Sharing Central Banks’ costs and profits of monetary policy in the euro area

By Sergio Cesaratto

A debate has developed in Europe (on Vox.eu and elsewhere) on the fiscal costs related to the interest payments that central banks in the eurozone are bestowing on commercial banks, a result of the way monetary policy is currently conducted. The implementation of monetary policy currently revolves around the ECB’s direct control of the interest rate paid on an abundant excess of bank reserves (relative to mandatory reserve requirements) (see Cesaratto 2020, chapter 7). This excess is the result of past quantitative easing (QE) operations whereby the eurozone’s national central banks (NCBs) bought government and corporate bonds by issuing reserves (liquidity). At the ECB’s current target rate of 3.75 per cent, banks are collecting considerable sums, more than 118 billion per year rebus sic stantibus. This also happens in other monetary areas, but there are European peculiarities.

Read rest here.

Neoliberalism Resurgent in Argentina

Extended post with Sergio Cesaratto on the website of Brave New Europe. A comparison of dollarization with some of the effects of the euro, and the similarities and differences between Argentina and Southern European countries.

A common currency for the Mercosur

 

 Actual proposal by Haddad and Galípolo at Folha de São Paulo

Lula's visit to Argentina, during the  Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (CELAC) meeting, brought about a brief discussion of the possibility of a common currency. I have discussed here (as well as many guest bloggers) both currency unions, in particular the euro, and it's consequences. Note that the FT piece linked suggested that the common currency was the first step in a long process. I doubt it, in part because, if the end goal is a real currency union, it would be a terrible idea. The actual proposal by the current finance minister, Fernando Haddad, and one of his collaborators, Gabriel Galípolo, falls short of a common currency area. It is still a bad idea.

The idea is to reduce the use of the dollar for bilateral transactions, and Haddad and Galípolo, in their piece for Folha de São Paulo last year, suggested that this would stimulate integration and trade. It is unclear that even that is correct. And there are other experiences with that kind of instrument in the region (e.g. the SUCRE in Ecuador, not the old currency, but the compensation mechanism).

The question about the proposal, which includes the creation of a digital currency and a central bank of the south, is what purpose does it serve. Haddad and Galípolo had suggested that it would further integration. That seems unlikely. Most of the integration has been done with Mercosur, and the most important way to integrate the countries in the region would be productively. The common currency won’t solve the Argentine external problems associated to the lack of dollar reserves either. And it won’t solve the Brazilian issue of how to deal with the political problem of the self-imposed fiscal ceiling limit, which make no sense, and constrains the ability of the government to promote growth and reduce inequality.

It is also unclear that anything beyond some general discussions would take place, and not just because the conditions are very different, and Argentina does not have dollar reserves, and hence the peso would depreciate considerably more with respect to the sur (the tentative currency) than the real would (note that the peso has depreciated way more than the real with respect to the dollar, and that to some extent explains the inflation differentials).

More importantly, Argentina has presidential elections this year, and it has to avoid a default on external obligations, something that is not the case in Brazil, obviously. In my view, the point of this announcement was purely political, and to suggest that the integration between the two countries, one with a threatened economy, the other with a threatened democracy, is a priority. Both left of center presidents stand together. Of course, the right place for this is UNASUR, not the Mercosur, and talks should be explicitly political. There is no circumstance in which a movement in the direction of a common currency makes any sense.

Still time to save the euro

New book edited by Herr, Priewe and Watt. Free download at the website (both pdf and for e-reader). I've only seen it now, and have been reading the great chapter by Cesaratto and Zezza. But look forward to others by Uxó, Álvarez and Febrero, Priewe, Bibow, Dullien, Simonazzi, Celi and Guarascio,  and Bofinger to mention a few.

Read full book here.

Integration, spurious convergence, and financial fragility: a post-Keynesian interpretation of the Spanish crisis

Here is to another crisis like this one!

Paper co-authored with Esteban Pérez that was a Levy Institute working paper is published. From the abstract:

The Spanish crisis is generally portrayed as resulting from excessive spending
by households associated to a housing bubble and/or an excessive welfare spending beyond
the economic possibilities of the country. We put forward a different hypothesis. We argue
that the Spanish crisis resulted, in the main, from a widening deficit position in the non-
financial corporate sector and a declining trend in profitability under a regime of financial
liberalization and loose and unregulated lending practices.

