Europe is approaching a decision point. It will have to decide whether it wants to create a sufficient central government that has more than a treaty, that has the ability to collect taxes from the whole and the ability to issue debt that obligates the whole, or whether it does not. That is the crux of this issue. The question is how much pain is it going to cause in Europe, and does the pain cause a collapse before it causes the choices? When a debtor can't print money and depreciate its currency, it will go into a self-reinforcing terrible economic situation. The deleveraging in Spain is just beginning, and they already have nearly 25% unemployment. They need relief.
What does it mean for the world economy if Europe continues to struggle like this?
The ECB has increased the pool of assets that are eligible as collateral that it will lend against, and it could spread out these refinancing operations. The European banks must deleverage at an orderly pace. Wherever they are lending, they are going to be lending less. Countries and those that are depending on borrowing money from European banks will experience a tightening of credit.
Spain and Italy in the periphery and, to some extent, France and even Germany will be hurt by this. Europe will be in a depressed state. Certainly, the peripheral countries in Europe will be in depressions, and there will be high unemployment. But if it happens in an orderly way, which I think is most likely, the repercussions for the world economy won't be intolerable. While the deleveraging of European banks and reduced European imports will be a depressant on the world economy, global markets and economic conditions won't collapse, because countries outside of Europe will be able to replace retrenching European bank lending with other sources of lending. They will borrow from American banks, and you will see the emergence of banks in large emerging countries such as China and Brazil.
Ireland was early to go down this path. What have we learned from their restructuring?
Well, for the most part, the Irish government has taken on the responsibility for most of the debt. Now the government doesn't have enough euros to service the debt. It has a problem. Portugal is going down the same route. And so, the EFSF -- the European Financial Stability Facility -- will loan to those countries as they go through an adjustment process. But the debt will have to keep being rolled and it will be difficult.
It will be a very long, difficult period for Ireland, and it will be a very long, difficult period for Portugal, and it will eat away money from the EFSF. It will be spread out over a long period of time. But in those cases, it is governments dealing with governments. In the case of Italy and Spain, most of the debt is still in the hands of the debtors and the banks and hasn't been put on to the government, because the resources, the sizes of the problem in Spain and Italy, are much bigger and more difficult for them to be handled in the same way as Ireland and Portugal.
And so?
So the main picture I'm trying to create is there could be a shock. I would say that there is maybe a 30% chance in the next six-month to two-year period of a really bad shock from Europe. And that shock is made worse because there is no clarity of who has got authority or control. When you have a centralized government and you have the ability to enforce laws, you can resolve problems. There might be a lot of arguments, but ultimately decisions can be made.
There are no provisions in the Maastricht Treaty for the breakup of the monetary union. There are no rules, there are no means. If a country is exiting the monetary union and then says I'm going to pay off the debt in my local currency, how does that work? The Maastricht Treaty doesn't have any provision for any country leaving the monetary union. It doesn't say if this happens, then that happens. There is a question of enforceability.
Every society has to have the ability to enforce laws. How does Germany actually force Italy to pay? It isn't clear. Supposing Spain decides they want to exit the union. The unemployment rate is terrible. That's a very scary thought. Maybe they say, "We're going to pay you back in Spanish pesetas even though the contract is for euros." That's the history, by the way: Argentina and Brazil and Mexico did that.
Yes, but local currencies no longer exist.
That's the whole other complication. There are good incentives not to take that course, and yet there are also big problems if you don't take it. In any event, there isn't a good decision-making process. There isn't a single means of achieving resolution in Europe, and that's the big problem here.
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