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Die Corona-De­pression

Carmen und Vincent Reinhart, Erstere bekannt durch ihr gemeinsames Buch mit Kenneth Roggof “This Time it’s different”, beschreiben in einem Beitrag für Foreign Affairs ihre Sicht auf die “Corona-Depression”. Die Highlights:

  • “The COVID-19 pandemic poses a once-in-a-generation threat to the world’s population. (…) governments around the world have deployed economic firepower on a scale rarely seen before. (…) The shared nature of this shock—the novel coronavirus does not respect national borders—has put a larger proportion of the global community in recession than at any other time since the Great Depression. As a result, the recovery will not be as robust or rapid as the downturn. And ultimately, the fiscal and monetary policies used to combat the contraction will mitigate, rather than eliminate, the economic losses, leaving an extended stretch of time before the global economy claws back to where it was at the start of 2020.” – bto: Das klingt anders als das “V”.
  • “The pandemic has created a massive economic contraction that will be followed by a financial crisis in many parts of the globe, as nonperforming corporate loans accumulate alongside bankruptcies. Sovereign defaults in the developing world are also poised to spike.” – bto: Ja, das klingt vernünftig und nachvollziehbar. Doch stimmt es auch? Ich denke, der Konkurs wird abgeschafft. Wir werden einfach alles in langfristige Schulden verwandeln und bei den Notenbanken endlagern. Alles andere wäre dumm. In meinem Buch schlage ich dennoch einen Rettungsfonds für Deutschland vor, der die Corona-Schulden der Unternehmen übernimmt und derart endlagert.
  • “And the crisis will hit lower-income households and countries harder than their wealthier counterparts. Indeed, the World Bank estimates that as many as 60 million people globally will be pushed into extreme poverty as a result of the pandemic. The global economy can be expected to run differently as a result, as balance sheets in many countries slip deeper into the red and the once inexorable march of globalization grinds to a halt.” – bto: Es ist eine Zeitenwende, die alle Themenbereiche erfassen wird. Und das nachhaltig. Und sie wird Gegenmaßnahmen erforderlich machen, die als solche ebenfalls zu einer fundamentalen Veränderung des Umfelds führen werden.
  • “(…) the World Bank predicted that the global economy will shrink by 5.2 percent in 2020. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics recently posted the worst monthly unemployment figures in the 72 years for which the agency has data on record. Most analyses project that the U.S. unemployment rate will remain near the double-digit mark through the middle of next year. And the Bank of England has warned that this year the United Kingdom will face its steepest decline in output since 1706. This situation is so dire that it deserves to be called a ‘depression’—a pandemic depression.” – bto: die aber anders als die Große Depression mit Billionen-Ausgaben aufgefangen wird.
  • “Some important economies are now reopening, a fact reflected in the improving business conditions across Asia and Europe and in a turnaround in the U.S. labor market. That said, this rebound should not be confused with a recovery. In all of the worst financial crises since the mid-nineteenth century, it took an average of eight years for per capita GDP to return to the pre-crisis level. (The median was seven years.) With historic levels of fiscal and monetary stimulus, one might expect that the United States will fare better. But most countries do not have the capacity to offset the economic damage of COVID-19. The ongoing rebound is the beginning of a long journey out of a deep hole.” – bto: Und dies ist auch deshalb so, weil es nicht das einzige Problem ist, was die Weltwirtschaft hat.
  • “(…) there are three indicators that together suggest that the road to recovery will be a long one. The first is exports. Because of border closures and lockdowns, global demand for goods has contracted, hitting export-dependent economies hard. Even before the pandemic, many exporters were facing pressures. Between 2008 and 2018, global trade growth had decreased by half, compared with the previous decade. More recently, exports were harmed by the U.S.-Chinese trade war that U.S. President Donald Trump launched in the middle of 2018. For economies where tourism is an important source of growth, the collapse in international travel has been catastrophic. The International Monetary Fund has predicted that in the Caribbean, where tourism accounts for between 50 and 90 percent of income and employment in some countries, tourism revenues will ‘return to pre-crisis levels only gradually over the next three years.’” – bto: Es gibt einen weiteren Grund, weshalb die Einnahmen im Tourismus Jahre brauchen werden, um das Vorkrisenniveau zu erreichen: weil man jetzt und zukünftig weniger Lust darauf haben wird, Stunden im Flugzeug zu sitzen.
