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Avrà letto Nouriel Roubini spiegare sul Financial Times perché i giorni dell’Italia nell’Eurozona potrebbero essere contati. Strano, non trova?, che nell’analisi del passato e nelle previsioni del futuro, Berlusconi, for God’s sake, non sia neppur nominato.

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by Nouriel Roubini

With interest rates on its sovereign debt surging well above seven per cent, there is a rising risk that Italy may soon lose market access. Given that it is too-big-to-fail but also too-big-to-save, this could lead to a forced restructuring of its public debt of €1,900bn. That would partially address its “stock” problem of large and unsustainable debt but it would not resolve its “flow” problem, a large current account deficit, lack of external competitiveness and a worsening plunge in gross domestic product and economic activity.

To resolve the latter, Italy may, like other periphery countries, need to exit the monetary union and go back to a national currency, thus triggering an effective break-up of the eurozone.

Until recently the argument was being made that Italy and Spain, unlike the clearly insolvent Greece, were illiquid but solvent given austerity and reforms. But once a country that is illiquid loses its market credibility, it takes time – usually a year or so – to restore such credibility with appropriate policy actions. Therefore unless there is a lender of last resort that can buy the sovereign debt while credibility is not yet restored, an illiquid but solvent sovereign may turn out insolvent. In this scenario sceptical investors will push the sovereign spreads to a level where it either loses access to the markets or where the debt dynamic becomes unsustainable.

So Italy and other illiquid, but solvent, sovereigns need a “big bazooka” to prevent the self-fulfilling bad equilibrium of a run on the public debt. The trouble is, however, that there is no credible lender of last resort in the eurozone.

One is urgently needed now. Eurobonds are out of the question as Germany is against them and they would require a change in treaties that would take years to approve. Quadrupling the eurozone bailout fund from €440bn to €2,000bn is a political non-starter in Germany and the “core” countries. The European Central Bank could do the dirty job of backstopping Italy and Spain, but it does not want to do it as it would take a huge credit risk. It also cannot do it, as unlimited support of these countries would be obviously illegal and against the treaty no-bailout clause.

Thus, since half of the European financial stability facility’s resources are already committed to Greece, Ireland, Portugal and to their banks, there is only about €200bn left for Italy and Spain. Attempts have been made to use financial engineering to turn this small sum into €2,000bn. But the leveraged EFSF is a turkey that will not fly, because the original EFSF was already a giant collateralised debt obligation, where a bunch of dodgy, sub-triple-A sovereigns try to achieve, by miracle, a triple-A rating via bilateral guarantees. So a leveraged EFSF is a giant CDO squared that will not work and will not reduce spreads to sustainable levels. The other “turkey” concocted by the EFSF was supposed to be a special purpose vehicle where reserves of central banks become the equity tranche that allows sovereign wealth funds and the Bric countries to inject resources in a triple-A super senior tranche. Does this sound like a giant sub-prime CDO scam? Yes, it does. This is why it was vetoed by the Bundesbank.

So, since the levered EFSF and the EFSF SPV will not fly – and there is not enough International Monetary Fund money to rescue Italy and/or Spain – the spreads for Italian debt have reached a point of no return.

After a patchwork of lending facilities are cobbled together, and found wanting by the markets, the only option will be a coercive but orderly restructuring of the country’s debt. Even a change in Italian government to a coalition headed by a respected technocrat will not change the fundamental problem – that spreads have reached a tipping point, that output is free-falling and that, given a debt to GDP ratio of 120 per cent, Italy needs a primary surplus of over 5 per cent of GDP just to prevent its debt from blowing up.

Output now is in a vicious free fall. More austerity and reforms – that are necessary for medium-term sustainability – will make this recession worse. Raising taxes, cutting spending and getting rid of inefficient labour and capital during structural reforms have a negative effect on disposable income, jobs, aggregate demand and supply. The recessionary deflation that Germany and the ECB are imposing on Italy and the other periphery countries will make the debt more unsustainable.

Even a restructuring of the debt – that will cause significant damage and losses to creditors in Italy and abroad – will not restore growth and competitiveness . That requires a real depreciation that cannot occur via a weaker euro given German and ECB policies. It cannot occur either through depressionary deflation or structural reforms that take too long to reduce labour costs.

So if you cannot devalue, or grow, or deflate to a real depreciation, the only option left will end up being to give up on the euro and to go back to the lira and other national currencies. Of course that will trigger a forced conversion of euro debts into new national currency debts.

