This Greek tragedy has several more acts to come.
The first will be a Greek default. It’s simply not credible that the government will be able to deliver such severe fiscal tightening at a time of deep recession. Even if everything were to go according to plan, the debt would peak at 150 percent of GDP, with a crippling 7.5 percent of GDP going on interest payments. Greece manifestly lacks the political will to do this. Prediction: the government of George Papandreou will fall and its successor will inflict a 30 percent “haircut” on holders of Greek bonds.
The next act will be even more dramatic. For what makes the crisis in tiny Greece so serious is the contagion effect—the realization among investors that if this can happen to Greek bonds, it can happen to other bonds, too. A scan of the data reveals two other euro-zone countries with bloated debts (Italy and Belgium) and another two with Greek-style overreliance on foreign lending (Portugal and Spain).
Last week the rating agency Moody’s placed Portugal’s long-term government bond Aa2 rating on review for a possible downgrade. And as Spain sold five-year bonds paying 3.5 percent—compared with a yield of 2.8 percent two months ago—rumors swirled that Madrid was seeking a bailout even bigger than Greece’s.
Nor is this the only way the Greek crisis can spread like a virus throughout the European economy. Their balance sheets stuffed full of dodgy government bonds, the Greek banks are heading into Lehman Brothers territory. For neighboring countries like Bulgaria and Romania, which rely heavily on Greek banks for funding, that spells a credit crunch.
Even more alarming is the exposure of other EU banks to Greek debt, which totals $193 billion, according to the Bank for International Settlements. Factor in the risk of copycat crises in Portugal and Spain, and you begin to see the outlines of a disastrous Europewide banking crisis. The only way out of that will be further compromises by the ECB about the paper it accepts as collateral. Already last week it waived its rules, continuing to hold Greek bonds, despite their junk status. If this continues, there is only one way for the euro to go, and that’s down.
Keep this in perspective. When the euro was launched back in January 1999, it was worth less than $1.20, and for most of its first three years it was down below parity with the dollar. So its recent slide from close to $1.60 before the global financial crisis to $1.27 last week is far from unprecedented. But the way this crisis is unfolding, further declines seem likely. It will surely be at least a year before investors wake up to the fact that the fiscal predicament of the United States is actually worse than that of the euro zone.
The difference is, of course, that the United States has a federal system, while the euro zone does not. In America, Texas automatically bails out Michigan via the redistribution of income and corporation tax receipts. What the Greek crisis has belatedly revealed is that such fiscal centralization is the necessary corollary of a monetary union.
Europe now faces a much bigger decision than whether to bail out Greece. The real choice is between becoming a fully fledged United States of Europe, or remaining little more than a modern-day Holy Roman Empire, a gimcrack hodgepodge of “variable geometry” that will sooner or later fall apart.
Ferguson is Laurence A. Tisch professor of history at Harvard University and William Ziegler professor at Harvard Business School. He is the author of The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World (Penguin Press).
newsweek-interactive.net |
