When the history of the 21st century is written, people will rightly ask why it was that Europe was found wanting during its most intractable economic crisis.
They will ask why Europe slept as an undercapitalized banking system floundered, unemployment remained unacceptably high, and the continent's growth and competitiveness plummeted.
Worse still, if a reconstruction plan does not come soon, Europe's leaders will be charged with "the decline of the West" and then face accusations for being, in the words of Churchill about the 1930s, "resolved to be irresolute, adamant for drift, solid for fluidity and all-powerful for impotence."
There is, of course, no shortage of European meetings. Hardly a day goes by without a summit of European leaders discussing the latest crisis facing a member state. But each time they talk as though they are dealing with a calamity confined to the nation in the headlines -- the Greek problem, or the Irish problem, sometimes the Portuguese or the Spanish problem -- without an agreement on the true nature of the emergency, which is pan-European. By wrongly analyzing Europe's woes, they end up implementing the wrong remedies too. For Europe's deficit crisis is a real concern but just one of its concerns.
Europe has in fact three deep-rooted problems, each of which is entwined with the other, and each of which reaches systemically into every corner of the continent. Alongside the deficit problem is also a banking problem -- not confined to a handful of banks or countries -- and a chronic growth problem.
First, banks: I was present in Paris in October 2008 at the first meeting ever held of the euro zone heads of government. The diagnosis of the banks I presented was of problems of liquidity but also of structure. But most in Europe at the time believed they were dealing only with the indirect consequences, the fallout, from an Anglo-Saxon financial crisis, and of course thought that a wayward Britain had allowed itself to be locked into the American financial boom. They did not then know that HALF the sub-prime assets had been bought by banks across Europe. No one had yet fully appreciated the depth of the entanglements between European banks and other global financial institutions, or how big the banks' exposure to falling property markets was. I remember the shocked looks which passed along the table when I argued that European banks were even more vulnerable than American banks because they were far more highly leveraged -- and indeed still are.
And even now a fundamental truth about the current state of European banks remains unspoken: that German, French, Italian and British banks who have lent recklessly to the periphery are owed billions not just by the Greeks but by the Irish, Portuguese and Spanish, and have losses still to take from toxic assets and the real estate collapse.
And when, years from now, people explain why Europe slept, they will also explain how, out of short-sighted self-interest, we treated the Greeks' problems as if they were ones of liquidity (addressed by giving loans), not solvency, and how by short-term maneuvers to delay the necessary denouement, we maximized the risk of a disorderly end-game. Indeed, with interest rates on the rise, capital outflows from all the periphery countries to the core are already making funding more difficult in each troubled country, dragging us into even higher interest rates, longer recessions and, possibly, higher deficits.
The third side of the triangle is, of course, low growth itself, which threatens to condemn the whole continent to a decade of high unemployment. The deficit reduction and bank stabilization we need to see cannot become entrenched without economies which generate trade, jobs and growth. Yet, suffering from anemic levels of growth, Europe is slipping further and further down the world league -- not acutely but chronically, which is more serious and much harder to reverse.
Today European unemployment is stuck around 10 percent with youth unemployment rising above 20 percent and as high as 40 percent in Spain. And it cannot come down fast. Europe now has a trend rate of growth which is almost one-half that of the USA and one-quarter that of China and India. Once, Europe represented half the output of the world. By 1980 this had fallen to one-quarter. Now it is less than one-fifth -- just 19 percent. Soon it will be little more than a tenth -- 11 percent by 2030 -- and then it will fall to 7 percent. By 2050 -- less than four decades from now -- the European economy could be smaller than that of Latin America. If European growth continues to run so far behind its competitors, then by mid-century it may be as small as Africa's.
Yet Europe is only half as well equipped as America to export our way to growth. Despite Germany's success in China, only 8 percent of our exports (in contrast to America's 15 percent) go to the eight fastest-emerging market economies, what are now called the growth generators, who will account for the majority of future growth.
It is clear that each of these three concerns -- deficits, banking instability and low growth -- is interwoven with the other in a way that makes policies designed to focus on only one issue much less effective than a comprehensive strategy aimed at simultaneously resolving all three. And a pan-European strategy is all the more necessary because the euro was constructed without any mechanisms for averting or resolving crises -- and with no agreement on who is ultimately responsible for financing crisis costs.
