Are we Sure that Tsipras Caved In?

Germany did not speak yet, and until then nothing is certain. But it looks like the new Tsipras proposal may turn into an agreement between Greece and its creditors.

We’ll see what happens in the next days, but I want to make a few remarks

At first sight, this does not look good for Tsipras. On all the points that remained contentious when negotiations were interrupted, the new proposal substantially accepts the creditors requests (labour law being an important exception): On VAT, privatizations, retirement age, we are now very close to the original creditors’ requests, and very far from the Greek ones.

And in fact the new package is even more “austerian” than the Juncker plan, as it contains deficit reduction for 12 billions instead of 8.

This said, if Tsipras manages to link the package to the obtention of a new loan (plus unblocking of structural funds) for a duration of three years, he will have obtained what he has been asking so far in vain, and what had been refused to Papandreou in 2011: Time and money.

While accusing him of doing nothing to change his country, creditors forced Tsipras to spend the past five months flying back and forth from Athens to Brussels, each time asking for a fistful of euros. If he manages to obtain a new loan over the next three years, this will finally stop. He will have the time to implement his recipe for Greece, and it will be finally possible to judge his government on acts rather than promises.

In this light the referendum was very important. By asking the Greek people the mandate to negotiate while remaining in the euro, he succeeded in throwing the ball in the creditors camp. Those speaking of betrayal of the people’s will probably did not pay attention to the Greek debate in the week of July 5th. This is why Syriza keeps climbing in the polls, by the way.

Tsipras had to pay the price of a stricter austerity than he would have wished for. But he gains breathing space, which is orders of magnitude more valuable. No surprise that Germany is hesitant. If a deal is not reached, as of now, it will be clear to all who will have kicked Greece out.

Not a bad day for Tsipras after all

Of Democracy and of a Different Europe

I have mixed feeling about the Oki victory in Greece. The choice was between two evils: slow death by more of the same (the troika plan), or a roller-coaster ride that has a high chance of ending catastrophically for Greece and for the EMU. I would have voted no, were I Greek, but not joyfully. This said, two things I have been reading in the past days are disturbing:

1. First, the claim that Tsipras’ rhetoric on democracy is misplaced: After all, people say, we all are democracies. Why should Greek democracy count more than the Portuguese, or the Spanish one? There is no reason, of course. Point is that Tsipras did something that is now really revolutionary in Europe, he tried – hold your breath –  to implement the platform on which he was elected. How many governments in Europe went to power promising an end to austerity, promising a “new deal for Europe”, just to retract a few months/weeks/days later and align themselves with the Berlin View that austerity is the only way? Greek democracy today should count more than democracy in the rest of Europe, because it is the only case in which voters are actually listened to by their government. This is why Syriza’s anomaly needed to be crushed, well beyond the actual content of its proposed policies. If European policy makers feel that their democracy should be as important as Greece’s, they could start by trying to do what their voters elected them for. That would certainly not hurt.
2. The second thing that bothers me, is the convergence of the establishment and of euro-skeptical movements across Europe. Don’t be fooled by the enthusiastic adherence of many no-euro movements to the Oki campaign Their siding with Tsipras was instrumental to Grexit, turmoil, and weakening the euro itself. Something orthogonal to what Tsipras has been doing and saying in the past two years. The referendum made it clear that the establishment and the no-euro converge in trying to prove that there is no alternative to austerity in Europe. The former, because if Greece is not normalized, we would enter into a new phase in which statements and policies would have to be assessed on the basis of facts (not so favorable to austerity) rather than taken as a matter of faith. Euro skeptics need Tsipras to be crushed because this would definitely prove that the only way to get rid of austerity is to get rid of the euro altogether.

Therefore the referendum, while certainly hazardous and ill-conceived (what did the Greek people vote on, in the end?), had the great merit of exposing the hypocrisy of some commentators, and to show that the only hope for a different Europe has to be found in the struggle that an inexperienced prime minister is leading from Athens. Since yesterday, with the renewed support of his people. Dangerous times ahead, but with a small hope for change.

It’s the Politics, Stupid!

Update: 6/30:  A very interesting piece by BrankoMilanovic, made the same point before me

I have been silent on Greece, because scores of excellent economists from all sides commented at length and in real time on the developments of negotiation, and most has been said.

But last week has transformed in certainty what had been a fear since the beginning. The troika, backed by the quasi totality of EU governments, were not interested in finding a solution that would allow Greece to recover while embarking in a fiscally sustainable path. No, they were interested in a complete and public defeat of the “radical” Greek government.

The negotiation has not been one. The two sides were very far in January, as it is and it should be, if two radically different views about the engines of growth confront each other. Syriza wanted the end of austerity, that was much harsher on the country than expected, while failing to bring the promised benefits, even in terms of public finances’ sustainability. And it wanted the burden of debt to be lifted The troika wanted get its money back (well, not all of it; the IMF has always been open to debt restructuring), and more of the policies imposed to Greece since 2010, because, well, “eventually they will work”. (no need for me to remind with whom I have been siding).

