Greece: Enough is Enough

In Alexis Tsipras’ shoes I would apply immediately for Greece to leave the EU, as envisaged by Art. 50 of the TEU (Consolidated Version of the Treaty on European Union, Official Journal of the European Union, C 115/15, 9/5/2008).

Since Greece’s 2010 crisis the Troika (sorry, the “international institutions”) have sunk about €245bn into its rescue, i.e. more than would have been sufficient at that time to pay off the entire Greek debt. It is well known that these funds did not benefit the Greeks but went almost entirely to save French, Swiss and German banks from their exposure to Greek government bonds. And in the FT or 21 April Martin Wolf debunks Greek “mythology” including the myth that “Greece has done nothing”: 

“Greece has undergone a huge adjustment of its fiscal and external positions. Between 2009 and 2014, the primary fiscal balance (before interest) tightened by 12 per cent of gross domestic product, the structural fiscal deficit by 20 per cent of GDP and the current account balance by 12 per cent of GDP.”

“Between the first quarter of 2008 and the last of 2013, real spending in the Greek economy fell by 35 per cent and GDP by 27 per cent, while unemployment peaked at 28 per cent of the labour force. These are huge adjustments. Indeed, one of the tragedies of the impasse over the conditions for support is that the adjustment has happened. Greece does not need additional resources.”

The cost of such adjustments to the Greek people were immense. Unemployment reached 28% (48% for youth unemployment), the dismantling of collective bargaining lowered real hourly wages by 25% by 2014. The minimum wage fell to its level of the 1970s. The minimum pension fell below the poverty threshold. As many as 35.7% of the population and 44.1% of children aged 11 to 15 are now at risk of poverty or social exclusion. And Gechert and Rannenberg (of the German Hans Böckler Foundation) show that without austerity the Greek economy would only have stagnated, avoiding the deep recession, while tax increases without spending cuts would have been much more effective in lowering the Debt/GDP ratio.

Another myth debunked by Martin Wolf is that Greece will pay its debt in full. As a a result of fiscal consolidation and the bailout its debt has gone from about 120% of GDP in 2010 to over 177% today. Thus Greece needs either further debt relief or, in order to continue to service the debt, it needs the €7.2bn bail-out funds due last year that were not disbursed on the ground of alleged delays in Greek implementation of “structural reforms” agreed in the Memorandum of Understanding negotiated by the previous right-wing government with the “institutions”.

After the 25 January elections the new government, democratically elected on a specific anti-austerity campaign, and reported by post-election polls to consistently command the support of 80% of the population, an agreement with the “institutions” was reached in principle on 20 February for the release of the €7.2bn on condition of somewhat different but yet unspecified structural reforms. However there have been continuous wrangles about whether or not the Greek reform proposals were or were not sufficient to warrant the release of the residual bail-out funds.

Up to now Greece has paid punctually interest and debt instalments as they became due, such as $450mn owed the IMF on 9 April and a batch of Treasury Bonds that also fell due. But the IMF is still owed €203mn on 1 May and €770mn on 12 May, plus €1.6bn in June, while some of the debt with the ECB is also due for repayment. The Greek government has scraped the bottom of the barrel by requisitioning the liquid balances of state enterprises and local authorities. It has announced that it is not in a position to make these payments, unless it stops payment of pensions and public sector wages and salaries.  Without access to these €7.2bn Greece is likely to default on its payments to the IMF and the ECB.

On 15 April the FT reported that Greek officials had approached the IMF informally proposing to delay the repayment of loans due in May but were told that no rescheduling was possible; indeed they were persuaded not to make that request officially, presumably to avoid an open refusal.

At the same time Germany’s finance minister Wolfgang Schäuble was reported in an interview to have virtually ruled out that at the Eurogroup meeting in Riga on 24 April a deal might release bailout funds to Athens. "You can't pour hundreds of billions... into a bottomless pit."

However Die Zeit reported that Ms Merkel now might support emergency measures that would give Greece continued access to ECB Emergency Financial Assistance even in case of default. The possibility of a Greek default not being followed by Grexit is being discussed more and more widely (see for instance Wolfgang Munchau and Martin Wolf in the FT).  It might be possible, perhaps, but would still be very messy, and if there is sufficient goodwill to make it possible it would be much more effective to disburse the wretched €7.2bn.