Full paper available here.

Fixing the Euro’s Original Sins: The Monetary-Fiscal Architecture and Monetary Policy Conduct

By Thomas Palley

The euro zone (EZ) was created in January 1999. Its weak economic performance is significantly due to the euro’s neoliberal monetary architecture and the design of monetary policy. Those features undermine national political sovereignty and consign the EZ to severe economic under-performance, which in turn fosters political demands for exit from the euro. Escaping this dynamic requires restoring fiscal space to EZ countries, and also changing the design of EZ monetary policy. The paper shows how this can be done. It decomposes the challenge of reform into generic problems related to the neoliberal construction of monetary policy, and specific problems concerning the euro as a currency union. The currency union problems are further decomposed into “money – fiscal policy” architecture problems and specific monetary policy conduct problems.

Read rest here.

A few brief comments on Brexit and the postmortem of the European Union

Another end of the world is possible

There will be a lot of postmortems for the European Union (EU) after Brexit. Many will suggest that this was a victory against the neoliberal policies of the European Union. See, for example, the first three paragraphs of Paul Mason's column here. And it is true, large contingents of working class people, that have suffered with 'free-market' economics, voted for leaving the union. The union, rightly or wrongly, has been seen as undemocratic and responsible for the economics woes of Europe.

The problem is that while it is true that the EU leaders have been part of the problem and have pursued the neoliberal policies within the framework of the union, sometimes with treaties like the Fiscal Compact, it is far from clear that Brexit and the possible demise of the union, if the fever spreads to France, Germany and other countries with their populations demanding their own referenda, will lead to the abandonment of neoliberal policies. Austerity will most likely continue. On this matter, note that the United Kingdom did not ratify the Fiscal Compact, and austerity is a completely home made policy, consolidated by the current Conservative government, but also by the previous Blairite New Labor. And Socialist governments in France (you can say the same of Syriza in Greece) have also accepted austerity as the only alternative.

Most of the austerity policies imposed on the peripheral countries are actually the result of the euro, and are to a great extent independent of the existence of a broader political union. Of course the mechanisms for imposing austerity pass through the institutions of the union, but it is clear that progressive policies can be pursued within the union.

In order to understand the limitations of the European project it is important to remember that the original project, associated to the Treaty of Rome built on the European Coal and Steel community, was a policy that aimed at resolving the perennial Franco-German conflict, with the cooperation of the US, in the context of the Cold War. The project went hand in hand with Keynesian policies at home, and the development of the modern Welfare State, possible in part as a result of the Marshall Plan. On the other hand, the modern union is often confused and seen as being inextricably associated with the euro, which was designed after the Conservative resurgence in the 1980s, and consolidated in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet block. That is, the euro was created in the neoliberal Thatcherite world in which supposedly 'there is no alternative.' The context has not changed much, even if there is a revolt against neoliberal policies.

And that is why separating the euro project (the case of Grexit would be based on that) from Brexit is important. This is hardly the demise of neoliberal policies. Even the end of the European Union would not guarantee that pro-worker coalitions would win elections, or that if elected they would purse Keynesian expansionary policies (btw, it is also unclear that Grexit would solve all the problems in Greece, and that a default would be successful, although I do think the case is stronger there).

Globally, in fact, there is no evidence that neoliberalism is retreating. In Latin America, the opposite seems to be the case. In the US the same working class anger with neoliberal policies, austerity and stagnation has led to both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump's insurgent campaigns, but we may end up with the same old neoliberal policies as always (yeah, I mean Hillary Clinton; and no Bernie and Donald are not the same, but that's another issue, and I would vote for Hillary). Even worse, some elements of the revolt of the masses in the US have led to a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment and outright xenophobia, not unlike the UK. And that is something that Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson have exploited in the UK. And remember that Jeremy Corbyn was for Remain, and that he may also suffer with Brexit, and with that the insurgence against neoliberal Blairism within Labor.

