Kakistocracy

In 1988 my old friend, teacher and mentor Luigi Spaventa was made Treasury Minister in the Italian government.  The Communist Party had been offered a few posts in the government, including Vincenzo Visco at the Ministry of Finance, but had refused; Luigi belonged to the left but was not a party member, and fortunately accepted.  On that occasion, I sent him a postcard with the following verses:

Visco al Fisco! Noo? Peccato,

Il Partito s’e’ imbranato.

Per fortuna c’e’ Spaventa

Che al Tesoro s’arroventa,

E la fine e’ ormai per via

della Cachistocrazia.

[Visco at Finances! No? Pity./The Party has goofed./But fortunately Spaventa/At the Treasury is getting fired-up,/And at last we are on the way/To end our kakistocracy.]

Naively I thought I had coined the word, from the Greek kakistos, superlative of kakos(bad), government by the worst citizens, but on googling the word there are almost half a million entries: kakistocracy was first used in 1829 by the English satirical writer Thomas Love Peacock. The American poet James Russell Lowell wrote in a letter in 1876: "Is ours a government of the people, by the people, for the people, or a kakistocracy rather, for the benefit of knaves at the cost of fools?"

Luigi, a wonderful teacher and a great economist, died prematurely in 2010.  Had he lived longer he might have been appointed premier in 2012 instead of Mario Monti (for he was President Napolitano’s economic adviser), or to even higher office later: Italian recent history would have taken a turn for the better.  In any case I was patently wrong: not only does kakistocracy – the mafia in collusion with the political Casta- still rule Italy, now it has spread to the entire world.  Whenever the best men come to power in a country, the global kakistocracy tries to squash them.  This is the case right now in Greece.

All that Alexis Tsipras is asking of the European and global rulers is six months of breathing space to prepare an alternative plan for debt management and economic recovery.  After all, the elections of 25 January had been called only on 14 December and he could not conceivably have been expected to have a plan ready when his outstanding surprise victory was proclaimed.

His first moves were directed at reassuring the global community: Greece would honour its debts in full, without insisting on a debt haircut; the country would remain in the Eurozone, as preferred by a large majority of its citizens; it would fight tax evasion and raise the living standards of those who had suffered most from the austerity imposed by the Troika (the ”Memorandum” issued by the EC, ECB and IMF): the unemployed, especially those unfairly dismissed, the poor, old age pensioners and the other economically weak groups.  ”If the country’s sacrifices were conducive to recovery and growth I would be the first to advocate them” – he said to Parliament last week (I am quoting from memory) – ”if the bitter pill was necessary to recover health I would readily swallow it”.  But the austerity imposed by the European and globalist kakistocracy demonstrably leads only to cumulative impoverishment and ruin, as it has already done.  Thus Tsipras rejected at once the continuation of the programme agreed with the Troika by his predecessor, renouncing the €7.2bn aid that Greece otherwise expected to receive at the end of February, asking only for the €1.9 bn repayment of ECB profits made on its Greek bonds, with a view to using the next six months to negotiate a new agreement and in the meantime to meet all outstanding obligations by issuing around €10bn short-term Treasury bonds. 

So far the Kakistos and Tsipras are set on a collision course. The Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis and German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble would not even “agree to disagree”.  On 11 February in Brussels at a meeting of Eurozone Finance Ministers talks collapsed after six hours.  There is no way the debt owed to the ECB or the IMF can be cut, under penalty of losing access to assistance from these institutions – though Greece might be allowed to repay ECB credits by borrowing on very long terms from EFSF, the Eurozone bail-out fund.  Moreover Tsipras has promised that private investors will not be hit.  The only room for debt renegotiation is with European governments, to whom Greece owes directly or indirectly about €195bn, around 62 per cent of its total debt (of which almost 148bn or 45 per cent to the bail-out fund EFSF). True, Greece has already benefited from a debt cut in 2010 and 2012, and from the lengthening of maturities right up to 2057; and from a reduction of interest on its debt down to 2.6% of GDP, equivalent to that paid by Italy or France (and only 1.5% on its debt with the EFSF, which could not possibly be cut further).

