reported that, “In San Diego County, the elimination of what is commonly called the “SALT” deduction could affect about a third of households, said Greg Cox, a member of the board of supervisors. The average middle-income resident would lose a $16,000 deduction.” They failed to note that the third of households affected are the wealthiest third. According to CNBC: “More than half of taxpayers who are earning $75,000 and above claim SALT deductions on their federal income tax returns as do more than 90 percent of taxpayers who make $200,000 or more.”

Furthermore, the figure $16,000 is misleading in two respects. The loss of a $16,000 deduction would increase taxes for a single person earning $200,000 annually by $5,280 at the current tax rate of 33%. However, broadening the tax base by eliminating the SALT and other deductions allows raising the same revenue with a lower tax rate. To measure the actual tax impact both effects must be combined. Current congressional proposals are to reduce the rate for the above person to 25%, which would result in an increased tax of $4,000. None of this would affect the poor directly. I assume that Renae Merle and Peter Jamison were just careless rather than letting their biases get the best of them, but you can make your own judgment.

The SALT deduction cannot be justified on either economic or fairness grounds, but there is sadly a good chance congress will cave in to the pressure from the wealthier states to keep it or at least some of it.

A Modest Proposal—Helicopter Money and Pension Reform

It is possible to fix the bankrupt Social Security System and the Federal Reserve’s failure to achieve its inflation target painlessly. Yes, really.

The Fed has failed to raise inflation to its 2% target because over regulated banks can’t find over regulated firms wanting to borrow and invest. As a result, the increases in the Fed’s base money from its Quantitative Easing and other efforts to stimulate the economy has piled up as bank excess reserve deposits at the Federal Reserve Banks.[1] If the Fed pushes too hard (e.g., by lowering the interest it pays on these bank reserves, potentially even to negative levels) it feeds asset price bubbles (stock and housing prices), which do great damage when they burst.[2] If the Fed just printed more money and sprinkled it around to the general public—what Milton Friedman called helicopter money—there is no doubt that the public would spend more and drive up prices.

Leaving aside whether it is really a good idea to create a steady 2% rate of inflation, there is an easy way of doing it that would also facilitate badly needed reform of the government’s retirement system. Contrary to the myth that our Social Security pensions reflect what we paid in (saved) to the system, Social Security pension payments are now fully pay as you go. This means that the revenue from payroll taxes approximately matches the outflow for current pensions, i.e. nothing is being saved for the future. As our population continues to age and the number of retired pensioners increases relative to the shrinking number of workers paying into the system, the modest amounts that have been accumulated in the Social Security “Trust Fund” will be drawn down to zero in about 15 years at which time the government will not be able to meet existing promises.[3]

The following proposal combines helicopter money sufficient to bring the inflation rate to its target with badly needed reform of our government pension system. Under this proposal all individuals will receive a minimum government guaranteed pension for life whether they paid in anything or not. This might be implemented as part of a Friedman like negative income tax and other badly needed tax reforms,[4] or stand alone. Before retirement, individuals who are working but with incomes below the poverty level (to be politically established) will not pay a wage tax as they do now. The subsequent pensions of such people will be paid with helicopter money (the Federal Reserve will print the money to buy government bonds sufficient to finance these expenditures). All workers with incomes above the poverty level will be required (as they are now) to set aside the amount of income needed to finance their minimum guaranteed pension on a fully funded basis. They are free to save more if they would like a higher pension. The funds set aside must be invested in government licensed and approved private pension funds chosen by each worker rather than in the almost fictitious Social Security Trust Fund.

This would establish the three pillars of good pension policy proposed by the World Bank in 1998: a means tested minimum pension financed by the government’s general revenue, a mandatory minimum pension paid for and privately invested by all working individuals, and additional, optional, supplemental retirement saving privately invested. Such a model was first adopted in Chile over 35 years ago with great success. Central and Eastern European countries have adopted similar models as part of their transition from centrally planned to market based economies. Financing income subsidies to the poor from general revenues (via printing money), and a user fee approach to mandatory saving (mandatory saving matched to the actuarial value of the pension received), conforms more closely to the principles of good tax policy.[5] The alternative sometimes proposed of raising the income cap on the payroll tax is closer to general revenue financing (if the government guaranteed minimum is only paid to the poor), but leaves out non-wage income and thus fails the good tax criteria.

As new workers would be truly saving for retirement, their savings would not be available to finance those currently retired, as is now the case with our pay as you go system. Thus transitional arrangements will be needed (for several decades) to deal with existing unfunded promises. If the promises remain unchanged, the money to pay for them will have to come from somewhere (higher taxes or reduced defense or other expenditures). Usually, in such cases the government spreads the burden around (burden sharing). Two simple and sensible changes to the current promises would absorb the greater part of the shortfall. The first is to adjust the pensionable retirement age to the fact that the average person lives much longer than when the current retirement ages were fixed. People are living longer and can (and most would like to and do) work longer. The other is to change the index to people’s pensions from a wage index (which generally increases pensions in real terms over time) to the cost of living (CPI), which would preserve their real value against any inflation over time.

For today, this means that the wage tax on the poor would be abolished and paid for with new Fed money that would thus be put in the hands of those who would spend it, increasing employment (though we are really at full employment now) and/or wages and prices. It would both raise inflation a bit and launch a genuine, long over due pension reform.

[1] “US Monetary Policy–QE3” Cayman Financial Review, January 2013

[2] “The D E Fs of the Financial Markets Crisis” CATO Institute, September 26, 2008.

[3] https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/saving-social-security/

[4] http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/2009/07/07/US-federal-tax-policy/

[5] http://www.compasscayman.com/cfr/2013/07/12/The-principles-of-tax-reform/

The Sequester

Everyone agrees that the sequester, an $85 billion cut from the planned increase for this fiscal year, applied across the board within the broad categories of Defense ($42.5 billion) and non defense discretionary ($42.5 billion) is the worst way to allocate cuts. This is apparently why President Obama proposed it as a sort of poison pill. (See Bob Woodward: bob-woodward-obamas-sequester-deal-changer/). Indeed it is. Little else is clear about the sequester. It is worth clarifying the facts and context of the size of the cuts and their distribution after a quick review of how we got here.

Background

Republicans want to bring federal government spending down to traditional levels, which can be fully financed with existing taxes, while Democrats want to raise taxes to finance a larger government (currently at 24.3 percent of GDP reflecting, in part, great recession related factors, and averaging 19.8 percent from 1960 to 2007). Many efforts have been made to forge a compromise package that would be accepted by both the Republic majority House and the Democrat majority Senate. So far, none has succeeded.

Three years ago President Obama established a bipartisan budget reform commission—Bowles-Simpson commission, which in December 2010 recommended spending cuts and tax increases that would slow down the ballooning of debt over the next ten years by 4 trillion dollars, 3 trillion in spending cuts and 1 trillion in tax increases (largely from closing tax loopholes). As the base line projected increase over that period was $10 trillion, the Bowles-Simpson proposals would hold the increase in the debt to $6 trillion. Sorting out what Bowles-Simpson actually proposed became so complicated (e.g., they actually used an eight year period rather than ten and for incomes over $250,000 assumed a return to pre-Bush tax cuts rates) that even President Obama ignored the report. http://www.cbpp.org/cms/index.cfm?fa=view&id=3844

Soon thereafter (January 2011) three Republican and three Democrat Senators, the so-called gang of six, began discussions to find an acceptable compromise, eventually announcing failure in May of that year. Later that same year the Bipartisan Policy Center’s Debt Reduction Task Force co-chaired by Pete V. Domenici, former Republican U.S. Senator from New Mexico, and Alice M. Rivlin, founding director of CBO, former OMB director, and former Vice Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve, made similar recommendations.