  • “(…) the prices of many exports have also fallen. Nowhere has the drama of falling commodity prices been more visible than in the oil market. (…) The resulting overproduction and free fall in oil prices is testing the business models of all producers, particularly those in emerging markets, including the one that exists in the United States—the shale oil and gas sector. The attendant financial strains have piled grief on already weak entities in the United States and elsewhere. Oil-dependent Ecuador, for example, went into default status in April 2020, and other developing oil producers are at high risk of following suit.” – bto: Als Klimapolitiker könnte man sagen, es wäre auch so gekommen aufgrund der Abkehr von den fossilen Brennstoffen.
  • “The World Trade Organization estimates that global trade is poised to fall by between 13 and 32 percent in 2020. If the outcome is somewhere in the midpoint of that wide range, it will be the worst year for globalization since the early 1930s.” – bto: Der enorme Rückgang des Welthandels wird auch zu einer Prioritätenverschiebung führen.
  • “The second indicator pointing to a long and slow recovery is unemployment. Pandemic mitigation efforts are dismantling the most complicated piece of machinery in history, the modern market economy, and the parts will not be put back together either quickly or seamlessly. Some shuttered businesses will not reopen. Their owners will have depleted their savings and may opt for a more cautious stance regarding future business ventures. Winnowing the entrepreneurial class will not benefit innovation.” – bto: Eben deshalb brauchen wir eine Entschuldung!
  • “(…) some furloughed or fired workers will exit the labor force permanently. Others will lose skills and miss out on professional development opportunities during the long spell of unemployment, making them less attractive to potential employers. The most vulnerable are those who may never get a job in the first place—graduates entering an impaired economy. After all, the relative wage performance of those in their 40s and 50s can be explained by their job status during their teens and 20s. Those who stumble at the starting gate of the employment race trail permanently. Meanwhile, those still in school are receiving a substandard education in their socially distanced, online classrooms; in countries where Internet connectivity is lacking or slow, poorer students are leaving the educational system in droves. This will be another cohort left behind.” – bto: Auch das stimmt, es gibt aber die Gegenbewegung der schrumpfenden Erwerbsbevölkerung.
  • “What is perhaps more troubling, this depression arrived at a time when the economic fundamentals in many countries—including many of the world’s poorest—were already weakening. In part as a result of this prior instability, more sovereign borrowers have been downgraded by rating agencies this year than in any year since 1980. Corporate downgrades are on a similar trajectory, which bodes ill for governments, since private-sector mistakes often become public-sector obligations.” – bto: Und das sollten sie auch werden, verbunden mit einer Endlagerung der Schulden für Generationen.
  • “The third salient feature of this crisis is that it is highly regressive within countries and across countries. The ongoing economic dislocations are falling far more heavily on those with lower incomes. (….) The regressive nature of the pandemic may also be amplified by a worldwide spike in the price of food, as disease and lockdowns disrupt supply chains and agricultural labor migration patterns. The United Nations has recently warned that the world is facing the worst food crisis in 50 years. In the poorest countries, food accounts for anywhere from 40 to 60 percent of consumption-related expenditures; as a share of their incomes, people in low-income countries spend five to six times as much on food as their counterparts in advanced economies do.” – bto: Ich finde, es ist wichtig, genau daran zu erinnern, weil es eben ein Problem ist, wenn wir auf uns blicken – CO2-Abgaben auf Importen, etc. – und vergessen, wen wir damit treffen.
  • “(…) the fiscal response around the world has been relatively narrowly targeted and planned as temporary. (…)  The speed of the response no doubt was driven by the magnitude and suddenness of the problem, which also did not provide politicians with an opportunity to add pork to the legislation. The United States’ actions represent a relatively large share of the estimated $11 trillion in fiscal support that the countries of the G-20 have injected into their economies. Once again, greater size offers greater room to maneuver. Countries with larger economies have developed more ambitious stimulus plans. By contrast, the aggregate stimulus of the ten emerging markets in the G-20 is five percentage points below that of their advanced-economy counterparts. Unfortunately, this means that the countercyclical response is going to be smaller in those places hit harder by the shock. (…) The stimulus in the European economies, in particular, is more about the balance sheets of large businesses than about spending, raising questions about its efficacy in offsetting a demand shock.” – bto: Und was sollen wir auch machen, wenn die Tourismusindustrie leidet? Es gibt wenige Hebel, dies zu beeinflussen.
