Hugleiðingar um peninga og gjaldmiðilsmál o.fl.

Á landsfundi Sjálfstæðisflokksins var þetta samþykkt í efnahagsmálum:

"Peninga- og gjaldmiðilsstefnan er ein af grunnstoðum efnahagslífsins. Þjóðin kallar eftir agaðri efnahagsstjórn. Allsherjar þjóðarsátt og samræmd stefna í opinberum fjármálum og peningastefnu þarf að vera um hliðstæð skilyrði og Maastricht-skilyrðin þar sem verðbólga, langtímavextir, afkoma ríkissjóðs og heildarskuldir eiga að vera sambærileg og þekkist í helstu viðskiptalöndum Íslands. Með agaðri efnahagsstjórn er unnt að draga úr vægi verðtryggingar. Íslendingar verða að geta skipt um gjaldmiðil eftir 3–5 ár ef þeim sýnist svo. Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn setji á fót nefnd sem kanni framtíðarskipan gjaldmiðilsmála á Íslandi."

Spurningar vakna:

Ef þjóðin kallar eftir agaðri efnhagsstjórn, er þá ekki verið að kalla á að losna við sveiflur? Krónunni fylgja sveiflur! Virtir hagfræðingar hafa fullyrt það!

Af hverju þarf að vera þjóðarsátt um HLIÐSTÆÐ skilyrði og Maastricht-skilyrðin? Hvernig eiga þau að vera hliðstæð? Harðari - slakari? Og hvernig á að ná þeirri þjóðarsátt? Þjóðaratkvæði?

Er ekki hægt að afnema verðtryggingu með agaðri hagstjórn? Af hverju þarf að DRAGA ÚR væginu? Langflestir Íslendingar vilja losna við verðtryggingu. Með upptöku Evru er það mögulegt!

Og þetta síðasta: Skipta um gjaldmiðil eftir 3-5 ár, ef okkur sýnist svo? Felst ekki í þessu viðurkenning að krónan dugi ekki? Af hverju þarf að bíða í 3-5 ár til að fá frekari staðfestingu þess?

Breytir ný nefnd miklu í málinu?

Staðreyndin er sú að Ísland er með gjaldmiðil á gjörgæslu og afar litlar líkur á að sá gjaldmiðill klári sig í ólgusjó alþjóðlegra efnahagsmála!

Af landsfundinum má annars ráða að niðurstaða hans er mýkri en á síðasta landsfundi. Tvær öfgafyllstu tillögurnar voru felldar.

Sem verður kannski að skoðast í ljósi þeirrar staðreyndar að Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn hefur í gegnum tíðina verið flokkur sem aðhyllist vestræna samvinnu og hefur verið með sterka tengingu inn í atvinnulíf þjóðarinnar. Því er það mikilvægt að flokkurinn taki af skynsemi á t.d. gjaldmiðilsmálum og öðrum stórum hagsmunamálum.

Þau öfl innan flokksins sem virkilega vilja láta reyna á Evrópumálin hér á landi, með því að klára aðildarferlið og bera samning undir þjóðina í atkvæðagreiðlslu geta með góðu móti haldið því starfi áfram innan flokksins. Það er mikilvægt, því dropinn holar steininn.

Athugasemdir

[Örn Ægir Reynisson, 21.11.2011 kl. 22:40]

Þið kratarnir þreytist seint á bullinu þó staðreyndirnar blasi við.

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How Iceland survived the fire

November 21, 2011 2:29 pm

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Iceland was the first country devastated by the financial crisis. Lehman Brothers failed on September 15 2008. By October 9, its three big banks – Glitnir, Landesbanki and Kaupthing – had collapsed. The UK government seized Landesbanki UK under anti-terror laws, while Gordon Brown, the prime minister, threatened to seize Icelandic assets in the UK. On October 24, Iceland agreed a deal with the International Monetary Fund.

On October 27 2011, I attended a conference jointly organised by the IMF and the government of Iceland to celebrate Iceland’s graduation from the programme and evaluate the outcome of the rescue. I also moderated the final panel.

The programme remains controversial. Jón Daníelsson of the London School of Economics presented a critique during the conference. Others presented critiques from outside.

What happened to Iceland is clear: its banks ran amuck.

By 2007, the assets of the three largest banks had reached nine times gross domestic product. For the world, these banks were not too big to fail. For Iceland, they were too big to save. This combination had happy results.

As the prime minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, remarked in the opening speech of the conference: “In effect . . . the lion’s share of the banking collapse was borne by foreign creditors. There was no other way, there was no other option, considering that the banks’ assets were ten times Iceland’s GDP.”

Árni Páll Árnason, the minister of economy, explained what happened: “First, deposit holders were given priority to the bond holders of the banks. Second, all domestic assets were transferred, along with deposits, to new banks at a ‘fair’ value. The new banks, capitalised by the State, then assumed the role of the old banks in the payment system. The international operations of the old banks were however put into liquidation in regular bankruptcy proceedings. In the process the system shrunk from . . . 10 times Iceland’s GDP to about two times”.