Personally, I cannot see that the disintegration of Europe would lead to a positive outcome. Sure the EU has a significant democratic deficit, and a bureaucracy that is seen as wasteful and inefficient (that is always, btw, part of the right wing propaganda for smaller government; you know, because private corporations are always so efficient and democratic, aren't they?). The same is true of American democracy. Ask the Bernie supporters re-counting votes in California (or Al Gore for that matter). So maybe secession should be the solution (yeah, in the US it's the right wing crazy lunatic fringe in Texas that thinks that this is a good idea). And yes, the right wingers in Europe are rejoicing (Trump too).

At a minimum the European Union provided an environment in which people could move freely, in which petty nationalism gave way to acceptance of foreigners and immigrants, something particularly relevant with the refugee crisis in the neighboring region. Some may suggest that this was very little to show for. And the alternative, does it have something to show for? If the European Union really collapses, there will be very little for progressives to be happy about.

A Post-Keynesian Interpretation of the Spanish Crisis

New paper with Esteban Pérez published by the Levy Economics Institute.

From the abstract:

The Spanish crisis is generally portrayed as resulting from excessive spending by households, associated with a housing bubble and/or excessive welfare spending beyond the economic possibilities of the country. We put forward a different hypothesis. We argue that the Spanish crisis resulted, in the main, from a widening deficit position in the nonfinancial corporate sector—the most important explanatory factor behind the country’s rising external imbalance— and a declining trend in profitability under a regime of financial liberalization and loose and unregulated lending practices. This paper argues that the central cause of the crisis is related to the nonfinancial corporate sector’s increasingly fragile financial position, which originated from the financial convergence that followed adoption of the euro.

Read it here.

Unlimited Targets? Some pointers

By Sergio Cesaratto (Guest Blogger)

In this short note I will not add anything of substantial to the debate with Marc Lavoie on the nature of the Eurozone (EZ) crisis in view of Target 2 (T2). Readers have numerous papers to look at (including Lavoie 2015a/b, Cesaratto 2013, 2015a/b) and posts (Vernengo 2015, Ramanan, 2015). However, although most of relevance has already been said, there is perhaps still some space for few qualifications.

1. Subject of the dispute is on whether the EZ crisis can be considered a balance of payment (BoP) crisis in view of the existence of T2 and of the Eurosystem semi-authomatic refinancing mechanism, or if it should be considered a crisis derived from flawed institutional mechanisms that led, in particular, to a belated intervention by the ECB to sustain peripheral sovereign debts.

Marc believes that given the existence of T2 and refinancing mechanisms, a BoP crisis cannot occur in a monetary union:

“The point that I have tried to make on a number of occasions at conferences is that outflows are not limited by the amount of foreign reserves in the Eurozone context, in contrast to a country on a fixed or managed exchange rate regime. If a Eurozone country is running a current account deficit that banks from other Eurozone members decline to finance, or if it is subjected to capital outflows, then all that happens is that the national central bank of that country will be accumulating TARGET2 debit balances at the ECB. There is no legal limit to these debit balances. The national central bank with the debit balances, which pay interest at the target interest rate, has as a counterpart in its assets the advances that it must make to its national commercial banks at that same target interest rate. And the commercial banks can obtain central bank advances as long as they show proper collateral. Why would the size of current account deficits or TARGET2 debit balances worry speculators?” (Lavoie 2015: 158)

Marc correctly points out the difference in our views:

“Cesaratto (2015°: 151) and I agree when he concludes that “there are no definite limits to T2 imbalances”; he seems to disagree when he adds that “a political limit has been set by the imposition of harsh austerity measures on peripheral countries in order to obtain positive CA balances”. (ibid)

So the difference is that I see policy limits (perhaps political was not the right word) to T2 imbalances in the sense that policy makers cannot see them growing indefinitely, reflecting growing flow and stock foreign indebtedness and, correspondingly, mounting indebtedness of peripheral private and sovereign debts.

2. To give an example, would a central government with a sovereign central bank (CB) let one region (say Calabria) to expand its expenditure issuing regional bonds by letting its CB to guarantee an unlimited issuance? Notably this behaviour would let this region to accumulate an unlimited balance of payment deficit and foreign debt with the rest of the country and the rest of the world. At the minimum the other regions would like to imitate this (electorally) convenient behaviour. The reader can derive by herself the economic consequences of this behaviour.

