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The Nobel Laureate Robert Mundell laid out the conditions under which a single currency could work. Europe didn’t meet those conditions at the time; it still doesn’t. The removal of legal barriers to the movement of workers created a single labor market, but linguistic and cultural differences make American-style labor mobility unachievable.

Moreover, Europe has no way of helping those countries facing severe problems. Consider Spain, which has an unemployment rate of 20% – and more than 40% among young people. It had a fiscal surplus before the crisis; after the crisis, its deficit increased to more than 11% of GDP. But, under European Union rules, Spain must now cut its spending, which will likely exacerbate unemployment. As its economy slows, the improvement in its fiscal position may be minimal.

Some hoped that the Greek tragedy would convince policymakers that the euro cannot succeed without greater cooperation (including fiscal assistance). But Germany (and its Constitutional Court), partly following popular opinion, has opposed giving Greece the help that it needs.

To many, both in and outside of Greece, this stance was peculiar: billions had been spent saving big banks, but evidently saving a country of eleven million people was taboo! It was not even clear that the help Greece needed should be labeled a bailout: while the funds given to financial institutions like AIG were unlikely to be recouped, a loan to Greece at a reasonable interest rate would likely be repaid.

A series of half-offers and vague promises, intended to calm the market, failed. Just as the United States had cobbled together assistance for Mexico 15 years ago by combining help from the International Monetary Fund and the G-7, so, too, the EU put together an assistance program with the IMF. The question was, what conditions would be imposed on Greece? How big would be the adverse impact?

For the EU’s smaller countries, the lesson is clear: if they do not reduce their budget deficits, there is a high risk of a speculative attack, with little hope for adequate assistance from their neighbors, at least not without painful and counterproductive pro-cyclical budgetary restraints. As European countries take these measures, their economies are likely to weaken – with unhappy consequences for the global recovery.

It may be useful to see the euro’s problems from a global perspective. The US has complained about China’s current-account (trade) surpluses; but, as a percentage of GDP, Germany’s surplus is even greater. Assume that the euro was set so that trade in the eurozone as a whole was roughly in balance. In that case, Germany’s surplus means that the rest of Europe is in deficit. And the fact that these countries are importing more than they are exporting contributes to their weak economies.

The US has been complaining about China’s refusal to allow its exchange rate to appreciate relative to the dollar. But the euro system means that Germany’s exchange rate cannot increase relative to other eurozone members. If the exchange rate did increase, Germany would find it more difficult to export, and its economic model, based on strong exports, would face a challenge. At the same time, the rest of Europe would export more, GDP would increase, and unemployment would decrease.

Germany (like China) views its high savings and export prowess as virtues, not vices. But John Maynard Keynes pointed out that surpluses lead to weak global aggregate demand – countries running surpluses exert a “negative externality” on their trading partners. Indeed, Keynes believed that it was surplus countries, far more than deficit countries, that posed a threat to global prosperity; he went so far as to recommend a tax on surplus countries.

The social and economic consequences of the current arrangements should be unacceptable. Those countries whose deficits have soared as a result of the global recession should not be forced into a death spiral – as Argentina was a decade ago.

One proposed solution is for these countries to engineer the equivalent of a devaluation – a uniform decrease in wages. This, I believe, is unachievable, and its distributive consequences are unacceptable. The social tensions would be enormous. It is a fantasy.

There is a second solution: the exit of Germany from the eurozone or the division of the eurozone into two sub-regions. The euro was an interesting experiment, but, like the almost-forgotten exchange-rate mechanism (ERM) that preceded it and fell apart when speculators attacked the British pound in 1992, it lacks the institutional support required to make it work.

There is a third solution, which Europe may come to realize is the most promising for all: implement the institutional reforms, including the necessary fiscal framework, that should have been made when the euro was launched.

It is not too late for Europe to implement these reforms and thus live up to the ideals, based on solidarity, that underlay the euro’s creation. But if Europe cannot do so, then perhaps it is better to admit failure and move on than to extract a high price in unemployment and human suffering in the name of a flawed economic model.

Chronicle of a Currency Crisis Foretold

Martin Feldstein

25-05-2010

Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard, was Chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisors and President of the National Bureau for Economic Research.

CAMBRIDGE – The crisis in Greece and the debt problems in Spain and Portugal have exposed the euro’s inherent flaws.  No amount of financial guarantees – much less rhetorical reassurance – from the European Union can paper them over. After 11 years of smooth sailing since the euro’s creation, the arrangement’s fundamental problems have become glaringly obvious.