On several occasions President Obama and Speaker of the House, Republican John Boehner, were close to a “grand bargain” that included some tax revenue increase and entitlement cuts. Efforts failed when Boehner concluded that he could not obtain enough Republican votes in the House. The President may have had the same problem with his party in the Senate if he had tried to present it to them. Other efforts, such as one led by Vice President Biden, met similar fates.

To avoid the sharp curtailment of government spending that would result from hitting the debt ceiling, preventing any further government borrowing in late 2011, the Budget Control Act of 2011 increased the authorized debt ceiling by $2.3 trillion and cut $841 billion from the projected deficit increase over the next ten years by capping the annual increases in discretionary spending over that period. The caps do not constrain increases in war related expenditures (Afghanistan), natural disasters, or entitlements. It also established as special joint committee of Congress charged with agreeing on an additional $1.2 trillion in deficit reduction over the next ten years with everything on the table (entitlements and defense cuts, tax increases, etc). If this so-called Super Committee was unable to reach an agreement or Congress did not approve it, the same amount would be cut according to the now infamous sequester. (Super Committee Sequestration) The sequester provision was deliberately meant by all sides to be so unpalatable that the Super Committee could not possibly fail to reach a compromise.

However, on November 20, 2011, the co-chairs of the Super Committee stated that “after months of hard work and intense deliberations, we have come to the conclusion today that it will not be possible to make any bipartisan agreement available to the public before the committee’s deadline.”

Two things were scheduled to happen if nothing changed. First, $1.2 trillion of automatic across-the-board spending cuts would kick-in on Oct 1, 2012. Second, the Bush tax cuts would expire for everyone at the end of that year. In addition, the temporary cuts in the payroll tax and the extension of unemployment benefits might not be continued. These three items constituted the infamous fiscal cliff, which was averted at the last-minute by making the Bush tax cuts permanent for everyone except those with incomes above $400,000, indexing the Alternative Minimum Tax and a few other things. The start of the sequester was delayed until January 1, 2013 and then again until March 1. This is a very simplified summary (trust me) of how we got to the sequester.

The Sequester

The sequester does not reduce total spending. Total Federal government’s spending in 2012 was $3,538 billion and planned spending (no actual budget has been approved for three years) for 2013 (which ends September 30) was (before the sequester) $3,796 billion. Reducing this amount by the $85 billion as required by the sequester still leaves an increase of $173 billion, which even after adjusting for inflation is a real increase. http://www.usfederalbudget.us/federal_budget_estimate_vs_actual

The often misleading practice in Washington of referring to reductions in increases as “cuts” is illustrated by the following statement by Sen. Bernard Sanders (I-Vt.), a member of the Budget Committee: “Some of us believe very strongly that it would be absolutely wrong to cut Social Security benefits.” He was referring to the proposal offered by President Obama to John Boehner to shift the index used to increase Social Security benefits over time to one that would increase them more slowly (the chain CPI index, which would preserve the real value of benefits). Senate-democrats-budget-challenges-obama-on-medicare-social-security-cuts

While the sequester does not cut total spending, the way in which it is allocated does cut spending in some areas. Half of the cut comes from Defense, which was already being cut (cuts that actually reduce spending below the previous year) before the sequester. The other half of the cut falls on discretionary spending (sparing the entitlements – social security, Medicaid, etc, and the Department of Veteran’s Affairs). As such non-military discretionary spending is only about 15% of total spending, taking half of the total cut from items that are only 15% of the total is about an 8% cut. These figures apply to this year only. Like this year’s “cuts,” the sequestered spending over the next ten years are to be taken from the ever-increasing base line amounts and thus just slows down the previously planned increases.

The Budget Control Act of 2011 also specified that within the categories identified above, the cuts must be applied across-the-board (i.e. proportionally) to each Budget Account (BA), of which there are 1200, and each of which consolidates a number of programs, projects and activities (PPA). Within each Budget Account, the executive branch of government is responsible for prioritizing the cuts, i.e. for cutting those things least valuable (most wasteful). The government rarely spends money on things that have no value at all (some of my friends will challenge me on this statement), but that is not the correct standard of judgment. The correct standard (in part) is whether the money spent on a valuable project would have produced even more value if spent on something else (whether by the government or the taxpayer).

To review, the President proposed the cross the board cuts to defense and non-defense discretionary spending and Congress accepted the idea in the Budget Control Act of 2011 believing, with the President, that it would never need to be applied. However, we are now there and the cuts must be made. But within the cuts required for each Budget Account, it is the Administration that is responsible for what to cut. Like the CEO of any company faced with limited resources, Department heads are responsible for cutting those activities of least value and preserving those of greatest value.

Smoke

Any cut hurts someone even if it benefits the economy over all. Consider, for example, the loss of four air traffic controllers at the Garden City, Kansas airport. “THE $85 BILLION in across-the-board budget cuts known as sequestration have begun to affect places like Garden City, the Kansas county seat (pop. 26,880) whose airport will lose $318,756 in Federal Aviation Administration funds that pay for four air traffic controllers. As The Post’s Stephanie McCrummen reported, Garden City Regional Airport’s control tower is one of 238 affected by sequestration, which will reduce total FAA spending in fiscal 2013 from about $16.7 billion to $16.1 billion. Small towns are lamenting the potential impact on air safety and local economies.” A Washington Post editorial on March 8 notes that of the two commercial flights that take off and land there each day one already does so when the control tower is closed (Small-town-airports-propped-up-with-200-million). The Post concludes that the $200 million a year the federal government spends to subsidize commercial flights to small lightly used airports is a waste that deserves to end.

A considerable fuss was raised about the Administration’s cutting the White house tours. Was this the least costly cut from the White House or Secret Service budget? I have no idea. The Washington Post editorialized that: “THE DECISION to drop White House tours always had a whiff of what’s known as Washington Monument syndrome. The ham-handed tactic is employed when government is faced with budget cuts and officials go after the services that are most visible and appreciated by the public.” (Reopen-the-white-house-to-tourists) The government could not threaten to close the Washington Monument because it has already been closed for several years for repairs from earthquake damage.

On the other side of the ledger, the Administration’s release of non dangerous illegal immigrants held in federal prisons is more likely a case of doing what the Administration and many others consider the right thing to do anyway and using sequestration as an excuse (the release was weeks before the sequestration). Wasting-money-lives-through-the-detention-of-immigrants

The proposal to cut back on Congressional junkets abroad was made by a columnist, not the administration for obvious reasons. Everyone can find their own favorite wasteful spending. Budget decisions are never easy and resources are always limited so careful prioritization is a normal and essential part of the management of any organization.

