06. 2011年5月12日 00:08:31: cqRnZH2CUM
http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2011/05/10/eu-economic-plan-faces-time-crunch/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=brussels
May 10, 2011, 5:17 AM ETEU Economic Plan Faces Crunch By Riva Froymovich The backbone of the European Union’s “comprehensive response” to the sovereign debt crisis faces a key hurdle at next week’s meeting of finance ministers on May 17. The package of six economic reforms is the legal framework for the EU’s plans to monitor member state budgets, recommend policy changes and punish governments that consistently step out of line. But a political tug-of-war has sparked concerns that its adoption will be delayed. EU heads of state and government have promised to sign-off on the reforms by a June 24 summit. Timing is not inconsequential. Further delays could spell trouble for stressed government bond markets. In addition, the European Commission is scheduled to recommend changes to national budgets, kicking off the process set out in the framework, on June 7. Without a legal grounding, the commission’s proposals will be rendered meaningless. However, the timeline is challenged by a multi-level approval process, the first major test of new European Parliament powers that give it equal say with member states. People close to the legislative negotiations also question how much national governments are willing to concede to satisfy the parliament. The commission proposed the economic “six-pack” last year in September, which the member states softened and approved this year. Now, the parliament has its say–after voting on 2,000 amendments, some of which aimed to bring the proposals closer in line with the commission’s initial plan. The parliament’s economic committee is now in negotiations with Hungary, which currently holds the rotating EU Presidency and therefore represents member governments. Hungary will present a progress report on the negotiations at the May 17 meeting. All parties involved are still publicly targeting June for final approval. But, privately, some are skeptical that it will be done before the June 24 deadline. The parliament is digging in its heels. It wants sanctions for ill-behaving countries to be more automatic and to give more authority to the commission in preventing excessive deficits, given the history of member states allowing one another’s budgets to get out of hand without facing sanctions. But internal conflict in the parliament is complicating the matter too. Members of the economic committee officially have a mandate to negotiate on behalf of the full parliament before any plenary vote takes place, but Socialist members say the committee’s position is not supported by a strong enough-majority. They say a vote before the entire parliament could change their negotiating positions with Hungary. For instance, Socialists want to distinguish between “good spending” and “bad spending” before punishing a country for an excessive budget deficit. At the same time, a select few Socialists with a seat at the negotiating table are lobbying their own positions, instead of just the economic committee’s consensus votes, directly to Hungary. This is slowing the negotiations, say people with knowledge of the situation. Hungary has four more meetings with the parliament before May 17 to hash something out. Then, the other member states weigh in. While there is a political will to succeed by June, it is unclear how much the finance ministers will agree to let Hungary concede during the negotiations. Member-state flexibility will be key in keeping to the timeframe, say people familiar with the situation. A significant roadblock is the Franco-German side-deal reached in Deauville, France, last October. It was here that Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel set the terms for supporting the commission’s legislative package. Namely, by watering down automatic sanctions, they were able to find agreement on the rest. “I’m not saying it’s sacred… but Deauville is a relatively strong orientation for many of the issues,” said an EU official. Still, another EU member-state diplomat said the parliament may find friends in some of the countries that have always been pushing for tougher preventive measures, such as the Netherlands and Finland. On top of all this, there is still the outstanding issue of the economic scoreboard, a highly politicized process that officials say there has been no progress on since a broad outline in March. Senior EU government officials drew up a list of nine key indicators in March that should be used to signal whether a country is developing potentially dangerous economic imbalances. Now, parliament is seeking to get in on that conversation too, which one official said was “technically not implementable.”