The attempt to establish a single currency for 16 separate and quite different countries was bound to fail. The shift to a single currency meant that the individual member countries lost the ability to control monetary policy and interest rates in order to respond to national economic conditions. It also meant that each country’s exchange rate could no longer respond to the cumulative effects of differences in productivity and global demand trends.

In addition, the single currency weakens the market signals that would otherwise warn a country that its fiscal deficits were becoming excessive. And when a country with excessive fiscal deficits needs to raise taxes and cut government spending, as Greece clearly does now, the resulting contraction of GDP and employment cannot be reduced by a devaluation that increases exports and reduces imports.

Why, then, is the United States able to operate with a single currency, despite major differences among its 50 states? There are three key economic conditions – none of which exists in Europe – that allow the diverse US states to operate with a single currency: labor mobility, wage flexibility, and a central fiscal authority.

When the textile and shoe industries in America’s northeastern states died, workers moved to the West, where new industries were growing. The unemployed workers of Greece, Portugal, and Spain do not move to faster-growing regions of Europe because of differences in language, history, religion, union membership, etc. Moreover, wage flexibility meant that substantially slower wage growth in the states that lost industries helped to attract and retain other industries. And the US fiscal system collects roughly two-thirds of all taxes at the national level, which implies an automatic and substantial net fiscal transfer to states with temporarily falling incomes.

The European Central Bank must set monetary policy for the eurozone as a whole, even if that policy is highly inappropriate for some member countries. When demand in Germany and France was quite weak early in the last decade, the ECB reduced interest rates sharply. That helped Germany and France, but it also inflated real-estate bubbles in Spain and Ireland. The recent collapse of those bubbles caused sharp downturns in economic activity and substantial increases in unemployment in both countries.

The introduction of the euro, with its implication of a low common rate of inflation, caused sharp declines in interest rates in Greece and several other countries that had previously had high rates. Those countries succumbed to the resulting temptation to increase government borrowing, driving the ratio of government debt to GDP to more than 100% in Greece and Italy.

Until recently, the bond markets treated all euro sovereign debts as virtually equal, not raising interest rates on high-debt countries until the possibility of default became clear. The need for massive fiscal adjustment without any offsetting currency devaluation will now drive Greece and perhaps others to default on their government debt, probably through some kind of IMF-supported debt restructuring.

The euro was promoted as necessary for free trade among the member countries under the slogan “One Market, One Money.” In reality, of course, a single currency or fixed exchange rate is not needed for trade to flourish. The US has annual trade turnover of more than $2 trillion, despite a flexible exchange rate that has seen sharp ups and downs in recent decades. The North American Free Trade area increased trade among Canada, Mexico, and the US, all of which have separately floating exchange rates. Japan, South Korea, and other major Asian trading countries have very flexible exchange rates. And, obviously, only 16 nations within the 27-member EU’s free-trade area use the euro.

Despite its problems, the euro is very likely to survive the current crisis. But not all of the eurozone’s current members may be there a year from now. In retrospect, it is clear that some of the countries were allowed to join prematurely, when they still had massive budget deficits and high debt-to-GDP ratios. Moreover, some countries’ industrial composition and low rates of productivity growth mean that a fixed exchange rate would doom them to increasingly large trade deficits.

For the rest, some mechanism of enhanced surveillance and control may be adopted to limit future fiscal deficits. But, even with a smaller group of member countries and some changes in budget procedures, the fundamental problems of forcing disparate countries to live with a single monetary policy and a single exchange rate will remain.

Developing Countries and the Global Crisis

Joseph E. Stiglitz

April 15, 2009

NEW YORK – This year is likely to be the worst for the global economy since World War II, with the World Bank estimating a decline of up to 2%. Even developing countries that did everything right – and had far better macroeconomic and regulatory policies than the United States did – are feeling the impact. Largely as a result of a precipitous fall in exports, China is likely to continue to grow, but at a much slower pace than the 11-12% annual growth of recent years. Unless something is done, the crisis will throw as many as 200 million additional people into poverty.

This global crisis requires a global response, but, unfortunately, responsibility for responding remains at the national level. Each country will try to design its stimulus package to maximize the impact on its own citizens – not the global impact. In assessing the size of the stimulus, countries will balance the cost to their own budgets with the benefits in terms of increased growth and employment for their own economies. Since some of the benefit (much of it in the case of small, open economies) will accrue to others, stimulus packages are likely to be smaller and more poorly designed than they otherwise would be, which is why a globally coordinated stimulus package is needed.

