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June 29, 2022 - 3:45pm
According to several commentators, we might be on the verge of a second euro crisis, as the “spread” — the difference between Italian and German bond yields — reached its highest level since 2013, following a slow but steady rise in Italian yields. This is hardly surprising, since none of the underlying dysfunctions of the euro that led to the first euro crisis have actually been resolved.
It has been a decade since Mario Draghi put an end to the first euro crisis by pledging to do “whatever it takes to preserve the euro” — which essentially meant getting the European Central Bank (ECB) to act somewhat like a “normal” central bank, promising to act as a lender of last resort in case a member state faced insolvency.
In fact, Draghi’s famous speech fell short of “normalising” the euro. In “normal” countries — that is, countries that issue their own currency — the central bank would never dream of meddling in the government’s fiscal or economic policies. The government sets its fiscal and economic policy targets, and the central bank accommodates them, which usually means “printing” the money the government needs to fulfil its targets.
Draghi’s promise, on the other hand, came with strings attached: the ECB would intervene to save a country from insolvency only if the country signed up to a European Stability Mechanism (ESM) structural programme. This included a host of economic and social reforms (liberalisation of labour markets, reduction of labour costs, etc.) on the macroeconomic level, and cost-cutting reforms on the fiscal level. In other words: think Greece.
This exemplifies the fundamental flaw (or virtue, if you subscribe to the neoliberal point of view) of the euro: in currency-issuing nations, the central bank, as an arm of the state, is effectively dependent on government or representative institutions; governments in the euro area, in contrast, are dependent on the ECB — which throughout the years hasn’t had any qualms about using its power to impose its political agenda on democratically elected governments and even remove political leaders from office.
Observers claimed that the “unprecedented” measures put in place during the pandemic — the suspension of budgetary rules, the ECB’s launching of a massive trillion-euro bond-purchasing programme and the creation of a Europe-wide “recovery plan” known as Next Generation EU — meant that the eurozone had finally overcome these structural deficits.
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Subscribe“Draghi saved the euro”.
I can’t tell you how many times I have read that phrase or similar in the last decade and every time, I’ve thought “no, what he did was preserve the euro for the time being, kicking the can down the road to create breathing space for reform – which was never used to good effect and at some point the chickens will come home to roost”. And here we jolly well are.
Katharine, I think you know that the EU bureaucrats never have any real plan to “reform” anything that’s broken. Not with the Euro debt crisis. Not with the CAP. No, they just double down and keep going with even greater determination. To put it politely, this is not a “learning organisation”. It is one that sees no need to learn.
You might imagine they would be familiar with Dennis Healey’s First Law of Holes. It seems not – their motto might as well be “keep digging”.
In terms of Italy, the risk is as much of a pro-Putin government on the left as of a populist one on the right. Or some combination of both…
…I’m glad we have a moat. We need to get tooled-up for it’s defence..!
In the USA, we have 50 states with 50 governments. Some states are extremely productive while others are not. With a single currency, the less productive states could literally run out of dollars. Our federal government, however, redistributes wealth to poorer states. It’s accepted.
In the EMU, your trade deficit countries are always exporting Euros for goods and services. Since they are part of a single currency, they can’t print money to make their goods less expensive, so they face recession or depression. Without a wealth transfer, they can run out of Euros.
The question is: are the wealthy countries willing to redistribute their wealth to the trade deficit countries?
…much the same in the UK, despite the wailing of the Sturgeonistas…emphatically NOT the same in the EU, unless by stealth…although there is an extent to which the market is being jollied-along to believe it might happen. But when the crisis really hits, it absolutely won’t…and it will hit…