The Financial Times on line of 18 April (Breaking News, 6.57 pm) reports that ECB president Mario Draghi told the IMF spring meeting the euro area was better equipped than it had been in the past (in 2010, 2011 and 2012) to deal with a new Greek crisis but warned of “uncharted waters” if the situation were to deteriorate badly.

On 21 April BloombergBusiness reported that “The European Central Bank is studying measures to rein in Emergency Liquidity Assistance to Greek banks, as resistance to further aiding the country’s stricken lenders grows in the Governing Council”. The writing is on the wall.

Grexit costs would be very serious not only for Greece but for the entire Eurozone and beyond, but unilateral withdrawal from the whole of the European Union rather than simply the Eurozone would make more sense. An application to withdraw would only take effect two years later, leaving ample time for a possible change of mind and for re-negotiations, but might be an effective and quick way of sobering up Mr Schäuble and the other Troika hawks that have been bullying Greece, pushing it towards default regardless of consequences. Greece might as well take back the initiative, not least to avoid an internal government crisis.

What is particularly deplorable is the IMF duplicity and bad faith: in Greece and everywhere else on a global scale they have been calling relentlessly for fiscal consolidation and structural reforms (a euphemism for enterprise freedom to dismiss employees and for the systematic destruction of the welfare state) but at the same time they have played a leading role in discrediting consolidation and "reforms" as policy instruments to fight a recession.

The IMF World Economic Outlook of October 2012 (Box 3.1 untypically signed by Chief Economist Olivier J. Blanchard and Senior Economist David Leigh, presumably to suggest that their views are personal and not official) raised previous estimates of fiscal multipliers for several reasons. First, the ineffectiveness of countervailing monetary expansion close to the zero floor of the interest rate'; second, lack of opportunities for exchange rate devaluation especially in the Euroarea; third, the existence of  a large gap between potential and actual income (for fiscal multipliers are higher in a downturn than in a boom) and finally, the simultaneous consolidation across many countries.  Such revision of estimated multipliers implied an upwards revision of the costs of consolidation, to the point of theorizing that tax increases and especially expenditure cuts would actually raise, instead of lowering, the ratio between Debt and GDP, thus setting up a vicious circle. This of course is what happened punctually in Greece and in other highly indebted economies – like Italy – as a result of fiscal consolidations.

Further the IMF World Economic Outlook 2015 (Ch. 3, Box 3.5 on The Effects of Structural Reforms on Total Factor Productivity, pp.104-107) issued on 14 April candidly recognizes, on the basis of available econometric evidence, that total factor productivity can be increased by using more skilled labour and ICT, by investing more in research and development and by lowering the level of regulation in product markets. In contrast, the IMF does not find any statistically significant effects on total factor productivity that result from lowering labour market regulation (See also Ronald Janssen Social Europe).

Such schizophrenic duplicity on the part of the IMF has not even incompetence as a conceivable justification. A Greek unilateral withdrawal from the European Union would sober up lots of people in Washington as well as in Brussels, Frankfurt and Berlin. Go for it Alexis and Yanis on behalf of all of us, not just on behalf of Greece. 

UPDATE (13 May)

Last Monday (11 May) Greece paid the $750mn owed to the IMF, one day before the deadline, ending days of uncertainty over funds availability and whether payment might be withheld in order to put pressure on creditors. 

Where did the money come from? The FT reminds us that “The Greek government ordered hundreds of state entities — among them hospitals, universities and local authorities — to deposit their cash reserves with the central bank. But many such entities, including an overwhelming majority of municipalities, have declined to comply”.

An unmissable piece of news, which appears to have gone largely unreported in the financial press: TSIPRAS TO FIRE [FIRED] BANK OF GREECE BOSS FOR UNDERMINING SYRIZA POSITION: “Bank of Greece Governor Yannis Stournaras will be quitting his post today (last Sunday). Alexis Tsipras will ask for his resignation in the light of documentary proof that the former New Democracy Finance Minister personally gave specific briefs to a top journalist about “putting the most negative spin possible on the news” about Greek finances.

Yannis Stournaras was Greek Minister of Finance from 5 July 2012 until he moved to the BoG last year. As a senior consultant to the Bank he was personally involved in the entry of Greece into the euro. As a senior Governor he sits on the Board of the IMF, a position that places him in a serious conflict of interest with the Greek government.  “Meanwhile, the forensic investigation into debt overstatement in 2010 and how much Greek debt can be objectively defined as ‘odious’ continues”.