But according to the Troika Memorandum Greece is committed to running a primary surplus (before paying interest) of 4.5% of GDP a year, which is an exceedingly heavy burden on an impoverished country.  Such a surplus requirement could very well be cut at least temporarily, by an interest moratorium until growth is resumed, back to earlier income levels, to the 1%-1.5% primary surplus that Syriza’s current plans would require. This is the purpose of the proposal put forward by Yanis Varoufakis, of swapping debt owed to European governments with new bonds indexed to the Greek growth rate.  

The ECB was certainly within its rights to cancel the waiver allowing Greek banks the use of Greek government bonds as collateral, thus denying Greece access to liquidity at 0.05% interest, once Tsipras had indicated his unwillingness to continue on the agreed course at the end of February.  But it was certainly not ”legitimate and opportune” as declared by Matteo Renzi, who presented Tsipras with an elegant tie instead of solidarity (”So that he could go and hang himself with it”, commented Giorgia Meloni, leader of the right-wing party Fratelli d’Italia).  As long as Greece has access to Emergency Liquidity Assistence (even at the higher cost of 1.55%) Greek banks can cope even with the slow run on deposits that has already begun (€15 bn in the two months preceding the elections); but such access has to be confirmed every fortnight and its possible suspension is a Damocles’ sword. Greece really needs the Tsipras really needs the €10bn Treasury bonds that Tsipras wishes to issue.

The trouble is that Greece is already right up against the €15bn limit to short term indebtment that has already been imposed by the Troika, and the additional €10bn bonds have to be, but have not been, authorised.  Yet this is the only and therefore the best way out of the Greek-Troika confrontation.  Wolfgang Schäuble declared that ”Europe is not in the business of granting bridging loans”, but the €10bn would be no skin off his nose, they would be raised – at a price, that current delays make rise all the time – in the international market.  By giving up its entitlement to €7.2bn under the Memorandum surely Greece can have its €15bn borrowing ceiling lifted at the same time?  The Troika cannot have it both ways, tying Greece to its borrowing limit when it is renouncing some of the benefits of its current deal with the Troika.

Germans display the memory typical of elephants when they evoke the ghost of their 1922-23 hyper-inflation to justify their opposition even to ECB quantitative easing.  But they have a shorter memory than goldfish when it comes to the 1953 cancellation of German debt of over 200% of its GDP at the time, much in excess of the current Greek debt burden of under 180%.  According to the economic historian Albrecht Ritschl (LSE), Germany was ”the “biggest debt transgressor of the twentieth century”;Robert Skidelsky recently reminded us that“Germany experienced eight debt defaults and/or restructurings from 1800 to 2008. There were also the two defaults through inflation in 1920 and 1923. And yet today Germany is Europe’s economic hegemon, laying down the law to miscreants like Greece.”

Tsipras’ mention of war reparations was not commented on by Merkel but both vice-Chancellor Sigmar Gabriel and Wolfgang Schäuble immediately said that the issue was definitively closed years ago, and its re-opening was out of the question.  Tsipras mentioning the War was treated as an inappropriate gesture in bad taste.  Shades of Basil Fawlty of Fawlty Towers, shouting at the Hotel’s Spanish waiter Manuel: ”Don’t mention the War!” when German guests arrived.  But why ever not?  If memories of 1922-23 hyper-inflation are not buried, a fortiori neither should more recent and tragic ones.  Such a combination of a good memory for distant events with forgetfulness of recent ones is typical of dementia.

