Fiscal Follies

2010 YEAR END SERIES

Nouriel Roubini

Nouriel Roubini

Nouriel Roubini is Chairman of Roubini Global Economics, Professor of Economics at the Stern School of Business, New York University, and co-author of the book Crisis Economics.

2010-12-13
NEW YORK – The fiscal stimulus that most advanced economies and emerging markets implemented during the 2008-2009 global recession – together with monetary easing and the backstopping of the financial system – prevented the Great Recession from turning into another Great Depression in 2010. At a time when every component of private demand was collapsing, the boost from higher government spending and lower taxes stopped the global economy’s free-fall and created the basis for recovery.

Unfortunately, stimulus spending and the related bailout of the financial system, together with the recession’s effect on revenues, contributed to fiscal deficits on the order of 10% of GDP in most advanced economies. According to the International Monetary Fund and others, these economies’ ratio of public debt to GDP will surpass 110% by 2015, compared to 70% before the crisis. Aging populations in most advanced economies imply additional public debt in the long term, owing to non-fully-funded pension schemes and rising health-care costs.

Thus, in most advanced economies, deficits need to be reduced to avoid a fiscal train wreck down the line. But much research, including a recent study by the IMF, suggests that raising taxes and reducing government spending has a negative short-term effect on aggregate demand, thereby reinforcing deflationary and recessionary trends – and undermining fiscal consolidation.

In an ideal world, where policymakers could credibly commit to medium- to long-term fiscal adjustment, the optimal and desirable path would be to commit today to a schedule of spending reductions and tax increases, phased in gradually over the next decade as the economy recovers. That way, if the economy needed another targeted fiscal stimulus in the short run, financial markets would not respond by driving up borrowing costs.

Unfortunately, the fiscal policy currently adopted by various advanced economies deviates sharply from this path of credible medium-term consolidation combined with short-term additional stimulus.

In the US, we have the worst of all possible worlds. On one hand, stimulus had become a dirty word – even within the Obama administration – well before the Republicans’ mid-term election victory ruled out another round altogether. On the other hand, medium-term consolidation will be all but impossible in America’s current atmosphere of hyper-partisanship, with Republicans blocking any tax increase and Democrats resisting reforms of entitlement spending. Nor is there any pressure from bond markets to concentrate the minds of policymakers.

In the periphery of the eurozone, the problem is the opposite: bond vigilantes are demanding that Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Spain, and Italy front-load fiscal consolidation or watch their borrowing costs go through the roof, risking them their market access and triggering a public-debt crisis. Markets don’t care that front-loaded fiscal consolidation is exacerbating recession and thus making the goal of reducing debt and deficits as a share of GDP near-impossible to achieve.

To avoid a persistent and destructive recession, the fiscal and structural reforms imposed by the bond vigilantes should be accompanied by other euro-zone policies that restore growth and prevent vicious debt dynamics. The European Central Bank should ease monetary policy in order to weaken the value of the euro and bootstrap the periphery’s growth. And Germany should cut taxes temporarily – rather than raising taxes, as planned – in order to increase disposable income and stimulate German demand for the periphery’s goods and services.

Alas, neither of the two biggest players in the euro zone is pursuing policies consistent with restoring sustained growth in the euro zone’s periphery. The ECB’s monetary policy is too tight; and Germany is front-loading fiscal austerity. Thus, the periphery is destined to a destructive deflationary and recessionary adjustment that will exacerbate the risks of recession, insolvency, eventual defaults and, possibly, exit from the euro.

In the United Kingdom, the new government gave several reasons for front-loading fiscal consolidation. The bond vigilantes might have woken up if early austerity was not implemented; the deficit was very large and the public sector bloated; and it is always politically easier to implement tough measures early in an administration, when popular support is still high and the next election is far off.

Certainly, the UK was playing with fiscal fire and needed some commitment to earlier austerity. But phasing in austerity more gradually, and thus back-loading the adjustment, would have posed less risk to the economy’s anemic recovery while maintaining a credible commitment to fiscal consolidation. Instead, the government could well end up with no plan B in case plan A – massively front-loaded austerity – leads to a double-dip recession.

In short, an optimal path of fiscal austerity would, in most countries, imply a back-loaded but credible commitment to medium-term consolidation, together with short-term additional stimulus when necessary and allowed by market conditions, thereby avoiding the prospect of a deflationary and recessionary spiral. Unfortunately, the main advanced economies are following a divergent path – which, in some cases, will lead them in the opposite direction in 2011. As a result, the risks of debt deflation and eventual disorderly sovereign and private-sector defaults are rising.

Nouriel Roubini is Chairman of Roubini Global Economics (www.roubini.com), Professor of Economics at New York University’s Stern School of Business, and co-author of Crisis Economics.

Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2010.
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