Englund

 Premier rebuffs suggestion joint debt to boost competitiveness Draghi’s proposal to strengthen European Union’s competitiveness by taking on joint debt is a risky strategy that could divert attention from the more consequential reforms that the bloc needs, Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson warned. He reiterated the Nordic nation’s long-held aversion to issuing common debt. “European reports tend to boil down to the fact that you need to jointly borrow lots of money to do things,” Kristersson said in an interview in Stockholm. “On that issue we, along with other countries, are skeptical. Every time you want to accomplish something, it cannot end with us having to take on more debt.” Bloomberg 16 september 2024  https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-16/swedish-pm-says-draghi-report-falls-into-common-debt-trap Draghi Says EU Itself at Risk Without More Funds and Joint Debt https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2024/09/draghi-says-eu-itself-at-risk-without.html Tillba...

  Om EU öppnar dammluckorna för gemensam upplåning är risken uppenbar att fler ändamål med tiden kvalificerar sig.  Det vore ett förödande steg för EU, vilket Sverige bör försöka bromsa. DI Ledare Frida Wallnor 9 september 2024  https://www.di.se/ledare/statliga-pengar-kan-inte-kopa-konkurrenskraft/   Scholz told reporters in June:  “Do I want to accept that we issue sovereign bonds, so-called eurobonds, for defense financing? The answer is no.” The federal constitutional court in Karlsruhe has a long tradition of policing the limits of Germany’s contributions to multinational debt raises. Lindner, Germany’s finance minister,  has said he’s opposing joint debt for both, political and legal reasons. “Communitization of risks, liabilities and debt doesn’t contribute to stability and therefore Germany won’t support it,” he told reporters in Brussels last week. German Constitutional Court and The European Peace Facility Bloomberg 27 July 2024 https://englundmac...

  Former ECB chief calls for as much as €800 billion of new spending, a year European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, who tasked Draghi with delivering the report...  Bloomberg 9 September 2024 https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-09-09/draghi-says-eu-in-danger-without-massive-spending-and-joint-debt I rapporten, som tagits fram av den tidigare ECB-chefen Mario Draghi, framgår det enligt Reuters att unionen behöver investeringar på 700-800 miljarder euro, motsvarande 7.990-9.130 miljarder kronor, per år.  ”Den stora frågan är om det finns ett behov av säkra gemensamma tillgångar? Svaret är ja, det finns ett behov av medel för gemensam finansiering”, säger han.  Frågan om gemensam finansiering är kontroversiell, då flera medlemsländer tidigare har satt sig på tvären mot idéer om att till exempel ge ut gemensamma euroobligationer. Men EU-kommissionens ordförande Ursula von der Leyen säger på presskonferensen att om unionen är tydlig med att definiera...

”Det finns länder som oavsett vilken kris man befinner sig i alltid kommer driva att det ska lånas upp pengar och att saker ska betalas av någon annan, antingen av framtida generationer eller skattebetalare i andra länder”, sade hon. ”Den diskussionen, är jag rädd, kommer aldrig sluta”, fortsatte hon.  DI 1 mars 2022 https://www.di.se/live/macron-driver-pa-om-euroobligationer-sverige-motsatter-sig/ EU Debates Joint Bonds to Cover 2 Trillion Euros in Spending EU leaders met for a two-day summit in Versailles, France Ania Nussbaum, John Follain, and Natalia Drozdiak Bloomberg 11 mars 2022 EU Debates Joint Bonds to Cover 2 Trillion Euros in Spending - Bloomberg New York Times om eurobonds och Europas Existentiella Fråga The euro bonds debate reflects what is perhaps the central existential question facing Europeans: how much more central government and integration are they willing to accept to save the euro? https://englundmacro.blogspot.com/2011/08/new-york-times-om-eurobonds-och-eur...

