Siemens withdrew more than half-a-billion euros in cash deposits from a large French bank two weeks ago and transferred it to the European Central Bank, in a sign of how companies are seeking havens amid Europe’s sovereign debt crisis.
The German industrial group withdrew the money partly because of concerns about the future financial health of the bank and partly to benefit from higher interest rates paid by the ECB, a person with direct knowledge of the matter told the Financial Times.
The agency said the country’s net general government debt is the highest among A-rated sovereigns, and now expects it to peak later and at a higher level than it previously anticipated.
“In our view, Italy’s economic growth prospects are weakening and we expect that Italy’s fragile governing coalition and policy differences within parliament will continue to limit the government’s ability to respond decisively to domestic and external macroeconomic challenges,” S&P said in a statement.
It is apparent not only that US banks have lost confidence in their European counterparts and have started shutting them out of inter-bank funding markets, but also that US officials are busy making matters worse by seeking to shift blame for America’s dire domestic performance on to influences from this side of the Atlantic. “Seventy-five per cent of the dark things happening in the world economy are because of the eurozone,” one of Geithner’s team said at Marseille….
Markets are convinced of several things: that Greece is politically incapable of meeting the austerity demands imposed by the EU and the IMF, and is now locked into a spiral in which its debt position can only become worse as its economy deteriorates; that a default on Greek sovereign debt is therefore inevitable sooner rather than later, and will impose losses on European banks, including the likes of Société Générale and Crédit Agricole of France, which may in turn need to be bailed out by their governments; and that the eviction of a bankrupt and incorrigibly irresponsible eurozone member is not only a technical possibility but an economic necessity if the single currency is to survive at all.
…China itself must ultimately be a victim of this warped structure as well, and that is where we are in late 2011. Act III of the global denouement is unfolding. The world will have to lance the debt boils of Asia as well before clearing the way for another cycle of global growth.
The facts are simple. China dodged the Great Contraction of 2008-2009 by unleashing credit on a massive scale.
Zhu Min, the IMF’s deupty chief and a former Chinese official, said loans had jumped from 100pc of GDP before the crisis to around 200pc today — if you include off-books financing from letters of credits, trusts, and such like.
To put this in perspective, a study by Fitch Ratings found that credit in America rose by just 42pc of GDP in the five-year period before the housing bubble popped. It rose by 45pc of GDP in Japan from before the Nikkei cracked in 1990, and 47pc before the Korean crisis in 1998.
Anders Borg, the Swedish finance minister, said that “the politicians seem to be behind the curve all the time.” Citing a “clear need for bank recapitalization,” he added: “We really need to see some more political leadership.”
Despite the potentially grave consequences, the mood in Germany seemed to be turning increasingly in favor of letting Greece fail rather than bear the growing cost.
European finance ministers ended a two-day meeting here Saturday without making substantial progress toward solving the region’s debt crisis, or any pledge to recapitalize Europe’s banks.
The meetings were highlighted by the appearance by Timothy F. Geithner, the United States treasury secretary, whose advice, and warnings, drew a tepid reaction from the euro zone’s finance ministers. And Mr. Geithner’s rejection Friday of a European idea for a global tax on financial transactions prompted a debate about whether Europe should go ahead on its own.
Meanwhile, with an October deadline looming for international lenders to agree to the release of around 8 billion euros, or $11 billion, of aid to Greece, without which it could default on its debt, George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, canceled a trip to the United States.
(Before you read the full article, guess the answer to this question: What percentage of public sector employees in Italy have lifetime tenure?).
With only 960 residents and a handful of roads, this tiny hilltop village in the arid, sulfurous hills of southern Sicily does not appear to have major traffic problems. But that does not prevent it from having one full-time traffic officer ”” and eight auxiliaries.
The auxiliaries, who earn a respectable 800 euros a month, or $1,100, to work 20 hours a week, are among about 64 Comitini residents employed by the town, the product of an entrenched jobs-for-votes system pervasive in Italian politics at all levels.
“Jobs like these have kept this city alive,” said Caterina Valenti, 41, an auxiliary in a neat blue uniform as she sat recently with two colleagues, all on duty, drinking coffee in the town’s bar on a hot afternoon. “You see, here we are at the bar, we support the economy this way.”
