Grækenland, Spanien og Italien skaber ny Euro-usikkerhed

Fra BNP Paribas

Uncertainty over the political outlook in Greece and Spain and S&P’s downgrade of Italy’s
rating have raised doubts as to whether the ECB will be willing to undertake sovereign QE.
 This will buoy QE’s more ardent opponents, but ECB chiefs have already made clear that
meeting the bank’s price-stability mandate is their focus, not influencing government policy.
 Falling inflation and inflation expectations only serve to strengthen our view that the ECB will
announce sovereign QE after its next policy meeting on 22 January.
Political developments in Greece and Spain, as well as S&P’s recent downgrade of Italy’s
sovereign debt rating, have amplified the concerns of quantitative-easing (QE) critics over the
potential risks associated with ECB sovereign bond purchases.
The unease is not only stemming from Greece
Combined with the pressure on the European Union from France and Italy for a relaxation of the
rules of the bloc’s fiscal compact, the increase in political uncertainty underlines the persistent
risk of ‘moral hazard’. With government bond yields low and market volatility subdued by QE,
the reform efforts underway in a number of European countries could be relaxed. Moreover, the
debate on possible debt restructuring in various eurozone countries underlines the risk of
potential losses for the ECB, the costs of which would ultimately fall on the region’s taxpayers.
The Greek parliament’s failure to elect a new president in the first of three rounds of voting on
Wednesday has added to the unease. Should the next two ballots not produce a head of state,
parliament will be dissolved and a general election called. Polls suggest opposition, anti-euro
party Syriza could win. With the party advocating a tougher stance in Greece’s dialogue with the
Troika and calling for official-sector debt relief, this would only serve to heighten the uncertainty.
For more details on Greece, please see Greek presidential vote: One down, two to go.
The political uncertainty is not confined to Greece, however. In Spain, anti-establishment, protest
party Podemos is leading the polls ahead of the country’s regional and national elections next
year. The newly formed party touts itself as an alternative to the Partido Popular (PP)-Spanish
Socialist Worker’s Party (PSOE) monopoly on Spanish politics and may encourage those parties
to shy away from fiscal austerity in order to woo back voters. A strong showing by Podemos in
November 2015’s general election could lead to a fragmented parliament and a coalition
government, raising uncertainty over the continuation of fiscal rectitude and structural reform.
The recent decision by S&P to downgrade its rating on Italy’s sovereign bonds is also likely to
have raised some eyebrows in Frankfurt, highlighting the risk that Italy’s high public debt could
continue to increase in the absence of a significant step-up in its reform efforts.
What does this mean for ECB QE?
So, do these developments reduce the probability of ECB QE, or will they affect its timing? We
don’t think so. We continue to expect the ECB to announce broad-based asset purchases,
including sovereign bond buying, at its meeting on 22 January, for a number of reasons.
First, a number of ECB Council members, including its president, have recently highlighted that
potential effects on government policy will not be the determining factors when it comes to ECB
policy decision making. In a speech to the Financial Times Banking Summit on 26 November,
for example, ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio said that it was “not the task of a central
bank to exert … pressure on governments to adopt policies for which they are responsible”.
At the subsequent ECB press conference on 4 December, ECB chief Mario Draghi reinforced that
point, saying that “as far as we are concerned [moral hazard applies] only to the extent that it can
affect or it can be hampering our main objective, which is price stability. That’s very important – to
keep in mind these distinctions. We are not here to teach governments what they ought to do, or
blackmail governments that if they don’t do something we’ll do something else. We are focused on
price stability, so any consideration has to be analysed and looked at from this angle.