Lies

Then there were the claims of cuts that never occurred. Education Secretary Arne Duncan’s false claim of pink slips for teachers earned him 4 Pinocchios (big lie) from The Washington Post’s Fact Checker. And Duncan is one of the good guys: 4-pinocchios-for-arne-duncans-false-claim-of-pink-slips-for-teachers

On March 1 at his press conference President Obama stated: “Starting tomorrow everybody here, all the folks who are cleaning the floors at the Capitol. Now that Congress has left, somebody’s going to be vacuuming and cleaning those floors and throwing out the garbage. They’re going to have less pay. The janitors, the security guards, they just got a pay cut, and they’ve got to figure out how to manage that. That’s real.” But it wasn’t. It also received 4 Pinocchios from the Fact Checker. sequester-spin-obamas-incorrect-claim-of-capitol-janitors-receiving-a-pay-cut

The Congressional janitors seemed to be a particular concern of the administration. Gene Sperling, director of the White House economic council, on ABC News’ “This Week,” March 3, 2013 observed: “You know, those Capitol janitors will not get as much overtime. I’m sure they think less pay, that they’re taking home, does hurt.”

On March 4, White House spokesman Jay Carney observed at his news briefing: “On the issue of the janitors, if you work for an hourly wage and you earn overtime, and you depend on that overtime to make ends meet, it is simply a fact that a reduction in overtime is a reduction in your pay.” But none of this was true and drew 4 more Pinocchios from the Post Fact Checker. Capitol-janitors-making-ends-meet-with-overtime-nope

Though the President already has the responsibility of deciding where to cut within Budget Accounts, Republicans have offered to broaden the range of his discretion to determine what to cut and what to keep. Senator Toomey (R-Penn) reported this to us at the Heritage Foundation the day after his dinner with the President at the Jefferson Hotel. He and Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla) have introduced a bill in the Senate to this effect. The President said no thanks. If you believe that the president has the best interests of the nation at heart, this is a shocking revelation. The President seems to prefer to blame the Republicans for forcing harmful cuts on the nation because after having accepted tax increases on the wealthy they refuse to raise taxes more without some cuts in entitlement programs. This was confirmed in a revealing article by Ezra Klein How-to-fix-sequestration-without-raising-taxes

The way forward

The Budget Act of 1974 requires the president to submit a budget request to Congress on the first Monday in February. He has yet to do so (written March 14^th). His recent step into the leadership role normally played by Presidents on major budget matters is welcomed and will be essential if compromise is to be achieved.

White-house-delay-budget-proposal-infuriates-republicans. For the first time in three years the Senate is on the way to adopting a budget as well. Given the budget already passed by the House (the Ryan budget), for the first time in several years the two chambers will have written proposals to negotiate, and hopefully reconcile, with each other.

Most Republicans don’t want to raise taxes or cut defense. Most Democrats don’t want to touch entitlements. Most everyone accepts that the current path is not sustainable. “Sen. Mark R. Warner (D-Va.) argued — to the “consternation” of people “on my side,” he said — that Democrats will have to do more to prevent Social Security and Medicare from bankrupting the nation as the population ages. I share the belief of even my most progressive colleagues that Medicare and Social Security are among the greatest programs ever implemented. But I also believe that the basic math around them doesn’t work anymore,” Warner said. The longer we put off this inevitable math problem,” he said, “the longer we fail to come up with a way to make sure that the promise of Medicare and Social Security is not just there for current seniors but for those 30 years out.” (in the previously cited Post article). Demographics alone will dramatically increase Social Security, Medicaid and Medicare spending even if benefits for each person are not increased as the ratio of old and retire people to working people increases dramatically over the next thirty. Increasing immigration, reducing benefits and increasing tax revenue are the only things that can help. Both sides will need to compromise.

My preference is to cut the Defense department a bit more and “cut” entitlements a lot (which would have little to no effect for a number of years but is critical for the future), and modestly increase the State Department and infrastructure repair spending. Medicare and Medicaid will be more difficult because they require structural changes that actually reduce the cost of medical care, not just arbitrary cuts that must be made up by paying customers picking up other peoples’ bills. Social Security is much easer to fix: Saving Social Security

There are many reasons for reducing the size of our government. Keep-it-lean, How-to-measure-the-size-of-government.

Whether it increases tax revenue or not our tax system needs major overhaul: “US Federal Tax Policy”. At a minimum personal income tax loopholes (deductions) should all be closed and if the corporate income tax can’t be eliminated yet, its rate should be lowered to the levels found in Europe.

But Obama won the last election. I will not get what I want. Republicans will also have to compromise. The battle should be fought over spending. The question should be what government programs and at what level are we willing to pay for with our tax revenue. Some tax increases and spending cuts have already been adopted. More are needed. It is time for Congress and the Executive to get back to their jobs of evaluating priorities and trade offs and develop and adopt a real budget. Hopefully this time they will succeed. Much depends on it.

Our Government, or Lack There Of

Some of you thought my recent complaints against uncompromising Republicans toward the fiscal cliff were somewhat one sided. It takes two to tango in the compromise game, of course. I would like to suggest a structural change in the U.S. budgetary rules that I think will help reduce our deficits and our debt while at the same time making government more effective. It shifts the focus of the debt reduction discussion from taxation to expenditures, which is the side of the equation on which the Democrats have been irresponsible and uncompromising. The Democrat controlled Senate has not even passed our government’s budget for the last three years.

The subject of taxation divides into its structure (what is taxed and how the burden is shared among the population—these are issues of fairness and the economic consequences), and its level (how much revenue is raised). Getting the structure right is very important for economic growth and for public acceptance of and cooperation with paying the taxes chosen. My views on taxation were reviewed four years ago: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2008/09/06/how-to-measure-the-size-of-government/ and more extensively almost 40 years ago: http://works.bepress.com/warren_coats/29/.

My proposal, which is really a bit of left over unfinished business from the Reagan administration, is that the level of tax revenue should be set to pay for all of government’s expenditures over the business cycle. Deficits would be allowed during recessions (the so called automatic stabilizers), which would have to be paid for with surpluses during booms. I would like to see a constitutional amendment that imposes this requirement in place of legislated debt ceilings. If the public really wants more government spending, taxes will need to be raised to pay for it.

The focus on taxation, and the refusal of many Republicans to raise them, has been very counterproductive. The Republicans have done a terrible job of making the case for smaller government and I blame a lot of that on their emphasis on taxes rather than spending. If we insist that Obama’s spending programs must be financed by tax revenue rather than borrowing (except for automatic stabilizers during recessions – e.g., increases in unemployment insurance and the natural fall in tax revenue when incomes fall), people would start focusing on the fact that they will have to pay for these expenditures. It would make fighting for more restrained spending easier.

The government (federal, state and local) should be involved in some areas of our lives, but we should make the case for such involvements carefully because the nature of government, if not firmly and continuously resisted, is to keep growing. The defense industry in the United States is large and powerful. It has an obvious profit interest in seeing the government’s defense expenditures increase and it has the economic means to help influence such an outcome. The taxpayers’ representatives in government need the counter pressure those taxpayers can provide to evaluate defense spending and all other government programs carefully and to apply rigorous cost benefit analysis to every proposal.

Even then, it is well known in public choice literature that it is difficult for the diverse and defused public interest of taxpayers to dominate over the individual special interests of bankers, pharmaceuticals, farmers, teachers unions, etc. If these special interests are able to gain special favors from the government (e.g., farm subsidies) they benefit greatly but the cost is spread widely over all taxpayers. These forces push government to grow into activities that can harm the economic efficiency and growth that benefits us all. But they also invariably push and ultimately cross the boundaries of honest advocacy into blatant corruption. I expounded on this dangers in (at least) two earlier blogs:

https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2009/12/23/keep-it-lean/ and http://dailycaller.com/2011/01/17/ikes-farewell-address-fifty-years-on/

Liberal (in the classical meaning defined by John Stewart Mill) and democratic societies are the exception in history. They are not easily defended.