If this does not complicate the life of readers, a reference to a view that cannot be suspected of fiscal timidity, that is to MMT, is useful here. Wray and Nersisyan (2010: 16) argue that although there are not “financial constraints [to sovereign debt and deficit] inherent in the fiat system”, nonetheless some arbitrary fiscal constraint, e.g. a balanced budget of the cycle, is necessary to avoid that the government “might spend ‘out of control,’ taking too large a percent of the nation’s resources”.

Would any national government let its CB to back a single region to behave this way? And should we expect the EU sustaining a single member, let alone a group of members, to behave this way? Or could we expect the U.S. printing dollars to check the Argentinian foreign debt crisis in 2001?

On a similar vein Ramanan (2015, italics added) pointed out:

“Let’s consider what happens if there is no federal government and if the ECB is the main supranational authority (ignoring other supranational institutions which have limited powers). Suppose the ECB were to guarantee the debt of governments of all Euro Area nations. There’s nothing to prevent, say, the government of Finland to increase the compensation of its employees every year by a huge percentage and thereby affecting Finnish corporations’ compensation of its employees. This will result in a reduction of competitiveness of Finnish producers and Finnish resident economic units will rely more on goods and services produced abroad. This will raise Finland’s net indebtedness to the rest of the Euro Area and the world. If someone believes that this debt is not a problem, how about the inflationary impact of this rise in demand on the rest of the Euro Area?... 

To summarize, the Euro Area problem wouldn’t have been a balance-of-payments problem had the official sector promised to act as a lender of the last resort to national Euro Area governments without any condition. As long as there are conditions, it is a balance-of-payments problem. One cannot pretend that the European Central Bank has or can be given such powers to lend without any condition. And hence the Euro Area crisis is a balance-of-payments problem.”

3. In this sense I do not agree with the ecumenical view taken by Matias Vernengo (2015) according to which:

“Cesaratto and Lavoie hypotheses are one and the same. The balance of payments and the monetary sovereignty views of the European crisis are two sides of the same coin. The fact that overdraft facilities involved in the TARGET2 system could be used to create credit to finance euro imbalances, or that the ECB could buy government bonds in the secondary market does not preclude the fact that the actual crisis is, in the absence of these policies, the result of the inability to manage a CA deficit.”

It can be noted that Matias eventually endorses the argument (that I refrain to attribute to Lavoie but that, perhaps, he might approve) that the absence of an unlimited credit by the ECB is the ultimate cause of the BoP crisis. My view is that it is unthinkable to believe in an open ended support by the ECB (or by the EU governance) of unlimited Target 2 imbalances. And this is, in my view, the ultimate cause of the imposition of austerity policies on the periphery. The ECB “whatever it takes” (threatened) intervention, finalised to alleviate the austerity costs by reassuring financial markets, was indeed subordinate to the adoption of austerity measures - so that no German court could protest, inspired by Werner Sinn, that the ECB was sustaining unlimited peripheral foreign debts.

In Lavoie’s and Paul De Grauwe (e.g. 2013)’s views austerity was functional to reassure the financial markets about the fiscal sustainability of peripheral debts given the absence of the ECB as lender of last resort (see Cesaratto 2015b for a review). Note that this view is exposed to a fiscal interpretation of the crisis (one that Lavoie and De Grauwe firmly oppose). And, indeed, the reader may wander what is the cause of the crisis, given that Lavoie and De Grauwe tend to neglect Robert Frankel’s and others’ story about the similarities of the EZ crisis with the typical financial crisis of emerging economies (see Cesaratto 2015b for a review)

The next are minor points.

4. Marc is correct when he argues that Roberto Frenkel does not reject the “unlimited Target 2 unbalances view”:

“Let me make a final point. Cesaratto (…) enlists Roberto Frenkel (2012) among the
economists who support his ‘balance-of-payments’ interpretation of the crisis. I got quite
a different impression when I read his paper. While Frenkel (2012: 13) agrees with Cesaratto that the adoption of the common currency was a mistake and that the crisis has its origin in ‘the conjunction of fixed exchange rates, full capital mobility and weak financial regulation,’Frenkel nevertheless believes that the size of TARGET2 balances is irrelevant and argues that the sovereign risk premiums observed with GIIPS countries were tied to the absence of a credible lender of last resort”

And indeed in my most recent paper (Cesaratto 2015b) I had already pointed out:

“A more nuanced position is taken by Frenkel (2014, pp. 13-14). On the one hand he regards the eurocrisis as a balance of payment crisis; on the other, he denies that there can be an “exchange rate risk” (the typical manifestation of a balance of payment crisis) in the euro zone presumably because of the combination of Target 2 and the ECB refinancing operations. The increasing sovereign default risk is then attributed to the absence of a lender of last resort. Notably, with OMT the ECB began to act as a lender of last resort but precisely to defuse what Draghi (2012) called in his most famous speech ‘convertibility risk’, that is the risk of a euro break-up.”

