Mrs Merkel is right on a number of counts and unless the rest of us, Europeans, acknowledge the strength of her case, there will be no progress in sorting out the mess otherwise known as eurozone. The trick will be to grant her her dues but, also, to point out the logical conclusion of her own arguments (which she seems unable or unwilling to discern).
1. She is right that Europe needs common economic governance
2. She is right that common economic governance cannot be sustained in the absence of any institutionalised brakes on the member-states’ deficits
3. She is right that the underlying economic forces, of competitiveness, productivity and a greater emphasis on the boring business of making things and then selling them
4. She is right that the German taxpayer (and the Dutch, Austrian and Finnish ones) cannot constantly increase their guarantees to the EFSF on the behalf of the effectively bankrupted rest
5. She is right that extending the EFSF’s remit to indulging in fancy buy-backs of Greek and Irish junk bonds is as helpful as aspirin administered to a dying patient
6. She is right that European solidarity is undermined when German production workers retire at 67 while French paper pushers retire at 62 or Greek army personnel are pensioned off at 43
7. She is right that either all eurozone wages should be index-linked or none. That it is not defensible to have wages linked to inflation on the western side of the Belgian-German border but not on its eastern side.
8. She is right that a race-to-the-bottom, when it comes to corporate tax, is ludicrous. Usurping foreign direct investment from the rest of the eurozone with 12% tax rates is a policy that, if generalised, would lead to no greater foreign direct investment, a slump in the tax take and, more importantly, a huge redistribution from labour to capital
In short, Mrs Merkel is completely right on all the issues that she is holding out on currently. Unfortunately, as those of us on the Left have known for a while, it is much easier to be right about your dislikes and wishes than to come up with firm remedies for a better status quo whose implementation is both feasible and does not produce byproducts worse than the original disease.
Let me begin with points 6,7 and 8. The first two are a matter of cross border solidarity. Of course, one could point out that convergence does not have to be achieved at the lowest denominator. Why can the retirement age not rise in France from 62 to 65 while falling in Germany from 67 to 65? hammering out such compromises is Europe’s comparative advantage. Lock several eurocrats in a room and let them get on with it. Their brief ought to be, not only to negotiate a common number, but also to fashion common definitions and associated remedies. For instance, how exactly is a pensioner defined? In Greece, the pension system is (ab)used because of the lack of proper social security. So, in areas of chronic unemployment, the state prefers to push a 58 year old into retirement in order to avoid having her on the dole. So, convergence yes, but across the board please.
Point 8 needs no further exegesis. It is incumbent upon members of the eurozone to harmonise their corporate tax rates. This does not mean a uniform tax rate everywhere. Special economic zones can be declared on the basis of commonly agreed criteria. What is absurd is to allow Ireland to declare itself a special (low tax) economic zone and, in so doing, to invite other countries or regions into a free for all that leads to a suboptimal outcome for everyone, including Ireland. However, note that this harmonisation, again, requires a centrally administered process of deciding the corporate tax rates of each eurozone region.
Points 4 and 5 concern the hapless EFSF. Since I have written enough on the subject, I shall try to desist. Save to sum up: The EFSF is a giant CDO. It is the most inefficient means by which to raise funding for stricken states. The toxic nature of its eurobonds are a massive drag on the taxpayers of the surplus countries and, thus, a major threat to European Unity. Mrs Merkel is right to distrust it, not to want to extend any more guarantees to it and, generally, to see it as an evil whose necessity ought to be undermined. The more ‘analysts’ come up with iffy schemes (recall the buy-back of Greek debt idea) for bolstering the EFSF and allowing it to grow into something more robust than it is, the more Mrs Merkel digs in, and the deeper the eurozone sinks into the mire. Take for instance the latest proposal by Daniel Gros and Thomas Mayer. It recommends that the EFSF buys most of the debt by Greece, Portugal and Ireland by offering to replace their bonds with its own, at the current market haircut rates (giving their owners a firm deadline within which to sell). But this would immediately deplete the EFSF funds, a sure signal to the market that Spain may have nowhere to turn to if it finds itself in need. Spanish spreads will shoot up, then Italian and Belgian ones will follow and, meanwhile, the EFSF will have knocked itself out. And if Mrs Merkel (against all odds) were to decide to triple the EFSF’s funds, to avoid that eventuality, then no one would sell to the EFSF Greece’s or Ireland’s bonds at the current low price. Summing up, Mrs Merkel is wise not to see the EFSF’s evolving role as anything to write home about.