“The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.”

Happy New Year.

Has the ECB provided the missing piece to resolve the EU debt crisis?

On September 6, Mario Draghi, president of the European Central Bank (ECB), announced that the ECB would engage in unlimited secondary market purchases of government bonds of member countries adhering to the policy conditions agreed to with the IMF and EU (and thus qualified to borrow from the European Financial Stabilization Fund – EFSF – or the European Stabilization Mechanism – ESM) to the extent needed to promote the efficient transmission of monetary policy throughout the Euro area. The over all liquidity impact of such purchases will be sterilized (offset by the sale of some other ECB assets), as needed, in order to preserve the ECB’s inflation objective of an inflation rate below but near 2% over the next two years. What does this add to the existing European tool kit and is it enough to resolve the EU debt crisis?

All responsible government officials recognize and accept that in the long run nations, like individuals, must live within their means (pay fully for what they consume). Their standard of living will depend on what they are able to produce (productivity). Eliminating government deficits requires reducing government spending and/or increasing its tax revenue. Increasing the sustainable standard of living of its people (the level of consumption they can fully pay for with what they produce) requires liberalizing restrictions on labor and product markets and investment that will increase the productivity and thus output of workers and businesses. The debate is primarily over the optimal pace of introducing the measures needed to balance budgets and increase productivity and competitiveness. This matters in that it takes time for the economy to adjust to reforms before it enjoys the benefits of more rapid growth. In the interim continuing but declining deficits must be financed either in the market (if market lenders have confidence in the effectiveness of the measures being taken), or by the IMF/EU/ECB until market confidence can be established.

I have elaborated these points in earlier blogs: “European debt crisis: causes and cures”; “Saving Italy and the euro”; “Buying time for Italy”; and “Saving Greece-Austerity and/or Growth”.

Throughout the crisis Germany has demanded that Greece and other over indebted and uncompetitive countries undertake the needed corrective measures before being granted the financing needed for the transition back to normal market borrowing. Events have proven Germany to be right as earlier “bailout” commitments have led to a suspension or slow down in policy reforms thus prolonging recovery. For the same reason Germany has vigorously opposed (correctly in my view) the adoption of Eurobonds, which would allow Greece and others to borrow at the same interest rate as Germany and all other EU members. The moral hazard of bad fiscal behavior when market discipline of over borrowing is removed is a real and serious issue.

On the other hand, Germany is also pushing for Fiscal Union in order to gain better EU wide control over excessive national deficits. This may or may not be a good idea for Europe (I have my doubts) but it is certainly not, contrary to much opinion, essential for the viability of the Euro. The idea behind the German push for Fiscal Union stems from the markets’ failure to properly price the risk of lending to Greece, Portugal and some other overly indebted countries and Germany’s belief that the only way it can protect its tax payers from supporting inflated living standards to the South is by gaining control over their governments’ expenditures. Until the last few years, the governments of Greece and Portugal could borrow in the market at interest rates very close to the rates paid by the German government, which by the way has borrowed quite a lot itself (the ratio of German government debt to its GDP is currently above 81%). These governments spent and over promised future benefits recklessly on the (temporary) basis of relatively cheap debt financing in the market.

It is certainly a fair question to ask why the market failed in this regard and over lent to a number of governments that now have difficulty repaying. The expectation that Germany and other Northern EU countries would not allow the profligate southern ones to default made such lending seem risk free and the market priced it accordingly. Fiscal Union and/or EU-wide fiscal rules are one way to limit such excessive borrowing and unfunded future promises. Improved market discipline of borrowing via more accurate risk premiums on market lending is another, and in my opinion, superior approach. Greece’s orderly default (75% haircut) on its publicly held debt and the current crisis have restored a large measure of market discipline to sovereign borrowing. Greece and Portugal do not need to borrow from the market for several more years as long as they implement and adhere to the reforms demanded by the IMF/EU/ECB. However, Spain and Italy closely watch the now far more sensitive interest rates demanded by the market when lending to them. Given the substantial outstanding debt of these countries, those interest rates can make the difference between the success or failure of reform efforts. Ireland, which has successfully, though painfully, implemented all of the conditions of the IMF et al “bailout,” is well on the way to full recovery and is now able to borrow again in the market at reasonable interest rates.

The missing piece in the EU/ECB tool kit to manage the ongoing debt crisis is the availability of sufficient temporary adjustment financing for larger countries such as Spain and Italy should markets loss confidence in one or both of them before their reforms have had time to bear fruit. The resources of the EFSF/ESM, still waiting for the German constitutional court’s approval, are not sufficient to finance stabilization programs with both countries. This leaves markets uneasy and volatile. Market interest rates on ten-year Spanish government bonds have varied this year between under 5% to 7.6%. German government bond rates have varied between 1.24% and 1.85%. Mario Draghi’s commitment of ECB funds to buy short-term sovereign debt (with maturities of up to three years) in secondary markets does not augment the resources available to the EFSF/ESM to finance adjustment programs with the IMF, but by buying such bonds in the secondary market should liquidity in a program country dry up, the ECB should be able to significantly reduce the prospects of what it considers unrealistically high risk premiums for such bonds. The ECB would only buy bonds of countries meeting the conditionality of an IMF supported adjustment program. Outright secondary market purchases are a standard and traditional liquidity management tool for central banks. What is unique in the European context is that open market purchases must be for the bonds of individual countries and the choice of countries matters. It is for others to determine whether, as Mr. Draghi claims, the new initiative is consistent with the ECB’s mandate.

This past week I attended a meeting of the Mont Pelerin Society in Prague. Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and a few other free market champions founded the MPS in 1946. Czech President Vaclav Klaus, also an MSP member, hosted this year’s meeting. President Klaus has opposed the Czech Republic’s adoption of the Euro. It has kept its own currency, which the Czech National Bank has managed very well under an “inflation targeting” policy regime. However, Spanish economist Jesus Huerta de Soto spoke at the meeting in defense of the single currency. He favors a return to the gold standard but convincingly argued that the monetary discipline on Spain provided by giving up its own currency to the Euro was a good second best. The key to success or failure of the Euro for the overly indebted countries that use it is whether they reform deeply enough to live within their own means within a few years and to sufficiently improve their competitiveness with the rest of Europe and the rest of the world. Failure to do so will harm the defaulting country far more than it will harm the Euro. I wish them well.

Spain’s Financial Crisis: First Principles

Europe’s debt crisis has many contributing elements: bloated government bureaucracies, unaffordable social welfare programs, and productivity stifling labor and commercial laws. However, none is as central as the condition and behavior of those European banks that overlent to and undercharged many European governments, and whose potential insolvency should one or more European governments default (as Greece has already to some extent) has dominated the EU’s slow, halting approach to dealing with it. Focusing on the case of Spain, the following note illustrates the importance for the future of Europe’s financial markets of resolving the banking sector’s problems properly.