This is one of several important messages to emerge from a United Nations Experts Commission on the global economic crisis, which I chair – and which recently submitted its preliminary report to the UN.

The report supports many of the G-20 initiatives, but it urges stronger measures focused on developing countries. For instance, while it is recognized that almost all countries need to undertake stimulus measures (we’re all Keynesians now), many developing countries do not have the resources to do so. Nor do existing international lending institutions.

But if we are to avoid winding up in another debt crisis, some, perhaps much, of the money will have to be given in grants. And, in the past, assistance has been accompanied by extensive “conditions,” some of which enforced contractionary monetary and fiscal policies – just the opposite of what is needed now – and imposed financial deregulation, which was among the root causes of the crisis.

In many parts of the world, there is a strong stigma associated with going to the International Monetary Fund, for obvious reasons. And there is dissatisfaction not just from borrowers, but also from potential suppliers of funds. The sources of liquid funds today are in Asia and the Middle East, but why should these countries contribute money to organizations in which their voice is limited and which have often pushed policies that are antithetical to their values and beliefs?

Many of the governance reforms proposed for the IMF and the World Bank – affecting, most obviously, how their heads are chosen – finally seem to be on the table. But the reform process is slow, and the crisis will not wait. It is thus imperative that assistance be provided through a variety of channels, in addition to, or instead of, the IMF, including regional institutions. New lending facilities could be created, with governance structures more consonant with the twenty-first century. If this could be done quickly (which I think it could), such facilities could be an important channel for disbursing funds.

At their November 2008 summit the G-20 leaders strongly condemned protectionism and committed themselves not to engage in it. Unfortunately, a World Bank study notes that 17 of the 20 countries have actually undertaken new protectionist measures, most notably the US with the “buy American” provision included in its stimulus package.

But it has long been recognized that subsidies can be just as destructive as tariffs – and even less fair, since rich countries can better afford them. If there was ever a level playing field in the global economy, it no longer exists: the massive subsidies and bailouts provided by the US have changed everything, perhaps irreversibly.

Indeed, even firms in advanced industrial countries that have not received a subsidy are at an unfair advantage. They can undertake risks that others cannot, knowing that if they fail, they may be bailed out. While one can understand the domestic political imperatives that have led to subsidies and guarantees, developed countries need to recognize the global consequences, and provide compensatory assistance to developing countries.

One of the more important medium-term initiatives urged by the UN Commission is the creation of a global economic coordinating council, which would not only coordinate economic policy, but would also assess impending problems and institutional gaps. As the downturn deepens, several countries may, for example, face bankruptcy. But we still do not have an adequate framework for dealing with such problems.

And the US dollar reserve-currency system – the backbone of the current global financial system – is fraying. China has expressed concerns, and the head of its central bank has joined the UN Commission in calling for a new global reserve system. The UN Commission argues that addressing this old issue – raised more than 75 years ago by Keynes – is essential if we are to have a robust and stable recovery.

Such reforms will not occur overnight. But they will not occur ever unless work on them is begun now.

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Europe’s Historic Gamble

Barry Eichengreen

15 05 2010

Barry Eichengreen is Professor of Economics at the University of California, Berkeley.

BERKELEY – The last few weeks have been the most amazing – and important – period of the euro’s 11-year existence. First came the Greek crisis, followed by the Greek bailout. When the crisis spread to Portugal and Spain, there was the $1 trillion rescue. Finally, there were unprecedented purchases of Spanish, Portuguese, Greek, and Irish bonds by the European Central Bank. All of this was unimaginable a month ago.

Europe’s fortnight mirabilis was also marked by amazing – and erroneous – predictions. Greece would be booted out of the monetary union. The eurozone would be divided into a Northern European union and a Southern European union. Or the euro – and even the European Union – would disintegrate as Germany turned its back on the project.

But, rather than folding their cards, European leaders doubled down. They understand that their gamble will be immensely costly if it proves wrong. They understand that their political careers now ride on their massive bet. But they also understand that they already have too many chips in the pot to fold.

Those forecasting the demise of the euro were wrong because they misunderstood the politics. The euro is the symbol of the European project. Jacques Delors, one of its architects, once called the single currency “the jewel in Europe’s crown.” Abandoning it would be tantamount to declaring the entire European integration project a failure.