The eurozone can survive with the debt restructuring and exit of a small country such as Greece or Portugal. But if Italy and/or Spain were to restructure and exit this would effectively be a break-up of the currency union. Unfortunately this slow-motion train wreck is now increasingly likely.

Only if the ECB became an unlimited lender of last resort and cut policy rates to zero, combined with a fall in the value of the euro to parity with the dollar, plus a fiscal stimulus in Germany and the eurozone core while the periphery implements austerity, could we perhaps stop the upcoming disaster.

The writer is chairman of Roubini Global Economics, professor at the Stern School at New York University and co-author of ‘Crisis Economics’

di Martin Wolf

L’euro sopravviverà? I leader di Francia e Germania ora si pongono questa domanda per quanto riguarda la Grecia. Se i governanti vent’anni fa avessero saputo quello che sanno adesso, non si sarebbero lanciati nell’avventura della moneta unica. Ormai solo la paura delle conseguenze di una spaccatura li tiene insieme. Il dubbio è se sarà sufficiente. Sospetto di no.
Gli sforzi per riportare la crisi sotto controllo finora sono falliti. La leadership dell’Eurozona è riuscita a rimuovere dal tavolo gli effetti dirompenti del desiderio di legittimazione democratica di Papandreou. Ma Italia e Spagna sono in seri guai finanziari. Con un tasso di interesse reale del 4,5% circa e una crescita economica dell’1,5% (media dal 2000 al 2007), l’avanzo primario dell’Italia (prima dei tassi di interesse) dovrà essere costantemente intorno al 4% del Pil. Ma il rapporto debito/Pil è troppo alto e questo significa che l’avanzo primario dovrà essere molto maggiore, oppure il tasso di crescita dovrà essere molto più alto, oppure il tasso di interesse dovrà essere molto più basso. Con Berlusconi al potere, nessuno dei cambiamenti necessari potrà avvenire. Un altro leader potrebbe risolvere la faccenda? Ne dubito.

Il problema fondamentale è stata l’incapacità di comprendere la natura della crisi. Nouriel Roubini, professore alla Stern School of Business dell’Università di New York, enumera i punti rilevanti in un recente studio. Distingue fra stock e flussi. I secondi sono più importanti, e sono fondamentali per ripristinare la competitività con l’estero e la crescita economica. Come osserva Thomas Mayer, della Deutsche Bank, «la crisi della zona euro superficialmente è una crisi del debito pubblico e del settore bancario, ma alla base c’è una crisi della bilancia dei pagamenti causata da un disallineamento dei tassi di cambio interni reali». La crisi finirà se, e solo se, i Paesi più deboli recupereranno competitività. Al momento, i loro disavanzi strutturali esterni sono troppo ingenti per poter essere finanziati spontaneamente.

Roubini illustra quattro scenari possibili per affrontare i problemi di stock e di flusso: primo, ripristinare la crescita e la competitività con politiche monetarie di espansione quantitativa aggressive, un euro più debole e misure di stimolo nei Paesi del nocciolo duro, mentre i Paesi della periferia si sottopongono a misure di austerità e riforme; secondo, un aggiustamento deflazionistico nei Paesi della periferia, abbinato a riforme strutturali, per spingere in basso i salari nominali; terzo, finanziamento permanente di una periferia non competitiva da parte dei Paesi del nocciolo duro; quarto, una ristrutturazione del debito su ampia scala e parziale frattura dell’euro. Il primo scenario potrebbe raggiungere l’obiettivo dell’aggiustamento limitando al minimo il default. Il secondo non riuscirebbe ad arrivare in tempo all’aggiustamento di flusso e probabilmente si trasformerebbe nel quarto. Il terzo eviterebbe un aggiustamento, di stock e di flusso, nei Paesi della periferia, ma rischierebbe di trascinare all’insolvenza i Paesi del nocciolo duro. Il quarto sarebbe la fine.