Overview

In some respects the financial and debt situation of Spain is similar to that of the U.S.[1] Its central government debt is less than the U.S.’ and Germany’s (68%, 103%, and 83% respectively). This year its public sector deficit is expected to be 5.9% (8.5% last year), less than the U.S. at 7.6%, but more than Germany’s at 1.3%. Its total debt (public and private) to foreigners (external debt) is less as well (84%, 103%, and 142% respectively). Spain’s housing bubble and subsequent collapse were average. The decline in Spain’s real housing prices from their peak in 2007 of about 20% was about the same as the UK’s and the Euro zone’s and less than in Ireland and the U.S.

To over simplify, what sets Spain apart is a) its lack of competitiveness (its current account deficit with the rest of the world relative to GDP was 9.6% in 2008 and is currently almost 3% while the Euro area as a whole is balanced – i.e., 0); b) the heavy reliance of its banks on borrowed funds (its loan to deposit ratio is about 150% compared with 80% for U.S. banks; and c) its banks’ large exposure to the real estate and construction sectors (56.5% compared to 30% for U.S. banks). In addition, Spanish and European banks in general operate on much less capital than do American banks. Going into the recent financial crisis—2007—the ratio of total European bank assets to capital—i.e., the leverage ratio—averaged around 30, while for American banks it averaged around 13 (i.e. capital gearing ratios of 3.3% and 7.7% respectively).

Spain was confident that it could make sufficient budgetary and policy adjustments to convince markets that it was still safe to lend to while gradually winding down excess spending and liberalizing rigid labor and product markets (its no bailout strategy). But after four years of inadequate measures Spanish voters ousted the Socialist Party and gave the center right party of Mariano Rajoy a solid majority in Parliament with a mandate to move more aggressively. Prime Minister Rajoy’s reform program has been a mixed bag (see “Spain’s Economic Reforms: A Mixed Bag”). The central government’s spending and deficit are falling rapidly, though excessive regional government spending remains a problem. Labor market reform has been quite quick and strong and is already producing improvements in competitiveness. However, Spain has fallen back into recession and unemployment is the highest in Europe at over 24%. (see Rajoy government reform program)

Spain’s Banks

Spain’s primary vulnerability comes from its banks. In fact, a central feature of the European debt crisis is the relatively large exposure of European banks, including German banks, to the sovereign debts of Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Spain, etc. If depositors think that their deposits are at risk, they will move them. If they think all banks in Spain suffer this risk, they will move them out of Spain to other banks that accept Euros. If depositors withdraw their deposits too rapidly (i.e., bank runs) then even solvent, well capitalized banks can have trouble liquidating assets fast enough to fund the withdrawals. The total deposits of Greek banks have fallen from € 245 billion at the end of 2009 to € 175 billion at the end of April 2012. However, Spanish banks’ deposits have not begun to decline until very recently.

Countries limit the risk of deposit runs by explicitly insuring bank deposits up to a limit and/or by standing ready to intervene (bailout) failing banks. In Spain, all deposits are insured up to € 100,000 per depositor. If governments guarantee all deposits as a result of a comment to bail out insolvent banks, deposit insurance is redundant and not needed. Even a full deposit guarantee provides some market discipline of bank behavior if the regulator intervenes promptly when a bank becomes insolvent, because shareholders lose all of their investment in the bank. Market discipline is strengthened further if bank bondholders also incur losses when the assets of an intervened bank are not sufficient to cover their repayment.

The Importance of Bank Capital

Without deposit insurance or government deposit guarantees, their bank’s capital is the primary protection for depositors against the risk of loss. If depositors think that their bank’s capital is too low to cover potential losses, they will move their deposits to safer banks. Unfortunately, the value of a bank’s capital cannot be known with certainty. Economic capital (net worth) is the difference between the value of assets and the value of liabilities. A large share of banks’ assets is loans. The value of a loan is less than its face (book) value if it is not repaid fully or on time. It is impossible to know for sure which loans are “good” and which are doubtful and how doubtful they might be in the future.

Minimizing the risk of deposit runs via capital adequacy consists of three elements:

The level of capital banks are required to hold in normal times (dynamic or cyclically adjusted capital requirements deserve more serious attention) must be sufficient to absorb possible losses. Higher capital requirements provide more deposit protection.
The rules for valuing assets and thus capital must reflect their real value as best as possible. Most bank loans have no secondary market from which to measure their value. Thus bank regulators have established rules of thumb for estimating the probable loss in value for loans that are not performing or are at risk of falling into arrears and potentially defaulting. Banks are required to provision (write down capital) to cover such probable losses. This is the equivalent of “marking to market” the probable value of loans that have no market. Loan valuation and loan loss provisions need to realistically reflect and cover the most likely repayment outcomes.
Depositors must have confidence in the adequacy of the first two measures and the faithfulness with which banks apply them. This is the issue of transparency. The recent deployment of stress tests, when properly explained (especially when undertaken by third parties, such as the IMF), is meant to reduce the uncertainty surrounding the adequacy of measured capital.

The risks to Spanish bank depositors come primarily from three sources:

The potential losses from loans to Spain’s now busted housing and construction markets and from holdings of sovereign debt of Greece are uncertain and have almost certainly been underestimated and under provisioned in the past. Significant exposure to Spanish sovereign debt is now becoming an issue as well. Capital injections are needed just to keep actual capital at currently reported levels. Higher levels of capital are needed to compensate depositors for the uncertainty of the actual level of capital.
The ability of Spain to honor its deposit insurance commitments or its implicit commitments to cover deposits in the event of an intervention are increasingly in doubt because the ability of the Spanish government to borrow additional amounts to cover such commitments is in doubt.
The ability of banks to fund their loans from non-deposit sources or to fund deposit withdrawals even if they are well capitalized are in doubt in current market conditions. This is a liquidity problem, not a solvency problem, and should be handled by the provision of central bank liquidity.

Spanish banks fund a large part of their loans with relatively short-term borrowed money rather than deposits. Access to such funds has become difficult and expensive. From the beginning of central banking, a core function of central banks has been to provide banks with the liquidity they need in such circumstances. The long-established principle is that the central bank should provide illiquid but solvent banks with all the liquidity they need (generally by lending to them against good collateral), but should not lend to insolvent banks (banks lacking sufficient good assets to cover their deposit and other liabilities). The ECB’s three-year Long Term Refinancing Operation is addressing banks’ liquidity problem (#3).

But even without deposit runs (or walks), Spanish and other European banks (especially) need to reduce the extent to which they lend long-term on the basis of short-term borrowed funds. They can only do so by reducing lending until their deposits finance a larger share of it and/or by increasing capital. The bank deleveraging now underway around the world is an important source of reduced bank lending and the slow pace of recovery (see Carmen M. Reinhart & Kenneth S. Rogoff, “This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly”).

Spanish banks were better capitalized than most at the onset of the international financial crisis but more recently have been overwhelmed by the magnitude of the collapse of Spain’s housing and construction markets. The government (previous and current) has taken measures to address banking sector weaknesses but always a bit behind the curve. Seven failing cajas (regional savings banks heavily exposed to real estate) were merged in 2010 to form Bankia making it Spain’s fourth largest bank. In May the bank was largely nationalized (costing the Spanish government around 20 billion Euros to date) and trading of its shares was suspended on May 25, 2012. Deposit insurance was established then raised. Government guarantees of senior bank bond holdings were introduced (October 2008).

