¿EL FINAL DEL EURO: UNA GUIA DE SUPERVIVENCIA?

Reseñamos y comentamos brevemente tres recientes artículos sobre la crisis del euro.El orden es deliberado y no cronológico.El criterio que los ordena es, en primer lugar, un relativo optimismo sobre la capacidad de fijar el problema español principalmente motivado por los atavismos resistentes a la profundización de la "europeización " (Europa sería, invocando a Ortega, la solución y no el problema).El artículo de Fernandez-Villaverde, Garicano y Santos quiere enfatizar que no hay salida al margen de Europa, pero queriendo enfatizar este aspecto omite cuestiones muy importantes que son necesarias en cualquier hoja de ruta.

 En primer lugar la profunda crisis institucional española y europea, que sobria pero certeramente señala Torreblanca.Sin una solución de ésta ninguna crisis financiera y fiscal tendrá solución.Y este un problema que está más allá de la capacidad de los líderes nacionales.

Finalmente,por contraposición, "El final del Euro: guía de supervivencia" de los norteamericanos Jhonson y Boone enfatiza que, en su opinión, la crisis del euro ya está en un punto de no retorno desde un punto de vista económico y político y lo argumenta en detalle y de forma bastante plausible.No está mal que los europeos empecemos por considerar cómo ven nuestros problemas nuestros rivales, aunque sean aliados.Esa es una forma de pensar más necesaria ahora que nunca.Hasta ahora estamos por encima del bien y del mal con muy poca fortuna.

Seguramente Nada es Gratis puede aportar también su informada visión sobre las cuestiones políticas y económicas abajo detalladas.Ignoro si viene de los años cincuenta, pero uno de los principales problemas de nuestro país y de Europa es la falta de debate.Las cuestiones son de los técnicos o de los políticos y, en último termino, solo de estos últimos.Y punto final.Así es como hemos llegado hasta aquí. No es ni mucho menos seguro que pueda revertirse la tendencia.

 

"No queremos volver a la España de los 50,” de JesúsFernández-Villaverde, Luis Garicano, Tano Santos (El País 1 de Junio de 2012)

Para empezar, necesitamos cambiar radicalmente nuestra estrategia de negociación con Europa. Este es un juego cooperativo, con ganancias potenciales enormes para todos si encontramos la solución, no un juego de suma cero. En la construcción europea no hay acuerdo posible sin confianza mutua, no hay rescate sin alianza. Contrariamente a la propaganda que escuchamos, Alemania no quiere dominar Europa. El problema es precisamente el contrario, que Alemania desea que le dejen en paz y asegurarse que no se impone una solución en la que le toman el pelo y en la que debe hacer transferencias al resto de Europa hasta el fin de los tiempos.

Nos conviene mantener el euro, única forma de control de los desmanes de nuestros dirigentes

Segundo, debemos abandonar el populismo. Olvidémonos de Gibraltar: entran más españoles a vivir en Londres en un año que la entera población del Peñón. ¿Queremos hablar de esto cuando empresas cruciales españolas dependen de la voluntad del regulador financiero, energético o aeroportuario inglés? Igualmente, dejemos de clamar a gritos nuestra soberanía en peleas abiertas a pecho descubierto con el BCE —que es el único que provee ahora mismo de financiación a la economía española— y con nuestros socios. La histeria debe pasar a mejor vida.

Y no acusemos a Bruselas por lo que nos piden hacer. Las reformas hay que defenderlas en sí, porque es en el interés de España que el estado sea sostenible. España debe expresar un claro compromiso con la construcción europea y con soluciones que minimicen en lo posible las transferencias a largo plazo. España debe decir un claro sí a Europa, que es lo único que nos protege del peronismo empobrecedor, y que estamos dispuestos a pagar el precio que esto acarrea.

Para ello, necesitamos urgentemente un nuevo gobierno, con apoyo de todos los partidos mayoritarios y de nuestros expresidentes, compuesto por políticos competentes y técnicos intachables con amplios conocimientos de su cartera. Este gobierno debe trabajar con tres prioridades. Primero, poner de verdad en marcha las reformas necesarias reconstruyendo la confianza de inversores extranjeros, contribuyentes españoles y socios europeos. Segundo, afirmar, sin ambigüedad, el compromiso absoluto con el euro y la construcción europea. Y, tercero, plantear a nuestros socios, desde la confianza generada por un gobierno coherente y serio, una ayuda económica en condiciones para resolver el único problema que no podemos resolver solos: el agujero creado por la burbuja inmobiliaria en el sistema financiero, a cambio de un control europeo de los bancos rescatados y de un sistema regulador común.

La sociedad española debe decidir qué España quiere. Hay una España posible por la que queremos luchar, una España moderna, con instituciones fuertes e independientes, con un nivel de vida elevado, un sistema educativo abierto pero exigente y con un Estado del bienestar sostenible. Este modelo de España está en su misma esencia ligado a Europa.

Y esta respuesta debería ser obvia, pues ya la dio Ortega hace 102 años en un discurso al club de opinión de Bilbao. Frente a los que acusan a Europa de todos nuestros males, hoy como ayer, España es el problema, Europa la solución.

Jesús Fernández-Villaverde es catedrático de Economía, University of Pennsylvania; Luis Garicano es catedrático de Economía y Estrategia, London School of Economics; Tano Santos es catedrático de Economía y Finanzas de la Escuela de Negocios de la Universidad de Columbia.

Reparar Europa antes de usarla (El País Jueves 31 de Mayo)

Jose Ignacio Torreblanca

"No saldremos de la crisis sin unas instituciones europeas renovadas a todos los niveles

Despreciar el 15-M o fijarse en sus aspectos más atrabiliarios es un error pues este movimiento no es revolucionario sino profundamente democrático y, si se quiere, incluso conservador ya que su mensaje central es tan sencillo y verdadero como que esta democracia no funciona como dice que funciona ni tampoco como debería funcionar.

(...)

 

Es hoy evidente que no saldremos de esta crisis solo con más y mejores políticas, ni en el ámbito nacional ni en el europeo, sino con nuevas, renovadas o reforzadas instituciones a tdoso los niveles.Antes de usar Europa, la debemos reparar, lo que nos obliga a pensar y actuar en dos niveles al mismo tiempo:lo mismo ocurre en el contexto estrictramente naional.En España y en Europa debemos reconstruir las instituciones y la confianza pues es evidente que con los diseños institucionales actuales y las actuales relaciones de poder no saldremos de ella.

… en España y en Europa está crisis es política, luego su solución está en la política y, por tanto, al alcance de la mano.¿Voluntarismo?.Sí eso exactamente es lo que necesitamos, en España y en Europa."

¿Pero realmente está al alcance?

El final del Euro: Una guía de supervivencia

"Some European politicians are now telling us that an orderly exit for Greece is feasible under current conditions, and Greece will be the only nation that leaves.  They are wrong.  Greece’s exit is simply another step in a chain of events that leads towards a chaotic dissolution of the euro zone.