5. Finally, although this is less important, I’d like to point out, in Cesaratto (2015a) I was not so pretentious to claim that Lavoie (2015) was entirely devoted to discuss Cesaratto (2013). Unfortunately this is the impression that the reader may get from Lavoie’s incipit of his Reply. When I began my (2015) paper writing:

“In a general appreciation of my work on TARGET2 (T2) (Cesaratto 2013), Marc Lavoie (2015a) criticized my interpretation of the Eurozone (EZ) troubles as a balance of payments crisis”,

by ”general appreciation” I meant “positive reception” (see e.g. the Microsoft Window Word dictionary), but perhaps the way I expressed myself was ambiguous.

References

Cesaratto, S. 2013. “The Implications of TARGET2 in the European Balance of payments Crisis and Beyond.” European Journal of Economics and Economic Policy: Intervention 10, no. 3: 359–382. link

Cesaratto, S. 2015a. “Balance of Payments or Monetary Sovereignty?. In Search of the EMU’s Original Sin–Comments on Marc Lavoie’s The Eurozone: Similarities to and Differences from Keynes’s Plan.” International Journal of Political Economy 44, no. 2: 142–156. link

Cesaratto, S. 2015b. Alternative Interpretations of a Stateless Currency crisis, Asimmetrie, WP no.8. link

De Grauwe, P. (2013) Design Failures in the Euro zone - can they be fixed? London School of Economics, LEQS Paper No. 57/2013. Link

Frenkel, R. 2012. “What Have the Crises in Emerging Markets and the Euro Zone in Common and what Differentiates Them?”, link

Frenkel, R. (2014) What have the crises in emerging markets and the Euro Zone in common and what differentiates them? in Joseph E. Stiglitz, Daniel Heymann (eds), Life After Debt - The Origins and Resolutions of Debt Crisis, Palgrave Macmillan (quotations from the WP version link)

Lavoie, M. 2015a. “The Eurozone: Similarities to and Differences from Keynes’s Plan.” International Journal of Political Economy 44, no. 1 (Spring): 3–17. link

Lavoie, M. 2015b. “The Eurozone Crisis: A Balance-of-Payments Problem or a Crisis Due to a Flawed Monetary Design?” International Journal of Political Economy 44, no. 2: 157-160. (abstract)

Nersisyan, Y. and Wray, L.R. (2010) Does Excessive Sovereign Debt Really Hurt Growth? A Critique of This Time Is Different, by Reinhart and Rogoff, Levy Institute, WP No. 603

Ramanan (2015) Sergio Cesaratto’s Debate With Marc Lavoie on Whether the Euro Area Crisis Is a Balance-Of-Payments Crisis – II, The Case For Concerted Action

Vernengo, M. (2015) Greece on the verge, Nakedkeynesianism, June 30

Roundtable on the European Crisis

If you're around Lewisburg next Tuesday.

US Interstate Transfers and the Euro Crisis

by Nathaniel Cline and David Fields

It is recognized among heterodox economists that the fiscal crisis some Eurozone countries faced (and are facing) is the result not of internal fiscal excess but of fundamental imbalances made worse by the adoption of a common currency. Indeed, as Wynne Godley pointed out (in several pieces) long ago, European structural payment imbalances will not be automatically corrected by market forces. In this case a common currency without centralized fiscal powers will potentially exacerbate the balance of payments problems of member countries. Some countries will be permanently outsold, and under the current arrangements, are forced to make large income adjustments to resolve their balance of payments.