As time passed, depositors have only become more concerned about the safety of their deposits. In an effort to finally get ahead of the curve, the authorities have increased the provisions required against weak and doubtful loans and other assets, and initiated third-party stress tests of its banks. The IMF’s recent Financial Sector Stability Assessment found Spain’s large internationally active banks to be well capitalized and able to absorb the new capital strengthening requirements. However, its former savings banks and some of its medium and small private sector banks are more vulnerable and will need capital injections from the government to cover insured or guaranteed deposits. Because of its own financing difficulties, the government of Spain has turned to the EU to backstop its ability to recapitalize (replace capital lost by or potentially lost by defaulting loans) those of its banks with inadequate capital. For this purpose the EU has committed €100 billion.

The Way Forward

Deposit runs on Spanish banks (including the drying up of wholesale funding) can be prevented only by convincing depositors that their money is safe, i.e. that their banks have sufficient capital to cover any losses. This requires honest accounting and full implementation of the indicated provisioning, and adequate capital; or creditable government guarantees.

For the future health of Spanish banks, it is important that Spain’s banking interventions preserve the intended discipline of excessive risk taking that results from imposing losses on shareholders and senior bond holders while honoring its commitments to protect depositors. Thus liquidity support should only be given to solvent banks. Nonperforming loans should be properly provisioned. Banks that are critically undercapitalized and are unable to raise their own capital to required levels within a reasonable period should be intervened. Intervened banks should be resolved according to the least cost principle (least cost to the tax payer). Shareholders and senior bondholders should be wiped out before government money is injected to cover other liabilities. Viable banks should be continued and sold to new owners within a reasonable period of time. Non-viable banks should be wound down (liquidated) paying off all insured or guaranteed depositors with the help of public funds as needed.

In requesting EU financial assistance, Spain is committed to abiding by EU rules on state aid to banks. However, emergency responses to a financial crisis much too often produce the foundation of moral hazard and excessive risk taking that creates the next crises delaying true and long-lasting resolution. More market discipline of risk taking needs to be reintroduced via a sound bank resolution policy. Spain will contribute to the future soundness and vitality of its banking sector and that of all of Europe if it adheres to the above principles as it “cleans up” its financial sector.

[1] The International Monetary Fund’s “Financial Sector Stability Assessment” provides an excellent summary as of May 2012.

Saving Greece: Austerity and/or growth

Econ 101: When discussing Greece’s economic problems public officials and the press regularly toss out the need for “austerity” and/or “growth” as if they were clearly defined and understood concepts. I suspect that they mean quite different things to different people. While it is convenient to summarize complicated policies with single words, it can also stand in the way of understanding what is really meant. So what are the policies needed for Greece’s recovery and what should we call them?

Stocks and flows: For starters we need to distinguish the stock of Greek debt (the existing outstanding amount of previous, unrepaid borrowing) from its annual deficit. Greece’s debt reflects the past history of its annual deficits. Its current and prospective deficits foreshadow the future stock of debt. A full default on Greek debt—wiping it all off—would reduce Greece’s annual interest payments on its debt but beyond that would do nothing to reduce its annual deficit and the build up of its future stock of debt, which eventually would again become unsustainable. So forgiving (defaulting on) all existing Greek debt, by itself, will not resolve Greece’s problems.

Sticking with broad simplifications, Greece has two major economic problems. First, its government spends more than it can pay for without borrowing (the deficit — the flow of new debt). Moreover, like the U.S. and many other governments, it has made commitments to spend in the future (e.g. unfunded pension commitments) that are not yet reflected in its stock of debt or its annual deficits. This must change because it is not sustainable. Lenders will lose confidence in the government’s ability to service its debt and will stop lending. This calls for “austerity”, i.e. eliminating the annual deficit, by some combination of reducing expenditures and increasing tax revenue. I will return later to the distinction between structural and cyclical deficits.

Greece’s second major problem is its low productivity and uncompetitive prices. By themselves these would simply imply a lower standard of living for Greeks. But the average Greek has been spending more than his income by borrowing, giving the temporary illusion of a higher standard of living. To the extent that Greek spending is for foreign produced goods and services and these imports are not fully paid for with Greek exports, they must be paid for by borrowing. This artificial standard of living is obviously not sustainable.

Greece shares the same currency, the Euro, with 22 other European countries (including non members such as Monaco, Kosovo, and the Vatican). If Greeks borrow domestically to pay for imports, Euros will flow out of Greece, tightening liquidity. This should put downward pressure on wages and prices in Greece, which would help restore its competitiveness with the rest of the Euro zone. If Greeks borrow abroad, interest rates on such borrowing should eventually increase to cover the increased default risk. This will discourage Greek borrowing. Greece has reached this point.

Some argue that if Greece had its own currency it could reduce its real wages by devaluing its currency and thus restore external competitiveness. Cutting real wages in this way would be easier, they argue, than cutting nominal wages directly as Greece has just done for government employees. Experience in other countries suggest that devaluing its own currency, if it had one, would set off domestic price increases to offset the loss of real wages unless labor markets were made more competitive. A spiral of devaluations and inflation would likely ensue. Only when real wages can be reduced to competitive levels one way or another can Greece hope to grow out of its current problem.[1] Thus the Greek government is undertaking structural adjustments to liberalize labor and product markets in order to make them more efficient and to make wages and prices more responsive to market conditions.

Some argue that the emphases in Greece should be put on growth. Given the debate in the U.S. between Keynesian and neo classical economist over whether growth requires “stimulus” to increase demand (the Keynesian view) or “structural adjustments” to make labor and product markets more efficient and to encourage investment (the neoclassical view), it is not completely obvious what the proponents of growth in Greece have in mind. Attempting to promote growth with government stimulus to demand is not in the cards, as that would require more government spending and/or lower taxes and thus even larger deficits that no one is willing to finance. The only way for Greece to enjoy a higher standard of living is to undertake structural reforms that will allow the economy to be more productive and its wages and prices to be more competitive with the rest of the world.

So Greece needs to eliminate its deficits (actually run surpluses to reduce its outstanding debt) and liberalize its labor and product markets to establish balance in its external trade. All serious students of the Greek situation agree with this. The policy debate is complicated, however, by the interaction between growth and deficits and the speed with which an economy adjusts to changes.

If the Greek economy grows more rapidly it helps its debt problem in several ways. First, a growing economy generates more tax revenue from the same tax system. This reduces the deficit. It also tends to reduce government expenditures linked to safety net expenditure (e.g. unemployment insurance). This also reduces the deficit. In addition, the capacity of an economy to sustain and service debt is linked to its size. Thus economists look at the ratio of debt to GDP. A more rapidly growing economy tends to reduce the debt/GDP ratio by increasing the denominator.

While Greece must eliminate its deficits, the initial impact of expenditure cuts and higher taxes is to temporarily reduce income and tax revenue. Greece is experiencing this now. Its expenditure cuts have not reduced its deficit as much as expected because the temporary slow down in economic activity as displaced government employees (for example) look for new jobs, has been larger than expected thus reducing tax revenue by more than expected. A reduction in income has the same but opposite effect on the deficit as does an increase in income. This phenomenon is called automatic stabilization. Both Keynesian and neoclassical economists favor allowing such cyclical swings in government deficits and surpluses. But in the long run the government’s structural deficit (its full employment deficit) should be zero or at least smaller than the economy’s long run average growth rate. In Greece’s case it should be in surplus for a number of years to reduce its existing stock of debt.