A secret Greek Finance Ministry report is said to provide detailed evidence of ”atrocities and forced loans during Nazi occupation of Greece in World War II”.  Apparently ”in 1960 Germany paid DM 115 million in reparation payments to victims of the Nazi terror regime in Greece in accord with a bilateral reparation agreement”. But 1) the Netherlands suffered much less and received a much larger compensation; 2) “the 1953 London Agreement on German External Debts, between the Federal Republic of Germany and creditor nations, stipulated that payment obligations from World War II were to be deferred until ‘after the signing of a peace treaty’", and 3) apart from the cost of war suffering, casualties and loss of material assets, there was a loan the GreekCentral Bank was forced to give the Nazi regime in 1942, 476 million reichsmarks which the occupiers not only acknowledged but had actually started repaying shortly before the end of the war.  Even at a modest interest rate of 3% a year (though German loans after the War generally had a 6% interest rate) after 70 years that loan would have built up to a handsome three digit billion sum in today's euros.  Professor Hagen Fleischer, a historian from Athens University, explains that "Before 1990, Germany tended to point out [that] it was too soon, because Germany was divided and it was the entire country that had gone to war, not just one half. So the issue was supposed to be canned until Germany was again reunified".  After reunification, however, "Germany's response was suddenly, 'So much time has passed - now it's too late’".  Clearly the Greek Ministry of Finance should publish its secret report in full on the Internet at once, together with all the body of evidence of post-2009 Greek negotiations with the Kakistos of the Troika that led to the ”Memorandum”.

There is a perfectly feasible solution to the otherwise potentially catastrophic losses involved in the confrontation between Greece and the Troika: lifting the €15bn ceiling on short-term debt in exchange for Greece renouncing the aid otherwise payable under the Memorandum.  Paradoxically, Angela Merkel is standing firm and and wisely stopping Europe from joining the USA and its jejeune warmongering President Barak Obama in arming Ukraine and fighting Vladimir Putin.  Let’s hope that she might come to her senses also in her dangerous confrontation with Greece. 

UPDATE

On Thursday 13 February it was announced that fiscal revenue for the month of January was €1bn lower than forecasts (a shortfall of 23%). The ECB extended another EUR5bn in emergency loans to banks in Greece after fears that a spate of bank withdrawals could dry up funding. In fact according to JP Morgan withdrawals from bank deposits since the beginning of 2015 amounted to €21bn.  But ELA is subject to fortnightly verification and is not a permanent solution.  On Friday 14 it was announced that in the fourth quarter of 2014 the Greek economy had contracted slightly, reversing the trend after nine months growth.

The Greek government claims that it does not need any fresh cash: “We do not want new loans, we need time, not money to implement reforms” – the Greek premier said in an interview to the German weekly Stern.  But a spokesman for the Commission commented: “We fear that the available liquidity is shrinking faster than anticipated”.

Monday 16 February was supposed to be the day of reckoning. But the Brussels meeting of Eurozone Ministers of Finance with Tsipras and Varoufakis ended with a bitter row, with general recriminations and yet another postponement of the final decision until no later than Wednesday next.  The Union offered Greece only the extension of the pre-existing agreement, at the same conditions; the Greeks rejected the proposal as “absurd and unacceptable”

Time is running short, for some countries, like Germany, the Netherlands, Finland and Estonia, need parliamentary approval not only for a new Memorandum but also for an extension of the last one.

One might think that the difference between the positions of the two antagonists is minimal and purely formal. After all, what big difference there might possibly be between the extension of a pre-existing agreement subject to consensual renegotiation within six months, and a slightly different stipulation also subject to consensual renegotiation within the same term?

The difference however is immense.  The extension of the current agreement would involve the acceptance not only of the general principle of austerity but also of new privatizations of public assets at derisory prices, and the reversal of policy measures already taken by the Tsipras government, such as the reinstatement of public employees especially if unfairly dismissed, the adoption of a higher minimum wage and higher pensions.  It would be a capitulation on the part of the Greek government, involving the rejection of the main principles of their electoral campaign and popular mandate.  And for the kakistos European leaders it is a serious question of asserting who is really Master in Europe.

We could say that the Troika, like Shylock The Merchant of Venice, is demanding of Greece its pound of flesh in payment of its debt, whereas Greece is willing to pay a pound of its flesh only on condition that it does not include any of its blood.  This Shakespearean drama is being replicated next Wednesday, with an open ending. 

BREAKING NEWS

Greeks and eurozone agree bailout extension

“Greece and its eurozone bailout lenders agreed an 11th-hour deal to extend the country’s €172bn rescue programme for four months, avoiding bankruptcy for Athens but setting up another potential stand-off in June when a €3.5bn debt payment comes due”. Financial Times, 20 February 2015, 8.18pm

Hip Hip Hip! Hooray!