It is true that Germans are incensed about bailing out Greece. It is true that Angela Merkel is the first postwar German chancellor not to have lived through World War II. But her views and actions are shaped by the society in which she lives, which in turn is shaped by that history. And what is true of Merkel is still true of Europe. This is why European leaders swallowed hard and took their unprecedented steps.

But, having doubled their bet, Europeans now must make their monetary union work. Europe has excellent bank notes. It has an excellent central bank. But it lacks the other elements of a proper monetary union. It needs to establish them – and fast – which requires finally addressing matters that have been off-limits in the past.

First, Europe needs a Stability Pact with teeth. This will now happen, because Germany will insist on it. As the European Commission has proposed, the strengthened pact will have tighter deficit limits for heavily indebted countries. Exceptions and exemptions will be removed. Governments will be required to let the Commission vet their budgetary plans in advance.

Second, Europe needs more flexible labor markets. Adjustment in the United States’ monetary union occurs partly through labor mobility. This will never apply to Europe to a similar degree, given cultural and linguistic barriers.

Instead, Europe will have to rely on wage flexibility to enhance the competitiveness of its depressed regions. This is not something that it possesses in abundance. But recent cuts in public-sector pay in Spain and Greece are a reminder that Europe is, in fact, capable of wage flexibility. Where national wage-bargaining systems are the obstacle, the European Commission should say so, and countries should be required to change them.

Third, the euro area needs fiscal co-insurance. It needs a mechanism for temporary transfers to countries that have put their public finances in order but are hit by adverse shocks.

To be clear, this is not an argument for Germany’s dreaded “transfer union” – ongoing transfers to countries like Greece. It is an argument for temporary transfers to countries like Spain, which balanced its budgets prior to the crisis but then was hit by the housing slump and recession. It is an argument for fiscal insurance running in both directions.

Fourth, the eurozone needs a proper emergency financing mechanism. Emergencies should not be dealt with on an ad hoc basis by 27 finance ministers frantic to reach a solution before the Asian markets open. And European leaders, in their desperation, should not coerce the European Central Bank into helping. There should be clear rules governing disbursement, who is in charge, and how much money is available. It should not be necessary to obtain the agreement of 27 national parliaments each time action is needed.

Finally, Europe needs coherent bank regulation. One reason the Greek crisis is so difficult is that European banks are undercapitalized, overleveraged, and stuffed full of Greek bonds, thereby ruling out the possibility of restructuring – and thus lightening – Greece’s debt load.

That happened because European bank regulation is still characterized by a race to the bottom. “Colleges” of regulators, the supposed solution, are inadequate. If Europe has a single market and a single currency, it needs a single bank regulator.

This is a formidable – some would say unrealistically ambitious – agenda. But it is the agenda Europe needs to complete to make its monetary union work.

[Kjo është një axhendë e frikshëm - disa do të thonë joreale ambicioze. Por kjo është agjenda që Evropa duhet të plotësojë për ta bërë unionin e saj monetar të funksionojë.]

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GDP Fetishism

Joseph E. Stiglitz

September 2009

NEW YORK – Striving to revive the world economy while simultaneously responding to the global climate crisis has raised a knotty question: are statistics giving us the right “signals” about what to do? In our performance-oriented world, measurement issues have taken on increased importance: what we measure affects what we do.

If we have poor measures, what we strive to do (say, increase GDP) may actually contribute to a worsening of living standards. We may also be confronted with false choices, seeing trade-offs between output and environmental protection that don’t exist. By contrast, a better measure of economic performance might show that steps taken to improve the environment are good for the economy.

Eighteen months ago, French President Nicolas Sarkozy established an international Commission on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress, owing to his dissatisfaction – and that of many others – with the current state of statistical information about the economy and society. On September 14, the Commission will issue its long-awaited report.

The big question concerns whether GDP provides a good measure of living standards. In many cases, GDP statistics seem to suggest that the economy is doing far better than most citizens’ own perceptions. Moreover, the focus on GDP creates conflicts: political leaders are told to maximize it, but citizens also demand that attention be paid to enhancing security, reducing air, water, and noise pollution, and so forth – all of which might lower GDP growth.

The fact that GDP may be a poor measure of well-being, or even of market activity, has, of course, long been recognized. But changes in society and the economy may have heightened the problems, at the same time that advances in economics and statistical techniques may have provided opportunities to improve our metrics.