http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2011/05/10/a-greek-debt-scoresheet/?mod=WSJBlog&mod=brussels
May 10, 2011, 12:55 PM ET A Greek Debt Scoresheet
By Charles Forelle Get ready, sports fans. The next few weeks and months will be packed with Greek debt action. We present you, our Loyal Readers, with a handy scoresheet. Print it out and post it on your wall. The Problem: The €110 billion EU-IMF bailout is not enough money for Greece. It never was. The original bailout math in May 2010 showed Greece would need €53.2 billion to cover deficits, €88.3 billion to repay existing long-term debt and €10 billion to prop up banks through mid-2013. That’s €151.5 billion. To plug the hole, the EU presumed Greece would borrow more than €40 billion from private markets. The numbers have only gotten worse. In the most recent analysis, the EU added €4.9 billion to the deficits that will need to be financed. The current estimate is €44.1 billion in long-term borrowing to fill the gap, of which €26.7 billion should come in 2012. Almost no one believes Greece will be able to raise that much money; currently, markets want more than 15% to lend to Greece, and S&P rates its bonds deep in junk territory. There’s not much time: The Day of Reckoning is likely March 20, 2012, when Greece must pay back a €14.4 billion bond. The Solutions: There are at least four possible options. 1.) Modify, wait and hope. Make some tweaks to Greece’s bailout package and hope they are enough–or close enough–to give Greece more time to regain market confidence. What tweaks could be made? Lowering the interest rate on Greece’s bailout loans. Greece, after a rate cut, will now pay around 4.5% for its euro-zone loans (the IMF rate can’t realistically be touched). At the beginning of 2012, Greece will have around €57 billion in euro-zone bailout loans outstanding. If the euro-zone countries were willing to make the loans completely interest-free, a huge step, Greece would save just €2.5 billion in 2012.
Giving Greece more time to pay back the bailout loans. This is already in the works. But it will have no effect on 2012, since no bailout loans come due in 2012. (Some €10 billion will be due in 2013.)
Plowing ahead with privatization. There are ambitious plans to realize €50 billion from privatization of state assets by 2015. But how much could be realized in the coming months? Hard to say, but likely not very much. The figure of €26.7 billion in required new borrowing in 2012 could probably be fudged a bit by speeding up bailout-loan disbursements. But the total planned bailout disbursements in 2013 are €8 billion. Eliminating interest entirely and pulling all the 2013 disbursements into 2012 would close the gap by €10.5 billion–not even halfway. Barring a massive amount of very fast privatization, this route looks impossibly difficult to achieve by March 20. (A wild card: Short-term debt. We’ve excluded it from our calculations, on the theory that it is cashed out and reissued in a continuous flow mostly through local banks. The EU assumes that too. It’s not a terrible assumption, given that the Greek banks are relatively healthy–at least compared to their Irish counterparts. But Greece could close the gap a bit by issuing somewhat more short-term debt than it redeems each year. The EU’s revised bailout calculations actually do this; net short-term debt issuance over the period of the bailout in May 2010 was estimated at €1.1 billion; in the most recent update, it is €5.7 billion. Perhaps this could be stretched further? But there’s surely a limit.) 2.) Give Greece more money. The EU’s temporary bailout fund, the EFSF, could just write a check. That would plug the gap very quickly. Of course, voters in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands and elsewhere would not be happy. And it wouldn’t do anything to change the fundamental upward direction of Greece’s debt pile. Moreover, some €35 billion in long-term debt is due to be paid back in 2012. So the taxpayers of euro-zone countries would be borrowing money to lend to Greece, a very risky credit, so that it could pay back other borrowers (i.e., private banks) in full. Not likely to be politically popular. 3.) Demand that private creditors hold off on getting theirs. Greece could be told to offer a “voluntary exchange” to its private creditors, whereby they turn in their maturing bonds for new ones that are repaid later. There’s a risk: If not enough borrowers sign up for the deal, the voluntary exchange could quickly become involuntary, which is far messier. Plus, just putting off repayments doesn’t reduce Greece’s total debt burden–nor its mounting interest burden. Last year, interest payments ate up 14% of government revenue. Some quick arithmetic suggests that the EU might be able to scrape by without giving Greece more money in 2012, if all or most of the long-term bondholders whose debt comes due that year (holding about €35 billion) agree to postpone repayment. But it’s a tight squeeze: Telling existing bondholders that there won’t be any fresh financing makes them less likely to agree voluntarily to suspend repayment. If there isn’t enough interest, the EU will have to write another check. 4.) Take the “haircuts” now. Most economists believe Greece won’t be able to repay its €350 billion (and growing) debt. Getting it under control thus requires forcing private investors (and possibly the public lenders) to accept that they won’t get fully paid back–the dreaded “haircut.” If it is inevitable, doing it sooner rather than later limits the impact on public lenders, and thus taxpayers. But no one knows exactly what this step would do to the banks that lent to Greece, and by extension the broader European banking system. But even this option will almost certainly mean Greece’s needing more bailout money. A haircut will bar it from private markets for a while. It’ll need public money as long as it’s still running deficits.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703864204576316522301926858.html?mod=WSJ_article_MoreIn_Europe Violence Mars Greek General Strike
