13 April 2012

Nouriel Roubini: Europe’s short vacation

The honeymoon for the ECB's new president, Mario Draghi, has turned out to be brief, writes Roubini for Project Syndicate. The trouble is that the eurozone has an austerity strategy, but no growth strategy.

The recession will worsen throughout this year, for many reasons.

First, front-loaded fiscal austerity – however necessary – is accelerating the contraction, as higher taxes and lower government spending and transfer payments reduce disposable income and aggregate demand. Moreover, as the recession deepens, resulting in even wider fiscal deficits, another round of austerity will be needed. And now, thanks to the fiscal compact, even the eurozone’s core will be forced into front-loaded recessionary austerity.

Moreover, while über-competitive Germany can withstand a euro at – or even stronger than – $1.30, for the eurozone’s periphery, where unit labour costs rose 30-40 per cent during the last decade, the value of the exchange rate would have to fall to parity with the US dollar to restore competitiveness and external balance. After all, with painful deleveraging – spending less and saving more to reduce debts – depressing domestic private and public demand, the only hope of restoring growth is an improvement in the trade balance, which requires a much weaker euro.

Even structural reforms that will eventually increase productivity growth can be recessionary in the short run. Increasing labour market flexibility by reducing the costs of shedding workers will lead – in the short run – to more layoffs in the public and private sector, exacerbating the fall in incomes and demand.

Finally, after a good start, the ECB has now placed on hold the additional monetary stimulus that the eurozone needs. Indeed, ECB officials are starting to worry aloud about the rise in inflation due to the oil shock.

The trouble is that the eurozone has an austerity strategy but no growth strategy. And, without that, all it has is a recession strategy that makes austerity and reform self-defeating, because, if output continues to contract, deficit and debt ratios will continue to rise to unsustainable levels. Moreover, the social and political backlash eventually will become overwhelming.  

Without a much easier monetary policy and a less front-loaded mode of fiscal austerity, the euro will not weaken, external competitiveness will not be restored, and the recession will deepen. And, without resumption of growth – not years down the line, but in 2012 – the stock and flow imbalances will become even more unsustainable. More eurozone countries will be forced to restructure their debts, and eventually some will decide to exit the monetary union.

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© Project Syndicate