A single European sovereign bond? Pie in the sky, unless…

Delors’ Union Bonds

Nearly 20 years ago, in 1993, Jacques Delors proposed the issue of “Union bonds", whose repayment would be guaranteed by the Community budget, in addition to EIB (European Investment Bank) loans to finance infrastructure investments in transport, energy and telecommunications (EC White Paper on Growth, competitiveness, and employment. The challenges and ways forward into the 21st century, (COM (93) 700 final). This was a pale reflection of a much more ambitious and radical plan suggested to Delors by one of his economic advisers, Stuart Holland, who envisaged the issue of Union bonds by a European Investment Fund as a vehicle for the transfer of a substantial share of Member States’ national debt to the Union. After such “tranche transfer” member states would continue to service their share of their debt, but at a lower interest rate (Stuart Holland, The European Imperative: Economic and Social Cohesion in the 1990s. Foreword by Jacques Delors, Nottingham: Spokesman Press, 1993). Stuart expected the bonds not to count as debt of the member states, by analogy with US Treasury bonds, but because member states would continue to service them that analogy does not hold. Neither did he contemplate any need for a Union guarantee: the EU having virtually no debt, Union bonds would be credible regardless. Union bonds remained a dead letter.

Eurobond redux

The recent euro crisis, correctly seen as a crisis of sovereign debt, resurrected the idea of a single Eurobond whose issue would gradually replace at least part of the member states’ sovereign debt. In 2009-2010 several proposals in this sense were voiced again, among others by Paul de Grauwe and Wim Moesen (Gains for All: A Proposal for a Common Euro Bond, in: Intereconomics, Vol. 44, No. 3, 2009, pp.132-135), Daniel Gros and Stefano Micossi (A bond-issuing EU stability fund could rescue Europe, 2009, Europe’s World, spring); Jacques Delpla and Jakob von Weizsäcker, The Blue Bond Proposal, Bruegel Policy Brief 2010/3, May); Erik Jones, (A Eurobond proposal to promote stability and liquidity while preventing moral hazard, ISPI Policy Brief, n.180, March 2010); and, of course, Stuard Holland again (Europe needs a Gestalt shift, 2010 and elsewhere).

One such scheme was authoritatively backed by Luxembourg Premier and Treasury Minister Jean-Claude Junker and the Italian Finance Minister Giulio Tremonti in the Financial Times of 5 December 2010 (E-bonds would end the crisis). Giuliano Amato also forcefully endorsed it (in IlSole-24Ore of 11 December 2010). But German Chancellor Merkel and French President Sarkozy rejected the idea, together with the alternative proposal of raising the size of the EFSF (European Financial Stabilisation Facility) set up in May 2010 to deal with Euro-zone sovereign default .

Lower interest rate

The scheme for a single Eurobond comes in different sizes and forms, but all proposals have an underlying consideration in common: a European bond would attract a lower interest rate than the average (weighted) interest rate at which nation states could borrow in international markets, because of the lower liquidity premium and the lower credit risk premium. The funds raised through issues of a single Eurobond could be channeled to Eurozone member states in various ways: by buying their new national bond issues, or by buying back old national bonds, or by lending to member states against the security of domestic bonds. If a tranche of member states’ debt could be “transferred” to the EU in this way, say something of the order of 60% of European GDP, in line with EU own-policy stated in the Maastricht Treaty and the Growth and Stability Pact, a Eurobond should not worry global financial markets. A stock of all-European bonds would give the Euro a wider appeal and promote its diffusion as a reserve currency. Eurozone debt as a percentage of GDP was 84% in 2010 (79% in 2009), 60% of it would be €5.5 trillion, large enough to compete with the US Treasury bonds and reap any conceivable benefits in terms of liquidity.

Responsibility for servicing these bonds could be envisaged as: several; several and collective; European.

Several responsibility

Every participating member state would be responsible for servicing these bonds in a pre-fixed proportion, say proportionally to the shares it holds in the European Central Bank (the kind of approach followed by De Grauwe and Moesen, 2009).

