Social Europe

politics, economy and employment & labour

  • Themes
    • Global cities
    • Strategic autonomy
    • War in Ukraine
    • European digital sphere
    • Recovery and resilience
  • Publications
    • Books
    • Dossiers
    • Occasional Papers
    • Research Essays
    • Brexit Paper Series
  • Podcast
  • Videos
  • Newsletter
  • Membership

New Countdown For Greece: A Bank Bail-in Is Looming

Marcello Minenna 4th November 2015

Marcello Minenna

Marcello Minenna

The debt crisis may no longer be in the spotlight but the financial situation in Greece remains complex. Greek banks continue to survive at the edge of bankruptcy, kept afloat only by Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) from the ECB and by still-enforced capital controls.

After the August “agreement”, the Troika has promised the Greek government €25 billion for bank recapitalization, of which €10bn is in a Luxembourg account ready to be wired. The funds will be disbursed only if the government manages, before the 15th of November, to approve a long list of urgent reforms: the infamous list of the “48 points” that embraces tax increases, public spending cuts and the highly controversial pensions reform.

It is obviously a tough task for the Tsipras government, even if September’s election victory gave him a solid mandate. After a parliamentary marathon, it seems that the government has successfully passed some unpopular measures: the increase from 26% to 29% in income tax, the rise from 5% to 13% in the tax on luxury goods and the restoring of the tax on television advertisements.

The process was not so smooth with the first steps in reforming pensions and slowdowns are on the horizon. Tsipras is also trying to gain time against the pressure of Brussels to modify the laws that still protect primary homeowners from foreclosure. According to some estimates, there are around 320,000 families in Greece that are not paying down their mortgages and obviously these bad loans are dead weights for the banking system. In the questionable strategy of EU bureaucrats, an increase in foreclosures should boost the banks’ assets and in this way should help to reduce the financial demands on the ESM bailout fund.

Anyway, the Greek government is still living for the day, and the Troika has noticed that only 19 of the mandatory 48 reforms have been approved so far. Brussels is unhappy with this situation and has sent a strong “signal” to the Tsipras government by delaying the last €2 billion tranche of loans. At end-October 2015, €13 billion has already been transferred to Greece; these cash inflows alone have allowed the government to guarantee payments of salaries and pensions and reduced the dangerous social tensions experienced in July. Moreover, part of these funds has been diverted to pay down the ECB and this could allow the Quantitative Easing (QE) programme to be extended to Greece as early as November. This would be an unexpected image success for Mr. Tsipras and would give breathing space to the banking system, where up to €15 billion of government bonds eligible for purchase by the ECB are still languishing.


Become part of our Community of Thought Leaders


Get fresh perspectives delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for our newsletter to receive thought-provoking opinion articles and expert analysis on the most pressing political, economic and social issues of our time. Join our community of engaged readers and be a part of the conversation.

Sign up here

However, deadlines are looming and the respite could be very short: in the next few days the ECB will release official estimates about the capital requirements needed to rescue the Greek banking system (again). Rumours from the financial industry are forecasting low figures, well below the €20 billion threshold. In this way, the ESM would lend “only” €15 billion to the Greek bailout fund HFSF, while the remaining requirement would be met (in theory) by private investors.

The EU authorities do not seem alarmed by the €12.7 billion of deferred tax credits (DTC) towards the Greek government that are the bulk (over 50%) of the Tier 1 capital of Hellenic banks. This sounds strange, since at the beginning of the year the EU Commission investigated the governments of Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal for unfair state aid to their own banking systems.

The target of that investigation was precisely the deferred tax credits towards the government that, after some legal changes, had been counted towards the Tier 1 capital of the banks, thus realizing de facto an artificial recapitalization. Moreover, the major Greek banks are controlled by the HFSF fund; this “coincidence” implies a dubious circular scheme between government and banks that inflates the scale of equity capital artificially.

It seems plausible that the European authorities would not proceed in this direction, since a reassessment of the DTC in Greek bank balance sheets would necessarily imply a major involvement of the ESM in the recapitalization process.

In any case, it’s in the interest of Tsipras to close off this recapitalization as soon as possible: the 1st of January 2016 will see the new regulation foreseeing a bail-in for the resolution of banking crises come into force. According to the new regulatory framework, private bondholders and depositors should share recapitalization costs together with shareholders. Despite this real threat, depositors cannot simply react defensively by withdrawing their savings owing to the capital controls. Therefore, it’s highly probable that yet another compromise between Greece and the EU is on cue.

But a second, more bleak scenario cannot be dismissed out of hand: in any renewed clash between the Eurogroup and the Greek government over the course of the reforms, Greek savers could face being penalized again if only to demonstrate that Brussels is perfectly capable of enforcing its rules over “undisciplined countries”. At present, many analysts in southern European countries are sceptical about the real enforceability of the “bail-in” clause, especially when a common EU deposit insurance scheme remains on the drawing board. In this perspective, Greece can once again be the “canary in the mine” – useful to show to other Mediterranean countries that the bail-in rule can be and will be applied. Whatever happens, the sacrifices for the Greek people have just begun – again.

