The ECB after this weekend
Ahead of Sunday’s final deadline, neither a Greek exit nor a Greek deal can be ruled out, although at this stage a deal looks slightly more likely again. How is the ECB likely to respond to either outturn?
What will the ECB do with ELA?
In terms of ELA, the most important criterion for the ECB is whether there is a chance of a deal. Hence, the ECB is willing to tolerate, at least for a while, Greece failing to settle a payment to the Bank of Greece, as long as there is a political process that is moving towards a deal. In fact, we suspect Greece is already in arrears at the Bank of Greece on a loan not related to SMP. Therefore, if there is no deal over the weekend, we expect that the ECB would instruct the Bank of Greece that the existing ELA cannot be rolled over and that it must be repaid by the Greek banks, pushing them into bankruptcy. It would not wait for the bond redemption on 20th July. If there is a deal over the weekend, we would expect the ECB to initially maintain the ELA ceiling at €89 billion. This may make further capital controls necessary (for example, lowering the €60 daily withdrawal limit given that deposits would still be flowing out). But, we suspect the ECB would only increase ELA slowly and incrementally after it has seen more progress in terms of parliamentary procedures, ESM negotiations and implementation of measures by the Greek authorities. Hence, even with a deal, capital controls will need to remain in place for a long time and be eased only very slowly.
What will the ECB do to contain spillovers?
In terms of broader macro policy to deal with spillovers beyond Greece, we suspect the ECB will continue with its current stance of using rhetoric pre-emptively while adopting a wait-and-see approach in terms of actual policy changes. Alongside its decision to freeze ELA to Greek banks almost two weeks ago, the ECB had already said that it was monitoring financial market conditions closely and that it stood ready to act if the risk to price stability in the Euro area were to deteriorate. And it has signalled that it could use both existing and new instruments within its mandate.
If there is a Greek exit, we think that the ECB may put out a policy statement on Sunday, further emphasizing its readiness to act if financial market conditions were to deteriorate. This statement would stress that the ECB’s tolerance of downside surprises is very low and that it would intervene very quickly. The statement could contain some indication of the kind of action that could be taken. But we doubt that it would be very specific as the form of any spillovers would still be hard to gauge.
In terms of options, we have noted before that this will depend on how exactly markets are affected. In terms of bond markets stress, adjustments to QE and activation of OMT are often mentioned as the most likely options. OMT is difficult due to its reliance on ESM conditionality. In contrast, the QE programme is certainly flexible enough to allow an extension (beyond September 2016), an accelerated pace of purchases (above €60bn/month) and a reorientation (towards countries suffering most from spillover). But, we think that some of these changes would risk muddling the QE objectives. Hence, it would be better to have a new programme, designed specifically to deal with downside risks from possible Greek contagion, while keeping QE focused on the inflation objective. In any case, we do not think that it would be difficult to get either of these options through the Governing Council.