The positive impact on competitiveness and income of liberalizing labor, services and product markets will also take time to develop. Balancing Greece’s fiscal budget now, before structural reforms have had time to work, would require much larger fiscal corrections (spending cuts and tax increases) than would be needed for long run balance.

This background should help understand and evaluate Greece’s options. Without external financial help (as is now provided by the EU, IMF and ECB), Greece could not adjust its fiscal deficits enough in the short-term to avoid the need to continue borrowing temporarily. Under these circumstances market lenders are likely to charge such a high risk premium to buy Greek sovereign debt to cover the prospects of default that deficits would become worse rather than better. Greece would default (with or without leaving the Euro). If it had defaulted in December 2011, it would have saved 16.3 billion Euros in interest payments on outstanding debt out of total government expenditures of €76.8 billion, but would have had to cut expenditures instantly an additional €6.3 billion to keep it within its tax revenues of €54.2 billion, over a 10% cut in non-interest expenditures instantaneously. This is austerity on steroids. The Greek economy had already stopped growing in 2008 and shrank by 3.3%, 3.5% and 5.0% in 2009, 10, and 11 respectively. The shock of default would surely depress the real economy further than the 2.0% decline currently forecast for 2012, reducing tax revenue further and requiring even larger cuts in spending. This does not take account of the impact of a Greek default on its banks, which hold a significant amount of Greek sovereign debt, and which the government would no longer be in a position to support. Default is no panacea, and this has not taken into account the possible negative effects in Spain and Italy, to name but two other European countries.

The approach taken by the IMF and EU is to agree with Greece on targets for both deficit reduction (austerity) and structural reforms (growth) that aim to restore full balance by 2021 and to finance the declining deficits in the interim at modest interest rates so that Greece does not need to borrow from the market. The program requires the “voluntary” write down of private sector holdings of Greek sovereign debt by about 70%. Greece would reduce its deficit from almost 10% in 2011 to less than 5% in 2012 (a primary surplus – i.e. not including interest on its debt—of 0.2%, raising to a primary surplus of 2.4% in 2013 and 5.0% in 2014). This “austerity” is being supplemented by significant structural reforms. The program is a balance between the pace of austerity and growth. Slower implementation of austerity requires a longer period of IMF/EU financing but with potentially more rapid growth.

Government employment is being reduced by 22% between 2010 and 2015 (150,000 employees). Future pension commitments have been reduced. Inflation has fallen below the Euro area average. However, external competitiveness has improved as the result of wage reductions in Greece rather than improved productivity, i.e. living standards have fallen. In general, labor market and business sector reforms have lagged. Changes in labor laws to allow more flexible wage bargaining and to ease the cost of lay offs are showing positive results. A number of services and professions have been liberalized to subject them to greater competition (cruise ships, highway freight, tourist coaches, regulated professions). The cost of starting new businesses has been reduced (“The new law reduces the number of steps (from 11 to 1), days (from 38 to 1), and cost (by more than 50 percent) required to start a business.”). Nonetheless the slow pace of such reforms is the major weakness of the program. Public acceptance of its changed circumstances and how best to deal with them has not be easy or smooth either.

It is noteworthy that the Greeks work more hours on average than any other European county (2,017 hours per year compared to 1,408 hours a year for Germans). German’s enjoy a higher standard of living because they produce more each hour they work. Greece needs to liberalize its markets to become more productive. Lowering wages will make Greek output more competitive beyond its borders but will not raise the standard of living for Greek workers.

The euro group has stated in its communiqué, “We reiterate our commitment to provide adequate support to Greece during the life of the program and beyond until it has regained market access provided that Greece fully complies with the requirements and objectives of the adjustment program.” The proviso is standard but also reflects Greece’s poor record of honesty and implementation.

IMF financial support is parceled out in quarterly installments contingent on Greece meeting the conditions agreed to for each quarter. This combines the carrot of financial assistance with the stick of close monitoring of Greece’s compliance with the reforms needed for long run success. There are no good options for Greece, but the current agreement between Greece and the IMF/EU seems to hold out the best hope for potential success. It balances austerity and growth. It will not work without public acceptance. Government promises to its public are being and must be broken. The Government needs to convincingly explain that these promises cannot be kept and that a brighter future requires the reforms that have been promised to the IMF/EU/ECB and the increased productivity and growth they should make possible.

Iceland and Ireland are well on their way to recovery from their debt disasters. If Spain and Italy can get and stay ahead of the adjustment and reform curve, and they have new governments committed to doing so, Europe should pull through and be stronger for the experience. But the next few years will be difficult.

[1] Mario Blejer and Guillermo Ortiz, “Latin Lessons”, The Economist February 18, 2012, page 94.

Buying time for Italy

Buying time can be useful if you get something useful with it, otherwise it is a waste of time and money. Italy needs to borrow less domestically to finance its government’s expenditures (reduce its fiscal deficit) and to borrow less abroad to finance its imports in excess of its exports (reduce its trade deficit). The lower interest cost of the IMF and/or EU lending money to the governments of Italy and Spain at German sovereign debt interest rates can buy them time to enact and implement government spending cuts, tax increases, and market reforms that improve productivity and reduce labor costs before they need to borrow in the market at potentially much higher interest rates. Why might the IMF and the EU’s European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) be willing to lend money at German rates when market investors aren’t? That is a good question without a clear answer, though most commentators seem to assume it without much question.

The pay off from the measures Italy needs to implement will take time to materialize. Liberalizing markets takes years to actually improve productivity and exports. Some domestic wage and price deflation will probably be needed as well. Reforms to the tax system take time to produce revenue. Above all it will be difficult for the Italian economy to grow (the essential ingredient of financial sustainability) while the rest of Europe, if not the world, is stagnating. In the interim, Italy’s deficits will remain above the levels expected to result from current reforms in the future (say two to four years down the line). If they cannot be financed at “reasonable” interest rates, Italy will be forced to default on its fiscal debt of about 2 trillion U.S. dollars (of which about $500 billion falls due and needs to be refinanced in 2012). The impact on the banks, pension funds, and others that hold this debt would be devastating beyond our experience.

Thus IMF et al financing can be useful if a) Italy actually enacts and implements now the reforms needed to become viable in the future, and b) if the IMF is more confident that Italy will achieve the desired outcome than are market lenders. Without condition “a”, buying time is a waste of time because Italy would default anyway only somewhat later after running up even more debt. With regard to “b”, it may be that the IMF is better able to assess and enforce Italy’s reforms than the market (the IMF reviews progress every quarter against agreed performance criteria before authorizing the next quarterly tranche of its loan), but it is not obvious that this is so. Market lenders can see any reforms actually undertaken and the result almost as easily as the IMF can. If these measures are credible and convincing, market lenders will reduce their risk premiums for lending to Italy. If so, no funds from the IMF would be needed.

On the other hand, lenders may have become risk averse in the conditions now existing in Europe and the U.S. and world economy. If so, they will demand an interest rate to lend to Italy that is more than the premium needed to cover the expected loss from default. In these conditions IMF/EU financing could make the difference between success or failure. Undermining confidence in the ECB and the purchasing power of the Euro would be bad under all scenarios. While more rapid growth in the supply of Euros as the result of ECB purchases of Italian and Spanish debt might not be expected to be inflationary in today’s depressed economies, the effect on Euro interest rates will depend heavily on public confidence in the ECB’s anti-inflation commitment (i.e. inflationary expectation. See my earlier note on the role of the ECB: https://wcoats.wordpress.com/2011/11/17/saving-italy-and-the-euro/).