Marcello Minenna

Marcello Minenna is head of the quantitative analysis unit in Consob (the Italian Securities and Exchange Commission). He has taught quantitative finance at Bocconi University and at the London Graduate School of Mathematical Finance. He is a regular writer for the Wall Street Journal and Corriere della Sera and is a member of an advisory group which supports the economic analysis of the biggest Italian trade union, CGIL.

You are here: Home / Economy / New Countdown For Greece: A Bank Bail-in Is Looming

Most Popular Posts

Belarus,Lithuania A tale of two countries: Belarus and LithuaniaThorvaldur Gylfason and Eduard Hochreiter
dissent,social critique,identity,politics,gender Delegitimising social critique and dissent on the leftEszter Kováts
retirement,Finland,ageing,pension,reform Late retirement: possible for many, not for allKati Kuitto
Credit Suisse,CS,UBS,regulation The failure of Credit Suisse—not just a one-offPeter Bofinger
Europe,transition,climate For a just and democratic climate transitionJulia Cagé, Lucas Chancel, Anne-Laure Delatte and 8 more

Most Recent Posts

Barcelona,feminist,feminism Barcelona: a feminist municipalism now at riskLaura Pérez Castaño
Spain,elections,Sánchez Is Spain on the right track?Bettina Luise Rürup
CBI,Confederation of British Industry,harassment Crisis at Britain’s CBI holds lessons for othersMarianna Fotaki
central and eastern Europe,CEE,renewable Central and eastern Europe: a renewable-energy win-winPaweł Czyżak
Cape Town,inequality Tackling inequality in the city—Cape TownWarren Smit

Other Social Europe Publications

Bildschirmfoto 2023 05 08 um 21.36.25 scaled 1 RE No. 13: Failed Market Approaches to Long-Term Care
front cover Towards a social-democratic century?
Cover e1655225066994 National recovery and resilience plans
Untitled design The transatlantic relationship
Women Corona e1631700896969 500 Women and the coronavirus crisis

Eurofound advertisement

Unaffordable and inadequate housing in Europe

Unaffordable housing is a matter of great concern in the European Union. It leads to homelessness, housing insecurity, financial strain and inadequate housing. It also prevents young people from leaving their family home. These problems affect people’s health and wellbeing, embody unequal living conditions and opportunities, and result in healthcare costs, reduced productivity and environmental damage.

This new report maps housing problems in the EU and the policies that address them, drawing on Eurofound’s Living, working and Covid-19 e-survey, EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions and input from the Network of Eurofound Correspondents.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Foundation for European Progressive Studies Advertisement

The spring issue of the Progressive Post magazine from FEPS is out!

The Special Coverage of this new edition is dedicated to Feminist Foreign Policy, to try to gauge its potential but also the risk that it could be perceived as another attempt by the west to impose its vision on the global south.

In this issue, we also look at the human cost of the war in Ukraine, analyse the increasing connection between the centre right and the far right, and explore the difficulties, particularly for women, of finding a good work-life balance and living good working lives.


DOWNLOAD HERE

Hans Böckler Stiftung Advertisement

The macroeconomic effects of re-applying the EU fiscal rules

Against the background of the European Commission's reform plans for the Stability and Growth Pact (SGP), this policy brief uses the macroeconometric multi-country model NiGEM to simulate the macroeconomic implications of the most relevant reform options from 2024 onwards. Next to a return to the existing and unreformed rules, the most prominent options include an expenditure rule linked to a debt anchor.

Our results for the euro area and its four biggest economies—France, Italy, Germany and Spain—indicate that returning to the rules of the SGP would lead to severe cuts in public spending, particularly if the SGP rules were interpreted as in the past. A more flexible interpretation would only somewhat ease the fiscal-adjustment burden. An expenditure rule along the lines of the European Fiscal Board would, however, not necessarily alleviate that burden in and of itself.

Our simulations show great care must be taken to specify the expenditure rule, such that fiscal consolidation is achieved in a growth-friendly way. Raising the debt ceiling to 90 per cent of gross domestic product and applying less demanding fiscal adjustments, as proposed by the IMK, would go a long way.


DOWNLOAD HERE

ETUI advertisement

The four transitions and the missing one

Europe is at a crossroads, painfully navigating four transitions (green, digital, economic and geopolitical) at once but missing the transformative and ambitious social transition it needs. In other words, if the EU is to withstand the storm, we do not have the luxury of abstaining from reflecting on its social foundations, of which intermittent democratic discontent is only one expression. It is against this background that the ETUI/ETUC publishes its annual flagship publication Benchmarking Working Europe 2023, with the support of more than 70 graphs and a special contribution from two guest editors, Professors Kalypso Nikolaidïs and Albena Azmanova.


DOWNLOAD HERE

About Social Europe

Our Mission

Article Submission

Membership

Advertisements

Legal Disclosure

Privacy Policy

Copyright

Social Europe ISSN 2628-7641

Social Europe Archives

Search Social Europe

Themes Archive

Politics Archive

Economy Archive

Society Archive

Ecology Archive

Follow us

RSS Feed

Follow us on Facebook

Follow us on Twitter

Follow us on LinkedIn

Follow us on YouTube