Financial Times
October 6, 2011
The eurozone is confronted with a crisis of not just labour costs and prices – but culture. The burden is primarily on southern Europe, where sovereign bond credit spreads (relative to the German Bund) range from 370 basis points (Italy) to 1,960 basis points (Greece). The northern eurozone countries have tight spreads against Germany – a narrow 40 to 80 basis points for the Netherlands, Austria, Finland and France. There are thus two distinctly defined eurozone areas: in the north and in the south.
The ranking of credit risk spreads by size across the eurozone in 2010 was almost identical to the ranking of the level of unit labour costs (relative to that of Germany), suggesting that the higher labour costs and prices have rendered “euro-south” less competitive and so more subject to credit risk. The more competitively priced net exports of the northern eurozone participants, in effect, more than covered the rising level of net imports of the south. In short, between 1999 and the first quarter of 2011, there has been a continuous net transfer of goods and services shipped from the north to the south. Northern Europe in effect has been subsidising southern European consumption from the onset of the euro on January 1 1999. It is not a recent phenomenon.
I recall that in the early years of the eurozone there was a general notion in the markets that the Greeks were behaving like the Germans. But there is scant evidence that on embracing the euro southern members significantly altered their behaviour – behaviour that precipitated chronically depreciating exchange rates against the D-Mark. From 1990 through to the end of 1998, euro-south unit labour costs and prices rose faster than in the north. In the years following the onset of a single currency, that pace barely slowed. In fact, the underlying trend was stopped only by the financial crisis of 2008. Since then there have been signs of price level stabilisation in the north and the south.
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