The contrast with what happened elsewhere – particularly, in Ireland – is striking. Iceland let the creditors of its banks hang. Ireland did not. Good for Iceland!

Two other features of Iceland’s story stand out: first, unlike Estonia, Latvia or members of the eurozone, the country’s currency lost roughly half of its pre-crisis value against the euro (see chart); and, second, in order to limit this collapse, the government also introduced exchange controls.

How well has Iceland performed over the past three years?

Quite well, is the answer.

Paul Krugman, of Princeton university and the New York Times (“A Song of Ice and Ire: Iceland in context”) made telling comments. Iceland’s unemployment rate remained far below those in other small crisis-hit countries, remaining well below 10 per cent, against close to 15 per cent in Ireland. Its overall employment fell by half as much as Ireland’s and the improvement in Iceland’s real net exports was 40 per cent of GDP over two years, roughly double Ireland’s.

Mr Krugman also noted that so-called “internal devaluations” – big declines in nominal wages – do not happen, at least in the short term: his comparisons between Iceland, Ireland and the Latvian private sector made this clear. The needed decline in Iceland’s wages, in euros, happened swiftly, as a result of the devaluation.

Iceland gained enormously from its refusal to bail out the creditors of its banks. In 2007, according to the IMF, both Iceland’s and Ireland’s net public debts were 11 per cent of GDP (which gives the lie to those who believe these crises were due to fiscal irresponsibility rather than to the conniving of politicians and regulators with financial irresponsibility).

In 2011, Iceland’s net debt reached 67 per cent of GDP. This is bad. But Ireland’s net debt is now forecast to reach 107 per cent of GDP by 2013. Partly as a result of its considerably lower debt burden, Iceland’s credit standing, as measured by credit default swaps, crossed over Ireland’s in August 2010 and is now almost 4 percentage points below Irish levels (see chart).

According to the IMF, growth will be 2.5 per cent this year and much the same in 2012. None the less, GDP was still 10 per cent below its pre-crisis peak in the second quarter of 2011, which is much the same decline as for Ireland. If one considers a depression to be a period in which GDP remains below its pre-crisis peak, Iceland is still in deep depression, even though the economy is off the bottom.

Also important has been success in mitigating the social costs of this huge financial crisis, not only in terms of employment and unemployment, but also in terms of the distribution of income, as Stefán Ólafsson of the University of Iceland, made plain.

Yet Iceland still confronts big challenges.

One such challenge is how to secure growth and convince Icelanders that they have a future at home. Iceland is still a rich country. But it has taken a battering. Yet, given its resources, I cannot make myself too worried. Free energy is a great boon. This is and will remain a rich little country.

A related challenge is completing the restructuring of domestic private debt and banks. The critics complain that the latter have fallen into the hands of vultures determined to gouge pounds of flesh out of domestic borrowers trapped in mortgages at penal interest rates.

Another set of issues concern the future of the currency and exchange controls. Some Icelanders recommend swift abolition of the controls. Others propose swift abolition of the Icelandic króna. Gylfi Arnbjörnsson, president of the Confederation of Trades Unions, argued forcefully for abandoning the national currency, with its long history of instability, in favour of the euro. It is a measure of how unhappy many Icelanders are with the record of currency instability that they seek to exchange the króna for the euro: normally, recently rescued rats do not join sinking ships.

For all the uncertainties about Iceland’s future, what has already happened brings at least four lessons.

1. It is crucial for countries with large international banks, relative to GDP, to be able to separate their essential domestic activities from their global ones and, if necessary, let the latter collapse. The retail ring-fence recommended by the UK’s Independent Banking Commission seems relevant to Iceland, therefore.

It is even more important, however, to ensure that the credit of the sovereign is never sacrificed to the creditors of banks. Iceland is to be congratulated on having escaped the Irish folly. The UK government is to be condemned for trying to hang this millstone around Iceland’s neck.

2. Having a currency of one’s own is useful when things go badly wrong, even if the currency area is as small and the currency and financial system as mismanaged as Iceland’s. A collapsing currency is a simple alternative to renegotiating millions of contracts, piecemeal. Iceland’s current account shifted from a deficit of 28 per cent of GDP in 2008 to a small surplus this year. The main reason for this was a 30 per cent reduction in domestic purchasing power, itself largely due to the currency collapse. Should Iceland decide to abandon its currency, it will have to do a far better job of managing the consequences than current members of the eurozone.

3. The question of how small open economies are to manage their relationship with the global financial and monetary systems remains unresolved. It is a question to which the IMF itself needs to devote a great deal more attention.

4. The most unacceptable consequence of the crisis, across the globe, is that those whose irresponsibility caused the havoc have largely escaped accountability, while the innocent have been severely punished. In the case of Iceland, those responsible got off largely free. But some effort has been made to cushion the plight of the innocent. Yet the sense of injustice remains palpable.

The market economy will not endure if it is seen to be a racket run by a relatively small number of insiders against the interests of a vast number of outsiders. That happened to Iceland. But, as Simon Johnson of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Peterson Institute of International Economics pointed out, in a rousing speech, the threat is not to Iceland alone. It could happen anywhere.