Celebrate

Stronger than expected GDP growth in France and Spain (0.5% and 0.8% in 2016Q1, 0.1% more than expected!) has boosted Eurozone GDP to a staggering +0.6% in the first quarter of 2016. The Financial Times notes that GDP is now above its pre-crisis level. I expect, in the next few days, celebrations in some quarters.

So, just a reminder:

The figure speaks for itself. While we had a lost decade (eight-ade), The US and the OECD as a whole were out of the woods in 2011Q2. Our neighbours across the Channel in 2013Q2. Furthermore, we were the only ones to go through a double dip recession, and are the only ones still fighting with deflationary pressures.

Of course, if we look at per capita GDP (warning, I constructed it myself, simply dividing real GDP by population on January 1st), the lost decade may materialize after all:

I added Greece as a second reminder. The country is back at case one, in yet another round of difficult negotiations. And I do believe that remembering what they have endured may help

So, tell me again, what should we be celebrating?

The Sin of Central Bankers

I read, a bit late, a very interesting piece by Simon Wren-Lewis, who blames central bankers for three major mistakes: (1) They did not see the crisis coming, while they were the only one in the position to see the build-up of leverage; (2) They did not warn governments that at the Zero Lower Bound central banks would lose traction and could not protect the economy from the disasters of austerity. (3) They may be rushing in declaring that we are back to normal, thus attributing all the current slack to a deterioration of the supply side of the economy.

What surprises me is (2), for which I quote Wren-Lewis in full:

Of course the main culprit for the slow recovery from the Great Recession was austerity, by which I mean premature fiscal consolidation. But the slow recovery also reflects a failure of monetary policy. In my view the biggest failure occurred very early on in the recession. Monetary policy makers should have said very clearly, both to politicians and to the public, that with interest rates at their lower bound they could no longer do their job effectively, and that fiscal stimulus would have helped them do that job. Central banks might have had the power to prevent austerity happening, but they failed to use it.

The way Wren-Lewis writes it, central banks were not involved in the push towards fiscal consolidation, and their “only” sin was of not being vocal enough. I think he is too nice. At least in the Eurozone, the ECB was a key actor in pushing austerity. It was directly involved in the Trojka designing the rescue packages that sunk Greece (and the EMU with it). But more importantly, the ECB contributed to design and impose the Berlin View narrative that fiscal profligacy was at the roots of the crisis, so that rebalancing would have to be on the shoulders of fiscal sinners alone. We should not forget that “impeccable disaster” Jean-Claude Trichet was  one of the main supporters of the confidence fairy: credible austerity would magically lift expectations, pushing private expenditure and triggering the recovery. He was the President of the ECB when central banks made the second mistake. And I really have a hard time picturing him warning against the risks of austerity at the zero lower bound.

And things are not drastically different now. True, Mario Draghi often calls for fiscal support to the ECB quantitative easing program. But as I argued at length, calling for fiscal policy within the existing rules’ framework has no real impact.

So I disagree with Wren-Lewis on this one. Central banks, or at least the ECB, did not simply fail to contrast the problem of wrongheaded austerity. They were, and may  still be, part of the problem.

The problem is one of economic doctrine. And as long as this does not change, I am unsure that removing central bank independence would have made a difference. Would a Bank of England controlled by Chancellor  Osborne have been more vocal against austerity? Would an ECB controlled by the Ecofin? Nothing is less sure…

 

Convergence no More

As a complement to the latest post, here is a quite eloquent figure

I computed real GDP of the periphery (Spain-Ireland-Portugal-Greece) and of the core (Germany-Netherlands-Austria-Finland), and then I took the difference of yearly growth rates in three subperiods  that correspond to the run-up to the single currency, to the euro “normal times”, and to the crisis.