But an investor potentially interested in this type of bond could invest in it today, simply by purchasing a portfolio of bonds issued by all member states in the same proportions. Such composite instruments are not unusual: the Markit iTraxx SovX Western Europe Indez, for instance, is a basket of mostly Eurozone Credit Default Swaps. The yield on such composite bond would have to be exactly the same as that of a corresponding balanced portfolio. There would be no interest saving in issuing such a bond, for it would be a useless exercise. If the bond attracted a liquidity premium so should the composite portfolio, and financial intermediaries would profit from its introduction on an increasingly larger scale and, therefore, they would be bound to introduce it, without any official initiative or inducement.

Collective and several responsibility

Under this kind of scheme the bond could be covered by a "collective and several" guarantee, i.e. in case of default bond-holders could claim reimbursement from any participating member state of their choice (cf for instance, Jones 2010). A spokesman for President Sarkozy was reported as saying. "This proposal is not entirely new. It raises difficulties notably in terms of sharing costs and profits... " (Eurointelligence.com, 10 December 2010). Obviously the interest cost of borrowing through a single Eurobond, though lower than the average cost of borrowing individually by member states, would be higher than that applicable to “virtuous” states. However the lower interest rate due to the lower risk and enhanced liquidity could benefit all: all countries could be charged a rate lower than but proportional to their own market rate, all being better off, even leaving something left over for accumulating a reserve.

In the case of several and collective responsibility for the bonds, however, there would remain two distributive problems. A minor problem is how to cope with member states with a debt/GDP ratio lower than the tranche of national debt whose transfer to the EU is envisaged. Slovakia at 42% debt/GDP ratio in 2010, Slovenia at 34%, Luxembourg at 20%, or Estonia with with a paultry 8%, would have to be granted a scaled down maximum liability in case of default. A second, major, problem is that more “virtuous” countries like Germany would be more exposed than weaker members to the risk of having to bail-out defaulters; who could indulge moreover in “moral hazard” behaviour and deliberately take advantage of the cover from such collective responsibility (though moral hazard would be limited to the share of their debt covered by Eurobonds, since the rest of their debt would attract a higher marginal interest rate). Thus it is perfectly understandable that Germans and other “virtuous” member states would be irreducibly opposed to such a scheme (unless accompanied by the realization of objectives close to the hearts of the virtuous, e.g. fiscal conformity across EU member states). True, even as things are now these countries are exposed to the risk of having to bailout defaulters, so much so that interest rates on German 10-year bonds have also increased from under 2% to almost 3%. But as things are now their liability is not automatic, it can be accepted or refused according to German perceived interests (such as German banks exposure to default), and subjected to conditionality imposed on defaulters. Therefore such a solution of collective and several responsibility for the single Eurobond is almost certainly politically impossible.

A European guarantee

Under this type of scheme the bond would be covered by a European guarantee extended by a hypothetical European Debt Agency that would have the task of “managing” a debt that has now become European. But “managing” debt involves manipulating the term structure of debt (funding and un-funding) and cover of exchange rate risk of bonds issued in foreign currency and the like, not the burden of debt service and repayment. It is crucial to consider that the European Union budget represents just over 1% of European GDP and, what is devastatingly worse, has a ZERO primary surplus, because the EU lacks the power of taxation and its scant revenues (primarily a share of VAT and the shrinking revenue from external common tariffs) can be supplemented by national contributions proportional to GDP only to balance the books and no more. Thus neither the EU Budget nor special Agencies obtaining resources from it can “manage” European debt, including its service, on the scale envisaged by the proposals (of the order of magnitude of over €5 trillion). Therefore such Eurobonds would get a rating lower than, say, that of Italy, who with tax revenues of 43% of GDP has at least the theoretical possibility of running a primary surplus and serving its debt.

Under a European guarantee the bonds in question would be among the junkiest of junk bonds, with a credit rating and an interest spread not lower but higher than the Eurozone average.

