Aren’t all nations, one way or another, tarred with a similar brush of nationalism?

Sir, Harriet Agnew and David Keohane report that, on the centenary of the end of the First World War, Emmanuel Macron railed against nationalism as a “betrayal of patriotism”, in an implicit rebuke to his US counterpart. “Macron attacks nationalism in Armistice Day rebuke to Trump” November 12.

Macron said: “By saying ‘Our interests first. Who cares about the others?’ we erase what a nation holds dearest, what gives it life, what makes it great, and what is essential: its moral values.” Is that not beautiful? Of course it is!

My problem though is that precisely these days I have been writing that the ending of the First World War, and the Versailles treaty, should provide an opportunity to reflect on the armistice conditions that are imposed on sovereigns, when they have to capitulate because of excessive loads of public debts. This especially because it is usually not only the defeated sovereign’s fault. 

If we look behind most odious debts, we will find surely find odious credits. In the case of eurozone sovereigns, like Greece, odiously dumb regulations too. Assigning a zero risk, as the European Commission did to a nation that is much indebted in a currency like the euro, which is not really its domestic (printable) currency, made absolutely no sense. That meant for instance that German and French banks could lend to Greece against no capital at all, and so, naturally, these banks could not resist the temptation of offering Greece too much credit, and Greece could not resist the temptation of taking on too much debt.

But what happened? The recent armistice conditions imposed by EU authorities required Greece to take on debt, much of it in order to repay German and French banks, leaving it with about a €345 billion debt, more than €30.000 per each Greek, in a currency that as I mentioned is de facto not their own. 

Sir, so I ask is that not just another Carthaginian peace? Viewed this way, no matter how right what Macron preaches is, does he really have the right to throw the first stone on “moral values”? Aren’t all nations, one way or another, tarred with a similar brush of nationalism?

Sir, this is no minor issue. Since Italy would most probably not walk the plank like Greece, the future of the Euro, and of the European Union is at stake… and that is something that those who might rightly defend the Remain against the Brexit, should at least out of pure precaution consider.

@PerKurowski

Here are two recommendations to Raghuram Rajan on how to get India’s banks to become functional banks

Sir, I refer to David Keohane’s and James Crabtree’s “India’s central bank struggles to ensure lenders pass on interest rate cuts” April 22.

There are references to a “broken down process of monetary transmission through which the wishes of the central bank are transmitted to the real economy”, and to “a banking system frozen by high rates of bad loans”.

The following is what I would advice Raghuram Rajan to do, if he really wanted banks to become functional financing efficiently the real economy.

First, get rid of stupid Basel bank regulations that, with their different equity requirements based on credit risks, so distort the allocation of bank credit. These introduce a regulatory risk-aversion that has no place anywhere, but much less in a developing country, since risk-taking is the oxygen of any development. In its place put for instance an 8 percent equity requirement on all bank assets, and throw out forever, the portfolio invariant credit-risk equity requirements. Of course that could create a big need for fresh bank equity, and so…

Second, in order to take away the dead weight caused by the bad loans, and to help to fill any new bank equity needs, the central banks should proceed like Chile did during its financial crisis. Namely capitalizing all the banks by purchasing their non-performing loans, against the commitment by the banks to repurchase these assets from the central bank with their retained earnings, before any substantial dividend payments to their shareholders could be made.

You would then have well capitalized banks, ready to give credit on non distorted terms to for instance “risky” SMEs and entrepreneurs, and simultaneously been made so much safer that, presumably, they would have to pay less interest rates to depositors, and in the medium or long terms less dividends to shareholders. Not bad for a couple of hours work eh?

@PerKurowski