In the economy

European

March 25, 2010. Maxim Blan

Last year, it became obvious that the main economic problem in the foreseeable future will be widespread budget deficits and rapidly growing debts of states. Saving the financial sector, the states showed unheard of generosity, and the crisis led to a sharp reduction in tax revenues. Accordingly, budget expenditures increased, and income has sharply reduced. At the same time, the pace of recovery in developed countries leave much to be desired (i.e., the revenue part of the budgets does not grow as fast as we would like), but to get out of the emergency regime of financing the state economy is not in a hurry, fearing a new wave of crisis.

Accordingly, the problems of banks (even the largest) have faded into the background, and all attention was drawn to public finances. At first, Dubai made everyone pretty nervous, now Greece, which needs to be saved from the default, and this needs to be done urgently - already in April there are large payments for Greek government bonds.

How to help Athens, the whole European Union thinks. Summites are replaced by meetings of finance ministers, and this has been going on for several months. However, no one has yet proposed an effective mechanism. “Euro -Leavers” - Germany - stubbornly refuses to take on the burden of Greek problems, which is not surprising.

Firstly, the crisis hit the German economy. This has already led to the growth of protest moods. The strikes of the railway workers are replaced by strikes by air traffic controllers. Help is required by car concerns and shipyards. And, you agree to the Angel Merkel government in these circumstances to spend an extra Eurocent on the neighbors that have crawled into debts, this government will not lead Germany for long.

Secondly, Merkel perfectly understands that Greece is only the beginning. Create a precedent, and tomorrow Portugal, Ireland, Spain will be lined up in line, and there Italy will tighten. Already at the beginning of this year, economists came up with a new abbreviation - Pigs (Pigs) - to designate a group of countries - potential bankruptes. Pigs Portugal, Ireland, Greece and Spain are included in Pigs, and Italy can take the place of Ireland at any time. Other economists, having already waved his hand to Greece, talk about the “six” Stupid (stupid), which includes Spain, Türkiye, Great Britain, Portugal, Italy and Dubai. They can become new Greece at any time.

The inclusion of London in the group of “losers” is an extremely alarming sign, indicating that investors have less and less confidence that yesterday's world leaders will find a way to solve the problem of public debt, which would have ended with default for any country for a long time.

Returning to the problems of the eurozone, which the UK is not included, it should be noted the initiative of the chief economist Deutsche Bank Thomas Mayer and the head of the Brussels Center European political research of Daniel Gross, which proposed to create the European Monetary Fund (EU) - an analogue of the IMF - to solve the problems of members of the European Union, in need of financial assistance.

At first, the idea was enthusiastically accepted by the German Chancellor Angela Merkel, France and the European Commission supported. However, in Europe, with its bureaucratic procedures and a complex mechanism for making key decisions, this kind of fund may be born for years and, by the time of its birth, no one will be needed.

But this is not the main problem of EUF. The idea of ​​the regional anti -crisis fund is not new. Last year, its “little IMF”-the Asian anti-crisis fund-created the countries of Southeast Asia, there is something similar in the Middle East. Even Russia takes part in one of this kind of formations, agreeing to finance three quarters of the EU anti -crisis fund.

If you look at other regional anti -crisis funds, it is easy to notice that there are key players with huge accumulated gold and foreign exchange reserves. And a very insignificant part of these reserves went to the formation of funds designed to ensure financial stability in the region, pulling out small participants whose sizes are not comparable with the size of donors.

In Southeast Asia, China and Japan serve as donors-countries that occupy the first and second place in the world in terms of their reserves. In a much smaller anti -crisis fund of the EURASEC, the role of the donor went to Russia, for which $ 7.5 billion allocated - a modest amount compared with March 1, 436 billion.

In Europe, to date, potential recipients of money EFF is much more than donors. 20 of the 27 countries of the European Union have a state budget deficit above 3% of GDP - the limit permissible for 16 EU members who switched to a single European currency and signed a “stability pact” in the euro. Even Germany risks this year to exceed the budget deficit limit.

In addition, if more recently, the forecasts that provided for the breakdown of the eurozone, by any officials of Europe with indignation, were discredited, now the moods begin to change. Last Thursday, during a speech in the German parliament, Angela Merkel explained that such an exception should be considered only as a “last remedy” - in the case of constant violations of the Maastricht criteria that determine the conditions for the reception of states in the Euro zone.

And the German Chancellor opposed the provision of quick assistance to Greece, which ended up in the budget crisis. At the same time, she emphasized that they were not going to throw anyone in the EU in difficult times, and called for Greece to fully implement a hard economy program.

But Greece is already on the verge of a social explosion. One nationwide strike replaces the other. Demonstrations in Athens have already ended with street riots and clashes with the police. And the regime of the rigid economy, which was prescribed by Greece, the Ministers of Finance of the Euro zone may generally lead to the collapse of the Greek economy.

The situation looks deadly. If more recently it seemed that, having played on the nerves of investors and lowering the euro to the levels acceptable to European exporters, the leaders of the united Europe would offer a detailed and clear plan for the salvation of outsiders, now there are less and less hopes for this.

Author - Economic observer Newsru.com