But there was a common ground that, had the negotiation been real, could have allowed to reach an agreement, in just a few weeks of discussion. Both sides agreed that the Greek economy is broken, and that it needs radical reform. While Syriza focused on reorganisation of the State, on putting together a functioning tax collection system, at closing inefficiency loopholes, the troika demands were more “classic” and somewhat ideological: pension cuts, labour market reform, and the like. A continuation of the memorandum, in fact.

If we look at the economics of it, Sequencing is crucial: implementing structural reforms in bad times, when the economy is not able to absorb the short run costs of such reforms, imposes excessive disruption and risks hampering the potential long run benefits. This is why the joint implementation of austerity and structural reforms is particularly pernicious. Their short run contractionary effects reinforce each other and may be self-defeating, leading to no improvement in productivity or in public finances’ health. The dire state of Greece’s economy stands as a reminder that such an outcome is all but impossible. Troika reforms and cuts to public spending were doomed to fail since the beginning.

What happened since then? Well, contrary to what is heard in European circles, most of the concessions came from the Greek government. On retirement age, on the size of budget surplus (yes, the Greek government gave up its intention to stop austerity, and just obtained to soften it), on VAT, on privatizations, we are today much closer to the Troika initial positions than to the initial Greek position. Much closer.

The point that the Greek government made repeatedly is that some reforms, like improving the tax collection capacity, actually demanded an increase of resources, and hence of public spending. Reforms need to be disconnected from austerity, to maximize their chance to work.  Syriza, precisely like the Papandreou government in 2010 asked for time and possibly money. It got neither.

Tsipras had only two red lines it would and it could not cross: Trying to increase taxes on the rich (most notably large corporations), and not agreeing to further cuts to low pensions. if he crossed those lines, he would become virtually indistinguishable from Samaras and from the policies that led Greece to be a broken State.

What the past week made clear is that this, and only this was the objective of the creditors. This has been since the beginning about politics. Creditors cannot afford that an alternative to policies followed since 2010 in Greece and in the rest of the Eurozone materializes.

Austerity and structural reforms need to be the only way to go. Otherwise people could start asking questions; a risk you don’t want to run a few months before Spanish elections. Syriza needed to be made an example. You cannot  survive in Europe, if you don’t embrace the Brussels-Berlin Consensus. Tsipras, like Papandreou, was left with the only option too ask for the Greek people’s opinion, because there has been no negotiation, just a huge smoke screen. Those of us who were discussing pros and cons of the different options on the table, well, we were wasting our time.

And if Greece needs to go down to prove it, so be it. If we transform the euro in a club in which countries come and go, so be it.

The darkest moment for the EU.

@fsaraceno

Reform or Perish

Very busy period. Plus, it is kind of tiresome to comment daily ups and downs of the negotiation between Greece and the Troika Institutions.

But as yesterday we made another step towards Grexit, it struck me how close the two sides are on the most controversial issue, primary surplus. Greece conceded to the creditors’ demand of a 1% surplus in 2015, and there still is a difference on the target for 2016, of about 0.5% (around 900 millions). Just look at how often most countries, not just Greece, respected their targets in the past, and you’ll understand how this does not look like a difference impossible to bridge.

The remaining issue is reforms. Creditors argue that Greece cannot be trusted in its commitment to reform. After all, they cheated so often in the past… In particular, creditors point at one of Syriza’s red lines, the refusal to touch pension reforms, as proof that the country is structurally incapable of reform. And here is the proof, the percentage of GDP that crisis countries spent in welfare::

I took total social expenditure that bundles together pensions, expenditure for supporting families, labour market policies, and so on and so forth. All these expenditure that, according to the Berlin View, choke the animal spirits of the economy, and kill productivity.

Well, Greece does not do much worse than its fellow crisis economies, but it is true that it is hard to detect a downward trend. The reform effort was not very strong, and certaiinly not adapted to an economy undergoing such a terrible crisis. The very fact that after four years of adjustment program the country spends 24% of its GDP in social protection, is a proof that it cannot be trusted.This is just proof that, once more, the Greek made fun of their fellow Europeans, and that they want us to pay for their pensions.

Hold on. Did I just say “terrible crisis”? What was that story of ratios, denominators and numerators? The ratio is today at the same level as 2009. But what about actual expenditure? There is a vary simple way to check for this. Multiply each of the lines above for the value of GDP. Here is what you get (normalized at 2009=100, as country sizes are too different):

The picture looks quite different, does it? Greece, whose crisis was significantly worse than for the other countries, slashed social expenditure by 25% in 5 years (I know, I know, it is current expenditure. I am too busy to deflate the figure. But I challenge you to prove that things would be substantially different). Now, just in case you had not noticed, social expenditure has an important role as an automatic stabilizer: It supports incomes, thus making hardship more bearable, and lying the foundations for the recovery. In a crisis the line should go up, not down. This picture is yet another illustration of the Greek tragedy, and of the stupidity of the policies that the Troika insists on imposing. By the way, notice how expenditure increased from 2005 to 2009, in response to the global financial crisis. A further proof that sensible policies were implemented in the early phase of the crisis, and that we went berserk only in the second phase.

