German Conservatives Ease Up on Greece

During the summer of 2012, it was all too easy, especially for financial analysts (whose expertise is on finance rather than politics), to summarily conclude that the E.U. was not capable of keeping the states of Greece and Spain from default. Perhaps the human brain has an innate proclivity to think in bipolar terms in the sense that something (or someone) is presumed either “good” or “bad.” Empirically, social organization, which includes politics and finance, is typically more gray than “black and white.” This is undoubtedly the case concerning the political risk analysis that goes into assessments of systemic risk, especially where uncertainty is salient. In general terms, I would say that as of 2012 the anticipated demise of the euro (and even the E.U.) was much exaggerated. Somehow or other, European policy-makers were able to hold the federal ship-of-state together in spite of its vulnerabilities.

The full essay is at Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, available at Amazon.

Political Risk in Systemic Risk: Finnish Pensions Err in Debt Crisis

Finland became a state in the European Union in 1995 and adopted the euro at its birth in 1999. In terms of population, the state is between Wisconsin and Minnesota, both of which are states in the United States. The Finnish culture prizes saving as well as paying-off debt on time. As the Wall Street Journal put it, the Finns are more German in this sense than are the Germans themselves. It is easy to understand, therefore, why the Finns would not have been excited about the write-offs in Greek government in 2012. The Finnish cultural attribute here is an ideological proclivity. Such a value-system so deeply held can even eclipse or interfere with an otherwise unfettered risk-return trade-off presumed to be part of the market mechanism. Just as the risk-return investment-pricing froze rather than adjusted upward with the leap in risk in CDOs and the related insurance swaps that occurred on Wall Street in 2007 and 2008, the decisions of Finnish pension fund officers in the wake of the European debt crisis to pull out of Greek and Spanish bonds rather than simply to demand a higher rate of return, given the higher risk, likely means that the market mechanism itself freezes rather than functions at levels of high risk (or when risk is increasing dramatically). In other words, the theory of the laissez-faire market, which Adam Smith never advocated, has a serious flaw that is reflected in the mechanism in operation when there is a spike in risk. Un prix ne marche pas quand il y a beaucoup du risque. The free market mechanism in the investment market tends to freeze up rather than re-price instruments whose risk is quickly increasing to a significant degree.

The full essay is in Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, available at Amazon. 

The E.U. States on Bailouts and Immigration: Where Lies the Vulnerability?

The history of the E.U. and its predecessor, the EEC, can be characterized as a series of fits and starts. For example, at one point France vetoed the accession of the U.K. as a state. Before long, Britain was in and the EEC could step forward. At another point, the proposed “constitutional treaty” was voted down in referendums in two states. A few years later, the Lisbon amendment was ratified and the E.U. could adjust, albeit piecemeal, to being larger. Without knowing the overall pattern in this history, one could easily take one of the backward steps for the demise of the union. Even an awareness of the pattern is not sufficient to arrest doubts. Moreover, a back step can be of sufficient symbolic value that it breaks even the “fit and start” pattern with truly dire consequences. Given the overall pattern, however, it is difficult to discern such a baleful symbolic move back.

The full essay is at Essays on the E.U. Political Economy, available at Amazon.