Soft and hard default scenarios draw closer for Greece
 
 
 Country could be recognized as a basket case
    
    By Dimitris Kontogiannis
 It looks increasingly likely that Greece’s political elite and social  partners - such as the trade unions, the employers’ associations and  others - on one hand and the European Union on the other, will face a  critical dilemma in the next few weeks, months or quarters choosing  between a hard default or a soft default scenario.
Any suggestion  at the end of 2009 that a eurozone country would have been forced to  seek IMF financing a few months later would not have been taken  seriously. Yet, this is what happened a few months later thanks to a  large extent to the mismanagement of the crisis by the Greek side.
The  pressure of time to avoid a default and the relatively limited  experience of Greek officials involved in the negotiations with the EU  and IMF officials produced an economic program that failed to recognize  that the country faced a solvency rather than a liquidity crisis.
Sometime  in the fall of 2010, the troika - namely the representatives of the  European Commission, the IMF and the ECB (European Central Bank) - must  have recognized that the main goal of the program was not going to be  fulfilled. In other words, Greece would not gain access to the world  capital markets by early 2012 at the latest as envisaged.
Around  that time or a bit later, the troika must have also recognized that  implementation of the economic program was not going well. After a  strong start marked by legislation to overhaul the ailing social  security system, some spending cuts and many tax hikes, the government  dragged its feet.
By spring 2011, it must have become clear Greece  was lagging behind in the implementation of the program on both fronts:  structural reforms and fiscal consolidation. Faced with the prospect of  contagion of the Greek debt crisis to other vulnerable eurozone  countries, especially Italy and Spain, and the choice between  integration and disintegration of the eurozone, the EU leaders decided  “to support last July a new program for Greece and, together with the  IMF and the voluntary contribution of the private sector, to fully cover  the financing gap.”
The approval of the midterm fiscal strategy  by Greek Parliament helped a lot to that end since the other governments  could sell the new austerity program to their constituencies. But the  EU summit’s decision was political and had to be converted into  technical terms before heading for approval at national parliaments.
The  problems that have arisen with Finland’s demand for collateral to back  the new loan and signs that private sector participation in the second  Greek bailout is not proceeding as expected or hoped for apparently have  not helped sentiment and have clouded the prospects for the second  package.
But nothing did more to cloud the prospects more than the  temporary halt of the negotiations between the government and the  troika late last week. It was by any account a serious development,  given that the previous loan tranche of 12 billion euros from the first  rescue package of 110 billion euros had been released although Greece  had not fully met the conditions of the program.
At this point,  the government appears to want a so-called “political” solution at the  highest EU level that translates into providing Greece the same amount  of financing under the second bailout program - 109 billion euros of  official loans - while allowing the country to miss the budget deficit  target this year and perhaps next in exchange for some upfront  structural reforms. Whether this is politically acceptable by the other  EU leaders remains to be seen.
However, the Greek side should note  that more and more EU officials and some market participants  increasingly see the country as a special case. This may eventually lead  to a market differentiation between Greece and the rest of the eurozone  periphery, namely Portugal and Ireland, on one hand and isolate it from  Spain and Italy as well.
There is no doubt that Greece’s problem  was a complex one from the beginning. On the one hand, the country had  to tackle its large budget deficit, underpinning a high and fast rising  public debt-to-GDP ratio, and on the other it had to improve the eroded  competitiveness of its economy without controlling its own currency.
Yet  slashing the budget deficit by increasing taxes and cutting spending in  a frontloaded fiscal consolidation program to help restore market  confidence in the country’s public finances soon also meant the Greek  economy would have to suffer a deeper recession than otherwise thought.
The  hope of the planners was that structural reforms and successful fiscal  consolidation would have teamed up to pull the economy out of recession  relatively soon. In so doing, they did not pay enough attention to the  fact that structural reforms, even when implemented, take some time to  bear fruit, and that the local economy was a relatively closed one,  meaning it cannot count on the external sector, i.e. exports, to pull it  out of recession like Ireland.
In past episodes of successful  fiscal consolidation, countries could regain competitiveness relatively  quickly by letting their national currency depreciate against the  others. By being a member of the eurozone, however, Greece did not have  such a luxury.
But going through a period of deflation and fiscal  consolidation without the benefit of depreciation means a protracted  recession which may not be politically and socially acceptable after a  while. We are not sure whether Greece has reached the threshold of pain -  perhaps not - but it is clearly heading there.
In situations like  this and given all the obstacles the government and the political  establishment brings to the fore, Greece and its EU partners will have  to make a decision at some point down the road. This means restructuring  the Greek debt in a way so that the debt-to-GDP ratio falls  considerably, perhaps close to 100 percent from an estimated 166 percent  this year before the impact from PSI (Private Sector Involvement).
Whether this leads to a hard default and the exit of Greece from the eurozone or a soft default will have to be decided.
It  is clear to us that the EU leadership has grown increasingly  disenchanted with Greece. 
Therefore, any concession on a large-scale  restructuring of the Greek debt will hinge both on their estimates about  the possible impact from contagion to other europeriphery countries and  the so-called moral hazard problem. The latter refers to putting Greece  under less pressure to achieve a primary surplus and implement  structural reforms.
So, if they decide to give Greece another go,  the country will have to give a lot in return, such as constitutional  limit to the budget deficit, to counter moral hazard.
This is the  soft default scenario. This would have been unimaginable a few months  ago but it is possible now as reform and fiscal consolidation fatigue  has gripped Greece.
The worst is what some call the hard default  scenario. Here, the EU pulls the plug, recognizing that Greece is a  basket case or/and that the Greek political elite and social partners  cannot honor their commitments.
Neither scenario is good for the country, especially the hard default one. However, they can no longer be dismissed.
                            
  
 
ekathimerini.com , Sunday  September 4, 2011 (22:22)  
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Punti di vista.