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Comments:

Here are some interesting comments from friends on my earlier note on the use of the ECB to buy Italian debt.

Thanks Warren, it is hard to be optimistic that the politicians and technocrats of Europe will stumble on the only thing that will work.

Thought experiments: why do we never see calls for “break up of the $ zone” such as when Puerto Rico got into fiscal troubles (see Stossel and Cal Thomas or recent reforms)? Why don’t El Salvador, Ecuador and Caribbean Islands “leave the $ zone” so they can devalue to prosperity? So far, we have a credible “no bailout policy” so even Harrisburg must go into bankruptcy. In the US $ zone, counter-party risk is still important.

What if: instead of a “euro zone” we had seen 16 countries in the EU unilaterally adopt the DM? The Frankfurt-managed currency would have appreciated sharply in recent years compared to the US $, much like the C$, Aus$, et. al. The adopting countries would then have been in the position of Chile 1981. When pegged to a weak US $ during the Carter years, Chile thought pegging was great. Then, on the first Tuesday of November 1980 the US $ started to appreciate, and Chile found themselves holding the tail of a tiger until they rediscovered the virtues of floating.

If Italy and others are to stay on the “paper-gold standard” of Frankfurt, they will have to reduce real wages (& pensions etc.) the old fashioned way. If that is too painful politically, and if Frankfurt refuses to abandon administration of “paper gold”, then Italy, et. al. must remain the Appalachia of the euro zone.

Why would Cameron want the ECB to monetize euro-zone debts? Is it because more inflation in the euro zone as well as the US will take the pressure off the UK pound?

Jerry [Jordan, former President of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland]

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Warren,

You make a very elegant and compelling case. But I’m not convinced that it will work. The likelihood of the ECB remaining politically independent is slight. And the only way Germany will be able to enforce the kind of austerity it’s promoting will be to invade and occupy these countries’ finance ministries (which has already begun, but without decisive popular support). Just as in the US, the people who need to bear the brunt of a recovery–the largest banks (in this case, the French banks which are the most exposed) and the bond markets–are the least likely to do it, and so hold a near monopoly on the recovery. At some point the people really bearing the brunt—the people least able to do it–may just give up: on the ECB, on the Euro, on the EU. Russia in the 1990s is a case in point. How many European Putins are there waiting in the wings? So long as the US and China and nearly every other power is dealing with this crisis publicly at the other end of a ten foot pole, I find your, and any other positive, outcome, very unlikely at the present moment. Sacred tenets of central banking aside, from where I sit this looks like little else besides beggar thy neighbor. On every level.

Ken [Weisbrode, in Boston]

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Hi Warren,

I don’t have the time these days to read your lengthy blog essays, alas, but I did want to make an admittedly superficial comment or two. I really wish somebody would actually treat a sovereign borrower like an ordinary client some time. These Greek demonstrations are disgusting. Your country doesn’t have money, and you’re insisting that it keep the generous welfare taps wide open. Just where is the budget supposed to get the money to pay you to shut you up? It would be wonderful if the Greek demonstrators were given what they want, the country would default in a few days, and then the banks would take over the bankrupt estate and liquidate it. Not that banks are such wise and nice entities, but I just feel the Greek demonstrators deserve exactly this. It’s the logical consequence of their irrational demands.

Next topic: I’ve never understood the phrase (one that I have translated you saying many a time, I might add) that “of course, interest rates can’t go negative, so central banks are seriously constrained in their ability to loosen the money supply once the rates are down near zero already”. Why can’t they go negative? If the economy is so moribund that banks aren’t lending any more, only fuelling the moribundity further (not that you can fuel moribundity…), why can’t/shouldn’t the central bank loan money to the banks at negative interest in order to kick start lending and economic activity in general? It’s Keynesian deficit spending by other means – monetary instead of fiscal.

Just having a rare moment of economic musing, sorry to bother you with my infantile thoughts. Hope all is well with you, and that you have a good Thanksgiving. Nailya and I will be passing through DC in the next month or so, but literally passing. If plans change and we end up staying a little while, I’ll let you know and perhaps we can get together for a bit of socializing. Nailya’s gotten quite interested in economic and political affairs (she never had been in Russia, because there’s no point in getting excited about something that gets arbitrarily decided by the corrupt suits in the Kremlin without regard for anybody else), so I know she’d make a lively conversationalist.

Steve [Lang, former personal Russian/English translator for Mikhail Khodorkovsky after being the same for me and the IMF]

Saving Italy and the EURO

If Europe and the U.S. can’t focus more on the long run conditions needed for healthy economies, they will never climb out of the short run emergencies they keep creating. Germany deserves credit for trying to do just that.

The fear is that panicky market investors may over price the risk of Italy defaulting on its debt raising interest costs on that debt to levels that Italy cannot afford, thus becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. A sufficiently large European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) that was prepared to lend to Italy (buy its bonds in the market) at more “reasonable” interest rates could give the Italian economy time to recover and grow out of its current problems. The mere existence of such an arrangement and commitment should reassure market investors making it unnecessary for the EFSF to actually buy any Italy debt, or so the thinking goes.

The fact of the matter is that substituting EU/IMF funding for market funding cannot reassure markets nor improve Italy’s long run prospects unless Italy itself takes the measures needed to reduce its government’s deficits and to improve the productivity and competitiveness of its economy. If Italy’s new government is successful in adopting and implementing truly credible measures to achieve these two goals, the market will continue lending with more modest risk premiums and no lending by the IMF or EFSF will be needed. To be sure, it will take time for such measures to take hold and actually improve Italy’s economic growth and improved competitiveness so it will need to continue borrowing from someone for a few more years. And by the way, balanced trade (imports paid for with exports so that no external borrowing is needed) does not require that Southern Europeans acquire Northern European work ethics. It only requires that they live within their means, whether they wish to work a lot or a little.

The European Central Bank (ECB) cannot save Italy by buying its sovereign debt. Those who point to the ECB as the savior of Italy, do so because the ECB can (by twisting or violating its mandate and charter) buy Italian bonds in unlimited amounts now, while the EFSF does not have sufficient funds for that and cannot acquire them soon enough. But once again, none of this will help in the long run unless Italy adopts corrective, market liberalizing measures that improve its economic performance (growth rate and external competitiveness). But leaning on the ECB has a very large risk rarely mentioned (though it is implicit in German reluctance to turn the ECB loose). The moment European markets (North and South) come to believe that the ECB will allow inflation to increase as a by produce of buying Italian bonds or for any other reason, interest rates will rise to reflect the higher expected inflation. Rates will rise not only in Italy, but also in Germany and everywhere else in the Euro zone. This really would be a disaster for the Euro.

Thus there is no substitute, no short cut, to Italy’s taking appropriate measures. Everyone is now so scared that I am optimistic that Italy will actual succeed in doing so. The IMF review of its measures requested by Italy should go a long way toward reducing market uncertainty about any measures taken. Dealing with the short-run in a proper way will make for a brighter future for everyone.

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