Purtroppo esistono ostacoli di rilievo a questi scenari. Il primo è quello che ha maggiori probabilità di funzionare da un punto di vista economico, ma è inaccettabile per la Germania. Il secondo è politicamente accettabile per la Germania (anche se avrebbe effetti negativi sulla sua economia), ma finirebbe per essere inaccettabile per i Paesi della periferia. Il terzo è politicamente inaccettabile per la Germania e potrebbe rivelarsi inaccettabile perfino per i Paesi della periferia. Il quarto è inaccettabile per tutti, almeno per ora.
Quello che sta succedendo è un miscuglio poco felice della seconda e della terza opzione: austerità unilaterale più un finanziamento a denti stretti da parte del nocciolo duro. Mayer sostiene che potrebbe finire per tramutarsi nel primo scenario. La sua tesi è che l’attività di prestatore di ultima istanza svolta dal sistema europeo delle Banche centrali in favore delle banche che non sono in grado di finanziarsi sul mercato sta finanziando i passivi della bilancia dei pagamenti. La conseguenza è che le Banche centrali dei Paesi in surplus stanno accumulando grossi crediti nei confronti della Banca centrale europea, mentre quelle dei Paesi in deficit stanno accumulando debiti. Questa è un’unione dei trasferimenti. Sul lungo periodo, suggerisce Mayer, il finanziamento monetario dei saldi passivi della bilancia dei pagamenti produrrà inflazione e si trasformerà nel primo degli scenari prospettati da Roubini. Non sono sicuro che il pericolo di inflazione sia reale. Ma i tedeschi sicuramente temono che lo sia.

Sul lungo periodo, il primo e il secondo degli scenari di Roubini sembrano più probabili: o tutta l’Eurozona procede all’aggiustamento, o va in frantumi. La Germania dovrebbe accettare i rischi della prima via. Lo so che è tormentata dall’incubo dell’iperinflazione del 1923, ma fu la brutale austerity del 1930-1932 che portò al potere Adolf Hitler.
L’interrogativo è se sia possibile uscire dall’euro senza far saltare per aria il mondo intero. Partiamo dalla decisione di un’uscita cooperativa, considerando i gravissimi problemi di competitività di un Paese come la Grecia. La Grecia introdurrebbe una valuta, la “nuova dracma”. I nuovi contratti in base alla legge greca e le tasse e le spese del Paese ellenico sarebbero in questa valuta. I contratti esistenti rimarrebbero in euro. Le banche avrebbero conti correnti in euro e nuovi conti correnti in dracme. Il tasso di cambio della nuova valuta rispetto all’euro verrebbe stabilito dal mercato. La nuova dracma si deprezzerebbe rapidamente, ma di questo c’è un disperato bisogno.