There is some similarity between the euro crisis and the subprime crisis that caused the crash of 2008. In each case a supposedly riskless asset””collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), based largely on mortgages, in 2008, and European government bonds now””lost some or all of their value.
Unfortunately the euro crisis is more intractable….
In an ordinary financial crisis this tactic works: with the passage of time the panic subsides and confidence returns. But in this case time has been working against the authorities. Since the political will is missing, the problems continue to grow larger while the politics are also becoming more poisonous.
Premier Wen Jiabao said his country and will play its part to “prevent the further spread of the sovereign debt crisis,” but warned that China will not sign a blank cheque for states that have failed to carry out full reform.
“Countries must first put their own houses in order,” he told the World Economic Forum in Dalian.
Mrs. [Angela] Merkel, 57, faces far-reaching decisions about how to deal definitively with the debt crisis in Europe and, more immediately, whether to allow Greece to default or even to leave the currency union. American officials fear that if she does not act more decisively, bank lending could freeze up and the result would be another sharp financial downturn on both sides of the Atlantic.
Fears of a worsening debt crisis slammed European stocks on Monday, especially shares of French banks, forcing the French government to declare its support for its three largest financial institutions. The turmoil added to worries that the Greek crisis would prove difficult to contain without more robust action from Germany and, ultimately, its taxpayers.
The project of European integration, which began in the difficult years after World War II, is also on the line. If Greece were forced to abandon the euro, as more and more voices on the German right are demanding, it would be a jarring setback for solidarity on the Continent.
Financial turmoil in Europe is no longer a problem of small, peripheral economies like Greece. What’s under way right now is a full-scale market run on the much larger economies of Spain and Italy. At this point countries in crisis account for about a third of the euro area’s G.D.P., so the common European currency itself is under existential threat.
And all indications are that European leaders are unwilling even to acknowledge the nature of that threat, let alone deal with it effectively.
Mr. [Jürgen] Stark’s resignation, nearly three years before his term was up, is widely viewed as another fissure in the edifice of European unity, which has suffered as wealthier countries like Germany have been asked to underwrite poor performers like Greece.
“It’s a very bad sign,” said Daniel Gros, director of the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels. “It means that the split within the E.C.B. that we thought was far down the road is here now.
“It puts a shadow over the E.C.B. and risks financial markets asking, ”˜How long can they go on buying these Italian bonds?’ This indicates that the answer is, ”˜Not as long as I had thought.’ “
Harvinder Sian from RBS said the sovereign humiliation of Greece by EU creditor states smacks of colonialism and can expect to meet fierce resistance. It may be tempting for Greece to precipitate a “hard default” before the second rescue package comes into force and switches a large stock of debt contracts from Greek law to English law, he said.
It is not clear who is in the stronger position in the latest round of brinkmanship between Greece and the German bloc. If pushed too far, Greece can set off a powderkeg. The International Monetary Fund says European banks are highly vulnerable and need to raise their capital by €200bn. Many of the weakest are in Germany.
The Greek crisis has spilled over into Cyprus, raising the risk that a fourth country will soon need an EU bail-out….
The ruling is “a clear rejection of eurobonds”, said Otto Fricke, finance spokesman for the Free Democrats (FDP) in the governing coalition.
Above all, the court ruled that the Bundestag’s fiscal sovereignty is the foundation of German democracy and that Article 38 of the Basic Law prohibits transfer of these prerogatives to “supra-national bodies”.
By stating that there can be no further bail-outs for the eurozone without the prior approval of the Bundestag’s budget committee, the court has thrown a spanner in the works and rendered the EFSF almost unworkable.
The decision seemed to place fewer restrictions than some had expected on Chancellor Angela Merkel’s ability to react to the European debt crisis, while the high public standing of the court should lend broader legitimacy to government efforts to shore up the European currency. But, some analysts said, the ruling could hamper Mrs. Merkel’s power to take quick measures.
The court’s president, Andreas Vosskuhle, said the ruling did not represent a “blank check for additional rescue packages.”
The court’s judgment, highly anticipated in European capitals and financial markets, will settle whether Chancellor Angela Merkel’s government breached the German people’s property rights in agreeing to the initial bailout of Greece in 2010.
The court also is due to rule on whether the German government should have asked the country’s parliament before taking part in the bailouts of Ireland and Portugal, as well as on the legality of the European Central Bank’s purchases of government bonds.