During the next stage of the crisis, Europe’s electorate will be rudely awakened to the large financial risks which have been foisted upon them in failed attempts to keep the single currency alive.  If Greece quits the euro later this year, its government will default on approximately 300 billion euros of external public debt, including roughly 187 billion euros owed to the IMF and European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF).

More importantly and currently less obvious to German taxpayers, Greece will likely default on 155 billion euros directly owed to the euro system (comprised of the ECB and the 17 national central banks in the euro zone).  This includes 110 billion euros provided automatically to Greece through the Target2 payments system – which handles settlements between central banks for countries using the euro.   As depositors and lenders flee Greek banks, someone needs to finance that capital flight, otherwise Greek banks would fail.  This role is taken on by other euro area central banks, which have quietly leant large funds, with the balances reported in the Target2 account.  The vast bulk of this lending is, in practice, done by the Bundesbank since capital flight mostly goes to Germany, although all members of the euro system share the losses if there are defaults.

The ECB has always vehemently denied that it has taken an excessive amount of risk despite its increasingly relaxed lending policies.  But between Target2 and direct bond purchases alone, the euro system claims on troubled periphery countries are now approximately 1.1 trillion euros (this is our estimate based on available official data).  This amounts to over 200 percent of the (broadly defined) capital of the euro system.  No responsible bank would claim these sums are minor risks to its capital or to taxpayers.  These claims also amount to 43 percent of German Gross Domestic Product, which is now around 2.57 trillion euros.  With Greece proving that all this financing is deeply risky, the euro system will appear far more fragile and dangerous to taxpayers and investors.

Jacek Rostowski, the Polish Finance Minister, recently warned that the calamity of a Greek default is likely to result in a flight from banks and sovereign debt across the periphery, and that – to avoid a greater calamity – all remaining member nations need to be provided with unlimited funding for at least 18 months.  Mr. Rostowski expresses concern, however, that the ECB is not prepared to provide such a firewall, and no other entity has the capacity, legitimacy, or will to do so.

We agree:  Once it dawns on people that the ECB already has a large amount of credit risk on its books, it seems very unlikely that the ECB would start providing limitless funds to all other governments that face pressure from the bond market.  The Greek trajectory of austerity-backlash-default is likely to be repeated elsewhere – so why would the Germans want the ECB to double- or quadruple-down by suddenly ratcheting up loans to everyone else?

The most likely scenario is that the ECB will reluctantly and haltingly provide funds to other nations – an on-again, off-again pattern of support — and that simply won’t be enough to stabilize the situation.  Having seen the destruction of a Greek exit, and knowing that both the ECB and German taxpayers will not tolerate unlimited additional losses, investors and depositors will respond by fleeing banks in other peripheral countries and holding off on investment and spending.

Capital flight could last for months, leaving banks in the periphery short of liquidity and forcing them to contract credit – pushing their economies into deeper recessions and their voters towards anger.  Even as the ECB refuses to provide large amounts of visible funding, the automatic mechanics of Europe’s payment system will mean the capital flight from Spain and Italy to German banks is transformed into larger and larger de facto loans by the Bundesbank to Banca d’Italia and Banco de Espana– essentially to the Italian and Spanish states.  German taxpayers will begin to see through this scheme and become afraid of further losses.

The end of the euro system looks like this.  The periphery suffers ever deeper recessions — failing to meet targets set by the troika — and their public debt burdens will become more obviously unaffordable. The euro falls significantly against other currencies, but not in a manner that makes Europe more attractive as a place for investment.

Instead, there will be recognition that the ECB has lost control of monetary policy, is being forced to create credits to finance capital flight and prop up troubled sovereigns — and that those credits may not get repaid in full.  The world will no longer think of the euro as a safe currency; rather investors will shun bonds from the whole region, and even Germany may have trouble issuing debt at reasonable interest rates.  Finally, German taxpayers will be suffering unacceptable inflation and an apparently uncontrollable looming bill to bail out their euro partners.

The simplest solution will be for Germany itself to leave the euro, forcing other nations to scramble and follow suit.  Germany’s guilt over past conflicts and a fear of losing the benefits from 60 years of European integration will no doubt postpone the inevitable.  But here’s the problem with postponing the inevitable – when the dam finally breaks, the consequences will be that much more devastating since the debts will be larger and the antagonism will be more intense.

A disorderly break-up of the euro area will be far more damaging to global financial markets than the crisis of 2008.   In fall 2008 the decision was whether or how governments should provide a back-stop to big banks and the creditors to those banks.  Now some European governments face insolvency themselves.  The European economy accounts for almost 1/3 of world GDP.  Total euro sovereign debt outstanding comprises about $11 trillion, of which at least $4 trillion must be regarded as a near term risk for restructuring.

Europe’s rich capital markets and banking system, including the market for 185 trillion dollars in outstanding euro-denominated derivative contracts, will be in turmoil and there will be large scale capital flight out of Europe into the United States and Asia.  Who can be confident that our global megabanks are truly ready to withstand the likely losses?  It is almost certain that large numbers of pensioners and households will find their savings are wiped out directly or inflation erodes what they saved all their lives.  The potential for political turmoil and human hardship is staggering.

For the last three years Europe’s politicians have promised to “do whatever it takes” to save the euro.  It is now clear that this promise is beyond their capacity to keep – because it requires steps that are unacceptable to their electorates.  No one knows for sure how long they can delay the complete collapse of the euro, perhaps months or even several more years, but we are moving steadily to an ugly end.

Whenever nations fail in a crisis, the blame game starts. Some in Europe and the IMF’s leadership are already covering their tracks, implying that corruption and those “Greeks not paying taxes” caused it all to fail.  This is wrong:  the euro system is generating miserable unemployment and deep recessions in Ireland, Italy, Greece, Portugal and Spain also.  Despite Troika-sponsored adjustment programs, conditions continue to worsen in the periphery.  We cannot blame corrupt Greek politicians for all that.

It is time for European and IMF officials, with support from the US and others, to work on how to dismantle the euro area.  While no dissolution will be truly orderly, there are means to reduce the chaos.  Many technical, legal, and financial market issues could be worked out in advance.  We need plans to deal with: the introduction of new currencies, multiple sovereign defaults, recapitalization of banks and insurance groups, and divvying up the assets and liabilities of the euro system.  Some nations will soon need foreign reserves to backstop their new currencies.  Most importantly, Europe needs to salvage its great achievements, including free trade and labor mobility across the continent, while extricating itself from this colossal error of a single currency.

Unfortunately for all of us, our politicians refuse to go there – they hate to admit their mistakes and past incompetence, and in any case, the job of coordinating those seventeen discordant nations in the wind down of this currency regime is, perhaps, beyond reach.