Efforts for deposit insurance scheme across single currency area Eurozone finance ministers last week reached a political agreement on a long-awaited reform to the bloc’s bailout fund, the European Stability Mechanism, removing a barrier that has held back work on banking union project.  Detailed work on tackling the nexus between banks and their country’s sovereign debt — a so-called doom loop that has long bedevilled the European banking system.  FT 8 Decenber 2020 https://www.ft.com/content/9a525f9e-2f03-487c-bf4c-1b6574e790e8

This time it is tearing up the rule book entirely, announcing that it will not be bound by “self-imposed limits”. It will intervene in the sovereign debt markets wherever needed most – meaning that it can deploy its vast arsenal to defend Italy or Portugal – without strict conditions or ifs and buts.  It has vastly expanded the range of assets on the menu. It will do “as much as necessary and for as long as needed”. While Frankfurt needs the fig-leaf of stating that the €750bn blitz is to ensure “the  smooth transmission of its monetary policy in all jurisdictions of the euro area”, it is clear that the ECB is in reality acting to prevent the collapse of Italy's sovereign debt, which in turn would set off a Club Med chain-reaction within hours and blow up monetary union.  It took 20 years but the eurozone finally has its own version of the US Federal Reserve. Or as founding father Jean Monnet famously put it, “Europe is forged in crises”. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,...

In 2012 eurozone leaders vowed to break the “doom loop” by which national governments and their banking systems could drag each other down in a financial crisis.  This began the long journey towards a banking union in which taxpayers would no longer be on the hook for failing banks. Had the leaders fully understood what they were signing up for, they may not even have started.  Rome wants a ‘package deal’ that includes common deposit insurance scheme Martin Sandbu FT 13 January 20 20

If eurozone leaders had fully realised what they were signing up to, they would probably have lost their nerve. Martin Sandbu, FT 25 July 2017

Crucially, however, the proposed new securities wouldn’t be jointly guaranteed by the euro-zone governments. Without the joint guarantee, the new instrument is largely pointless. The innovation would have symbolic value, always much prized in EU affairs.  And it could serve as a prelude to deeper forms of integration. Bloomberg editorial 5 June 2017 "I am sure the euro will oblige us to introduce a new set of economic policy instruments. It is politically impossible to propose that now. But some day there will be a crisis and new instruments will be created." Romano Prodi, EU Commission President. Financial Times, 4 December 2001

The point is that banking union (a common, adequately financed approach to supervising and rescuing banks) and fiscal union (controls on taxing and spending by member states), which are both seen as necessary long-term foundations of monetary union, erode national sovereignty. Or to put it another way, the narrower interests of the nation state, the exercise of national sovereignty, have routinely watered down reforms to forge a banking and fiscal union, such that it is still not possible to be confident that the euro is forever. If only the eurozone's central decision-making institutions had democratic legitimacy, then eurozone sovereignty might trump national sovereignty - and the euro could live happily ever after. Robert Peston, BBC Economics editor, 24 June 2014 http://www.bbc.com/news/business-27993522

Info om Bankunion  http://www.nejtillemu.com/englundcloser0506.htm#zcbankunion

Fredrik Reinfeldt upprepade de svenska villkoret om att svenska banker och skattebetalare inte ska kunna få betala för förluster i andra länders banksystem. DN/TT 17 oktober 2012 Men det är väl det som hela idén med en bankunion, att man gemensamt skall dela risken för bankförluster?

Bankunion är på väg Den tyske finansministern Wolfgang Schäuble skriver i  Financial Times, August 30, 2012 "a big step towards more European integration – a genuine transfer of sovereignty and a significant strengthening of European institutions" I en artikel i FT nyligen kunde man läsa att Officials cautioned that the legislation was still being drafted and would not be formally unveiled by Mr Barroso until his state of the union address on September 12.  To become law, it must be approved by all 27 EU heads of government ; commission officials hope they will agree at an EU summit before the end of the year. Nu skall det kuppas igenom utan fördragsändring, tydligen. Men det kanske inte blir så lätt även om man hotar med Götterdämmerung och kollaps för euron, det projekt som makthavarna har investerat så mycket prestige i. Om beslutet, som det verkar, kräver enhällighet, kanske någon sätter sig på tvären, under någon förevändning. Kanske till och med Fr...