Let’s focus on the red bar: until 2008 the periphery on average grew more than 1% faster than the core, a difference that was even larger during the debt (private and public) frenzy of the years 2000. Was that a problem? No. Convergence, or catch-up, is a standard feature of growth. Usually (but remember, exceptions are the rule in economics), poorer economies tend to grow faster because there are more opportunities for high productivity growth. So it is not inconceivable that growth in the periphery was consistently higher than in the core especially in a phase of increasing trade and financial integration;

We all know (now; and some knew even then) that this was unhealthy because imbalances were building up, which eventually led to the crisis. But it is important to realize that the problem were the imbalances, not necessarily faster growth. In fact, if we look at the yellow bar depicting the difference in potential growth, it shows the same pattern (I know, the concept of potential growth is unreliable. But hey, if it underlies fiscal rules, I have the right to graph it, right?).

During the crisis the periphery suffered more than the core, and its potential output grew less fell more. This is magnified by the mechanic effect of current growth that “pulls” potential output. But it is undeniable that the productive capacity of the periphery (capital, skills) has been dented by the crisis, much more so than in the core. Thus, not only we are collectively more fragile, as I noted last Monday;on top of that, the next shock will hurt the periphery more than the core, further deepening the divide.

The EMU in its current design lacks mechanisms capable of neutralizing pressure towards divergence. It was believed when the Maastricht Treaty was signed that markets alone would ensure convergence. It turns out (unsurprisingly, if you ask me) that markets not only did not ensure convergence. But they were actually a powerful force of divergence, first contributing to the buildup of imbalances, then by fleeing the periphery when trouble started.

Markets do not act as shock absorbers. It is as simple as that, really.

Resilience? Not Yet

Last week the ECB published its Annual Report, that not surprisingly tells us that everything is fine. Quantitative easing is working just fine (this is why on March 10 the ECB took out the atomic bomb), confidence is resuming, and the recovery is under way. In other words, apparently, an official self congratulatory EU document with little interest but for the data it collects.

Except, that in the foreword, president Mario Draghi used a sentence that has been noticed by commentators, obscuring, in the media and in social networks, the rest of the report. I quote the entire paragraph, but the important part is highlighted

2016 will be a no less challenging year for the ECB. We face uncertainty about the outlook for the global economy. We face continued disinflationary forces. And we face questions about the direction of Europe and its resilience to new shocks. In that environment, our commitment to our mandate will continue to be an anchor of confidence for the people of Europe.

Why is that important? Because until now, a really optimistic and somewhat naive observer could have believed that, even amid terrible sufferings and widespread problems, Europe was walking the right path. True, we have had a double-dip recession, while the rest of the world was recovering. True, the Eurozone is barely at its pre-crisis GDP level, and some members are well below it. True, the crisis has disrupted trust among EU countries and governments, and transformed “solidarity” into a bad word in the mouth of a handful of extremists. But, one could have believed, all of this was a necessary painful transition to a wonderful world of healed economies and shared prosperity: No gain without pain. And the naive observer was told, for 7 years, that pain was almost over, while growth was about to resume, “next year”. Reforms were being implemented (too slowly, ça va sans dire) , and would soon bear fruits. Austerity’s recessionary impact  had maybe been underestimated, but it remained a necessary temporary adjustment. The result, the naive observer would believe,  would eventually be that the Eurozone would grow out of the crisis stronger, more homogeneous, and more competitive.

I had noticed a long time ago that the short term pain was evolving in more pain, and more importantly, that the EMU was becoming more heterogeneous precisely along the dimension, competitiveness, that reforms were supposed to improve. I also had noticed that as a result the Eurozone would eventually emerge from the crisis weaker, not stronger. More rigorous analysis ( e.g. here, and here) has recently shown that the current policies followed in Europe are hampering the long term potential of the economy.

Today, the ECB recognizes that “we face questions about the resilience [of Europe] to new shocks”. Even if the subsequent pages call for more of the same, that simple sentence is an implicit and yet powerful recognition that more of the same is what is killing us. Seven years of treatment made us less resilient. Because, I would like to point out, we are less homogeneous than we were  in 2007. A hard blow for the naive observer.