Forget about a rescue in the form of the G20, the G8, the G7, a new European Union Treasury, the issue of Eurobonds, a large scale debt mutualisation scheme, or any other bedtime story.  We are each on our own."

Peter Boone is chair of Effective Intervention, a UK-based charity, an associate at the Centre for Economic Performance, London School of Economics, and a principal in Salute Capital Management Limited.

Simon Johnson, former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, and a member of the CBO’s Panel of Economic Advisers.  He is a co-founder of The Baseline Scenario.

A version of this material appears also on the Huffington Post.

ESPAÑA Y EL EURO, SEGUN MICHAEL PETTIS

EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » Europe’s Depressing Prospects: Two Reasons Why Spain Will Leave the Euro


LA ESPIRAL MORTAL


The death spiral

"I said at the beginning of this newsletter that there were two reasons why I was certain Spain would leave the euro, the first of which has to do with the logic of Spain’s balance of payments position and the second with the internal dynamics that drive the process of financial crisis why I was certain that Spain would leave the euro.  To address the second, I think Spain will leave the euro because it seems to me that the country has already started on the self-reinforcing downward spiral that leads to a crisis, and there is no one big enough to reverse the spiral.

How does this process work?  It turns out that it is pretty straightforward, and occurs during every one of the sovereign financial crises we have seen in modern history.  When a sufficient level of doubt arises about sovereign credibility, all the major economic stakeholders in that country begin to change their behavior in ways that exacerbate the problem of credibility.

Of course as credibility is eroded, this further exacerbates the behavior of these stakeholders.  In that case bankruptcy comes, as Hemingway is reported to have said, at first slowly, and then all of a sudden, as the country moves slowly at first and then rapidly towards a breakdown in its debt capacity.

What is key to understanding the process is to see that stakeholders will behave for perfectly rational reasons in ways that politicians and moralists will decry as wholly irrational.  Rather however than respond to appeals that they stop behaving irrationally, stakeholders will continue making conditions worse by their behavior as they respond the distorted incentives created by the erosion of sovereign credibility.  To do otherwise would almost surely expose them to disaster.

To summarize what the self-destructive and automatic behavior of the stakeholders is likely to be, it is worth identifying some of the major stakeholders and to suggest how they typically react to a rise in the sovereign’s default risk:

1. Private creditors.  As Spain’s credibility deteriorates, private creditors will demand higher yields on their loans to Spain even as they change the form of their lending to reduce their own risk, for example by shortening maturities.  This has a double impact on making conditions worse.  First, higher interest rates mean that debt rises more quickly than it otherwise would.  Second, shorter maturities and other changes in the loan structure mean greater balance sheet fragility and a rising probability of default.
2. Official lenders.  As they are forced into providing liquidity facilities, official creditors typically demand and receive seniority.  This of course increases the riskiness for other lenders and creditors by pushing risk downwards, and so worsens balance sheet fragility and increases private sector reluctance to lend.
3. Depositors.  As the probability rises that Spain will leave the euro, and that bank deposits will be frozen and redenominated in the weaker currency before any abandonment of the euro is announced, depositors respond rationally by taking money out of the banking system.  As they do, banks are forced to contract lending, to increase balance sheet liquidity, and to reduce risk, all of which act as a drag on economic growth.
4. Workers.  Rising unemployment and the prospects for an unequal sharing of the burden of adjustment cause unions to become increasingly militant and to engage more often in various forms of industrial action, which, by raising uncertainty and costs for businesses, force them to cut output and employment.
5. Small and medium businesses.  One of the sectors most likely to be penalized in a debt crisis is the small and medium enterprise sector.  Owners of small and medium businesses know that they are vulnerable during a crisis to an expropriation of their wealth through taxes, price and wage controls, and other forms of indirect expropriation.  They try to forestall this by disinvesting, cutting back on expenses, and taking money out of the country.
6. Political leaders.  As time horizons shorten and politics becomes increasingly radicalized, policymakers shift their behavior in ways that reduce credibility further, increase business uncertainty, and raise national antagonisms.

It is important to recognize the almost wholly mechanical nature of credit deterioration once a country is caught in this kind of spiral.  Deteriorating creditworthiness forces stakeholders to adjust.  Their adjustment causes debt to rise and/or growth to slow, thus eroding creditworthiness further.

The combination of these and other actions by stakeholders, in other words, can’t help but reduce GDP growth, increase debt, and increase the fragility of the balance sheet, all of which of course undermines credibility further, so reinforcing the suboptimal behavior of stakeholders.  All of the exhortations by politicians, the church, public intellectuals, bankers, etc. – and there will be many – that stakeholders put personal self-interest aside and act in the best interests of the nation will be useless.  Slowing this behavior is not enough.  It must be reversed.

But how can it be reversed?  No one is big enough credibly to guarantee the creditworthiness of all the afflicted countries, and without a credible guarantee the downward spiral will occur, more or less quickly, until it is clearly unstoppable."

Michael Pettis  (18-05-2012)

SUSPENSION CAUTELAR DE SANCIONES TRIBUTARIAS

Justicia cautelar y justicia final en las sanciones tributarias aja

View more documents from Guillermo Ruiz Zapatero.

SANGRE, SUDOR Y NUMEROS

La Información abajo recogida procede del blog "NADA ES GRATIS" ya enlazado aquí en otras entradas y destaca el tremendo y vital  riesgo social, político y económico.También, aunque ya importa menos, cómo se ha dilapidado el principal activo de cualquier sociedad: una reacción a tiempo adecuada.Como un artículo abajo citado pone de manifiesto (fechado en Julio de 2010), estamos donde estábamos, solo que mucho peor que antes de perder el tiempo que teníamos y dependiendo solo de lo que otros nos quieran ofrecer.

 

La catástrofe de Bankia: Entrampados hasta las orejas LuisGaricano

(...)

En lo que sí tiene razón Xavier es en que ha llegado el momento de pedir ayuda al EFSF. El problema de la Banca debe ser resuelto por la UE, es demasiado grande para España.

En mi artículo sobre el miedo mismo, (aquí en versión NeG con figuras, aquí en versión El País para todos los públicos), decía que la financiación oficial neta del BCE /Eurosistema para la economía española (las famosas cuentas de Target 2) en el balance del Banco de España acumulada era de 175 mil millones a finales del 2011.  Pues bien, mirad ahora el balance del banco de España (situación a 30 de abril del 2012) y veréis que, tras un horroroso primer trimestre, esta cuenta está ahora a 302.840.530.163,04, es decir, más de 300mil millones, comparados con los 176 mil millones de finales del 2011.

¿Por qué este aumento en tres meses de 125000 millones? Es la LTRO, claro, las operaciones de financiación del BCE, que reemplazan a los préstamos extranjeros a la banca española. No supone en su mayor parte, como ya discutimos, una financiación neta del déficit por cuenta corriente (es muchas veces superior), sino prácticamente entera una salida de capitales al extranjero.

