European Central Bank President Wants to Exacerbate Continent's Fiscal Crisis

It's been amusing, in an I-told-you-so fashion, to follow the fiscal crises in Greece, Spain, and other European welfare states. And I feel like a voyeuristic ghoul as I observe the incredibly misguided bailout policies being adopted by the political elites (who are trying to bailout the business elites who made silly loans to corrupt nations in Southern Europe). But I'm not sure how to describe my emotions (dumbfounded fascination?) about the latest bad idea emanating from Europe - to have a fiscal federation that would give bureaucrats in Brussels power over national budgets. It's quite possible that this would result in some externally-imposed discipline for a basket case such as Greece, so it would not always lead to terrible results. But most of the decisions would be bad, particularly since the Euro-crats would use new powers to curtail tax competition in order to enhance the ability of governments to impose bad tax policy in order to seize more money. Moreover, fiscal centralization would exacerbate the main problem in Europe by creating a new avenue - cross-border subsidies - for people who want to mooch by getting access to other people's money. The Wall Street Journal Europe has a good editorial on the issue:

Of all the possible responses to Europe's sovereign debt woes, the notion of centralizing fiscal authority in Brussels may well be the most destructive. But that was exactly what European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet proposed in testimony before the European Parliament Monday. Mr. Trichet's idea is that an independent body within the European Commission should have broad power to sanction national governments for fiscal or macroeconomic policies that threatened the stability of the euro. This would amount, in Mr. Trichet's words, to the "equivalent of a fiscal federation" for the euro zone. Mr. Trichet has spent nearly 40 years as a civil servant in one form or another, which may explain his belief that Europe's budgetary problems can be solved by technocrats. ...Fiscal centralization would also undermine competition between different fiscal and macroeconomic policies within the euro zone. That would delight some countries, and probably some at the European Commission as well. During this crisis, French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde has criticized Germany for becoming too competitive for the euro zone's own good. And a decade ago, France was among the euro-zone countries that
attacked Ireland for lowering its corporate income-tax rate to 12.5% to attract
investment. ...Ireland's 12.5% corporate tax rate was an experiment that contributed to a lowering of rates around the world in the succeeding years.

Will the Euro Turn into the Argentinian Peso or the Zimbabwean Dollar?

I hope the title to this blog post is completely wrong, but the news out of Europe is very grim. Politicians have been over-spending and going deeper and deeper into debt. This negatively affects the private sector in the usual ways (higher taxes, unproductive allocation of resources, etc), but also creates instability in the financial sector since many banks and other institutions have naively lent lots of money to corrupt and inefficient governments. And as this story from the Telegraph indicates, the European Central Bank has been forced to surrenders its independence and is now monetizing government debt. In theory, the ECB is taking other steps to compensate, but the problem is so large (and the political willingness to solve the problem by radically shrinking government is so small) that it is difficult to see a good ending to this saga.

Fitch Ratings has warned that it may take massive asset purchases by the European Central Bank to prevent Europe's sovereign debt crisis escalating out of control. ...The ECB agreed to start buying Greek, Portuguese, and Irish bonds in April to help buttress the EU's `shock and awe' package, known as the European Financial Stability Facility. Total purchases so far have been €47bn (£39bn). It has focused its firepower on Greece, mopping up some €25bn of government bonds. This has prevented a collapse of the Greek debt market but at the high political price of letting banks and funds dump their holdings onto the EU taxpayer. ECB council member Jose Manuel Gonzalez-Paramo said it was "not entirely correct" to assume that the ECB was the sole buyer of the debt. "We will continue buying bonds until the situation has stabilized," he said. ...Fitch said European banks must refinance nearly €2 trillion of long-term debt by the end of 2012 in an unfriendly market. "There's an awful lot of debt coming due in 2011 and 2012, and that is becoming a concern," said Bridget Gandy, the agency's banking expert.