Ah, and of course virtuous Germany, the model we should all follow, is the black line. Do what I say…

One may object that focusing on expenditure is misleading. There is more than expenditure in assessing the burden of the welfare state on the economy. While Greece slashed spending, its welfare state did not become any better; its capacity to collect taxes did not improve, that its inefficient public administration and its crony capitalism are stronger than ever. Yes, somebody may object all that. That someone is Yanis Varoufakis, who is demanding precisely this: stop asking that Greece slashes spending, and lift the financial constraint that prevents any meaningful medium term reform effort. Reform is not just cutting expenditure. Reform is reorganization of the administrative machine, elimination of wasteful programs, redesigning of incentives. All that is a billion times harder to do for a government that spends all its energies finding money to pay its debt.

Real reform is a medium term objective that needs time, and sometimes resources. In a sentence, reform should stop being associated with austerity.

But hey, I am no finance minister. Just sayin’…

@fsaraceno

Push Greece Off the Cliff?

Yesterday, like many, I was appalled by the ECB announcement that it would stop accepting Greek bonds as collateral for loans. The timing, right after Greek finance minister Varoufakis met Draghi, but before he met German finance minister Schauble, seemed a clear signal: the ECB sides with Germany and EU institutions, and the only possible outcome it expects is a complete rolling back of Syriza electoral promises, and a renewed Greek commitment to austerity and troika-style structural reforms (privatizations plus labour market reform, to say it simply). This would of course be terrible news for Europe (these recipes simply did not work, this is acknowledge  everywhere from the IMF to the White House, passing by Downing Street). And terrible news for democracy as well. The signal to voters would be “Enjoy your day at the polls. Then we decide in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin”.

Appalling, I said. This morning I have read a different, very interesting interpretation by Frances Coppola.  Please read the piece. Is wonderfully written. In a few sentences, it says that the ECB move may not be pressure just on Greece, but on both sides involved, i.e. on Germany as well. In a sort of mega game of chess, by weakening Greece, by pushing it closer to the edge of the cliff, the ECB forces both sides to actively look for a deal, in order to avoid the catastrophic effect of Grexit. Coppola mentions the principle of “coercive deficiency” (famously applied to nuclear deterrence): a weaker Greece makes it run out of options, and hence a deal unavoidable.

Boy, I hope Frances is right! The alternative interpretation, United Creditors Against Greece, would mean the end of the Euro. And it is true that the practical implications of yesterday’s decision are in the end limited.  But I remain worried, for at least two reasons.

1. The first is that if the ECB were trying (in a convoluted way) to set the stage for a deal, it should push Greece closer to the cliff, while at the same time showing at least some willingness to negotiate. Now, it seems that the ECB is not willing even to grant an extension of maturities. This is at odds with the interpretation of the ECB as setting the ground for a deal
2.  Second, even assuming the ECB were in fact trying to crate the conditions for a deal, the game would be dangerous indeed, because it relies on Germany’s leaders to be good chess players! Leaving metaphors aside, it seems that Angela Merkel and Wolfgang Schauble are trapped in their own narrative of debt as a morality tale, in which punishment of the sinners is by definition impossible. So the question becomes whether they would recognize that pushing Greece off the cliff would entail huge costs for the EU at large. And even if they recognize it, they may be willing to pay the price “to teach the sinners a lesson”

Difficult times ahead. I am not optimist

A Broader Perspective

The EU received the 2012 Peace Nobel Prize. I think it is an helpful reminder of what the whole construct has been about for the past sixty years. Especially when you are critical of men and institutions, gloomy about the future, exhausted by endless postponements, frustrated by the chronic lack of ambition,it is from time to time useful to take some perspective, and recognize what a tremendous success Europe has been and still remains. I still remember my grandmother, terrorized by the German reunification, saying with a sigh: “We are lucky to have the European Union…”

My first class on the EU economy traces a sketchy outline of the developments from Jean Monnet to today.  I conclude telling to my (mostly non European) students that whatever they will hear from me over the rest of the semester, mostly negative horrible things, they should not forget the first class. This project remains a tremendous accomplishment precisely for the reasons that motivated the Nobel prize.

But then we go back to real life. The first thing that came to my mind when I heard the news was this:

Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: “With great power comes great responsibility.” This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I’m Spider-man The European Union

Precisely because what they have in their hands is a precious object, our beloved leaders need to get their act together, and do something to preserve it.
Those who speak of Grexit should maybe sit in my first class? Better still, the Spiderman DVD is on sale at Amazon…