(...) 

Bankia

Pues bien, la ayuda dada hasta ahora de acuerdo con la contabilidad de otro Xavier, Vidal Foch, son avales del estado por 28.500 millones, créditos del BCE (garantizados por el Banco de España) por 40.000 millones (15.000 en diciembre y 25.000 en febrero), si lo de la LTRO de arriba.  Y están las preferentes 4465 millones, del FROB I. O sea, que el Estado y el FGD garantiza 173 mil millones (depósitos) más 28 mil+40 mil +4.4 casi 250 mil millones del balance de BFA.

(...)

España, al contrario que Irlanda en su momento, no está en una situación presupuestaria que la permita el esfuerzo del que estamos hablando. Tenemos que conseguir, como propusimos aqui hace 2 años (el día que el Banco de España declaraba concluida la reestructuración del sistema financiero español) usar el EFSF para rescatar a los bancos, y no al Estado.

Nuestra posición negociadora no es mala: también el BCE está metido hasta las orejas . Y, mientras en el caso de Irlanda tuvo una salida fácil, que fue obligar a Irlanda al rescate a base de negarse a dar más dinero, aqui esa salida no es creíble, simplemente porque España es mucho más grande y está mucho más endeudada".

 

Nacionalización de Bankia: Primeras impresiones (Xavier Sala i Martin)

·  Todavía no tenemos los detalles pero si el gobierno piensa que solamente transformando en capital los créditosde unos 4.000 millones que el FROB ya dio a Bankia se va a arreglar el problema, está muy equivocado. Habrá que meter mucho más dinero en Bankia y en otros bancos insolventes. Y las cifras que barajan los analistas internacionales oscilan entre 50.000 y 300.000 millones. Entre el 5% y el 30% del PIB.

·  Si el gobierno de España asume unilateralmente ese costo, va a crear un agujero en sus cuentas públicas del orden del 5-30% del PIB y eso tendría consecuencias catastróficas para el país entero: las primas de riesgo se dispararían, los acreedores restringirían el crédito, una parta cada vez más importante de los impuestos se tendría que dedicar a pagar intereses cosa que obligaría a hacer recortes del gasto y subidas de impuestos. Eso agravaría la crisis todavía más y se crearía una espiral negativa que acabaría con la quiebra del país entero. Pasaría, más o menos, lo que pasó en Irlanda que, al salvar a sus bancos, hizo un agujero en el sector público de alrededor del 30% del PIB y tuvo que ser rescatada por sus socios europeos.

·  Por eso, el gobierno de España debe pedir ayuda a las autoridades financieras europeas y separar el rescate financiero (que va a suceder una vez) de lo que es el déficit público estructural (que se va a repetir en el futuro). Los europeos deben entender que va a ser más barato rescatar a unos cuantos bancos españoles que rescatar al país entero. Es posible que si no ayudan en el tema financiero, les sea imposible rescatar a un país del tamaño de España. La quiebra de España representaría la desaparición del Euro. El Banco Central Europeo, el FMI, la Unión Europea y los Alemanes (sobre todo los alemanes) deben pensar les interesa que el euro sobreviva o no. Si no ponen fondos para rescatar a los bancos españoles, pueden estar cavando la tumba de la moneda única.

·  Tendremos que esperar a ver si es España o es Europa la que pone el dinero público. Esperemos que se imponga el sentido común."

Sobre la financiación, la cuestión es que, en el mejor de los casos, parece que solo puede continuar por la misma vía que hasta ahora (BCE), más en su caso con el concurso del FMI, con el agravante de la elevación en la percepción del riesgo y de la destrucción económica.¿Por qué los agentes que no han sido racionales hasta ahora van a cambiar su percepción y actuación ahora?.¿La tumba que menciona Sala i Martin se está cavando cada día de distintas maneras?.

Usemos el fondo de rescate europeo para sanear el sistemafinanciero, no para rescatar al Estado (Luis Garicano, 1-07-2010)

EUROZONEBANKS AND CAPITAL FLOW REVERSAL (ASHOKA MODY)

 Los números y gráficos:

ROUBINI SOBRE EL RESCATE ESPAÑOL

EconoMonitor : Nouriel Roubini's Global EconoMonitor » Get Ready for the Spanish Bailout

Ideally, a bailout for Spanish banks should come immediately and in the form of direct capital injections from the EU bailout funds. Germany remains staunchly opposed to this, as it would mean giving up the stick of conditionality and feeding Spain the funding carrot. Such an option is also resisted by the Spanish authorities as the EU taxpayer will effectively take over their banks.

Instead it looks like a bailout for Spanish banks has been postponed until the very last minute. The cost of a bank bailout would then be foisted on to the Spanish sovereign’s balance sheet.

Bank bailouts on this scale may well bring the Spanish state to its knees. If they don’t, Spain’s public and external debt positions will.

In order to stabilise its public debt levels after a bank recapitalisation, Spain would have to generate a swing in its public finances that is not only unrealistic, but also self-defeating. The tax hikes and spending cuts required would make the recession deeper and cause the primary balance to deteriorate.

In order to put itself on a path towards external debt sustainability, Spain would need to see a huge adjustment in its trade balance. In the short-run, a fall in domestic demand could quickly improve the trade balance. However, in the medium-term, Spain can only service its foreign debt if it finds balanced and sustainable growth, which requires a real-terms depreciation that will not occur unless the value of the euro falls sharply.

Anyone who has closely followed developments in the eurozone will be struck by déjà vu looking at Spain’s current predicament. The corrosiveness of banking sector uncertainty for investor confidence in Spain is reminiscent of Ireland in 2009 and 2010. Spain’s austerity-recession feedback loop is similar to the process that fed the economic contraction in Greece and Portugal.

And yet despite the clear signs of failure in the existing bailout countries, the EU looks set to pursue an unchanged plan in Spain. But the crucial difference between Spain and the bailout countries is size. If things go wrong in Greece, Portugal and Ireland, a second bailout is affordable. But there can only be one roll of the dice for a country as large as Spain.

(...)

 The only way for there to be a happy ending in Spain is if action is taken swiftly in Brussels, Frankfurt and other European capitals. But that is not likely to happen. The eurozone periphery and Spanish crisis look like a slow motion train wreck.

  
The writer is chairman of Roubini Global Economics and a professor at the Stern School of Business, New York University. He co-authored this piece with Megan Greene, director of European economics, Roubini Global Economics.

El descarrilamiento a cámara lenta de un tren

SATYAJIT DAS Y LA CRISIS EUROPEA DE DEUDA

EconoMonitor : EconoMonitor » The European Debt Crisis Redux


The failure of the LTRO to decisively solve European problems is unsurprising. Confidential analyses prepared by European Union officials and distributed to ministers meeting at the Copenhagen meeting in March 2012 concluded that the Euro 1 trillion in loans was a “reprieve”, rather than a solution.