di Raghuram Rajan

Paul Krugman and Robin Wells caricature my recent book Fault Lines article in an in the New York Review of Books.
First, Krugman starts with a diatribe on why so many economists are “asking how we got into this mess rather than telling us how to get out of it.” Krugman apparently believes that his standard response of more stimulus applies regardless of the reasons why we are in the economic downturn. Yet it is precisely because I think the policy response to the last crisis contributed to getting us into this one that it is worthwhile examining how we got into this mess, and to resist the unreflective policies that Krugman advocates. The article, and their criticism, however, do have a lot to say about Krugman’s policy views (for simplicity, I will say “Krugman” and “he” instead of “Krugman and Wells” and “they”) which I have disagreed with in the past. Rather than focus on the innuendo about my motives and beliefs in the review, let me focus on differences of substance. I will return to why I believe Krugman writes the way he does only at the end.
My book emphasizes a number of related fault lines that led to our current predicament. Krugman discusses and dismisses two – the political push for easy housing credit in the United States and overly lax monetary policy in the years 2002-2005 – while favoring a third, the global trade imbalances (which he does not acknowledge are a central theme in my book). I will argue shortly, however, that focusing exclusively on the imbalances as Krugman does, while ignoring why the United States became a deficit country, gives us a grossly incomplete understanding of what happened. Finally, Krugman ignores an important factor I emphasize – the incentives of bankers and their willingness to seek out and take the tail risks that brought the system down.
Let me start with the political push to expand housing credit. I argue that in an attempt to offset the consequences of rising income inequality, politicians on both sides of the aisle pushed easy housing credit through government units like the Federal Housing Administration, and by imposing increasingly rigorous mandates on government sponsored enterprises such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Interestingly, Krugman neither disputes my characterization of the incentives of politicians, nor the detailed documentation of government initiatives and mandates in this regard. What he disputes vehemently is whether government policy contributed to the housing bubble, and in particular, whether Fannie and Freddie were partly responsible.
In absolving Fannie and Freddie, Krugman has been consistent over time, though his explanations as to why Fannie and Freddie are not partially to blame have morphed as his errors have been pointed out. First, he argued that Fannie and Freddie could not participate in sub-prime financing. Then he argued that their share of financing was falling in the years mortgage loan quality deteriorated the most. Now he claims that if they indeed did it (and they did not), it was because of the profit motive and not to fulfill a social objective. Let me offer details.
In a July 14, 2008 op-ed in the New York Times, Krugman explained why Fannie and Freddie were blameless thus:
“Partly that’s because regulators, responding to accounting scandals at the companies, placed temporary restraints on both Fannie and Freddie that curtailed their lending just as housing prices were really taking off. Also, they didn’t do any subprime lending, because they can’t: the definition of a subprime loan is precisely a loan that doesn’t meet :
the requirement, imposed by law, that Fannie and Freddie buy only mortgages issued to borrowers who made substantial down payments and carefully documented their income. So whatever bad incentives the implicit federal guarantee creates have been offset by the fact that Fannie and Freddie were and are tightly regulated with regard to the risks they can take. You could say that the Fannie-Freddie experience shows that regulation works. [emphasis mine] “
Critics were quick to point out that Krugman had his facts wrong. As Charles Calomiris, a professor at Columbia University and Peter Wallison at the American Enterprise Institute (and member of the financial crisis inquiry commission) , “Here Krugman demonstrates confusion about the law (which did not prohibit subprime lending by the GSEs), misunderstands the regulatory regime under which they operated (which did not have the capacity to control their risk-taking), and mismeasures their actual subprime exposures (which he wrongly states were zero).”
So Krugman shifted his emphasis. In his blog critique of a Financial Times op-ed I wrote in June 2010, Krugman no longer argued that Fannie and Freddie could not buy sub-prime mortgages. Instead, he emphasized the slightly falling share of Fannie and Freddie’s residential mortgage securitizations in the years 2004 to 2006 as the reason they were not responsible. Here again he presents a misleading picture. Not only did Fannie and Freddie purchase whole sub-prime loans that were not securitized (and are thus not counted in its share of securitizations), they also bought substantial amounts of private-label mortgage backed securities issued by others.
Of course, one could question this form of analysis. Asset prices and bubbles have momentum. Even if Fannie and Freddie had simply ignited the process, and not fueled it in the go-go years of 2004-2006, they would bear some responsibility. Krugman never considers this possibility. When these are taken into account, Fannie and Freddie’s share of the sub-prime market financing did increase even in those years.
In the current review piece, Krugman first quotes the book by Nouriel Roubini and Stephen Mihm.
Clearly, Fannie and Freddie did not originate sub-prime mortgages directly – they are not equipped to do so. But they fuelled the boom by buying or guaranteeing them. Indeed, Countrywide was one of their largest originators of sub-prime mortgages, according to work by Ed Pinto, a former chief credit officer of Fannie Mae: “The huge growth in the subprime market was primarily underwritten not by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac but by private mortgage lenders like Countrywide. Moreover, the Community Reinvestment Act long predates the housing bubble…. Overblown claims that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac single-handedly caused the subprime crisis are just plain wrong.”

For instance, consider this press release from 1992, and participated from very early on in Fannie Mae’s drive into affordable housing.