Legal analysts say the court is unlikely to rule that aid for euro-zone partners is unconstitutional, but that the judges could make future loan packages for euro countries subject to approval by Germany’s lower house of parliament, the Bundestag.
Germany is divided over Europe’s bailout fund. Finland may be jeopardizing Greece’s latest rescue. And Italy is suddenly backpedaling on austerity.
Jean-Claude Trichet and Mario Draghi, the current and incoming presidents of the European Central Bank, had a sharp message for Europe’s leaders Monday as financial markets swooned: Get your act together.
Tax evasion in Greece threatened to take organised form on Thursday when café and restaurant owners refused to pay a 10-point VAT rise, as a deep recession clashes with the government’s increasingly desperate search for revenue.
The steep rise in value added tax on the hospitality sector from 13 per cent to 23 per cent is part of a package of fiscal measures agreed in return for the country’s second financial rescue by European Union partners.
But for many of Greece’s ubiquitous cafés and souvlaki stands, which have already seen a 20-40 per cent decline in business in the past year as customers rein in spending, the VAT rise is the final straw….
Central banks and official bodies have parked record sums of dollars at the US Federal Reserve for safe-keeping, indicating a clear loss of trust in commercial banks.
Data from the St Louis Fed shows that reserve funds from “official foreign accounts” have doubled since the start of the year, with a dramatic surge since the end of July when the eurozone debt crisis spread to Italy and Spain.
“This shows a pervasive loss of confidence in the European banking system,” said Simon Ward from Henderson Global Investors. “Central banks are worried about the security of their deposits so they are placing the money with the Fed.”
Continued involvement of the ECB could be stymied by two factors. The first is its own distaste for the job. “The fact that markets are dysfunctional is, in our opinion, the responsibility of governments,” ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet said in Brussels on Monday. “They are issuing their own securities. They have the responsibility for the credibility of their own securities.”
There are also question hanging over the Italian austerity plan that the ECB wanted as the price of its support. On Monday, a proposed tax increase on high earners was ditched and some cuts to local-authority funding were scaled back.
“If Italy can’t deliver austerity, it is going to run into some hard questions from the ECB this year,” Mr. Penn said.
In 2008 the world economy was saved from depression by a bold and co-ordinated plan to shore up banks and counter the slump with fiscal and monetary stimulus. Today there is no boldness (the euro-zone crisis is the epitome of politicians doing too little too late). There is no co-ordination. And, to the extent that policies have a common theme, it is the wrong one: politicians across the rich world are taking too short-term a view of fiscal austerity””a bout of budget-cutting which will only increase the risk of another recession.
It does not have to be this way. Echoing the spirit of 2008, policymakers could adopt a co-ordinated strategy to boost growth. Two priorities stand out. First, a recalibration of fiscal and (in some places) monetary policy. Second, a big push on supply-side reforms, from freeing trade to slashing red tape.
… let me say that in English: the European Union is cracking up. The Arab world is cracking up. China’s growth model is under pressure and America’s credit-driven capitalist model has suffered a warning heart attack and needs a total rethink. Recasting any one of these alone would be huge. Doing all four at once ”” when the world has never been more interconnected ”” is mind-boggling. We are again “present at the creation” ”” but of what?….
As for America, we’ve thrived in recent decades with a credit-consumption-led economy, whereby we maintained a middle class by using more steroids (easy credit, subprime mortgages and construction work) and less muscle-building (education, skill-building and innovation). It’s put us in a deep hole, and the only way to dig out now is a new, hybrid politics that mixes spending cuts, tax increases, tax reform and investments in infrastructure, education, research and production. But that mix is not the agenda of either party. Either our two parties find a way to collaborate in the center around this new hybrid politics, or a third party is going to emerge ”” or we’re stuck and the pain will just get worse.
New signs of stress are piling up in the ailing European banking system.
Commercial banks boosted their reliance on the European Central Bank, borrowing €2.82 billion ($4.07 billion) from an emergency lending facility on Tuesday, while other banks continue to park unusually large amounts with the central bank, according to data released Wednesday.
While the amount of borrowing is tiny relative to the multitrillion-euro European banking system, it, and the increase from €555 million a day earlier, nonetheless suggest that some lenders are struggling to borrow from traditional funding sources, such as the capital markets or other banks.
Lin Hersh, a 61-year-old small-business owner in Bearsville, N.Y., about two hours north of New York City, called up her stock broker two weeks ago and gave the order to sell everything.