Rather than take the time afforded to move on other fronts, European leaders reverted to type. Spanish Finance Minister Luis de Guindos opined that: “We are convinced that Spain will no longer be a problem, especially for the Spanish, but also for the European Union”. It was eerily reminiscent of his predecessor Elena Salgado who almost exactly one year earlier on 11 April 2011 said: “I do not see any risk of contagion. We are totally out of this”.  The optimism was echoed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy who was confident that the Euro-Zone had “turned the page”. Italian Prime Minster Mario Monti stated that the “financial aspect” of the crisis had ended.

The European debt crisis is not over. Fundamental problems – debt levels, trade imbalances, problems of the banking sectors, required structural reforms, employment and economic growth – remain.

Beyond the German favoured remedy of asphyxiating austerity to either cure or kill the patient, Europe is rapidly running out of ideas and time to deal with the issues. As the real economy stalls and debt problems continue, the most likely policy actions may come from the ECB – an interest rate cut to near zero and further liquidity support, perhaps even full-scale quantitative easing. Bailout funds may be channelled to recapitalise Spanish banks, as a means of helping Spain without resort to a full-blown bailout package.

It is doubtful whether any of these steps will work.

European politicians and citizens want a quick return to a period Spaniards now refer to as cuando pensábamos que éramos ricos which translates to “when we thought we were rich”. Official policies and action are focused on deferring rather than dealing with the problem. Unfortunately, that means the inevitability of meeting the same problem somewhere down the road.

John Maynard Keynes observed in The Economic Consequences of the Peace that each action designed to bring closure to one crisis sows the seeds of greater economic, political and social problems. Europe is living the truth of that statement one day at a time.

UNA PROPUESTA MODESTA, UN FUTURO DECENTE

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: RIGFENCING RUROPE.A MODEST PROPOSAL FOR A DECENT FUTURE FOR EUROPE

YANIS VAROUFAKIS: IDEM PRESENTATION

VAROUFAKIS: EL FUTURO DE EUROPA

ANDRES VELASCO: ¿HACIA DONDE VAMOS?

STEVE KEEN: INESTABILIDAD EN LOS MERCADOS FINANCIEROS

Steve Keen, además de autor del libro "Debunking Economics" y del blog http://www.debtdeflation.com/blogs/, ha sido noticia de actualidad por su reciente polémica con el Nobel Krugman sobre el modelo neoclásico. Según el consenso común, el Nobel no brilló en la misma.

A la pregunta de si estamos en una "Gran Depresión", Keen contestó lo siguiente:

"We’re already in one. And the same thing applied back in the last Great Depression that people didn’t call it one until it was over. Because in an experience like this you’re always hoping there’s change just around the corner, the system will turn around. It’s only after you’ve been through it people look back and see that it’s been going for some years. So the Great Depression wasn’t called the Great Depression until sometime in the late 1930s."

En su trabajo "La inestabilidad en los mercados financieros: fuentes y remedios", que será presentado en la INET conference “Paradigm Lost: Rethinking Economics and Politics“ (Berlin Abril 12-14), señala la capital importancia de los mecanismos financieros que crearon la crisis en primer lugar para considerar cualquier alternativa realista a la misma.

Cuando todo queda reducido a las vueltas de tuerca en la reducción del gasto y de los déficits públicos, el señalar la realidad solo sería saludable, si el planteamiento ganara un lugar en un debate que es inexistente a cualquier nivel. Mientras tanto, no solo la crisis fue necesaria, sino que también son únicos y necesarios los pretendidos remedios.

"ES LA POLITICA ESTUPIDOS"

Edward Hugh ha resumido aquí con gran habilidad y finesse el estado de la crisis europea que todos los responsables se obstinan en considerar en términos equivocados.Lo hace con motivo del concurso convocado por Lord Wolfson sobre una remodelación ordenada de la zona euro:

Extractos:

"In particular I would highlight two key features which often seem to get ignored.

a) the impact of financial globalisation and what Carsten Valgreen calls the global financial accelerator on currency values. Virtually no one – not the USD or the UK pound sterling, or the Swedish Krona – can manage their currency valuation as they see fit, or devalue as they want. Currency parities are determined by complex interactive process which are by their very nature non linear in character.

Just look at the current valuation of the Japanese Yen and its impact on Japanese exports. It is impossible to understand much about current German policy thinking if you don’t get the fact that a principle constraint and line in the sand for Germany is not ending up being another Japan. The world of the 1990′s was not like this, and the simple rote argument of devaluation as the answer (which I myself use because while not being entirely right is not entirely wrong either) is not as straightforward as it seems, or as it once was. Hence the resistance in Brussels, Berlin and Paris to this panacea.

b) European societies are ageing rapidly, and this has implications. You will strain hard to find any reference to this phenomenon in the majority of commentaries offered on what to do about the Euro crisis, yet arguably the phenomenon of population ageing lies at the heart of the current debt crisis in developed economies. Impending health and pension liabilities are what makes so much sovereign debt unsustainable, and this is an issue which goes beyond the boundaries of the Euro Area, affecting countries like the US, the UK and Japan. Again, “the Euro is the root of all evil” argument fails to address this issue.

(…)

c) Finally we now have more than a decade’s experience of labour mobility from one European country to another, and in particular of migration patterns from periphery countries to the core. Among young qualified workers there is more mobility than many seem to imagine. I was in Latvia recently, which is a country not in the Euro but which is suffering population loss in such a way as to make its very continuity unsustainable in the longer run (you can find and download my presentation here). What I became convinced of during my visit there is that the fiscal union question is not only a Euro currency one. Simply having a single labour market in the context of generalised population ageing means that even non Euro countries will eventually need to participate in a common treasury due to the health and pension liabilities they are going to face.

(…)

Well, the LTROs have temporarily stabilised things, and made deposit movements from one country to another a much more containable evil. But this only offers some short term relief. Credit is still gridlocked all along the periphery, where the various countries are essentially entering long term depressions, with very high levels of unemployment, low economic growth and rising non performing loans in the financial sector. This is all unsustainable, but still, what could possibly be the trigger for disorderly break up?"

EconoMonitor : Don't Shoot the Messenger » What Wolfson Did Next

NADA ES GRATIS: PROGRAMA DE AVALES 2012

La información, sobre los avales del Estado a las emisiones de bancos españoles, procede de la Dirección General del Tesoro y de la entrada de hoy de Luis Garicano en Nada es Gratis.

Taambién sobre este tema las dos colaboraciones de Tano Santos del 29 de Marzo.

