Memo to Greece: Make War, Not Love, With Goldman Sachs

[marmar]

from Naked Capitalism:



Auerback/Wray: Memo to Greece: Make War, Not Love, With Goldman Sachs

By Marshall Auerback, a fund manager and investment strategist and L. Randall Wray, a Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri-Kansas City


In recent weeks there has been much discussion about what to do about Greece. These questions become all the more relevant as the country attempts to float a multibillion-euro bond issue later this week. The Financial Times has called this fund-raising a critical test of Greece’s credibility in financial markets as it battles with a spiraling debt crisis and strikes. ( http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/463b205e-1d93-11df-a893-00144feab49a.html ) The “credibility” of the financial markets is an important consideration in a country which has functionally ceded its sovereign ability to create currency, and thus remains dependent on the vagaries of the very banking institutions which helped create the mess in the first place.

Maybe Greece should secede from the European Union and default on its euro debt? Or go hat-in-hand to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to beg for loans while promising to clean up its act? Or to the stronger Euro nations, hoping for charitable acts of forgiveness? Unfortunately, all of these options are going to mean a lot of pain and suffering for an economy that is already sinking rapidly.

And it is questionable whether any of them provide long term viable answers. Polls show that given the perception of fiscal excesses of Greece and the other countries on the periphery, the public in Germany opposes a bailout of these countries at its expense by a significant margin. Periphery countries such as Ireland that have already undertaken harsh austerity measures also oppose the notion of a bailout, despite—nay, because of–the tremendous pain already inflicted on their own respective economies (in Ireland’s case, the banks are probably insolvent as well). The IMF route is also problematic, given that Greece probably doesn’t qualify under normal IMF standards, and many euro zone nations would find this unpalatable from an ideological standpoint, as it would mean ceding control of EU macro policy to an external international institution with strong US influence.

The Wall Street Journal recently highlighted an article by Simon Johnson and Peter Boone, lamenting that the demands being foisted on Greece and other struggling Euronations would “massively curtail demand, lower wages and reduce the public sector workforce. The last time we saw this kind of precipitate fiscal austerity—when nations were tied to the gold standard—it contributed to the onset of the Great Depression in the 1930s” ( http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703525704575061172926967984.html ). Where we disagree with Johnson and Boone is the suggestion that the IMF be brought in to craft a solution. Any help from this organization will come with tight strings attached—indeed, with a noose around Greece’s neck. Germany and France would be crazy to commit their scarce euros to a bail-out of Greece since they face both internal threats from their own taxpayers and external threats from financial vampires who are looking for yet another nation to attack. .........(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/02/auerbackwray-memo-to-greece-make-war-not-love-with-goldman-sachs.html