Countrywide Funding Corporation and the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae) announced today that they have signed a record commitment to finance $8 billion in home mortgages. Fannie Mae said the agreement is the single largest commitment in its history…The $8 billion agreement includes a previously announced $1.25 billion of a variety of Fannie Mae’s affordable home mortgages, including reduced down payment loans… :
“We are delighted to participate in this historic event, and we are particularly proud that a substantial portion of the $8 billion commitment will directly benefit lower income Americans,” said Countrywide President Angelo Mozilo…”We look forward to the rapid fulfillment of this commitment so that Countrywide can sign another record-breaking agreement with Fannie Mae,” Mozilo said.
“Countrywide’s commitment will provide home financing for tens of thousands of home buyers, ranging from lower income Americans buying their first home to middle-income homeowners refinancing their mortgage at today’s lower rates,” said John H. Fulford, senior vice president in charge of Fannie Mae’s Western Regional Office located here.
Of course, as Fannie and Freddie bought the garbage loans that lenders like Countrywide originated, they helped fuel the decline in lending standards. Also, while the Community Reinvestment Act was enacted in 1979, it was the more vigorous enforcement of the provisions of the Act in the early 1990s that gave the government a lever to push its low-income lending objectives, a fact the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) was once proud of (see the HUD press releases below).
Perhaps more interesting is that after citing Roubini and Mihm, Krugman repeats his earlier claim; “As others have pointed out, Fannie and Freddie actually accounted for a sharply reduced share of the home lending market as a whole during the peak years of the bubble.” Now he attributes the inaccurate claim that Fannie and Freddie accounted for a sharply reduced share of the home lending market to nameless “others”. But that is just the prelude to changing his story once again; “To the extent that they did purchase dubious home loans, they were in pursuit of profit, not social objectives—in effect, they were trying to catch up with private lenders.” In other words, if they did do it (and he denies they did), it was because of the profit motive.
Clearly, everything Fannie and Freddie did was because of the profit motive – after all, they were private corporations. But I don’t know how we can tell without more careful examination how much of the lending they did was to meet government affordable housing mandates or to curry favor with Congress in order to preserve their profitable prime mortgage franchise, and how much was to increase the bottom line immediately. Perhaps Krugman can tell us how he determined their intent?
Interestingly, before the housing market collapsed, HUD proudly accepted its role in pushing low-income lending through the various levers that Krugman now denies were used. For instance, in 2000 when it announced that it was increasing Fannie and Freddie’s affordable housing goals, it concluded.
“Lower-income and minority families have made major gains in access to the mortgage market in the 1990s. A variety of reasons have accounted for these gains, including improved housing affordability, enhanced enforcement of the Community Reinvestment Act, more flexible mortgage underwriting, and stepped-up enforcement of the Fair Housing Act. But most industry observers believe that one factor behind these gains has been the improved performance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac under HUD’s affordable lending goals. HUD’s recent increases in the goals for 2001-03 will encourage the GSEs to further step up their support for affordable lending.”
And in 2004, when it announced yet higher goals it said:
“Over the past ten years, there has been a ‘revolution in affordable lending’ that has extended homeownership opportunities to historically underserved households. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have been a substantial part of this ‘revolution in affordable lending’. During the mid-to-late 1990s, they added flexibility to their underwriting guidelines, introduced new low-downpayment products, and worked to expand the use of automated underwriting in evaluating the creditworthiness of loan applicants. HMDA data suggest that the industry and GSE initiatives are increasing the flow of credit to underserved borrowers. Between 1993 and 2003, conventional loans to low income and minority families increased at much faster rates than loans to upper-income and nonminority families.”
If the government itself took credit for its then successes in expanding home ownership then, why is Krugman not willing to accept its contribution to the subsequent bust as too many lower middle-class families ended up in homes they could not afford? I agree there is room for legitimate differences of opinion on the quality of data, and the extent of government responsibility, but to argue that the government had no role in directing credit, or in the subsequent bust, is simply ideological myopia.
Let me move on to Krugman’s second criticism of my diagnosis of the crisis. He argues that the Fed’s very accommodative monetary policy over the period 2003 to 2005 was also not responsible for the crisis. Here Krugman is characteristically dismissive of alternative views. In his review, he says that there were good reasons for the Fed to keep rates low given the high unemployment rate. Although this may be a justification for the Fed’s policy (as I argue in my book, it was precisely because the Fed was focused on a stubbornly high unemployment rate that it took its eye off the irrational exuberance building in housing markets and the financial sector), it in no way validates the claim that the policy did not contribute to the manic lending or housing bubble.