As a result, many (even in the mainstream) have suggested that a common fiscal union would resolve the problems these countries face. Comparisons have been made to the US whose member states enjoy a common currency with a substantial federal fiscal system that redistributes funds among the states. Residents of states pay taxes to the federal government and states receive government expenditures (through federal programs, grants, salaries, and other means). However the payments states receive are decided upon different ground than the taxes they pay. Thus a state like Mississippi pays very little in taxes, but receives a substantial amount of government spending. In contrast, states like Minnesota pay in to the system much more than they receive.

In normal times this prevents large balance of payments crises from emerging between states. Mississippi is thus permitted a higher average growth rate than would otherwise be implied by their balance of payments.

It is misleading however to assume from these large transfers that simple fiscal transfers between states would resolve Europe's fiscal problems. In a recent presentation to the Eastern Economic Association, Dave Fields and I argued that in fact, the US did not respond to the crisis by transferring large amounts of money between states as it does in normal times.

The key point was that US federal government went into deficit to transfer money to states as a whole. The relevant transfer in the crisis was then not among states, but between states and the federal government. What is needed then is a Euro deficit which would finance all member states, and not necessarily transfers between say Germany and Greece in the middle of a crisis.

The degree of interstate transfers in the US is shown below. Note that between 2004 and 2007 it appears that the federal government is actually a net drag on the states. This is likely not quite correct because the expenditures in the chart do not count expenditures which cannot easily be allocated among states (like for instance federal interest payments).

The Degree of Interstate Transfers 2004-1013

Source: Expenditures provided by the Pew Fiscal Federalism Initiative, tax data from the IRS, author's calculations

The issue can be seen clearly too if the transfers are broken down by state as is done in the chart below. One can see that by 2009, only a few states remained net contributors to the system while the others all became net recipients (including by the way both California and Texas). 

Fiscal Transfers Between the States 2008-2009

Source: Expenditures provided by the Pew Fiscal Federalism Initiative, tax data from the IRS, author's calculations

Galbraith on the Greek negotiations

A short interview given Tuesday morning from Brussels to Greek television. The questions are in Greek but the answers are in English and fairly direct. Not very good news, and not unexpected either. Basically the Germans are blocking a solution. What is needed to get a solution? "Calm and courage," says Jamie.

Lucas on the European Monetary Union

This is a bit old, it's from the interview in Snowdon and Vane's Modern Macroeconomics. The questions and answers for the Monetary Union below. Note that this is an interview from 1997.

S&V: What are your views on European Monetary Union?
Lucas: Again I don’t know enough about the politics, which has to be central.

S&V: Does it make economic sense to you?
Lucas: Well, it’s an issue in inventory theory. The cost of dealing with multiple currencies is that if you are doing business in Europe you, or people you hire to help you, have to have stocks of inventories of a lot of different currencies because payments are coming due in a lot of different currencies. The inventory cost of holding money is the interest foregone you could have earned by holding interest-bearing assets. If you have a common currency you can consolidate your cash inventories so that there is a saving involved. That is a very modest saving, but it is positive. But obviously multiple currencies are not inconsistent with a huge amount of prosperity. If you can consolidate, all the better, but those purely economic gains are pretty modest. If you don’t trust somebody else to run your monetary policy, maybe you want to oppose monetary union. For myself, I would be happy to turn my monetary policy over to the Germans any day [laughter]. [Italics added]

I doubt Greeks are laughing. If you think it was too early too see how turning monetary policy to the Germans was a bad idea see this post on Godley at about the same time.

Mario Seccareccia on Greece and the European Crisis

Nice interview by Mario for INET. The main point in his words:

"In the medium term, Greece could create some form of parallel currency set at par with the euro, like Argentina did in the early 2000s. The government in Argentina used 'patacones' to buy things and pay employees and they became quite acceptable because ultimately regular people could pay taxes with this currency. The Greeks could have a parallel national currency without altogether abandoning the euro. 

So these various short-to-medium-term measures may well be available to prevent default, but, at the end, if the Greek government cannot renegotiate its crushing debt burden — without some form of debt forgiveness in however form it will be disguised — you could see a Greek default happen. If it reaches that point, I don’t think there’s anything in the Eurozone treaties that would prevent Greece from retaining the euro. In this case, it will have to learn from the experiences of dollarized countries such as Ecuador that have been surviving under very severe constraints on fiscal policy but without the oil revenues that until recent times have served well to replenish Ecuador’s coffers."[Italics added]

Not sure if Mario is against Greexit, meaning exit from the euro, but the suggestions is that even with default there is no need for exit. I am not against his perspective, and that was the view that Wynne Godley had about Europe and the euro, for the former, but against the way the latter was implemented without fiscal federalism, and significant transfers. I also noted before that devaluation or exit does not solve all the problems.