And now, to the first three points on which Mrs Merkel is right: Starting from point 3, there is no doubt that this is the key issue affecting the eurozone’s future: the fact that, while our currencies are locked up, our different economies’ productivity rise and fall at ever differentiated rates. It is like tectonic plates moving in different directions under a city. At some point, the buildings will start cracking. We cannot deal with the eurozone crisis, long term, either by loans or by fiscal transfers or by harmonising tax rates and social benefits or, indeed, by strengthening the forces of recession in the countries already in its merciless clasps. Something else is needed. And that something else cannot be a matter of boosting the eurozone’s overall competitiveness since it is a question of relative intra-eurozone competitiveness. What is that something else? It is some form of Surplus Recycling Mechanism (SRM): A mechanism by which surpluses from surplus regions become profitable investments in a deficit-producing region. Without an SRM no currency zone is vaible; something that Keynes homed in on during the Bretton Woods conference but was ignored by a Unites States on the cusp of global domination; an emerging hegemon who, while fully aware of the importance of an SRM at a global level, decided that it would itself play that role, of the SRM, in the post-war economy (and did so successfully for many years – see my Global Minotaur story; the part I call the Global Plan).
Now, sixty years later, Europe needs its own SRM both to get out of the current crisis and to re-design the eurozone’s faulty architecture in a manner that absorbs shocks better. Unfortunately, unlike the USA back then, Mrs Merkel today does not seem to understand that her own programmatic views (see above) cannot hold together unless such an SRM is penned into her plan for a future Europe. That a European SRM is, if you like, the prerequisite for points 1 and 2 above: No SRM, no common economic governance. But as this is a long and interesting story, I shall have to return to it later.
My Merkel, right and wrong
Mrs Merkel is right on a number of counts and unless the rest of us, Europeans, acknowledge the strength of her case, there will be no progress in sorting out the mess otherwise known as eurozone. The trick will be to grant her her dues but, also, to point out the logical conclusion of her own arguments (which she seems unable or unwilling to discern).
1. She is right that Europe needs common economic governance
2. She is right that common economic governance cannot be sustained in the absence of any institutionalised brakes on the member-states’ deficits
3. She is right that the underlying economic forces, of competitiveness, productivity and a greater emphasis on the boring business of making things and then selling them
4. She is right that the German taxpayer (and the Dutch, Austrian and Finnish ones) cannot constantly increase their guarantees to the EFSF on the behalf of the effectively bankrupted rest
5. She is right that extending the EFSF’s remit to indulging in fancy buy-backs of Greek and Irish junk bonds is as helpful as aspirin administered to a dying patient
6. She is right that European solidarity is undermined when German production workers retire at 67 while French paper pushers retire at 62 or Greek army personnel are pensioned off at 43
7. She is right that either all eurozone wages should be index-linked or none. That it is not defensible to have wages linked to inflation on the western side of the Belgian-German border but not on its eastern side.
8. She is right that a race-to-the-bottom, when it comes to corporate tax, is ludicrous. Usurping foreign direct investment from the rest of the eurozone with 12% tax rates is a policy that, if generalised, would lead to no greater foreign direct investment, a slump in the tax take and, more importantly, a huge redistribution from labour to capital
In short, Mrs Merkel is completely right on all the issues that she is holding out on currently. Unfortunately, as those of us on the Left have known for a while, it is much easier to be right about your dislikes and wishes than to come up with firm remedies for a better status quo whose implementation is both feasible and does not produce byproducts worse than the original disease.