By ALKMAN GRANITSAS
[2greece0511] Orestis Panagiotou/European Pressphoto Agency Demonstrators were arrested by riot police during violent clashes in Athens Wednesday. ATHENS―A largely peaceful protest Wednesday by tens of thousands of Greeks against new government austerity measures was marred by violence in central Athens late in the day, when hundreds of youths wearing ski masks hurled water bottles, firecrackers and other objects at police who responded with tear gas and pepper spray. Throughout the day, public services across Greece ground to a halt as civil servants, teachers and hospital staff walked off the job, in one of the biggest demonstrations in months. Central and local government offices were closed, hospitals and ambulance services were operating on skeleton staffs, and schools and universities were shut for the day.
More Brussels Blog: A Greek Debt Scoresheet
Heard on the Street: No Drama in Credit Markets Transport services also were disrupted, with ferry and rail services suspended after dockworkers joined the strike. Public transport around the capital, Athens, operated on a reduced schedule, and flight operations were hit by a four-hour walkout by air-traffic controllers. Journalists also joined in the strike, leading to a blackout of all radio and television news programs. The strike, the second to be called this year by the country's two main umbrella unions, comes just days before the government is due to present Parliament with €26 billion ($37.4 billion) in further spending cuts and tax increases to slash the budget deficit over the next five years.
Photos: Strike Hits Greece View Slideshow
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Associated Press
Timeline: Greece's Debt Crisis View Interactive
Agence France-Presse/Getty Images More interactive graphics and photos "These neoliberal and barbarous policies, which are driving workers and society into poverty for the benefit of creditors and bankers, are taking us back to the last century," said public sector umbrella union Adedy in a statement. "They must not pass!" In May last year, Greece narrowly avoided default with the help of a €110 billion bailout from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund in exchange for measures to cut its bloated budget deficit and reform its economy. Since then, the country has cut its budget deficit by about a third, to 10.5% of gross domestic product last year, while the new measures―expected to be outlined Monday―aim to bring the deficit down to below 1% of GDP by 2015. The measures will include some €15.6 billion in spending cuts, and another €10 billion in new taxes. Much of the spending cuts would come from reducing wage costs in the public sector, cuts in operating expenses at state-owned enterprises, and reduced defense and health-care spending. Greece's public-sector workers―such as teachers, local government staff and workers at state-owned enterprises―have been hardest hit by the reforms so far, having seen their wages cut by up to 25% in some cases, as well as reductions in other benefits and entitlements. But the measures taken so far have weighed heavily on Greece's already sputtering economy as reduced wage and pensions, combined with higher taxes, have hit consumer spending which accounts for about four-fifths of the economy. The country is entering its third year of recession after shrinking a worse-than-expected 4.5% last year, and with only a modest recovery expected later this year. Despite that, one recent public-opinion poll shows that Greece's Socialist government enjoys some measure of support among the wider public for its reforms, which are seen as correcting decades of stifling overregulation in the economy and mismanagement in the public sector. A second poll, however, showed that most Greeks think the government should renegotiate the terms of its bailout deal. According to a poll published in the center-left Ethnos newspaper earlier this month, 67.7% of Greeks think that the government should proceed with economic reforms, and 63.7% supported the need for privatizations or other measures to exploit state-owned assets. A further 59.7% said they supported abolishing the current life-time job guarantee for public servants. But a separate poll for the privately owned Mega television channel this week also showed that 60.3% of Greeks want the bailout deal renegotiated, and 26% thought Greece should scrap the program altogether and abandon the euro. |
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