  • “Central banks have also attempted to stimulate the failing global economy. Those banks that did not already have their hands tied by prior decisions to keep interest rates pinned at historic lows—as the Bank of Japan and the European Central Bank did—relaxed their grip on the flow of money. (…) Just as important, central banks have fought desperately to keep the financial plumbing flowing by pumping currency reserves into the banking system and lowering private banks’ reserve requirements so that debtors could make payments more easily. The U.S. Federal Reserve, for instance, did both, doubling the amount it injected into the economy in under two months and putting the required reserve ratio at zero.” – bto: Sie haben vor allem jene gerettet, die schon zuvor mit zu vielen Schulden gearbeitet haben.
  • “(…) central banks have been able to prevent temporarily illiquid firms from falling into insolvency. A central bank can look past market volatility and purchase assets that are currently illiquid but appear to be solvent. Central bankers have used virtually all the pages from this part of the playbook, taking on a broad range of collateral, including private and municipal debt.” – bto: Dies ist richtig, aber letztlich auch keine Problemlösung. Es kauft Zeit.
  • “Central banks’ foray into territory far outside the norm is a direct result of design flaws in earlier attempts at remediation. After the crisis in 2008, governments did nothing to change the risk and return preferences of investors. Instead, they made it more expensive for the regulated community—that is, commercial banks, especially big ones—to accommodate the demand for lower-quality loans by introducing leverage and quality-of-asset restrictions, stress tests, and so-called living wills. The result of this trend was the rise of shadow banks, a cohort of largely unregulated financial institutions. Central banks are now dealing with new assets and new counterparties because public policy intentionally pushed out the commercial banks that had previously supported illiquid firms and governments.” – bto: weil man nach der Finanzkrise die erforderliche Bereinigung scheute, man blicke nur auf das europäische Bankensystem.
  • “(…) the net result of these policies is probably far from sufficient to offset a shock as large as the one the world is living through right now. Long-term interest rates were already quite low before the pandemic took hold. And in spite of all the U.S. dollars that the Federal Reserve channeled abroad, the exchange value of the dollar rose rather than fell. By themselves, these monetary stimulus measures are not sufficient to lead households and firms to spend more, given the current economic distress and uncertainty. As a result, the world’s most important central bankers—Haruhiko Kuroda, governor of the Bank of Japan; Christine Lagarde, president of the European Central Bank; and Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve—have been urging governments to implement additional fiscal stimulus measures. Their pleas have been met, but incompletely, so there has been a massive decline in global economic activity.” – bto: Keine Sorge, es werden noch Billionen-Programme kommen.
  • “The International Monetary Fund predicts that the deficit-to-GDP ratio in advanced economies will swell from 3.3 percent in 2019 to 16.6 percent this year, and in emerging markets, it will go from 4.9 percent to 10.6 percent over the same period. Many developing countries are following the lead of their developed counterparts in opening up the fiscal tap. But among both advanced and developing economies, many governments lack the fiscal space to do so. The result is multiple overextended government balance sheets.” – bto: und die Antwort auf das Problem? Deutschland zahlt für alle? Nein, auch wenn unsere Regierung glaubt, dies leisten zu können, wird es die Monetarisierung sein.
  • “Dealing with this debt will hinder rebuilding. The G-20 has already postponed debt-service payments for 76 of the poorest countries. Wealthier governments and lending institutions will have to do more in the coming months, incorporating other economies into their debt-relief schemes and involving the private sector.” – bto: Wir brauchen den globalen Reset nach Jahrzehnten der Schuldenwirtschaft.
  • “As future income decreases, debt burdens become more onerous. The social consequences are harder to predict. A market economy involves a bargain among its citizens: resources will be put to their most efficient use to make the economic pie as large as possible and to increase the chance that it grows over time.” – bto: So sollte es sein. Ich denke aber, wir können in Deutschland sehr gut beobachten, dass das genau nicht passiert. Hier wird nicht daran gedacht, wie man den Kuchen möglichst groß macht.
  • “A tide of populist nationalism often rises when the economy ebbs, so mistrust among the global community is almost sure to increase. This will speed the decline of multilateralism and may create a vicious cycle by further lowering future economic prospects. That is precisely what happened in between the two world wars, when nationalism and beggar-thy-neighbor policies flourished.” – bto: Wir werden eine Renaissance dieser Trends erleben.
  • “Officials (…) must refrain from confusing a rebound for a recovery.” – bto: Richtig, nur was man tun sollte, sagen die beiden Autoren auch nicht: Schuldenabbau, Investitionen, gemeinsame Monetarisierung. Dies setzt allerdings intelligente Politik voraus, gerade auch in Deutschland.

→ foreignaffairs.com: “The Pandemic Depression”, September/Oktober 2020