What has the financial crisis taught us? The global dimension and international policy cooperation
Speech by Lorenzo Bini Smaghi, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB,
21st Century Forum 2010,
Beijing, 6-8 September 2010
European experience: the Greek crisis, contagion and the role of European cooperation
The shock to market confidence generated by the Greek downgrade has parallels with the Lehman collapse in September 2008. Also in that case, contagion caused tensions across markets and countries. This reinforces the idea that policies inspired by the ‘put your house in order’ philosophy are not enough to insulate a domestic economy from external shocks.
The Greek credit rating downgrade last April took place in a weak environment, with international investors extremely sensitive to negative events. Confidence contagion spread the shock across the region. Financial tensions quickly propagated across market segments in Europe.
Contagion from sovereign risk moved to the banking system as the market focused on the exposures of European banks to troubled euro area governments. The loss of confidence in the banking system led to new strains in money markets. Furthermore, the shock spread across the globe through a network of leveraged international investors who moved to safe havens as soon as the business climate deteriorated.
On the eve of the first weekend in May financial markets were on the verge of a global contagion risk, with systemic implications. Correlation and
volatility indicators increased to levels above those reached right after Lehman Brothers’ failure.
In this context, the recent experience in Europe may illustrate how successful international cooperation can calm markets and halt contagion. To restore market confidence, the EU Member States agreed to establish a comprehensive package of measures, consisting mainly of three elements. First, it was agreed to speed up structural reforms and accelerate fiscal consolidation, especially in countries experiencing the strongest market pressures. Second, the ECOFIN Council adopted a regulation setting up the European Financial Stabilisation Mechanism (EFSM), which allows the European Commission to raise up to €60 billion for lending to troubled EU Member States. Third, euro area countries established the European Financial Stability Facility (EFSF) to provide loans of up to a total of €440 billion to euro area countries in difficulty, subject to strong policy conditionality in the context of joint euro area-IMF programmes. On 15 June, the EFSF agreement entered into force and on 4 August the Facility was activated. The IMF is also expected to contribute by providing financing amounting to at least half as much the euro area contribution to each programme.
Both the EFSM and EFSF financial assistance will be subject to strong policy conditionality and take place in the context of joint EU-IMF programmes. These policy actions and the recent bank stress tests have succeeded in reducing market tensions and restoring confidence. I believe these policies were successful mainly because of the unprecedented and exemplary coordination at European level.
Per gli interessati trovate l'intervento e il materiale a supporto di seguito:
ECB: What has the financial crisis taught us? The global dimension and international policy cooperation
http://www.ecb.int/press/key/date/2010/html/sp100907.en.pdf?986d26ce8f8465f8c81250ad812404c1