Internal devaluation and the Greek crisis

Last month, using the ILO's Global Wage Report, I noticed that real wages in Greece had collapsed by an outstanding 24% since 2009. Further, I suggested that my guess was that this internal devaluation was NOT the cause of the improvement in the current account (CA), which as can be seen below did in fact improve (2014 is an IMF estimate).

The question is whether real exchange rate depreciation, in this case a reduction of real wages, since the  nominal exchange rate is fixed (so to speak) with respect to other Euro countries, was a significant force behind the improvement in the CA balances.  Note that the improvement is basically all due to the collapse of imports, since the growth of exports (both shown below) has been basically zero (again 2014 figures are estimates).

Lower real wages had an impact, if they did, on demand, not in leading to higher exports associated to lower domestic costs. In other words, less demand associated to lower wages and a collapsing domestic economy is what has allowed for the rebalancing of the external accounts. If there are any doubts, below you can see the high correlation between GDP growth and the collapse in import growth.

This suggests that devaluation, be that internal as it has been so far, or external as leaving the Euro might imply, is not necessarily enough to solve the current crisis.

CIGI Senior Fellow Miranda Xafa on State of The Eurozone

Centre for International Governance Innovation Senior Fellow Miranda Xafa comments on the "State of the Eurozone" discussions which took place on October 6th, 2014 at the the German Marshall Fund of the United States in Washington, D.C. Xafa notes that the recent ECB announcement on asset purchases and the likelihood of a relatively successful forthcoming banking union may help to reduce Euro fragmentation and possibly ease credit issues. She cautions, nevertheless, that such structural reforms alone will not be enough to get the Eurozone out of its current long-run low-growth equilibrium.

Independence and monetary unions

So, as the map above shows, independence from the UK is nothing new. And I personally have no particular opinion on whether independence is good or bad for Scots, although many on the left seem to think it's a good idea. However, it is undeniable that independence and maintenance of the pound is a terrible idea. Here is Wynne Godley, who I should add was in favor of the European Union, but not of the currency union as it was organized, in 1992 (from a previous post available here).

"the power to issue its own money, to make drafts on its own central bank, is the main thing which defines national independence. If a country gives up or loses this power, it acquires the status of a local authority or colony. Local authorities and regions obviously cannot devalue. But they also lose the power to finance deficits through money creation while other methods of raising finance are subject to central regulation. Nor can they change interest rates. As local authorities possess none of the instruments of macro-economic policy, their political choice is confined to relatively minor matters of emphasis – a bit more education here, a bit less infrastructure there."

So much for the possibility of a more social democratic Scotland after independence. A bit more spending on education, in exchange for a lot of austerity.  Mind you, these effects my take a long time. Wynne predicted the problems of the Euro in 1992.

New Book: "The Euro, The Dollar and the Global Financial Crisis" By Miguel Otero-Iglesias

Editorial Reviews:

Many scholars have contributed to ongoing debates about the competition between the dollar and the euro for global monetary dominance. Few have added as much value as Miguel Otero-Iglesias with his systematic and original survey of the views of financial elites in major emerging market economies. Where conventional interpretations emphasize material "reality," Otero-Iglesias's ideational analysis clearly demonstrates how important it is to consider as well how "reality" is perceived and framed by key actors. The euro may be structurally weak, limiting its "hard" power. But at the cognitive level of "soft" power, Otero-Iglesias suggests, Europe's money poses a significant challenge to America's greenback. This is an argument to be taken seriously.

Benjamin J. Cohen, Louis G. Lancaster Professor of International Political Economy University of California, Santa Barbara, USA.

This is a book I’ve been waiting for: a detailed analysis of what financial elites in the large reserve-holding countries are thinking about the future of the international monetary system. Drawing on extensive research, Miguel Otero-Iglesias argues persuasively that the views of authorities in China, Brazil, and the Gulf states matter enormously for the future of the global roles of dollar and the euro. An engaging and innovative book that makes a major contribution to our understanding of the world’s money."

