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Eurozone: Keine Angst vor Bail-ins!

Michael Sandbu von der FT ist ein beeindruckender Journalist und klarer Denker. Immer wieder fasst er die Lage in der Eurozone treffend zusammen und stellt sich entsprechend kritisch zu den verschiedenen “Lösungsvorschlägen”. Hier macht er einen Schritt zurück und fragt nochmals, was wir denn eigentlich erreichen wollen:

Zunächst stellt er die Frage, nach dem Zweck der Reformen: “(…) do the reforms aim to make the eurozone better at crisis management or to enhance its performance in regular times?

  • “Many of the concrete proposals — perfecting bail-in rules, internationalising the protection of deposits, facilitating the restructuring of sovereign debt in extremis — are largely relevant as measures to minimise the damage of future panics (and thereby their likelihood). The focus on removing non-performing loan assets from bank balance sheets, too, is largely about cleaning up a post-crisis mess.” – bto: Ich denke, es geht in Wirklichkeit nur darum, den Schuldenberg irgendwie loszuwerden.
  • “The key disagreement here is really about how different approaches to crisis management — roughly, throwing taxpayer money at panicking markets versus creating a predictable and regular mechanism for having investors take losses when necessary — affect the regular workings of the eurozone. The ‚mutualisers‘ worry that the prospect of bail-in and restructuring will trigger self-fulfilling panics unnecessarily. The bail-in proponents worry that promising to stand behind debts will implicitly subsidise and therefore encourage investors to take greater risks than they otherwise would — making a crisis more likely.” – bto: Man könnte auch schreiben: Frankreich, Italien und die anderen Schuldner versus Deutschland (noch). Ich denke, es ist richtig, das Risiko wieder einzuführen. Es muss aber glaubhaft sein und wir müssen eine Antwort auf die vorhandene Überschuldung geben.
  • “On the few occasions European leaders have actually tried to solve market panics by restructuring debts — Greece in 2012, Cyprus in 2013 and tentative bank debt restructuring in Portugal, Spain and Italy since — things have always gone better than feared. The historical experience with sovereign debt restructuring shows the same.” – bto: Das bedeutet, dass es besser ist, Pleiten und Bail-ins zuzulassen und ist damit wiederum eine Unterstützung für eine deutsche Politik der Vergangenheit, die nun ohne Grund über Bord geworfen wird mit dem Ziel, die reichen Länder rauszuhauen, auf Kosten der ärmeren deutschen Haushalte. Ist das sozial?
  • “Second, is the vision one in which stabilisation, risk-sharing and convergence are the results of private financial integration (under the various labels of banking union, capital markets union and financial union) or the pooling of taxpayer resources (fiscal union in some guise or other)? At the moment the most likely outcome of the imminent eurozone agenda is one that largely focuses on the former and kicks the latter into the long grass. That need not be a bad thing — even those who want a fiscal union should not let the best be the enemy of the good.” – bto: Genau, so ist es! Denn wir kennen doch die Studien, die zeigen, dass selbst in den USA, wo viel mehr staatliche Umverteilung stattfindet, 80 Prozent eines Schocks vom Privatsektor aufgefangen wird!
  • “Third, where do we foresee the right balance to lie between national policy autonomy and centralised power — whether that power is expressed through (possibly reformed) rules or through decision-making authority at the eurozone level (such as through a eurozone finance minister)? The answer is crucial to the long-term legitimacy of monetary union: it cannot be seen as incompatible with democratic choices over domestic economic models.” – bto: ein klares Votum für mehr nationalstaatliche Autonomie! Richtig so.
  • “(…) are the reforms really about making the eurozone work better or do the rationale for them apply just as strongly to the EU? The idea of a euro-area budget or ‚fiscal capacity‘, for example, is variously defended as a stabilisation tool against shocks or as a way to fund important public goods at the eurozone level. But it is hard to think of any kind of pan-eurozone public expenditure that it is not just as useful for all EU countries to participate in. There is no monetary imperative to pool energy and infrastructure investments, for example, at the eurozone level only rather than across the entire single market.” – bto: genauso wenig wie der Euro erforderlich war und ist, um die Einheit Europas zu fördern.

“These distinctions are different from the faultlines usually identified in the eurozone debate, such as ‚risk reduction versus risk sharing‘ or ‚solidarity versus discipline‘.” – bto: In Wahrheit geht es ja auch um etwas anderes: Wer trägt die unvermeidlichen Verluste?

→ FT (Anmeldung erforderlich): “Four questions for euro reform”, 2. Februar 2018