Продолжение темы Греция опять в центре внимания
Эпиграф к теме: И если мы не ампутируем то, что спасти уже нельзя, мы рискуем распространить заражение по всему телу (Тимо Соини)
В понедельник прошла встреча 27 министров финансов стран ЕС. Основные темы в повестке дня были – Греция и Португалия.
Во первых, комментарии по поводу этой встречи, касающиеся Греции.
During the past year, Strauss-Kahn has been a decisive advocate of the bailouts, influential in the Greek emergency through his close relationship with socialist prime minister George Papandreou. Merkel surprised the rest of Europe last year by insisting the IMF play a central role in the bailouts, with the fund putting up a third of the €750bn rescue pot.
Страсс-Кан был решительным защитником помощи Греции благодаря его тесным связям с премьер-министром Греции Джорджем Папандреу ( и тот и другой социалисты). Треть помощи, выделенной Греции, поступает от МВФ. Поэтому присутствие главы МВФ было принципиально важно.
Отсутствие Страсс-Кана помешало принятию решений по Греции.
While Greece was expected to plead for more help last night, no decisions were expected for several weeks. The European commission said new "arrangements" were possible, with the options including a combination of cutting the interest rate on the bailout money, extending the repayment terms and topping up the loans by up to €60bn. But the emphasis in Brussels and EU capitals was on first urging greater austerity on Athens. Papandreou has been told he will have to show convincingly that he is committed to selling off Greek public assets through a radical privatisation programme before the eurozone will return to his rescue.
"We will discuss Greece but not conclusively," said Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister and president of the eurozone grouping. "We will be informed by the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European commission and then we will see."
Для выделения нового пакета помощи Греция должна продемонстрировать свои усилия по экономии.
This troika has been in Greece for the past week assessing the government's adherence to the savage programme of spending cuts and is said to be unhappy with what it has found. The next tranche of the bailout, €12bn, is due to be disbursed next month but there are threats it could be withheld.
The threats prompted Greek media reports at the weekend that pensions and teachers' and civil servants' wages could go unpaid next month if the money did not arrive. But eurozone governments have repeatedly emphasised in the past fortnight that Greece will not be allowed to default on its mountain of debt, making it unlikely that the €12bn will be retained.
Если транш в 12 млрд.евро не будет переведен в следующем месяце, то это приведет к невыплате пенсий, а также зарплат учителям и гражданским служащим.
Чтобы не допустить дефолт, эти средства будут с большой вероятностью переведены.
Diplomats in Brussels and German officials made it clear the US and China were stepping up pressure on the EU to resolve the Greek dilemma, exasperated by the mixed signals from European capitals that have led to turmoil on markets and fresh questions about the euro's viability. An emergency, supposedly secret, meeting in Luxembourg 10 days ago of the French, German, Spanish and Italian finance ministers, which sparked a panic about a possible Greek default, was said to have been the direct result of transatlantic pressure.
At meetings of global finance officials in Washington last month, according to diplomats in Brussels, the Americans, Chinese and Canadians voiced their irritation with European indecision and demanded action to calm the markets.
"The US, Canada, and Beijing told the EU: You've got to get this done to stop the speculation," a diplomat said.
Америка и Китай оказывают сильное давление на власти ЕС и требуют решить греческую дилемму.
Вчера заговорили о мягкой реструктуризации греческого долга
A "reprofiling" or "soft restructuring" of bonds held by private investors, defined as a voluntary loan "extension", was floated by Jean-Claude Juncker, Luxembourg's prime minister and president of the eurozone finance ministers, after a Brussels meeting.
However, he stressed that Greece would have to implement further painful welfare and labour reforms, alongside more privatisations, before European leaders would contemplate such drastic action.
"Greece will have to implement huge reforms ... to rapidly privatise many public entities... then we'll have to see whether we can't proceed to a soft restructuring," Mr Juncker said. "I am strictly opposed to a large restructuring."
