Who’s Rebalancing

Just a quick note. The two largest surplus economies have lately decided to take radically different paths.  China expressed concern for the imbalances lying behind its large current account surplus, and pledged since at least 2009 to re-balance its growth model towards higher domestic demand. I had already discussed that a little more than one year ago, noticing how the challenge for China was to steer away not only from exports, but also from excessive investment. In the same piece I had argued that while China seemed fully conscious of its contribution to the global imbalances that had led to the crisis, Germany had decided to walk the opposite path.

And here we are. With  timely synchronization, we learn that wages in Bavaria will increase  by 5.6% over the next two years,  maybe triggering a more generalized increase. Or maybe not. While in China they increased 17% in the year 2012.

Even taking into account differences in inflation and in growth, the difference is revealing. China is actually playing the game it committed to. Not only it tries to reduce its dependence on foreign demand; but, domestically, it is trying to boost consumption and to curb investment.

In the meantime Germany is stuck with its small-country syndrome: export-led growth and restraints to domestic demand (both public and private). In spite of recent troubles, austerity remains the course Europe is following (with disastrous results). It is telling that even when partially acknowledging that austerity did not bring the fruits she hoped for, Angela Merkel can only suggest, as an alternative, structural reforms to boost competitiveness. Expanding domestic demand has not, is not, and will not be an option for the German government.

The Berlin View is alive and kicking.

Wishful Thinking

Yesterday I published a note on OFCE le blog (in French), analyzing one possible outcome of the recent Italian elections: A center-left minority government, with external support of the Cinque Stelle movement led by comedian Beppe Grillo. The last part of the post argues that if a convergence between the Democratic Party and Beppe Grillo were to be found (at the moment the scenario is rather unlikely), it would happen on a number of progressive issues, like for example minimum citizenship income. But then, I conclude, this has implications for Europe as a whole. Here is a translation of the last paragraphs: It is clear  that the convergence could hardly happen within the bounds of the current fiscal consolidation. An agreement would therefore need a prior reversal of austerity that, it is worth repeating, was disavowed by the voters. This would not be easy for the Democratic Party that, like the Socialist Party in France, made the choice of fiscal discipline, and has kept a very ambiguous position along all the electoral campaign. But in turn, this has implications for Europe as a whole. European leaders in the next weeks may face a choice between demanding that Italy stays the course of fiscal consolidation, condemning the third economy of the eurozone to political paralysis and probably social chaos; or, accept that a new government is formed, that will most likely abandon austerity.  In both cases it will be impossible to act as if nothing had happened. Europe could be forced to rethink its own economic strategies, that are failing not only in Italy. An some countries reluctantly embracing fiscal consolidation (France to name one) could take the opportunity to challenge austerity as the only policy for growth.

Let’s be clear, here. I am totally aware that at the moment this is nothing more than wishful thinking. But hey, you never know…

The Spring is Nice, but then Comes the Fall

The much awaited European Commission Forecasts for 2013-14 are out. What do they say, in a sentence? That the situation is grim, but that the EU is gradually overcoming the headwinds. So that, surprise, surprise, the second half of the year will be better.
I guess we already heard that.  Every Spring forecast depicts a negative situation, and predicts an improvement in the Fall. And every year the Fall turn out as mother nature meant it to be, worse than the Spring.

I made a back-of-the-envelope exercise. The following figure depicts the forecasts error for each year of the Commission’s Eurozone GDP growth estimates from 3 different time horizons. The same year Fall forecast, the same year Spring forecast, and the previous year Fall forecast. To make it clearer, the three bars for say 2012, represent the forecast error of the Fall 2011 forecast (blue), of the Spring 2012 forecast (red), and of the Fall 2012 forecast (yellow).

I am not expert enough to judge whether these errors are “large” or “small”. Forecasting is a very difficult exercise, most notably in times of acute crises (the Commission underestimated both the severity of the recession in 2009, and the rebound of 2010). Yet, even a casual observer like me cannot help but notice two things:

1. The Commission tends to be overly optimistic, and forecasts turn out to be in general higher than actual values. It should not be like this. While I expect a government to inflate a bit the figures, a non-partisan, technocratic body should on average be correct.
2. Related, it is also surprising that in November of the same year the Commission is still consistently overoptimistic (yellow bar). Let me restate it. This means that in November 2012 the Commission made a mistake on GDP growth for 2012 (and in 2008-09-10-11…). November!

Taken together these two things seem to point to a political use of the Commission’s forecasts. Being overoptimistic, the people in Brussels first try to deflect criticisms of the austerity measures they help impose to most European countries; and second, probably, they hope to trigger the confidence fairy that is supposed to compensate fiscal consolidation and lift the EMU economy from the hole in which it put itself. “Look, things will be better, let’s go out and spend!”.  Vain attempt, if you ask me…

If we take the average error of the past 5 years, and assume that the Commission current forecasts are equally wrong (ok, this is just a game, it really is not rigorous!), we have this:

Then I have my own forecast for growth in the EMU for 2013. It ranges from -0.54% to -1.14%. The Commission forecasts -0.3%. We’ll see…

Bringing Krugman to Europe

Well, not him, actually (I wish I could); I need to content myself with his latest post on austerity. Krugman argues that austerity is happening (it is trivial, but he needs repeating over and over again), showing that in the US expenditure as a share of potential GDP is back to its pre-crisis level (while unemployment remains too high, and growth stagnates).

