A conjuntura económica, a zona euro e Portugal

Uma questão que me tem preocupado - mas de que não tenho todo o conhecimento e informação (aqui) - tem a ver com as implicações (e problemas - eventualmente - graves) do endividamento externo de Portugal (público e privado) resultante da acumulação de saldos negativos na Balança das Transações Correntes (BTC) - 90% do PIB em 2007 (aqui). Vê-se acima (gráfico retirado do artigo do FT referenciado abaixo) que Portugal, em 2009, teve um saldo negativo na BTC de cerca de 10 % do PIB (o segundo mais alto da EURO zona).

Este artigo: FT.com / Columnists / Martin Wolf - The eurozone depends on a strong US recovery fornece um quadro explicativo (pedagógico) da conjuntura na Zona EURO que ajuda a perceber melhor as linhas com que Portugal tem de se coser neste momento - e explica as preocupações (explícitas) sobre o endividamento externo, do Presidente da República e da (economista) Manuela Ferreira Leite - obviamente houve Guterres, mas poderia ter sido feito mais no tempo desta última (contenção do défice orçamental e, por que não, no mercado de arrendamento - no endividamento ao exterior qual é a proporção que se destinou a financiar casa própria?).

Transcrevo a maior parte do artigo:

"... the US goes into a recession; Europeans believe this deserved punishment has little to do with them; the European economy slows unexpectedly; the US throws everything at restoring growth; finally, the US recovers, pulling Europe behind it. Yet this is not just a slow-down. It is also a financial crisis.

What if the solvency of a eurozone member came into doubt?

After all, spreads over rates on German bunds and the prices of credit default swaps have risen already, the most affected countries being Belgium, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain (see charts). Eurozone members are like local governments.

If they were unable to refinance their debt, they would be forced to default or need outside rescue.

True, even the Greek spread of 165 basis points does not imply a high probability of default. The actual rate of interest – 4.7 per cent – is not unmanageable either. Yet markets can shift at great speed. It is possible to imagine a “sudden stop” on higher-risk sovereign bonds. That would force the debt to become short term – a classic route to a crisis.

The apparent elimination of exchange-rate risk did not eliminate risk itself. Inside the eurozone, inflation and exchange-rate risks become credit risk, instead. So what determines sovereign credit risk?

The traditional European approach focuses only on visible fiscal deficits and debt. This is far too limited. That is not only because it ignores contingent public debt. It is even more because it ignores the national balance sheet and so the close links between private and public sector balance sheets. It also ignores the balance of payments.

It is often said that the current account does not matter in a currency union. This is true: an exchange rate crisis is impossible. But it is also false: a credit crisis may happen instead. If a country runs a current account deficit, residents must be selling financial claims to foreigners. If private parties are the sellers of claims, foreign suppliers of funds must believe in their solvency. If the public sector is the seller, suppliers must believe the same thing.

When the domestic counterpart of the external deficit is a private sector deficit, it is frequently a boom in the supply of non-tradeable services that drives the economy. Property bubbles are a part of this story – very much so in the recent cases of Ireland and Spain (and also in the US and UK).

So what happens if this boom collapses? The supply of creditworthy private issuers of financial claims shrinks and capital inflows become more expensive or more restricted. Three things will then happen: first, the economy will slow; second, the external deficit will shrink; and, third, the fiscal deficit will rise.

The more determined any offsetting fiscal action, the smaller the shrinkage in the current account deficit and slow-down in the economy will be.

If a country has relatively weak international competitiveness, an inflexible labour market and an irrevocably fixed exchange rate, the end of the property boom will reduce domestic demand, without generating a significant offsetting expansion in net exports. The fiscal deterioration is then likely to be large and sustained. Thus, as the private sector deficit moves into surplus, the public sector moves in the opposite direction.

Ireland’s is a dramatic case: according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s latest Economic Outlook, the general government fiscal deficit will move from a surplus of 3 per cent of gross domestic product to a deficit of 7.1 per cent just between 2006 and 2009. Spain’s fiscal deficit is forecast to move from a surplus of 2 per cent to a deficit of 2.9 per cent over the same period. Yet Spain still runs a large current account deficit (see chart). So the private sector also runs a sizeable deficit, forecast at 4.5 per cent of GDP in 2009.

If that were to shrink faster than expected, very likely in today’s circumstances, the slowdown in the economy and jump in the fiscal deficit would be even bigger. Other eurozone members running big current account and private sector financial deficits are Greece and Portugal. Meanwhile, Italy, Belgium and Greece have high public sector indebtedness.

These six, then, are the vulnerable countries, with Greece much the most vulnerable. So how likely is a fiscal crisis?

The answer is that it depends on the length and depth of the eurozone’s recession, a member’s initial public debt position, the credibility of its fiscal authorities, its difficulty in achieving improvement in external competitiveness and, not least, on whether a crisis happens in any of these countries.

Panic is contagious. The decision by the European Central Bank to cut rates by 0.75 percentage points last week is at least recognition of the danger, though surely far too little far too late. But it is impossible to escape from the central problem:

the characteristics of Germany as the eurozone’s anchor economy. For the problem of the eurozone is not just that it is an assemblage of countries, but that its most important country has such distinct features.

What are Germany’s characteristics? It has an overwhelmingly competitive manufacturing sector; it is a chronic surplus country, with structurally weak domestic demand (ameliorated briefly during unification); and it has managed to avoid any housing or domestic credit booms. Its elite appears indifferent to the country’s rate of economic growth, even in the medium term; it is obsessed with the dangers of inflation; and it believes that countries that spend more than their incomes are somewhat immoral. Germans claim, with reason, that their country is a pillar of rectitude. But it can be hard for ordinary countries to live with such rectitude. Of course, the rest of the eurozone has chosen this option. But countries with structural surpluses, such as Germany, compel their partners to run the deficits Germans despise. In present circumstances, those deficits are evidently deflationary and could lead to waves of private, or even public sector, defaults.

Yet, would a member’s government be allowed to default?

Or would there be a rescue and if so, by whom and at what price? It is conceivable that the world will find out.

Maybe, fiscal federalism will be the outcome.

But it might be much messier. Some countries might be badly damaged.

Yet a robust recovery would eliminate this danger.

If it does arrive, there is no doubt where it will come from – not from Germany’s actions to sustain domestic demand, but from profligate “Anglo-Saxons”. Once again, Europeans will enjoy condemning the US for its hedonism, while taking full advantage of it – the customary “win-win” strategy for all. "