The European Central Bank (ECB) made no changes to its policy stance when the Governing Council met in Vienna on 2 June. Price inflation in the euro area remains well below the ECB’s definition of price stability and the prospects for inflation to move upward remain unchanged. Nevertheless, ECB President Mario Draghi argued in response to questions during his press conference, ‘we have to see the full impact of the measures that we’ve decided in March.’ Some of those, like the targeted long-term refinancing operations that offer to subsidize bank lending and the inclusion of corporate bonds in the ECB’s large-scale asset purchases will only start over the coming weeks. It takes time for such measures to work their way through to the consumption and investment that drives the real economy. And for those who complain that the ECB seems slow in meeting its policy target, Draghi made it clear that: ‘the medium term for a return to inflation to our objective of an inflation rate of close to but below 2 percent is pretty long.’ In other words, the ‘medium term’ from the ECB’s perspective is essentially as long as it takes.
Ideas, Information and Structural Power
Professor Pepper D. Culpepper recently accepted a job in Oxford at the Blavatnik School of Government. This means he will leave the European University Institute, where he has been teaching since 2010. A group of his current and former PhD students decided to organize half-day event to celebrate Professor Culpepper’s time at the EUI. As part of that celebration, I offered to do a profile of Professor Culpepper’s research contribution. What follows is the text that I presented.
Bonfire of the Certainties
Free trade is welfare enhancing. Interdependence requires cooperation. Central banks should be politically independent. And the United States is the indispensable world leader. These are the certainties we used to offer graduate students in international relations. Now they are all aflame.
The Decline of the West?
Some countries fall from greatness. For them, decline is absolute. Others face increasing competition from rising powers. Their decline is relative. However there is a third kind of decline that has more to do with degeneration than with failure, and less to do with competition than diminishing potential. This is a kind of morbid decline. It echoes the ‘decadence’ of the late 19th Century but without the implied culture of excess. The countries of the West might be accused of falling prey to this morbidity, so Benjamin Rowland and his contributors argue. Hence it is worth asking why that should be happening and what is to be done about it.
Banking Union or Bait-and-Switch?
When the Council of Economics and Finance Ministers (ECOFIN) meets informally on Friday, 22 April, one issue on the table will be the reduction of bank exposure to the sovereign debt of their home governments. This issue was laid out in a note from the Dutch Presidency that was leaked on Wednesday. The response of the Italian government in particular was immediate and strongly negative. Italian banks are heavily exposed to Italian sovereign debt and any attempt to reduce that exposure would impose unacceptable costs on an already fragile Italian financial system. To some degree this is the case for other peripheral countries as well. The Dutch Presidency note argues that Europe’s banking union needs to be strengthened with some kind of European Deposit Insurance Scheme (EDIS) and ‘a common backstop for the Single Resolution Fund (SRF)’. Before the Dutch Presidency can flesh out its position on these key support mechanisms, however, it needs to tackle the ‘bank-sovereign nexus’ so that ‘risk sharing and risk reduction go together’. Intellectually, this is a coherent argument.
The United States Needs Europe
‘In an interconnected world, there are no global problems that can be solved without the United States, and few that can be solved by the United States alone.’ United States National Security Strategy, 2015, p. 3.
‘A strong Europe is our indispensable partner, including for tacking global security challenges, promoting prosperity, and upholding international norms.’ United States National Security Strategy, 2015, p. 25.
The United States needs strong allies in Europe. The United States also needs European unity. This is has been a recurrent theme in Barack Obama’s foreign policy since the start of his campaign for the presidency in 2007. It is a theme he borrowed from the second administration of George W. Bush. It is also one of Obama’s greatest disappointments in shaping U.S. relations with the outside world. From the outset, both Obama and his predecessors have been explicit that the United States needs Europe’s strength to promote world order and uphold democratic values. U.S. foreign policy is most effective when it works in concert with Europe. It is least effective when coordination across the Atlantic falters or when Europe is divided or distracted. Future U.S. Presidents will struggle to adapt if European division and distraction becomes the norm. In fact, that may be happening already. Despite the strong language of his 2015 National Security Strategy, President Obama seems to be moving in a direction that relies less on trans-Atlantic cooperation.
U.S. Presidential Elections – Known and Unknown
The U.S. Presidential elections represent a stark choice between a competent if unexciting continuation of the status quo and an emotional – perhaps even terrifying – break with the past. Moreover, the results of the contest will be felt far beyond the borders of the United States. On 17 and 18 March, I was invited by the United States consulate in Milan to participate in a series of events to explain the ongoing elections. The audiences were mostly Italian but there were some others mixed into the groups as well. My goal was give some sense of how the U.S. elections are going to have an impact on the outside world. That impact will be both direct and indirect. The direct effects will come through the change in U.S. foreign policy. The indirect effects will come through the change in economic policy. I outlined the two issues in turn. Then I offered some thoughts on the future of U.S. global leadership. The bottom line in all three cases is very similar: Americans must choose between the familiar and the unknown – and the world must accept the consequences.
The ECB’s New Tactic — Pay to Lend
The European Central Bank (ECB) announced a raft of policy measures on Thursday, March 10, intended to give a further boost to euro area economic performance. Most of these measures were unconventional and yet still precedented. The ECB lowered its main policy rates, accelerated the pace of its asset purchases, and widened the pool of assets eligible to be included in its purchasing program. It also renewed its program for targeted loans to banks that extend credit to the non-financial sector. The only new element was the rate of interest that the banks would pay to access credit that they could lend for investment. The question is whether that new wrinkle will make much of a difference. As is often the case, the answer depends less on the mechanics of monetary policy than on the magic of market ‘confidence’.
Europe’s Strategic Priority
The European Union needs to make economic performance its number one strategic priority. The reason is not to trade off butter for guns and neither is it to abdicate global responsibility. Europe is too important for world order to withdraw into splendid isolationism. To be a global actor, Europe must be strong economically. In that sense, Europe is much like the United States.
National Ownership is Moral Hazard
The grassroots politics that policymakers accept as necessary for success in the domestic context is viewed as a top-down failure in any other country. The question is whether these two views of reform politics are reconcilable. The answer depends upon two things. One is how much you see politics as a process of give and take between policy advisors, politicians and voters. The other is how much you trust politicians in other countries. Unfortunately, the debate in Europe right now is much more about trust than about process.
Erik Jones 