EN EL OJO DEL HURACAN

La cara de la crisis de la eurozona

EconoMonitor : RGE Analysts » Eurozone Crisis: In the Eye of the Storm

"But for the firewall to work both its EU and IMF elements must be large enough. This is far from guaranteed, and failure on this point could trigger a massive escalation of the crisis. On the EU side of the firewall, there are currently two funds in place, the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF), which has around 250 billion euros in available funding, and the 500 billion euro European Stability Mechanism (ESM). The former is due to replace the ESM in June 2012, but the only way to amass enough funds to cover Italy and Spain’s financing needs for a few years is to run the EFSF and ESM concurrently. However, German Chancellor Angela Merkel remains — for now, at least — vehemently opposed to this idea. Similarly on the IMF side, many countries have indicated their reluctance to contribute to a firewall until the Eurozone devotes more of its own collective resources to solving its crisis.

VER CUADRO EN EL LINK

Figure 2: Composition of the Firewall vs. Financing Costs for the PIIGS (€, billions)"

Source: EFSF, ESM, RGE estimates* We assume that Italy and Spain will not be forced to request official financing before 2013

LA NOTIFICACION TRIBUTARIA EN UNA DIRECCION ELECTRONICA

La notificacion tributaria obligatoria en una direccion electronica habilitada

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¿SOLUCIONANDO LA CRISIS FINANCIERA Y DE DEUDA EN EUROPA?

This paper examines the policies that have been proposed to solve the financial and sovereign debt crisis in Europe, against the backdrop of what the real underlying problems are: extreme differences in competitiveness; the absence of a growth strategy; sovereign, household and corporate debt at high levels in the very countries that are least competitive; and banks that have become too large, driven by dangerous trends in ‘capital markets banking’. The paper explains how counterparty risk spreads between banks and how the sovereign and banking crises are serving to exacerbate each other. Of all the policies proposed, the paper highlights those that are coherent and the magnitudes involved if the euro is not to fracture.

CONCLUSIONES

Markets believe a fracturing of the euro has a material probability. Investors understand that any country with funding problems leaving the euro would do so to take advantage of converting credit risk into inflation risk – which is easier to manage. A fracturing allows monetisation and at least a potential route to improving competitiveness with less unrest. There are also costs to such a severe turn of events:

• High inflation in any country is costly.

• For Europe and the rest of the world the cost could also be large – not least legal uncertainty about financial contracts in euro; other countries within the eurozone coming under increased pressure; and a weakening of the status of the euro as a global currency.

These issues are very complex and, as a consequence of the monetary union, quite unique to Europe. Policies consistent with a growth strategy and including a proper cleaning up of bank balance sheets, recapitalisation and separation are critical to solving this crisis while maintaining the euro intact. The interim role of the ECB and the EFSF/ESM provides time, but that time needs to be used for thorough structural reform.

Adrian Blundell-Wignall is the Special Advisor to the OECD Secretary General on Financial Markets and Deputy Director of the Directorate for Financial and Enterprise Affairs (DAF)

EL PRECIO AL CALENTAMIENTO GLOBAL

PRICING CLIMATE CHANGE

JOHN HASSLER

The concern over the negative consequences of global warming has led to a vast array of policy measures aimed at reducing the use of fossil fuels. Yet a comprehensive plan for a shift towards more climate-friendly energy is still lacking. This column argues that a major reason for this is that macroeconomists have not been sufficiently active in the policy discussion. It then lays out four lessons from macroeconomics that should be helpful.

The combustion of fossil fuels is most probably the main cause of global warming, which is likely to induce substantial costs on the global economy. There is considerable uncertainty about the strength of these effects, as well as regarding their geographic distribution. Furthermore, countries not directly hit by the negative consequences of climate change, such as perhaps the countries in northern Europe, will nonetheless be affected by various macroeconomic and political spillovers.

The concern over the negative consequences of global warming has led to a vast array of policy measures aimed at reducing the use of fossil fuels. Over the past two decades, the share of fossil fuel in energy consumption has, however, been quite stable, at around four-fifths. Renewable energy has increased, but still accounts for less than 10% of energy consumption. Wind energy has grown very fast and is now a very visible source of energy in the European landscape. Nevertheless, it only accounts for around 0.5% of total primary energy consumption in the union.

It is obvious that the transformation of our energy production and usage to make it more climate-friendly will be a very costly process, even if optimally implemented. Attempts to do it sub-optimally will likely be too costly to be politically feasible and may even not be worth their cost. Despite this, a comprehensive plan for the transformation is still lacking. This is particularly true of policies targeted at promoting so-called “green technologies”. We argue that a major reason for this is that macroeconomists have not been sufficiently active in the policy discussion. Macroeconomics can provide a number of important lessons that we believe may be very helpful.

Lesson 1

Any analysis of the effects of taxation and quantity restrictions requires an understanding of the underlying market structure. It is a well-known, but unfortunately often forgotten truth that the effects of taxing a good depend crucially on both demand and supply. Part of the fossil fuel market is characterised by prices that are high relative to extraction and transportation costs. An example of this would be Saudi Arabian oil. Such a good should be thought of as largely supplied in a fixed quantity over the foreseeable future.

Taxes, unilateral or global, have a potential confined to affecting when oil is used and who uses it, but not the overall quantity. In plain words, all cheap oil will eventually be used by someone. Other fossil fuels, such as coal, have extraction and transportation costs that are non-negligible relative to their prices. Here, taxes may affect usage, in both the short and the long run.

Lesson 2

Releasing fossil carbon is an almost perfect externality. Carbon dioxide spreads quickly throughout the atmosphere and any effect it has is independent of where it was released. The social cost of emissions is highly uncertain, depending on a number of unknown parameters. As shown in Golosov et al (2011), three separate factors are the key determinants of the social cost of emitting carbon, namely:

• How long CO2 stays in the atmosphere.
• How much damage a given CO2 concentration causes.
• How the welfare of future generations is discounted.

Given the best estimates of the first two factors and standard subjective discount rates, the social cost of emitting one ton of CO2 is on the order of €10-15. With a higher weight on future generations, the cost is higher. At a subjective discount rate of 0.1% per year, the cost is around €100 per ton of CO2 (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Lesson 3

The social cost of carbon is independent of who emits, where emissions take place, and when in the business cycle the emissions take place. Therefore, policies aiming at internalising the cost of emissions into private decisions should not discriminate between different users. Currently, however, fossil fuel is taxed at very different rates depending on who uses it. Even with a wide range of uncertainty surrounding the true social cost of carbon, it is easy to find examples of existing tax schemes in the EU that are too high, as well as examples that are too low. Furthermore, the emission trading system in the EU has led to very unstable prices on emission rights. The social cost of carbon is hardly sensitive to business cycle conditions in the short run, so that the variability in the price of emission rights is likely to be inefficient. EU policy should be directed towards a harmonised and stable price for fossil fuel emissions.

