The problem with Eurobonds

As the Eurozone crisis deepens, some new ideas are emerging. Some have been aired for a while but are only beginning to be taken seriously. In this post, The Current Moment considers the issue of Eurobonds. In future posts, we will consider some of the other solutions being suggested, such as the idea of a banking union, the plans for which have been recently floated by the European Commission.

 

In a continued deepening of the Eurozone crisis, attention is focusing on Spain. Rather than investing in production during the boom years, bank capital in Spain was mainly channelled into property development. As the bottom fell out of the property market, Spanish banks have been left with worthless loans on their balance sheets. The regionalized nature of its banking system has made these problems less transparent than elsewhere and the scale of the problem has only recently emerged. Even now, there is considerable speculation about exactly how much it would take to stabilize Spanish banks. The IMF’s most recent estimate is that Spanish banks will need at least 40 billions Euros of new capital. In the meantime, loans are drying up for business and Madrid is being shut out of the international bond market.

There is some debate about whether in the longer term the Spanish economy will be able to raise competitiveness levels. The boom years were not entirely devoid of productive investment and optimists point to a weaker Euro boosting the country’s exports. Portugal, according to the FT (29/05/12) specializes in high end shoes and black toilet paper. Spain may find some of its exports benefiting from a falling Euro. But these competitive gains are not shared across the Eurozone as a whole: countries dependent on exporting to within the Eurozone will not benefit from a falling Euro. Any Spanish gains in competitiveness in the medium to long term are likely to come at the expense of the French, the Italians and other Eurozone member states.

For many, this all points to Eurobonds as the solution to the crisis. Far from exaggerating the differences between national economies within the Eurozone, Eurobonds are seen as a way of mobilizing these differences (especially German competitiveness) for the common good of the Eurozone as a whole. The basic idea of Eurobonds is that instead of national governments issuing bonds, the EU as a whole would do so. Those countries currently facing punitively high interest rates on new bond issues would find their borrowing costs falling. German bonds, currently serving as safe havens for international investors, would see a rise in interest rates, costing the German taxpayer but stabilizing the Eurozone as a whole. This idea was raised back in 2010 by the Bruegel think tank with its blue bond proposal. The idea here was that a Eurobond could be issued for debt of up to 60% of GDP for Eurozone members. Debt in addition to that would have to be financed by purely national government bonds. This would mean lower rates for sustainable debt levels and higher rates for excessive debt levels. The idea was batted away by Chancellor Merkel as a poor substitute for supply-side reform in crisis-stricken countries.

As opposition to austerity politics as strengthened, consolidated in recent months by the election of François Hollande in France and the inconclusive Greek elections, Eurobonds have come back onto the agenda. The term is used by Hollande as a rallying cry and as a measure of his success in Europe: if he is able to get the topic onto the EU agenda, he will have won his battle of wills with Merkel. Ever supportive of measures that may increase its own powers, the European Commission supports Eurobonds, as do leaders such as Mario Monti in Italy.

The more technical discussion about the exact modalities of any Eurobond issue asides, there are two major problems with this idea. The first is that as a solution to the Eurozone’s economic crisis, Eurobonds essentially rest upon the idea that borrowing more money can help Europe grow out of its current recessionary state. Given the performance of this particular growth model, that seems unlikely. As already argued on The Current Moment, Europe faces an impasse on growth: stuck between Hollande’s European neo-Keynesianism and Merkel’s insistence on national supply-side reforms, there are few alternatives to these two positions, neither of which inspire confidence.

The second problem is that Eurobonds present us with a direct clash between technocratic rationale and political reality. From the technocrat’s perspective, Eurobonds appear as a sensible solution to a thorny problem. Politically, they run against almost all the trends in place today in Europe. They would imply wealth transfers across national boundaries, something that is firmly resisted by national publics who would be expected to pay more. They would require considerable institutional strengthening at the European level in order to put in place the mechanisms needed to make decisions about how Eurobonds should be issued and how the funds raised should then be distributed. This comes at a time when the EU, according a recent Pew poll, is experiencing a “full blown crisis of public confidence” (see here for an overview of the poll).

Eurobonds would only exacerbate the democratic failings of European integration whilst at the same time they fall short of answering key questions about Europe’s growth model.