A second argument that Krugman makes is that Europe too had bubbles and the European Central Bank was less aggressive than the Federal Reserve, so monetary possible could not be responsible. It is true that the European Central Bank was less aggressive, but only slightly so; It brought its key refinancing rate down to only 2 percent while the Fed brought the Fed Funds rate down to 1 percent. Clearly, both rates were low by historical standards. More important, what Krugman does not point out is that different Euro area economies had differing inflation rates, so the real monetary policy rate was substantially different across the Euro area despite a common nominal policy rate. Countries that had strongly negative real policy rates – Ireland and Spain are primary exhibits – had a housing boom and bust, while countries like Germany with low inflation, and therefore higher real policy rates, did not. Indeed, a working paper by two ECB economists, Angela Maddaloni and José-Luis Peydró, indicates that the ultra-low rates by both the ECB and the Fed at this time had a strong causal effect in relaxing banks’ commercial, mortgage, and retail lending standards over this period.
I admit that there is much less consensus on whether the Fed helped create the housing bubble and the banking crisis than on whether Fannie and Freddie were involved. Ben Bernanke, a monetary economist of the highest caliber, denies it, while John Taylor, an equally respected monetary economist insists on it. Some Fed studies accept responsibility while others deny it. Krugman, of course, has an interest in defending the Fed and criticizing alternative viewpoints. He himself advocated the policies the Fed followed, and in fact, was critical of the Fed raising rates even when it belatedly did so in 2004.
Then, as he does now, Krugman emphasized the dangers from a Japanese-style deflation, as well as the slow progress in bringing back jobs.
Finally, if he denies a role for government housing policies or for monetary policy, or even warped banker incentives, then what does Krugman attribute the crisis to? His answer is over-saving foreigners. Put simply, trade surplus countries like Germany and China had to reinvest their financial surpluses in the United States, pushing down long term interest rates in the process, and igniting a housing bubble that eventually burst and led to the financial panic. But this is only a partial explanation, as I argue in my book. The United States did not have to run a large trade deficit and absorb the capital inflows – the claim that it had to sounds very much like that of the over-indulgent and over-indebted rake who blames his Then, as he does now, he advocated more stimulus. Then, as he does now, Krugman ignored the longer term adverse consequences of the policies he advocated.
creditors for being willing to finance him. The United States’ policies encouraged over-consumption and over-borrowing, and unless we understand where these policies came from, we have no hope of addressing the causes of this crisis. Unfortunately, these are the policies that Krugman wants to push again. This is precisely why we have to understand the history of how we got here, and why Krugman wants nothing to do with that enterprise.
There is also a matter of detail suggesting why we cannot only blame the foreigners. The housing bubble, as Monika Piazzesi and Martin Schneider of Stanford University have argued, was focused in the lower income segments of the market, unlike in the typical U.S. housing boom. Why did foreign money gravitate to the low income segment of the housing market? Why did past episodes when the U.S. ran large current account deficits not result in similar housing booms and busts? Could the explanation lie in U.S. policies?
My book suggests that many – bankers, regulators, governments, households, and economists among others – share the blame for the crisis. Because there are so many, the blame game is not useful. Let us try and understand what happened in order to avoid repeating it. I detail the hard choices we face in the book. While it is important to alleviate the miserable conditions of the long-term unemployed today, we also need to offer them incentives and a pathway to building the skills that are required by the jobs that are being created. Simplistic mantras like “more stimulus” are the surest way to detract us from policies that generate sustainable growth.
Finally, a note on method. Perhaps Krugman believes that by labeling other economists as politically extreme, he can undercut their credibility. In criticizing my argument that politicians pushed easy housing credit in the years leading up to the crisis, he writes, “Although Rajan is careful not to name names and attributes the blame to generic “politicians,” it is clear that Democrats are largely to blame in his worldview.” Yet if he read the book carefully, he would have seen that I do name names, arguing both President Clinton with his “Affordable Housing Mandate” (see Fault Lines, page 35) as well as President Bush with his attempt to foster an “Ownership Society” (see Fault Lines, page 37) pushed very hard to expand housing credit to the less-well-off. Indeed, I do not fault the intent of that policy, only the unintended consequences of its execution. My criticism is bipartisan throughout the book, including on the fiscal policies followed by successive administrations. Errors of this kind by an economist of Krugman’s stature are disappointing.