She dumped nearly all of her individual equities and her stock mutual funds, moving almost completely into cash. Ms. Hersh is haunted by the market plunge of 2008, when her $432,000 in savings dwindled to $150,000.
“What I’ve got left after the last downturn is about a third of what I started out with and I’m not in the mood to play anymore,” she said. Pointing to the weak American economy and concerns about Europe, Ms. Hersh said she would most likely steer clear of stocks through the end of this year.
“The short-sale ban really smacks of desperation,” said Kenneth S. Rogoff, a professor of economics at Harvard. “That’s their plan for solving the euro debt crisis? I mean, this isn’t going to buy them much time.”
The crisis in Europe, Mr. Rogoff said, goes far beyond falling stock prices and has more to do with the state of banks there, including banks in Italy and France. He said the sovereign debt problems were an extension of the stress on the system created by the banking crisis.
Bank of America would have us believe the goodwill by itself was more valuable than what the market says the entire company is now worth. Investors don’t buy that. They see a company that needs to raise fresh capital, judging by the discount to book value, in spite of the company’s claims it doesn’t need to. The more the stock price falls, the more shares Bank of America would need to issue to appease the markets, leading to fears of even more share dilution.
The same story is playing out in Europe, driven by the sovereign-debt crisis. The 32 companies in the Euro Stoxx Banks Index yesterday had a stock-market value of 313.2 billion euros ($444 billion) and a combined book value of 620.5 billion euros. France’s Credit Agricole SA (ACA), the index’s third-largest bank by assets, trades for just 34 percent of book.
If the experience of previous ECB interventions is anything to go by it is only a matter of time until we see larger-scale ECB operations, potentially accompanied by a European Financial Stability Facility (and later European Stability Mechanism) bailout. This is how it happened in the cases of Ireland and Portugal. ECB measures have always been announced as ways to prevent further, more costly rescue packages. The strategy never worked because in the end we got both. It won’t work this time, either.
It is remarkable how far the ECB has now moved from its initial Bundesbank-like philosophy of independence and monetary stability. These were not just soap-box oratories but supposedly law. The EU Treaty defines the ECB’s role very clearly: “The primary objective of the European System of Central Banks [the ECB and eurozone central banks] shall be to maintain price stability.” And the ECB “shall be independent in the exercise of its powers and in the management of its finances. Union institutions, bodies, offices and agencies and the governments of the Member States shall respect that independence.” If only!
Maybe the ECB somehow manages to conform to the letter of the law. It certainly doesn’t to its spirit….
No amount of jaw-jawing from the ECB (or from the G-7, which yesterday put out an odd statement calling the rise in euro-zone bond yields not “warranted”) can make investors buy Italian debt. Mr. Trichet continues to act as if the markets are having an attack of the vapors, from which they’ll recover presently. But no rational person or institution is going to start buying sovereign debt from heavily indebted, stagnant, deficit-running countries as if the past 15 months had never happened. The lamp has been rubbed, the genie has escaped, and no amount of un-rubbing will put him back in the lamp.
A half-hearted approach by the EBC will achieve little. Even full-blown “shock and awe” will only buy time. That’s because the real instability stems from fears euro-zone governments will impose losses on those holding individual country bonds if debts prove unsustainable. Those fears are mounting as the growth outlook deteriorates. Italy’s announcement of new austerity measures Friday may help address concerns over the deficit but could actually worsen the short-term challenge of growth.
That’s why the second part of the crisis resolution requires a vast expansion of the euro zone’s bailout facilities and most likely a move by European countries to guarantee European Financial Stability Facility’s bonds, effectively turning them into genuine euro-zone bonds.
China, Europe, America, Japan: each of in its own way is moving toward comprehensive bankruptcy: financial, spiritual, social. Recent tremors in world financial markets are a warning from the invisible hand that we are skirting dangerously close to that final frontier, but we will miss the point if we do nothing more than put our financial affairs in slightly better order.
The great crime of Belshazzar and his cronies was to become disconnected from real values and real events. They used the sacred vessels of the Temple for an unholy palace banquet; at a time of great danger to the realm they distracted themselves with good food and good wine. They ignored the great source of meaning that enlightens and guides the world to focus their attention on shiny objects: gold, silver, brass.
All this and more describes our global leadership today.