Lesson 4

When emission externalities are priced correctly, arguments can be made in favour of subsidies to develop new technologies. It is well known that the full social value of developing new and better technologies is rarely fully appropriated by the developer. One can also make a logical argument in favour of subsidising the use of particular technologies based on learning externalities. By producing and using a particular technology, knowledge is accumulated that can improve the technology and reduce its installation and operation costs. This learning is often partly an externality that can motivate a subsidy. It is key to keep in mind that this is a quantitative argument. Without a quantification of the value of the learning externality, the argument provides no policy guidance at all.

In fact, there is substantial knowledge about the learning rates of different technologies. In Table 1, we present learning rates for different “green technologies”. The learning rate is defined as the cost reduction implied by a doubling of the installed capacity. This learning rate is highest for photovoltaic solar power (17%), but is negligible for hydropower. Given these learning rates, it is possible to calculate the value of the externality and of an appropriate subsidy. In the table, we present the results from such a calculation. Many of the assumptions are such that we may interpret the results as upper bound on the subsidy. For example, it is assumed that the learning is fully external. In reality, it is reasonable to assume that a non-negligible share of the learning is appropriated by the investor. Nevertheless, the value of the externalities is in most cases fairly small. Despite this, there is an unreasonably large variation in the level of subsidies to different green technologies across the EU. The large sums spent on such subsidies, for example in the form of so-called feed-in tariffs are, in the best of cases, simply a waste. However, they may very well also be downright counterproductive (Sinn 2012).

Table 1. Cost reductions of future investments due to learning externalities in % of current investment cost

Source: IEA (2010) and own calculations.

The lessons provided above are straightforward and build on standard economic principles. If policy were to be based on them, a successful green transformation of the European economy is possible.

Editor’s note: This column is based on EEAG (2012), The EEAG Report on the European Economy, “Pricing Climate Change”, CESifo, Munich 2012, pp. 131–145. The EEAG members are Jan-Egbert Sturm (KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich; Chairman), Lars Calmfors (Stockholm University), Giancarlo Corsetti (Cambridge University), John Hassler (Stockholm University), Gilles Saint-Paul (University of Toulouse), Hans-Werner Sinn (Ifo Institute and LMU University of Munich), Akos Valentinyi (Cardiff Business School) and Xavier Vives (IESE Business School). They are collectively responsible for each chapter in the Report. They participate on a personal basis and do not necessarily represent the views of the organisations they are affiliated with.

References

Golosov, M., Hassler, J., Krusell, P. and A. Tsyvinski (2011), “Optimal Taxes on Fossil Fuel In General Equilibrium”, NBER Working Paper 17348.
IEA (2010), World Energy Outlook 2010, International Energy Agency, Paris, France, 2010.
Sinn, H.-W. (2012), The Green Paradox, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012

JOHN HASSLER © voxEU.org

El artículo está basado en el capítulo especial sobre el precio al calentamiento global del Informe anual del EEAG en CESifo

INFORME ANUAL SOBRE LA ECONOMIA EUROPEA

Recientemente se ha publicado el Informe Anual sobre la Economía Europea elaborado por el Grupo de Asesoramiento Económico Europeo en CESifo

The EEAG consists of a team of eight economists from seven European countries. The Group is chaired by Jan-Egbert Sturm (KOF Swiss Economic Institute, ETH Zurich) and includes Lars Calmfors (Stockholm University), Giancarlo Corsetti (Cambridge University), John Hassler (Stockholm University), Gilles Saint-Paul (University of Toulouse), Hans-Werner Sinn (Ifo Institute and LMU University of Munich), Akos Valentinyi (Cardiff Business School) and Xavier Vives (IESE Business School). They are collectively responsible for each chapter in the Report. They participate on a personal basis and do not necessarily represent the views of the organisations they are affiliated with.

LOS LIDERES EN SUS ALTOS CABALLOS

GRECIA Y LA EUROZONA: LOS LIDERES POLITICOS DEBERIAN BAJARSE DE SUS ALTOS CABALLOS

El contenido de la entrevista de Viv Davies a Willem Buiter es otra prueba reciente de la divergencia entre el curso de los "líderes" y el de la realidad europea (no solo sobre Grecia).

Viv: So, what do you think needs to happen, then, in order to make it possible for Greece to stay within the Eurozone and to grow and prosper?

Willem: Well, we have to write off the debt, effectively. Probably the IMF will get paid, because they always do. That's the advantage of the so called “third creditor” status. But all other creditors, be they private or official, including the ECB, the bilateral Euro Area creditor governments, and anybody else that may in the future be contributing to Greece, better recognize that Greece is not capable of servicing the debts. Just write it off. That still leaves a funding gap for the Greek sovereign, depending on your estimate, there still is a primary deficit, a non interest deficit for the general government of between two and four percent at least. So that still would have to be funded. They have to continue funding that, but no more.

And then, really, leave it up to the Greeks to reform themselves. There's no way that we're going to be able to turn Greece into a colony of Brussels, Frankfurt, and Washington, and run it as a vassal kingdom for the next eight years.

(...)

Viv: Yes. You mentioned the banking sector then. The ECB recently introduced its long term refinancing operation process, which many commentators have welcomed, especially in terms of the signal it gives to markets. However, some economists, like Charles Wyplosz, for example, are of the opinion that the LTROs have made things significantly more dangerous in that a potential wave of sovereign defaults could turn those bonds into toxic assets. It's what he refers to as the “trillion euro bet”. What are your thoughts on that?

Willem: I don't understand Charles' argument. But I think that the LTROs were a necessary part of the solution but by no means sufficient. They are a part of a mechanism for keeping the banks funded. We, of course, have to make sure that the banks become solvent again as well, which will require and inevitably mean that many of the continental European banks will end up in state ownership, those that aren't already. And even if there are no deep pocketed sovereigns to recapitalize the systemically important banks, then the money may have to be got from the unsecured creditors to the banks, from the bondholders, etc. So we're going to have to have major bank restructuring as well as provide the liquidity, but unless we provide the liquidity, we would never be able to get to the point that the structural reforms, the recapitalization, take place.

What I am worried about in terms of the LTROs has been that it has been accompanied by what I call some Balkanization of monetary policymaking in the Euro Area so that we are approaching a world in which there are two different risks.

Either because national central banks now have considerably more discretion over what's acceptable as collateral for national central bank credit, there is a risk of loss of control over the aggregate size of the balance sheets that you may call the "Ruble Zone Problem," that you get 17 different national centers of issuance, effectively.

The other problem is that since in order to minimize the first problem, the loss of control problem, the ECB has departed from the principle that losses of national central banks are pooled and shared - that's no longer the case. They're going to have 17 national central banks in the Eurozone with very different credit risks attached to them, so individual national central banks could go bust.

This is something that I think wouldn't be good for our collective health. We better think and think actively of ways of minimizing both the loss of control problem and the central bank insolvency problem. We have to go back to having a single European monetary and collateral policy. Of course, the application of the single set of rules will still be dependent on local circumstances. That is perfectly consistent with the common policy.

