por admin » Vie Jul 22, 2011 8:45 am
Malo el buffet de Brussels
Bad Brussels Buffet
'Something for everyone' won't solve the euro-zone crisis.
If the first Greek bailout 15 months ago was supposed to be the financial equivalent of "shock and awe," then yesterday's euro-zone summit in Brussels looks like a case of "confuse and obscure."
Just before lunchtime Thursday, the EU leaked a draft agreement on another bailout for Greece. Under the new plan, the EU would: (1) offer investors a range of options for voluntarily restructuring Greece's debt; (2) extend the maturity and reduce the interest rate on current EU loans to Greece; (3) commit to a "Marshall Plan"-like spending program of unspecified size to boost the Greek economy; (4) pledge new loans, also of unspecified size, to Athens; and (5) allow the EU's €440 billion ($634 billion) bailout fund to buy up euro-zone sovereign debt and recapitalize European banks.
As we went to press, EU leaders were still debating all of these points, and then some, behind closed doors. The plan's other elements include a solemn promise by the rest of Europe (aside from Greece) to pay their debts on time, a commitment to reduce reliance on ratings agencies, and a chorus of sonorities about growth and deficit reduction.
In all this noise, the big breakthrough—assuming it holds—is the agreement to restructure Greece's debt. Yet even here questions remain.
For a restructuring to be worth the bother, it would have to significantly reduce the stock of Greek government debt outstanding, which currently stands at about 160% of GDP and rising rapidly. But a purely voluntary restructuring is unlikely to put much of a dent in what Greece owes. The big European banks present at Thursday's summit own a small percentage of Greece's debt, and other investors may be less willing to take a big hit on the value of the debt they hold. It would be a shame for Europe finally to broach the taboo topic of a Greek default without taking the opportunity to cut the country's outstanding debt to somewhere south of 100% of GDP.
Reducing the cost of the EU's bailout loans is probably sensible enough, but it also reinforces the perception that Europe is still improvising here, and what's hailed as a solution one day can be discarded or revised the next. A European Marshall Plan for Greece, on the other hand, sounds like a colossal waste of EU taxpayer money—Greece's problem in recent years has not been insufficient amounts of wasteful government spending, and no government in Europe has money to burn on more of the same. Greece needs pro-growth economic reform, not another helping of warmed-over Keynesianism.
Which brings us to the expansion of the role of the bailout fund, also known as the European Financial Stability Facility. "To address contagion," the draft says, the EFSF will be allowed to intervene in the secondary markets for government bonds, finance the recapitalization of banks, and to "intervene on the basis of a precautionary program."
The idea here is that the stability fund becomes a financial-market firefighter of sorts, propping up debt markets that come under attack in a bid to stop "contagion" before a full-fledged Greek-style bailout becomes necessary in a place like Spain or Italy. But that's little more than a new twist on what the EU has been attempting, without success, for the past 15 months.
The markets reacted well to yesterday's leak, with the euro, stocks and government bonds all leaping in price on the news that Europe had agreed to throw still more money at the problem. And perhaps that was to be expected from a plan that, in place of coherence, offers a little something for everyone.
But that doesn't mean the problem is solved. On the contrary, the leaked plan implicitly affirms that, with the possible exception of Greece, no euro-zone country will be allowed to default on its debt. That, however, is a promise on which Europe is incapable of delivering, which means that the volatility, the fear and the slow-rolling crisis still have no end in sight.