Eric Helleiner, Faculty of Arts Chair in International Political Economy and Professor in the Department of Political Science of the University of Waterloo

In this original, well written and carefully researched book, Otero-Iglesias suspends motion in this fast moving story of currency rivalry to give the reader a view into the deeper logic of global monetary change. The author has synthesized skilfully across a wide spectrum of perspectives, from various systemically important emerging countries, and for which he has accessed key financial elites, and policy shapers, in China and Brazil, as well as the Gulf States. This book is truly a must read for scholars of the politics of the international monetary system, especially those with an eye to systemic change.

Gregory T. Chin, Associate Professor, York University, Canada and Co-Editor, Review of International Political Economy'

About the Author:
Miguel Otero-Iglesias is Senior Analyst on the European Economy and the Emerging Markets at the Elcano Royal Institute in Spain and Research Fellow in International Political Economy at the EU-Asia Institute at ESSCA School of Management in France.

For more info go here.

***My RIPE paper with Matias Vernengo, "Hegemonic Currencies During The Crisis, The Dollar Versus The Euro In a Cartalist Perspective" (see here), is cited.

Don't Cry For Me Scotland? Bill Black on Failed Banks and Scottish Independence

By Bill Black

I do not know whether the Scots should vote for independence.  I assume that the odds are they will vote against it.  I do know that the reasons advanced for voting against independence by business interest are false.  Indeed, the opposite of what they claim is far more likely to be true.  What I find a joy to behold, however, is the suggestion by the banksters that the Scots should get their economic advice about independence from a group of failed and often fraudulent parasites and that they should avoid any action that creates “uncertainty” or would cause them to act as a Nation rather than a U.K. province.  There is a serious effort to make independence from the Brits sound like the path of economic madness. Each of these asserted business bases for cowering from independence is an insult to the people of Scotland.  In an irony that, if the polls are accurate, is increasingly sensed by Scots, the business arguments against independence, unintentionally, have made a compelling case for independence.  The thrust of the Brit’s strategy is to promise that they will try to cripple Scotland economically should it vote to restore its independence and sovereignty.  Thus we see the English, and their EU allies, claiming that they would prevent Scotland from joining the EU or extort it to adopt the euro (a terrible idea) as a condition of entry into the EU, block its ability to continuing to use the pound as its currency, and even major businesses in Scotland threatening to flee the Nation should it vote in favor of independence.  Labor leader Ed Miliband went so far as to threaten to place armed border guards on the border with Scotland should the Scots vote to restore their sovereignty.

Read rest here.

Riccardo Bellofiore on why Italy’s stagnation could be future for Euro Zone

From The Guardian

This summer Italy fell into a triple-dip recession. After the 2008/09 collapse, the economy stagnated, heading back into recession during 2011 and never really recovering. The philosophy of Giulio Tremonti, who was the economic minister at the time, was to wait and see, until speculation killed Berlusconi’s government. Prime ministers Mario Monti and Enrico Letta followed Brussels’ self-defeating diktat for fiscal rigour, but even with moderate deficits the public debt/GDP ratio soared. The situation remained under control only thanks to the zero rate of interest and rhetoric by the European central bank president, Mario Draghi. Then came along Matteo Renzi, and Italian economic policy was all talk, talk, talk. While turning the screw of authoritarian parliamentary and electoral reforms, future lower taxes and liberalisations are promised to compensate for public cuts and to attract foreign investments. The €80 monthly tax break to lower-paid workers did not raise household consumption, and was instead spent on tariffs and local taxes. Yet in the past few weeks the outlook has changed, with 2014 second-quarter data showing France flat and Germany experiencing negative growth. Greece, Spain and Portugal registered rosier figures only because they were recovering from severe austerity. The eurozone cannot but be driven by the three biggest economies alone. This is a continental crisis within an anaemic global economy. However, an old Gramscian truth about Italy must be remembered: the “backwardness” of its capitalism is paradigmatic. Europe’s exit from the crisis needs the same policies that Italy needs, and without them Italy’s stagnation is the future for the entire continent.

Read rest here.