While a strong and passionate pro-European, I stood out from conventional economic opinion in doubting whether Britain's best interests lay in joining the euro. The UK Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls led 19 separate assessments of the euro. Our major finding was that inside the euro there was insufficient flexibility to achieve sustainable and durable convergence between nations. But we also demonstrated that the euro had no crisis prevention or crisis resolution plan in the event of convergence not being achieved. For under a single currency no nation -- even one completely uncompetitive with the rest of the euro zone -- can adjust its exchange rate, or benefit from an interest rate tailored to their specific needs. But nor had Europe adopted the U.S. crisis-prevention model for damping down disparities in a single currency area -- by labor mobility and wage adjustments, or by transfers to areas of need.
So, if I am right, we must now exchange panic-driven responses for a long-term reconstruction, or we will face a lost decade of high unemployment with social discontent, anti-immigrant feeling and secessionist movements.
We must now achieve for Europe the same "moment of truth" that the world found with the pivotal G20 summit in 2009. As happened with the G20, Europe's politicians should lead market sentiment by boldly and simultaneously agreeing to a Brady-bond-style solution for Greece and a European bank recapitalization; a new Euro area debt facility (responsible for, say, the first 60 percent of each country's debt) as part of a coordinated fiscal and monetary policy that permits, like the U.S., fiscal transfers; and, above all, a pro-growth, pro-enterprise strategy I call GLOBAL EUROPE: Europe's energies redirected outwards to exporting to the emerging economies, and re-equipping ourselves to do so with a clear timetable for -- and inbuilt incentives and penalties to guarantee -- labor, capital and financial market flexibilities.
Why would Germany support this? Because far from being against their interests, they now have a European reason to restructure their banks; can set tough terms on economic reform; and, by acting now, they avoid far bigger costs later. Indeed, I would argue that without my concurrent plan to restructure Europe's banks and insurance companies and to go for growth, the status quo or even a Brady plan for Greece still risk Europe-wide financial contagion.
History books about the "decline of the West" are not inevitable. But only a reconstruction that attacks deficits, banking liabilities and low growth together will avoid the deadening grip of an inward-looking protectionism -- and barren but avoidable years of unemployment and wasted lives.
© 2011 GLOBAL VIEWPOINT NETWORK; DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES
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Having entrusted its economy in the hands of a Ruling Elite, Europe's Working Class might well
have slept - but not, alas, its Ruling Elite.
No - Europe's Ruling Elite has been busy lifting the WORKING CLASS OF CHINA out of poverty
and today Mr. Brown, the results of that innovative appraoch to social responsibility are there for
all of us to see...
M.G.
I find that hard to believe. Paul Krugman and others were screaming their heads off about the oncoming disaster but no one listened.
Trying to keep the status quo will not work anymore. Reorganization, a plan has to be implemented. Paying attention to the bankling industry and regulation is the only way to avert a total meltdown.
Hence your problems of trying to assign a single arbitrary monetary value to a diverse collection of economies and sub economies is the same. My view is that these global systems have failed because they are too brittle to account for the richness and intricacies of the local...they become more like taxation systems than monetary...commandin rather than serving.
As we struggle to reduce the power of our own overbearing Federal Government, so too Europeans should consider doing the same.
For what it's worth - as a UK contributor to Huffpost USA - Gordon needs a job and is beginning to sound a little desperate.
This article is nothing more than putting out the resume to the great and good of the US and saying "Give me a job? Please. Pretty please. Somebody, anybody. Please love me."
(I voted for his party in the last elections by the way)
"But nor had Europe adopted the U.S. crisis-prevention model for damping down disparities in a single currency area -- by labor mobility and wage adjustments, or by transfers to areas of need."
I do believe that while those who've become utterly dependent on the federal government to assure prosperity continue to whine and moan, that the Americans who will prosper will do as PM Brown observes in that quote.
I don't need to be more prosperous than I was 30 years ago. I don't even need to be AS prosperous as I was 30 years ago (if it comes at an unacceptable cost to society or the environment). I just need to be prosperous enough. If I wanted to be more prosperous, I'd have to be willing to put more effort into it.
30 years ago the median income in Denmark was $32,000, today it is $62,000. Their society is strong, and they have a recycling rate of 70%, the highest in the world.
If we really want to save this country, we have to stop the "us against them" mentality and recognize we are part of a global civilization. The rich have to recognize that if they keep hoarding, there will be no one to protect them from the angry hoards of poor people trying to break down their doors and plunder their wealth.
Strong economies, universal healthcare, free college education, lower pollution, better human rights records?
Ok, sign me up.