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Le crisi finanziarie sono prevedibili? Nessuno è più credibile di Nouriel Rubini per rispondere affermativamente: nel febbraio 2008 , sette mesi prima del fallimento della Lehman (ma già nel 2006 lanciava i suoi ammonimenti), nel suo paper “12 passi verso il disastro” prevedeva con accuratezza la dinamica per cui una crisi tutto sommato di modeste dimensioni – Bernanke stesso all’epoca la stimava in alcune centinaia di miliardi di $ – avrebbe provocato il disastro che abbiamo visto.

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di Nouriel Roubini

Un anno fa avevo previsto che le perdite delle istituzioni finanziarie statunitensi avrebbero raggiunto un totale di almeno un trilione di dollari, senza escludere la possibilità di arrivare anche a due trilioni di dollari. In quel periodo economisti e politici erano concordi nel ritenere sbagliate per eccesso queste stime.

Servirebbero altri 1,5 trilioni di dollari per riportare il capitale delle banche al livello pre-crisi: solo così si potrà superare la stretta del credito, e rilanciare i prestiti al settore privato. In altri termini, il sistema bancario Usa è di fatto insolvente nel suo complesso, al pari di gran parte del sistema bancario britannico e di molte banche dell’Europa continentale.

Per il risanamento di un sistema bancario che deve far fronte all’attuale crisi sistemica le ipotesi sono fondamentalmente quattro: la ricapitalizzazione delle banche, con il contemporaneo acquisto dei loro titoli tossici da parte di una “bad bank” governativa; la ricapitalizzazione, accompagnata da garanzie governative – dopo un ‘iniziale perdita delle banche – degli asset tossici; l’acquisto da parte di privati degli asset tossici con garanzia governativa (l’attuale piano del governo Usa); e infine la pura e semplice nazionalizzazione – chiamandola magari con un altro nome (come ad esempio «government receivership») in caso di rifiuto di questo termine scabroso delle banche insolventi, da rivendere poi al settore privato una volta risanate.
Di queste quattro opzioni, le prime tre presentano gravi inconvenienti. Nel caso della “bad bank”, il governo rischierebbe di pagare prezzi troppo alti per i titoli tossici, sul cui vero valore non vi sono certezze. Anche l’ipotesi della garanzia potrebbe implicare un esborso statale eccessivo (nel senso di una garanzia troppo elevata, per la quale il governo non percepirebbe un corrispettivo adeguato).

La soluzione della “bad bank” comporterebbe un ulteriore problema: il governo si troverebbe a dover gestire tutti i titoli tossici acquistati senza disporre delle necessarie competenze tecniche. Quanto all’idea – invero molto macchinosa, avanzata dal Tesoro – che propone di stralciare i titoli tossici dai bilanci delle banche, fornendo al tempo stesso garanzie da parte del governo – è apparsa subito complicata e poco trasparente, tanto che è bastato il suo annuncio a provocare una reazione nettamente negativa dei mercati.

Paradossalmente, la nazionalizzazione potrebbe rivelarsi come la soluzione più favorevole dal punto di vista del mercato: verrebbero infatti esclusi dalle istituzioni palesemente insolventi sia gli azionisti comuni che i detentori di azioni privilegiate, e in caso di insolvenza molto estesa anche i creditori non garantiti, assicurando al tempo stesso ai contribuenti un compenso adeguato. In questo modo si risolverebbe anche il problema della gestione dei bad asset delle banche, rivendendo la maggior parte dei titoli e dei depositi – con una garanzia da parte del governo – a nuovi azionisti privati, una volta risanati i titoli tossici (come nella soluzione adottata per il fallimento della Indy-MacBank).

La nazionalizzazione risolverebbe oltre tutto anche il problema delle banche che rivestono un’importanza sistemica, “too big to fail” – cioè troppo grosse per poter fallire – e che quindi il governo deve necessariamente soccorrere, a un costo molto elevato per i contribuenti. Oggi di fatto il problema si è ulteriormente aggravato, poiché le soluzioni finora adottate hanno indotto le banche più deboli a rilevarne altre ancora più malridotte.

Le fusioni tra “banche zombie” ricordano un po’ il comportamento degli ubriachi cercano di aiutarsi l’un l’altro a rimanere in piedi: lo dimostrano le operazioni con cui JPMorgan, Wells Fargo e Bank of America hanno rilevato rispettivamente Bear Stearns e Wa Mu, Wachovia, Countrywide e Merril Lynch. Con la nazionalizzazione il governo toglierebbe di mezzo queste mostruosità finanziarie, per creare banche più piccole ma solide da rivendere a investitori privati.

È questa la soluzione che all’inizio degli anni ’90 ha permesso alla Svezia di risolvere la sua crisi bancaria. Al contrario, l’attuale politica degli Usa e della Gran Bretagna rischia di generare, come è avvenuto in Giappone, una serie di “banche zombie”, che in mancanza di un vero risanamento perpetuerebbero il congelamento del credito. Il Giappone ha pagato la sua incapacità di risanare il proprio sistema bancario con un decennio di crisi molto vicina alla depressione. In mancanza di interventi adeguati, gli Stati Uniti, la Gran Bretagna e molti altri Paesi corrono un rischio analogo: quello di una recessione o di una vera e propria deflazione che potrebbe protrarsi per vari anni.

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