Divergencias insalvables en el BCE

Como se transluce de las extrañas palabras de Draghi ayer en la conferencia de prensa (que comenté aquí), las cosas no habían terminado con las "buenas noches y feliz año nuevo" de rigor. Hay una profunda división en el Consejo de Gobierno en el BCE, que incluso puede llevar a la dimisión o cese de Draghi.

Esta información interna nos la ofrece Evans-Pritchard, de la que destaco:

The European Central Bank is facing a full-blown leadership crisis. Mario Draghi’s authority is ebbing, with powerful implications for financial markets and the long-term fate of monetary union.

Both Die Zeit and Die Welt report that three members of the ECB’s six-strong executive board refused to sign off on Mr Draghi’s latest statement, an unprecedented mutiny in the sanctum sanctorum of the ECB’s policy making machinery.

The dissenters are reportedly Germany’s Sabine Lautenschläger, Luxembourg’s Yves Mersch, and more surprisingly France’s Benoît Cœuré, an indication that Paris is still hoping to avoid a breakdown in relations with Berlin over the management of EMU.

Creo que nunca se habían sabido detalles tan crudos de disensiones internas en el BCE, que nació para ser el banco de la unanimidad por antonomasia. Lo que pasa es que la unanimidad explota cuando las divergencias entre Halcones y Palomas es tan pronunciada. La negativa a firmar el acta del CdG es muy fuerte, por mucho que Draghi dijera en la rueda de prensa que hay precedentes de decisiones sin unanimidad. La verdad es que la historia de BCE es más proclive a las dimisiones y ceses de los disenters, y esta vez no puede ser de otro modo, porque Draghi ha tomado como deber salvar al euro de sí mismo, y Alemania no quiere dejarle hacer.

El otro día, Bini Smaghi, ex miembro del consejo ejecutivo del BCE (que dimitió por disensiones), decía que el BCE necesitaba una refundación, de lo que no anda muy descaminado...pero que cada vez se antoja más difícil.

El enfrentamiento de Draghi con los pesos pesados alemanes es más importante de lo que parece a primera vista. Si Draghi se va, vendrá otro mucho más dócil con el poder alemán, y se habrán enterrado para un buen tiempo la esperanza de salir del hoyo. Los tipos de interés subirían en cuanto se alcanzara la inflación de 2% y la tasa de paro NAWRU, que en España se estima que es el 20%.

Esto suponiendo que el sistema financiero euro no estalla en mil pedazos ante cualquier eventualidad. Gracias a la normalización de la confianza en el euro lograda en 2012 por Draghi, las posiciones de riesgo han aumentado -se ha recomprando deuda de los países periféricos-

Italian lenders have doubled their portfolio of Italian state bonds (BTPs) to roughly €400bn since Mr Draghi launched his first €1 trillion carry trade three years ago. Mediobanca expects this to fall by €100bn in 2015. Who is going to buy this flood of supply on the market, and at what price?

y cualquier disonancia nos devolvería a las primas de riesgo de 2012. Con una desconfianza ilimitada en el BCE si se va Draghi, ¿no sería más difícil sujetar al euro?

Pero eso es lo que parece -parece- que es lo que intentan los alemanes. Evans-Pritchard:

This incendiary column in the ARD Tagesschau gives a flavour of what is being said in Germany. Fairly or not, Mr Draghi is accused of losing his temper, refusing to listen to objections, cutting off Bundesbank chief Jens Weidmann, and retreating to a "narrow kitchen cabinet".

The latest dispute was over a change in the wording of the ECB statement on its balance sheet. While it appears semantic and trivial – whether the €1 trillion boost is "expected" or "intended" – the underlying clash is serious. The hawks will not be bounced into full-fledged quantitative easing before they are ready. They are patently playing for time, still hoping that the Rubicon may never be crossed.

Mrs Lautenschläger raised eyebrows last weekend by violating the pre-meeting `Purdah’, warning that the bar on QE is still very high. She decried "activism" for the sake of it and warned that QE would do more harm than good at this point. Purchases of government bonds amount to fiscal transfer. They create a "serious incentive problem", she said.

She is of course backed by the Bundesbank’s Jens Weidmann, who said this morning that monetary policy is too loose for German needs -- even as the Bundesbank halves its economic growth forecast for Germany to 1pc next year, and even as the share of goods in Germany’s price basket in deflation reaches 31.2pc. Mr Weidmann says the crash in oil prices is a "mini-stimulus", seeming to imply that it therefore reduces any need for QE.

The Germans suspect that Mr Draghi is trying rush through sovereign QE so that there will be a lender of last resort in place for Club Med bonds next year as banks sell their holdings, following the repayment of ECB loans (LTROs).

Parece que la era Draghi, llena de cortos éxitos sin desarrollar en pleno, de intenciones y amagos de seguir los pasos de la FED, que con todo aportó una estabilización crucial cuando España estaba a punto de suspender pagos, esa era toca a su fin si no sucede un milagro. Una conversión fulgurante, una caída del caballo de Alemania, como San Pablo. Pero son muchos san Pablos los que necesitamos convertir.

Para terminar, reproduzco los últimos párrafos de Ambrose, porque estoy totalmente de acuerdo con él.

Let me be clear, I have no criticism of Mr Draghi. He has worked wonders, given the political constraints. His management of the ECB has been nothing less than heroic.

I agree fully with the logic – though not the purpose – of his cri de coeur in Finland a week ago. The ultimate success of EMU, he said, "depends on the acknowledgment that sharing a single currency is political union, and following through with the consequences".

Or put another way, that once you have launched a monetary union, you have automatically launched a political union too. That is what EMU means. The euro means a single government and a European superstate, and implicitly the abolition of Germany as a fully sovereign independent state. To pretend otherwise is intellectually infantile. To resist this truth - yet to proceed doggedly with EMU anyway - merely condemns Europe to rolling crises and permanent depression.

Mr Draghi is absolutely right about this, which is why those of us who were eurosceptics at Maastricht – and I wrote the leader for the Daily Telegraph on the night of that infamous treaty exactly 23 years ago – always opposed EMU with inflexible determination, and why we have great sympathy for those in Germany who wish to pull out of EMU in order to save their own sovereign state before it is too late.

Mr Weidmann is equally right in thinking – as he appears to do – that the headlong charge towards debt pooling and de facto fiscal union by monetary means is a mortal threat to German democracy and the rule of law.

The stakes are very high. A showdown must surely come within months, one way or another.