But we can't have national central banks, once again, the way they were before 2007, determining to a significant extent what kind of collateral they are going to accept. There has to be central control of this.

(...)

Viv: Finally Willem, returning to the central question of Greece, what would be your immediate advice for the European leaders and policy makers who are currently in two minds about what to do about Greece?

Willem: Write off the public debt, recapitalize their banks, using European resources, obviously, because there aren't any Greek resources. Keep them in the Eurozone, very definitely. It's both in the Greek interest and in our interest. Then provide further minimal financial support. Don't build up another debt burden, but sufficient to run steadily diminishing non interest deficit for the general government and ultimately have that peter out and turn the country into a country with a sizable primary surplus, but not from a position where they spend six or seven percent of GDP on interest. So write off the debt, restructure the banks and then make conditional funding, of the kind that is now available, forthcoming.

But don't get on the self righteous high horses that are ridden by so many European politicians, especially from Germany and my own home country, the Netherlands. It is, I think, offensive. It forgets that there cannot be a reckless debtor without that reckless debtor being accommodated by a reckless creditor.

The Dutch and the Germans savers and greedy investors are as culpable of the financial mess that we've created in Europe as the debtor countries. It takes two to tango here. When you don't know what to do, shut up. I think that would be the best advice I can give to our politicians.

©VoxEU.org.

LA STC 38/2011 Y EL CEDH

Ejecucion tributaria sin titulo, stc 38 2011, cc

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DAVOS Y LA CRISIS EUROPEA

¿ UNA UNION POLITICA EUROPEA?

Si "la fragmentación del poder europeo" es no solo una realidad innegable, sino el principal problema económico y político del momento europeo actual, las propuestas de una posible "unión política"- la de Nicolas Berggruen y Nathan Gardels abajo reproducida y otras- deberían estar en la agenda de sus representantes y líderes y en la del cuestionado "pueblo europeo" en conjunto y por separado:

"1. El Parlamento Europeo elegiría al principal responsable de la Comisión Europea, que formaría un gabinete de ministros sacados de los grandes partidos de la Cámara, entre ellos, un Ministro de Finanzas con potestad para supervisar y sancionar los presupuestos nacionales y la capacidad de aplicar impuestos y formular un presupuesto a escala europea. La prioridad del Ministro de Finanzas sería la coordinación macroeconómica, no la gestión microeconómica. Las competencias de los demás puestos del gabinete estarían limitadas a los "bienes públicos europeos" supranacionales (defensa, política exterior, energía, infraestructuras, etcétera), mientras que se dejarían todas las decisiones posibles sobre otros asuntos en manos de los Gobiernos nacionales dentro de la federación. El Tribunal Europeo de Justicia sería el encargado de arbitrar cuando entrasen en disputa cuestiones de soberanía del Gobierno federal y la nación-estado.

2. Como el poder reforzado del Parlamento para escoger al máximo mandatario de los órganos europeos le otorgaría la responsabilidad suprema, las elecciones al Parlamento Europeo, basadas en listas europeas y no en listas de los partidos nacionales, se consolidarían y tendrían más interés para los ciudadanos, con lo que se acabaría con la apatía actual que despiertan, debida a la sensación de que, en el fondo, no importan. Una mayor participación de los ciudadanos significaría más legitimidad para las instituciones europeas.

3. El Consejo Europeo actual se convertiría en una "cámara alta". Las naciones-estado elegirían a sus miembros de la manera que cada uno quisiera, para unos mandatos escalonados, más largos que el ciclo más breve del Parlamento, con lo que se fomentaría una perspectiva de Gobierno más a largo plazo. El número de miembros de cada nación-estado se calcularía en función de una ratio de 1 por cada 10 millones de habitantes. Los Estados con menos de 10 millones tendrían garantizado un escaño. De esa forma, la cámara, en total, tendría alrededor de 50-60 miembros.

4. Para conservar parte del carácter meritocrático y no partidista de la Comisión actual, cada ministro del gabinete trabajaría con un secretario permanente de la Administración Europea, especializado en su área de competencia.

5. Como en una especie de "sistema de Westminster" ideal, la elaboración de los presupuestos dependería de la Comisión, no del Parlamento. La comisión presentaría el presupuesto a votación en el Parlamento, sin someterlo a las negociaciones y los tomas y dacas de los intereses especiales durante el proceso legislativo. El Parlamento podría rechazar la dirección política emprendida por la Comisión mediante un voto de no confianza, en cuyo caso habría que formar nuevo Gobierno.

6. Los impuestos y las leyes tendrían que aprobarse mediante mayoría tanto en el parlamento como en la cámara alta.

7. Con el fin de promover una "mayoría de consenso" en el Parlamento, los partidos que obtuvieran menos del 10% en las elecciones europeas estarían presentes en los debates, pero sin derecho a voto. Esta norma facilitaría la tendencia a lograr compromisos de centro y ayudaría a evitar los posibles bloqueos debidos al derecho a veto de los partidos pequeños de una coalición. Además, ofrecería un incentivo para la formación de partidos europeos más fuertes, capaces de integrar diversos intereses.

Como es natural, existen aún muchas cuestiones sobre el camino hacia una unión política. Si queremos más legitimidad, ¿no deberían establecerse estas instituciones, con sus reglas, desde abajo, a través de una Asamblea Constituyente, mejor que mediante la modificación del tratado? ¿Los grandes partidos, después de obtener la mayoría de los escaños en el Parlamento Europeo, tendrían agendas lo suficientemente comunes como para poder lograr consensos de Gobierno?

(...)

En 1789, el entonces Secretario del Tesoro de Estados Unidos, Alexander Hamilton, propuso un sistema de Gobierno federal fuerte que asumiera las deudas contraídas por el Estado en la revolución y garantizara unos ingresos futuros constantes, con una mayor integración de la política fiscal pero conservando un grado considerable de soberanía local en los asuntos no federales. Ese fue el primer paso del proceso para hacer de Estados Unidos una potencia continental y mundial.

Del mismo modo, en Europa, en 2012, la resolución de la deuda alumbrará una unión política que podría convertir al continente en el pilar más poderoso del orden geopolítico multipolar del siglo XXI. La única forma de afrontar ese reto, ante las incertidumbres mencionadas, es que los dirigentes europeos y sus ciudadanos se comprometan, al menos, con esta transformación, en vez de seguir dando pasitos que solo sirven para debilitar el euro, intensificar la crisis y erosionar la presencia de Europa en el mundo."

Nicolas Berggruen es presidente del Consejo para el Futuro de Europa. Nathan Gardels es asesor principal del grupo.

Traducción de María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia

(Publicado en EL PAIS EL 26 DE ENERO DE 2012)

SUPLEMENTO EUROPEO DE CINCO PERIODICOS

¿COMO PODRIA SER UNA UNION POLITICA EUROPEA?

LA FRAGMENTACION DEL PODER EUROPEO