Let me begin with points 6,7 and 8. The first two are a matter of cross border solidarity. Of course, one could point out that convergence does not have to be achieved at the lowest denominator. Why can the retirement age not rise in France from 62 to 65 while falling in Germany from 67 to 65? hammering out such compromises is Europe’s comparative advantage. Lock several eurocrats in a room and let them get on with it. Their brief ought to be, not only to negotiate a common number, but also to fashion common definitions and associated remedies. For instance, how exactly is a pensioner defined? In Greece, the pension system is (ab)used because of the lack of proper social security. So, in areas of chronic unemployment, the state prefers to push a 58 year old into retirement in order to avoid having her on the dole. So, convergence yes, but across the board please.
Point 8 needs no further exegesis. It is incumbent upon members of the eurozone to harmonise their corporate tax rates. This does not mean a uniform tax rate everywhere. Special economic zones can be declared on the basis of commonly agreed criteria. What is absurd is to allow Ireland to declare itself a special (low tax) economic zone and, in so doing, to invite other countries or regions into a free for all that leads to a suboptimal outcome for everyone, including Ireland. However, note that this harmonisation, again, requires a centrally administered process of deciding the corporate tax rates of each eurozone region.
Points 4 and 5 concern the hapless EFSF. Since I have written enough on the subject, I shall try to desist. Save to sum up: The EFSF is a giant CDO. It is the most inefficient means by which to raise funding for stricken states. The toxic nature of its eurobonds are a massive drag on the taxpayers of the surplus countries and, thus, a major threat to European Unity. Mrs Merkel is right to distrust it, not to want to extend any more guarantees to it and, generally, to see it as an evil whose necessity ought to be undermined. The more ‘analysts’ come up with iffy schemes (recall the buy-back of Greek debt idea) for bolstering the EFSF and allowing it to grow into something more robust than it is, the more Mrs Merkel digs in, and the deeper the eurozone sinks into the mire. Take for instance the latest proposal by Daniel Gros and Thomas Mayer. It recommends that the EFSF buys most of the debt by Greece, Portugal and Ireland by offering to replace their bonds with its own, at the current market haircut rates (giving their owners a firm deadline within which to sell). But this would immediately deplete the EFSF funds, a sure signal to the market that Spain may have nowhere to turn to if it finds itself in need. Spanish spreads will shoot up, then Italian and Belgian ones will follow and, meanwhile, the EFSF will have knocked itself out. And if Mrs Merkel (against all odds) were to decide to triple the EFSF’s funds, to avoid that eventuality, then no one would sell to the EFSF Greece’s or Ireland’s bonds at the current low price. Summing up, Mrs Merkel is wise not to see the EFSF’s evolving role as anything to write home about.
And now, to the first three points on which Mrs Merkel is right: Starting from point 3, there is no doubt that this is the key issue affecting the eurozone’s future: the fact that, while our currencies are locked up, our different economies’ productivity rise and fall at ever differentiated rates. It is like tectonic plates moving in different directions under a city. At some point, the buildings will start cracking. We cannot deal with the eurozone crisis, long term, either by loans or by fiscal transfers or by harmonising tax rates and social benefits or, indeed, by strengthening the forces of recession in the countries already in its merciless clasps. Something else is needed. And that something else cannot be a matter of boosting the eurozone’s overall competitiveness since it is a question of relative intra-eurozone competitiveness. What is that something else? It is some form of Surplus Recycling Mechanism (SRM): A mechanism by which surpluses from surplus regions become profitable investments in a deficit-producing region. Without an SRM no currency zone is vaible; something that Keynes homed in on during the Bretton Woods conference but was ignored by a Unites States on the cusp of global domination; an emerging hegemon who, while fully aware of the importance of an SRM at a global level, decided that it would itself play that role, of the SRM, in the post-war economy (and did so successfully for many years – see my Global Minotaur story; the part I call the Global Plan).
Now, sixty years later, Europe needs its own SRM both to get out of the current crisis and to re-design the eurozone’s faulty architecture in a manner that absorbs shocks better. Unfortunately, unlike the USA back then, Mrs Merkel today does not seem to understand that her own programmatic views (see above) cannot hold together unless such an SRM is penned into her plan for a future Europe. That a European SRM is, if you like, the prerequisite for points 1 and 2 above: No SRM, no common economic governance. But as this is a long and interesting story, I shall have to return to it later.