Junk bonds, unless…

Unless the Agency in charge of debt service were to be endowed from the start with an amount of resources adequate to credibly guarantee its Eurobond issues. But:

The EFSF could not act in that capacity because it can count only on participant states' national guarantees, not ready cash. Thus bond issues have to be over-collateralised in order to secure AAA rating since they are guaranteed by less-than-AAA rated countries, reducing the EFSF operational capacity from the trumpeted €440bn to about 230-240bn. And such funds would partly dissolve with any downgrading of guarantor member states, and would vanish proportionally to their share in the case of their default. So much is this so that a proposal has been discussed in Brussels "in finance ministry circles" whereby non-triple A nations such as Italy, Spain and Belgium should contribute cash payments to the EFSF rather than guarantees (Eurointelligence.com, 21 January 2011). And recently Eurostat ruled that “Member states will have to account for EFSF’s debt issues as gross debt, proportionate to their share in the EFSF” (Eurointelligence.com 28 January 2011).

Nor could the ECB act in the capacity of guarantor, for several reasons. First, even modest ECB purchases of the sovereign debt of the weaker states during the recent crisis (on a scale of just over $82bn since last February) raised concerns about the quantitative growth and above all the quality of ECB assets, which required a more than doubling of ECB capital from €5bn to €10.8bn at the end of 2010. Secondly, the ECB has announced last week that even those purchases have come to an end. Thirdly, such operations are bound to infringe ECB independence and the pursuit of its inflation target of close to 2% but no more than 2%. Alberto Quadrio Curzio (Corriere della Sera, 12 December 2010) has suggested the issue of €1000bn bonds guaranteed by the surplus gold holdings of Eurozone Central Banks; Germany’s 3,406 tonnes, plus Italy’s 2,451 tonnes and France’s 2,435 tonnes, together hold reserves higher than those of the Fed at 8,133 tonnes. This may not be the best option, for it would impinge on Central Banks independence and meet general legal obstacles (as well as special obstacles in a country like Italy where the Central Bank has the curious feature of still having dominant private shareholders); but at least Alberto has faced the issue squarely and suggested a possible solution.

Certainly the EIB could issue Eurobonds on a large scale – although if and only if its capital were raised to an extent commensurate with the scale of its envisaged operations, in the form of monies actually disbursed up-front or guaranteed by AAA-rating states and not, as Stuart Holland so implausibly argues, because it can finance national investments with loans that are alleged not to count as national debt (they still need to be serviced by borrowing member states, why should they not count as part of their debt and where in the treaties does it say that they do not?). The same could be said of a correspondingly capitalized European Debt Agency or similar ad hoc institution. But any such capital increase would have to be raised by the weaker (low rating, high spread) individual states first.

Would global financial markets really be sufficiently benevolent, enlightened and optimistic as to see such an increase in national debt as a move towards the reduction of European sovereign risk? Suppose the indebted individual members of a family incurred new debt to provide a family-guarantee on some of their debt; would creditors really regard this as offering them additional protection, or as an increased risk of default deriving from moral hazard encouraging higher profligacy by those family members?

Without a considerable and effective tightening up of fiscal constraints, as demanded by Germany, it is unlikely that Euro-zone creative accounting via the creation of a Special Debt Agency – a kind of Special Investment Vehicle à la Enron – would restore global investors’ confidence in Euro sovereign debt. The single European bond seems to require fiscal Union as its pre-condition, rather than being a substitute for fiscal Union. Not in our lifetime (i.e., over our dead bodies) comes the Eurosceptic, nation-staters’ cry.

Think Small: the solution

Fiscal Union is not a yes or no option: it comes piecemeal too, responding to the minimum stake that different member states can afford or stomach. All that is required is that at least some of the national tax revenue of member states – corresponding to a uniform, at least initially small percentage of national GDP – is specifically earmarked to servicing the single Eurobonds issued by a European institution. This is how it could begin; its effects would be cumulative over time. Of course it would not generate additional resources to service sovereign debt but, starting from the other end of the salami, so to speak, it would be an effective way of enforcing the fiscal constraints that are a precondition of both a European response to European sovereign debt and an ever-deeper Union. If not now, when?

And if not, is there European life after member-state sovereign default?