O que mudou em relação à minha análise de 2012? Nada, ocorre que o BCE (leia-se Mario Draghi) salvou o Euro, ao garantir veementemente o seu papel de credor de última instância, mas os países do GIIPSI ainda tem um desempenho pouco impressionante no melhor dos casos. Salienta-se que a Grécia, conspicuamente o pior dos casos, já se encaminha para o seu 7º ano de recessão. Assim, resta a questão: vale a pena fazer parte do distinto clube do Euro, ao custo de uma década perdida? Por mais dolorosa que seja a transição para o novo dracma, pelo menos se recuperaria a autonomia da política monetária e cambial, ao final do processo. A Grécia já sofre há 7 anos e deve continuar sofrendo, enquanto a espiral de desemprego e deflação não surtir efeito significativo sobre a competitividade grega. Porém, mesmo se voltar a crescer, continuará dependente da boa vontade do BCE e dos sócios majoritários do clubinho, restando apenas torcer para que não haja um novo choque assimétrico.
Todavia, já me estendi demasiadamente nesta digressão - apesar de ser livre (hehe) -, então, sem mais delongas, eis a narrativa em torno da qual o pessoal benigno da VoxEU tenta criar um consenso:
Although the authors hark from diverse backgrounds, we
found it surprisingly easy to agree upon a narrative and a list of the main
causes of the EZ Crisis. We say “surprisingly” since EZ policymakers remain
attached to very diverse narratives of the Eurozone crisis.
The need for a consensus narrative.
Formulating a consensus on the causes of the EZ Crisis
is essential. When terrible things happen, the natural tendency is to fix the
immediate damage and take steps to avoid similar problems in the future. It is
impossible to agree upon the steps to be taken without agreement on what went
wrong. Absent such agreement, half-measures and messy compromises are the
typical outcome. But this will not be good enough to put the EZ Crisis behind
us and restore growth.
This is why formulating a consensus narrative of the
EZ Crisis matters so much. Eurozone decision-makers will never agree upon the
changes needed to prevent future crises unless they agree upon the basic facts
that explain how the Crisis got so bad and lasted so long.
The EZ Crisis was a ‘sudden stop’ crisis.
The core reality behind virtually every crisis is the
rapid unwinding of economic imbalances. In the case of the EZ crisis, the imbalances
were extremely unoriginal – too much public and private debt borrowed from
abroad. From the euro’s launch till the Crisis, there were big capital flows
from EZ core nations like Germany, France, and the Netherland to EZ periphery
nations like Ireland, Portugal, Spain and Greece.
Importantly, the EZ Crisis should not be thought of as
a government debt crisis in its origin – even though it evolved into one.
Apart from Greece, the nations that ended up with
bailouts were not those with the highest debt-to-GDP ratios.
Belgium and Italy sailed into the Crisis with public
debts of about 100% of GDP and yet did not end up with Troika programmes; Ireland
and Spain, with ratios under 40%, needed bailouts.
The real culprits were the large intra-EZ capital
flows that emerged in the decade before the Crisis.
These imbalances baked problems into the EZ ‘cake’
that would explode in the 2010s. All the nations stricken by the Crisis were
running current account deficits. None of those running current account
surpluses were hit.
When the EZ crisis started, there was a ‘sudden stop’
in cross-border lending. Investors became reluctant to lend – especially to
banks and governments in other nations. The special features of a monetary
union meant that the ‘sudden stop’ was not precipitous (as it was, for example,
in Iceland).
Rather this ‘sudden stop with monetary-union
characteristics’ showed up in rising risk premiums. The abrupt end of capital
flows raised concerns about the viability of banks and governments in nations
dependent on foreign lending, i.e. those running current account deficits.
Slowing growth produced big deficits and rapidly increasing public debt ratios.
When things got bad enough, several governments had to take on some of their
banks’ debt, thus increasing national debt ratios even further. This is how a
balance of payments crisis became a public debt crisis.
Why EZ membership mattered: Crisis amplifiers
Monetary union mattered since it allowed the
cross-border imbalances to get so large with such little notice before the
Crisis struck. It also mattered since the incomplete institutional
infrastructure amplified the initial loss of trust in the deficit nations in
several ways.
EZ governments who got into trouble had no lender of
last resort.
Absent a lender of last resort, a small sustainability
shock could be amplified without bound due to the deadly helix of rising risk
premiums and deteriorating budget deficits stemming from higher debt servicing
costs. This debt-default-risk vortex caught Portugal and came close to catching
Italy, Spain and Belgium. Even France and Austria floated into the penumbra of
debt vortexes at the height of the Crisis.
The other classic crisis response – devaluation – was
impossible for euro-using nations. W1
Taken together, these two features meant their
euro-denominated borrowing was akin to foreign currency debt in a traditional,
developing nation ‘sudden stop’ crisis.
The close links between EZ banks and national
governments greatly amplified and spread the Crisis.
This is the so-called ‘doom loop’ – the potential for
a vicious feedback cycle between banks and their government. It was one of the
key reasons that a single surprise in Greece could swell into a systemic crisis
of historic proportions.
The predominance of bank financing transmitted bank
problems to the wider economy.
As the ‘doom loop’ and slowing economy raised
uncertainty, investment suffered much more than in countries where bank
financing is less central, such as the US. This weakened economies in ways that
worsened the sustainability outlook for nations and banks.
The rigidity of factor and product markets made the
process of restoring competitiveness slow and painful in terms of lost output.
The whole situation was made much worse by poor crisis
management. Mistakes were made, but above all there was nothing in the EZ
institutional infrastructure to deal with a crisis on this scale. EZ leaders
faced the dual challenge of fire-fighting and institution-building – all in a
situation where the interests of debtors and creditors diverged sharply and European
electorates were closely following developments.
Judging from market reactions, each policy intervention
‘saved the day’ but made things worse from the next day on. The corner was only
turned in the summer of 2012 with the decision to set up a banking union and
the “whatever it takes” assertion by ECB President Mario Draghi.