German central bank chief Jens Weidmann: “The pooling of debt is just one side of a coin where federalism is the other. Governments who are in favour (of eurobonds) fail to point this out,” Sapa-AFP 26 maj 2012 “In those countries which are calling for eurobonds, France included, there is no public debate or public support for the transfer of sovereignty that that would entail. But it's precisely this debate we should be having,” Common bonds “can only come at the end of a long process, which, among others, would require several states to change their constitution, modification of treaties and the creation of more of a budgetary union,” German central bank chief Jens Weidmann said. Full text The Name Is Bond. Eurobond. Europe's debt crisis gets a new potential hero, with Germany once again cast in the role of villain. Foreign Policy 25 May  2012 Full text

INSTRUMENT of SURRENDER of all German forces to General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, and to the Soviet High Command Rheims. May 7, 1945 . [2] 1. We the undersigned, acting by authority of the German High Command, hereby surrender unconditionally to the Supreme Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force and simultaneously to the Soviet High Command all forces on land, sea, and in the air who are at this date under German control. 2. The German High Command will at once issue orders to all German military, naval and air authorities and to all forces under German control to cease active operations at 2301 hours Central European time on 8 May and to remain in the positions occupied at that time. No ship, vessel, or aircraft is to be scuttled, or any damage done to their hull, machinery or equipment.   http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/war.term/093_02.html

Häromdagen kom jag på att jag har skrivit om eurobonds i Financial Times, December 9 2010, visserligen bara under rubriken "Letters to the Editor", men ändå. - Sir, European sovereign bonds, called E-bonds, would end the crisis, according to Jean-Claude Juncker and Giulio Tremonti (Comment, December 6).  In fact it would be a step, hard to reverse, on the road to something that many would call a fiscal union federal superstate. Därom råder det väl i dag enighet. Även om en del tycker att detta vore bra och andra hotar med det. - There we would end up in a state of European bondage, skrev jag. Jag hade nämligen kommit på att ordet "bondage" enligt Google betyder livegenskap, vilket på engelska heter serfdom och då blir associationen för en ekonom självklar: - Google translates bondage to a Swedish word that in English is "serfdom" (livegenskap). - So maybe we are on The Road to Serfdom , after all. Vägen till träldom var ju den b...

The euro bonds debate reflects what is perhaps the central existential question facing Europeans: how much more central government and integration are they willing to accept to save the euro? New York Times, 15 august 2011 Det är det frågan om eurobonds handlar om. För mannen på gatan är det svårt att förstå för-och nackdelar med eurobonds, ja det finns nog även ekonomer som skulle ha svårighet att förklara detta, än mindre förstå. Frågan är ytterst om dagens stater skall bevaras eller bli delstater inom EU, likt provinser i det romerska riket. Om det har mannen på gatan en bestämd uppfattning. Det är därför europolitikerna försöker skjuta frågan framför sig. Men det är inte så lätt för ECB att hålla ställningarna. ECB köpte förra veckan statspapper (förmodligen mest från Italien och Spanien) för 22 miljarder euro, drygt 200 miljarder kronor. Därmed har ECB statspapper för 96 miljarder euro, 888 miljarder kronor. Eurointelligence meddelar också att Frankfurter Allgem...

Here  http://www.nejtillemu.com/englundcloser0506.htm#ebonds

Daniel Hannan 9:03PM BST 20 July 2011: Monetary union was never about economic logic. Rather than admit that the euro was a mistake, EU leaders are preparing the mother of all bailouts. One-off grants are no longer enough. What Euro-federalists now plan  –  what, indeed, they have been demanding for years  –  is a single eurozone bond market. Holders of junk national bonds will be invited to exchange their debt for new EU-backed bonds. The European Central Bank, or perhaps some new legal entity, will assume the bad debts of some of the stricken governments. Such a scheme will be expensive: it’s hard to see it costing less than a trillion euros. It will also be colossally unpopular: taxpayers in the donor countries will resent being made to pay for more profligate governments, while voters in the recipient countries are already protesting about the loss of economic sovereignty.  Most serious of all, it will be illegal.  Article 125 of the Euro...

Berlin wants explicit punishment of the banks, even if this triggers a Greek default. Paris has laboured day and night to find a default-free solution, fearing a euro-Lehman crisis Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, 8:55PM BST 20 Jul 2011 They are even further apart on the larger issue that overshadows this summit: whether to take the fateful step towards an EU debt union in order to defend Spain and Italy This could be done by issuing eurobonds, or allowing the eurozone’s €440bn bail-out fund to buy Italian and Spanish bonds preemptively Otmar Issing, the European Central Bank’s first chief economist and EMU’s most iconic figure, has made it very hard for the Chancellor to justify any of the key options on the table. “The issuance of eurobonds amounts to financial power without democratic legitimacy.  We must not forget that Western democracy began through parliamentary control over tax and public spending,” he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine, though he might equally have been sp...