I replicated his figure including some European countries, and with slightly different data. I took OECD series on cyclically adjusted public expenditure, net of interest payment. This is commonly taken as a rough measure of discretionary government expenditure. I also re-based it to 2008, as most stimulus plans were voted and implemented in 2009. Here is what it gives:

One Austerity (Should Not) Fit All

The run up to the Italian elections in February is a welcome occasion to come back to the issue of austerity. The debate in Italy was fired by the widely discussed Wolfgang Munchau editorial, blaming Mario Monti for not opposing austerity. In the heat of electoral competition, this unsurprisingly stirred harsh discussions on whether Italy has room for reversing the austerity that ravaged the country. Some commentators got slightly carried away, accusing those opposing austerity of “silliness and falsehood”. I wonder whether they include the IMF chief economist in the bunch… Whatever, this is a minor issue; the way I see it, these discussions totally miss the point.

The Tree and the Forest

What to do of yesterday’s decision of the ECB? The tree looks very rather nice, the forest much less. First, a look at what Mario Draghi announced:

• “[...] the Governing Council today decided on the modalities for undertaking Outright Monetary Transactions (OMTs) in secondary markets for sovereign bonds in the euro area. [...] We aim to preserve the singleness of our monetary policy and to ensure the proper transmission of our policy stance to the real economy throughout the area. OMTs will enable us to address severe distortions in government bond markets which originate from, in particular, unfounded fears on the part of investors of the reversibility of the euro. [...] we act strictly within our mandate to maintain price stability over the medium term.” The technical note accompanying the decision explicitly states what markets wanted to know: “No ex ante quantitative limits are set on the size of Outright Monetary Transactions” In other words, bond purchases will be unlimited.The technical note also specifies the conditionality, the fact that the purchases will be on short maturities, and that they will be fully sterilized.
• Let’s go back to Draghi: “we decided to keep the key ECB interest rates unchanged.  [...] inflation rates are expected to remain above 2% throughout 2012, to fall below that level again in the course of next year and to remain in line with price stability over the policy-relevant horizon.“

To summarize, the ECB will try to bring down the spreads, acting within its mandate, because speculation is perturbing the transmission mechanism of monetary policy and threatening stability.  This can also help explain the decision to keep the rates unchanged: there is no point in using that lever, unless it is  sure it works.

Why is the tree rather good? And what makes the forest more worrisome? The tree first.

Wages and Unemployment

The April data on Italian unemployment are out, and they look no good. Not at all. The overall rate (10.2%)  is at its maximum since the beginning of monthly data series (2004), and youth unemployment is  above 35%. The rest of Europe is not doing any better, with more than 17 millions people looking for a job in the eurozone alone.

We already knew. The latest data just add to the bleak picture. We also know (I discussed it) what the consensus diagnosis is: Too many rigidities, excessively high labour costs, both because of wages and of  taxes on labour (the so-called tax wedge). Therefore, let’s have lower wages, and all will be well! Unemployment will disappear, growth will resume. Mario Draghi said it rather nicely:

Policies aimed at enhancing competition in product markets and increasing the wage and employment adjustment capacity of firms will foster innovation, promote job creation and boost longer-term growth prospects. Reforms in these areas are particularly important for countries which have suffered significant losses in cost competitiveness and need to stimulate productivity and improve trade performance.

Unfortunately, things are not that simple. What about looking at a few data? It is simple to download them  from the website of Eurostat.

Greek Tragedies

I am preparing a class on the crisis, and for the first time I have put together in a single place the actual numbers that I discussed sparsely in the past. Taken all together, they are even scarier. So scary, that I want to share them.

The “Golden” Rule. Really? Golden?

The European Council meeting, next Monday, should finally lift the veil of mystery  that has surrounded the new “fiscal compact”, the set of rules supposed to govern fiscal policy in EU member countries. As of now, the only official document in our hands is the  Statement approved by the Heads of State and Government at the December 9 meeting.
I have argued at length that I am not in the camp of those who believe fiscal profligacy is the source of EMU problems (recently, here and here). Rather the contrary, I always thought (see for example here and here) that even the current rules de facto prevented EMU countries  from effectively using the standard tools of macroeconomic policy.

Germany Begins to Feel the Pain, Episode II

It had to be expected.  Yesterday Germany only placed 3.9bn euros  worth of 10-year bonds, from 6bn euros on offer, and the yields started climbing. This means that we are quickly entering into a new phase of the euro crisis.