Пока это оговаривается таким количеством условий, что может не приниматься всерьез. Пока...
His comments exposed deep divisions in Europe over a second Greek bail-out, on top of the original €110bn package. German Chancellor Angela Merkel indicated on Monday she would oppose any "reprofiling", saying: "It would raise doubts about our credibility if we simply were to change the rules in the middle of the first programme." French finance minister Christine Lagarde added: "Restructuring, reprofiling – off the table."
Greek deputy foreign minister Spyros Kouvelis, though, told Reuters his country is willing to engage in talks on a "soft" restructuring. Irish finance minister Michael Noonan went further and called for rates on the bail-out loans to Ireland, Portugal and Greece to be reduced or risk the programmes' "failure".
Заявления Юнкера вызвали большие разногласия среди политиков. Германия и Франция против. Ирландия и Греция – конечно, за.
Политики не могут разобраться, что же они понимают под словом реструктуризация.
While Juncker's and Rehn's statements marked a significant shift in official comment on Greece's predicament, there was apparent disagreement among other senior officials about whether such a move was the right thing to do, although that may have reflected the confusing array of phrases used.
"Restructuring, rescheduling -- off the table," French Economy Minister Christine Lagarde said late on Monday, after Juncker had hinted at a "reprofiling" of Greek debt, a way of extending the maturities on its loans without going through a more fundamental restructuring process.
"A restructuring or a rescheduling, which would constitute a default situation, what we would call a credit event, are off the table for me," she said.
European Central Bank governing council member Ewald Nowotny told Austrian radio that a "soft restructuring" was not on the cards, insisting that Greece needed to shore up its finances.
While all EU officials have rejected the idea of a full-on default, they have now introduced at least three terms to refer to the possibility of some alteration in the repayment schedule of Greek debt: restructuring, rescheduling and reprofiling.
From the financial markets' point of view, there may be little difference among them. The manager of a debt fund in the United States joked that the only time he had heard the word "reprofiling" used was in reference to a nose job.
But sovereign debt analysts draw a distinction between restructuring, which involves enforced losses, and "reprofiling," when bondholders are asked to exchange short-term debt for longer-dated bonds with a similar coupon, thereby altering the profile of the yield curve and effectively giving the debtor more time to repay the loan.
If a "reprofiling" or "soft restructuring" is done in coordination with bondholders, rather than forced upon them, it may not trigger a "credit event" and would therefore avoid the prospect of insurance contracts on debt having to pay out.
The repercussions would still be widespread. Around 70 percent of Greek government bonds -- worth around 215 billion euros -- are held abroad, mostly by French, German and American banks and by the European Central Bank.
A "reprofiling" would mean a delay in repayment, which may in turn cause knock-on credit problems.
В то время как официальные лица ЕС отвергают идею полномасштабного дефолта, они применяют по крайней мере три термина относительно изменения условий платежей со стороны Греции: реструктуризацию, изменение графика платежей (rescheduling), и перепрофилирование.
Реструктуризация включает в себя «принуждение» держателей облигаций к потерям. При перепрофилировании ил по другому «мягкой реструктуризации» держателей долговых бумаг просят заменить краткосрочный долг на облигации с большим сроком погашения; при этом меняется форма кривой доходности и заемщику дается больше времени на выплату долга.
Важно, что при этом не происходит «кредитного события», и не приходится выплачивать компенсации по страховым контрактам на долг.
С точки зрения финансовых рынков в этих терминах мало различий. Их интересует, приведет ли это к уходу от риска, насколько затронет крупные финансовые институты, вызовет ли распродажу активов.
Причины греческого долгового кризиса и может ли проблема быть решена путем реструктуризации.
Здесь дано простое и понятное объяснение причин, почему возникли проблемы Греции, Португалии, Ирландии:
The weaker countries, on the fringes of the single currency area, have not been able to cope with the disciplines involved in giving up control of their interest rates and their currencies, with the problem going much wider than the three countries – Greece, Ireland and Portugal – that have sought bailouts. Spain's housing boom and bust was the result of the pan-European interest rate being too low; Italy's increasing lack of competitiveness stems from a lack of exchange-rate flexibility.
It was also clear from the outset that the structure of monetary union would result in struggling countries being subjected to deflationary policies. Since the eurozone is not a sovereign state there is no formal mechanism for transferring resources from rich parts of the monetary union to the poor parts. Nor, given language barriers and bureaucratic impediments, is it easy for someone made unemployed in Athens to get a job in Amsterdam. Instead those countries seeking to match Germany's hyper-competitive economy have to cut costs, through stringent curbs on wage increases and fiscal austerity.
С самого начала было понятно, что структура монетарного союза приведет к дефляционному сценарию для отдельных, не самых сильных и дисциплинированных стран. Так как еврозона не суверенное государство, здесь нет механизма передачи ресурсов от богатой части монетарного союза к его бедной части. Речь идет как о финансовых, так и о материальных и людских ресурсах. Попытка выбраться из дефляционной ловушки путем бюджетной строгости никак не может выправить ситуацию.
Прошлой весной запустили первый план оказания помощи Греции (план А). Почему из этого ничего не получилось?
It's not difficult to see why this has happened. Those who put together Greece's programme underestimated the extent to which public spending cuts and tax increases would hamper the growth potential of the economy, particularly given the lack of scope for the currency to fall. Historically the IMF's structural programmes for troubled developing countries have involved devaluation, so exports became cheaper; but Greece's membership of the single currency has meant there has been no external safety valve to compensate for the domestic squeeze.
Greece needs to have the scope to grow its way out of its debt crisis. Failing that, the rest of the eurozone has to be prepared to stomach not just a second, but a third and perhaps even a fourth bailout so Athens can keep up with its debt repayments. Hence the drumbeat of speculation that Greece would be better off defaulting, or leaving the eurozone altogether.
Девальвация национальной валюты всегда являлось основным средством борьбы с кризисом, подобным греческому. Но в данном случае членство в союзе с единой валютой лишило Грецию возможности компенсировать сжатие экономики открытием клапана, связающего ее с мировой экономикой.
Теперь хотят запустить план В – реструктуризация или перепрофилирование. Но и тот и другой не решит проблем.
There is no suggestion that the Greek government is planning anything of this nature. Default and devaluation pose big risks, particularly since the debts would have to be in a redenominated currency (like the drachma) that creditors would deem to have junk status. In the short term, Greece's economic and financial crisis would almost certainly deepen. Athens would prefer the EU to provide a second bridging loan and to reschedule its debts over a longer period so the interest payments become less onerous.
But that is at best a stopgap solution, because it does nothing to address the structural weaknesses of the eurozone. For this, there are really only two solutions. The first is to turn monetary union into political union, creating the budgetary mechanisms to transfer resources across a single fiscal space. That would fulfil the ambitions of those who designed the euro, and would recognise that the current halfway house arrangement is inherently unstable.
The second would be to admit defeat by announcing carefully crafted plans for a two-tier Europe, in which the outer part would be linked to the core through fixed but adjustable exchange rates. Neither option, it has to be said, looks remotely likely, although the collapse of Lehmans shows the limitations of the current muddling-through approach.
Никакая реструктуризация не решает проблемы структурных различий еврозоны.
Автор статьи видит два способа решить проблему Греции, ни один из которых не устроит европейскую элиту.
Первый: превратить монетарный союз в политический: создать механизм перемещения ресурсов
Второй: признать поражение путем объявления о создании двухслойной Европы, в которой внешний слой был бы связан с ядром с помощью регулируемого обменного курса.
Статьи по теме: http://mfd.ru/blogs/posts/view/?id=208
Обновление следует.... 2.1, 2.2., 2.3. и т.д
