Watching the Euro

Background Reading 背景

• Eastern Europe's economies: What went right
• Greece's debt crisis: On the edge of the abyss 
• Europe's sovereign-debt crisis: Acropolis now 
• Germany and Greece: Neither a borrower nor a lender be
• Charlemagne: The euro's existential worries 
• The Baltic states: Euro not bust
• Charlemagne: Financial fortress Europe

Debate 辩论

http://www.economist.com/debate/overview/174

Charlemagne: Financial fortress Europe

The euro-zone rescue package does not mean common economic government. But the rules are clearly changing

May 13th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

SINCE 1949, Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty has bound NATO members to a solemn vow: an armed attack on one of the alliance shall be treated as an attack against all. With international markets closed to Greece, and contagion threatening Portugal and Spain, European Union leaders agreed to a similar pledge after a pair of gruelling, late-night meetings on May 7th and 9th.

From now on, they in effect declared, markets betting against one member of the euro zone would meet a swift response from all 16. Emergency finance would be channelled to vulnerable governments from an array of fighting funds of up to €750 billion ($950 billion) variously loaned or guaranteed by EU countries, euro-zone members and the IMF (see article).

Markets rallied, for a day or two at least. There was shock in Germany, where critics in the press and parliament accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of allowing the EU to become a “transfer union”, in which countries that stuck to EU rules would find their cash siphoned to the profligate.

From France there was crowing. President Nicolas Sarkozy claimed credit for a plan that he called “95%” French. He hailed the emergence of a new decision-making body at the EU’s inner core, made up of leaders from the 16 euro-zone countries. Such a “council of the euro zone”, as he called it, is not found in any EU treaty, but has been a French dream for years.

In Britain a scandalised press claimed the country could pay out anything between £10 billion ($15 billion) and £43 billion to prop up a single currency it did not even use. (The outgoing chancellor, Alistair Darling, said the real sum was £8 billion at most.)

This much is clear: the €750 billion plan is only a temporary fix. The scheme is designed to protect weak links in the euro zone for the next three years, buying them the breathing space to shore up public finances, clean up banks and retool uncompetitive economies so they can grow again and pay off their debts. “If we don’t succeed in restoring sound fundamentals in most of the euro zone, this crisis will come back,” admits a senior European politician.

What the scheme is not is a giant leap towards a common economic government, with the power to siphon huge sums from rich to poor bits of the union. It looks more like a mutual defence pact: an attack on one euro-zone member is now an attack on all. Countries that sign up to NATO’s Article 5 make a serious commitment. They are asked to send troops for joint training, spend a certain amount on defence and so on. But their pact does not mean there is a single NATO army.

Nevertheless, the rules of the euro zone—supposedly based on a Germanic vision of budgetary discipline and an independent European Central Bank (ECB)—are clearly in flux. The ECB started buying government bonds on the financial markets on May 10th: precisely the step urged on it by EU politicians and big banks. Allies of the ECB’s boss, Jean-Claude Trichet, insist he was reacting to market pressures, not assaults on his independence. But the episode caused angst in Germany, and beyond.

EU leaders agreed to a €60 billion facility controlled by the European Commission, funded by borrowing against the EU’s central budget, and so ultimately guaranteed by all 27 members of the EU. The legal basis was a bit of the Lisbon treaty that empowers the commission to send emergency money to countries hit by natural disasters or other “exceptional” crises. But leaders resisted a second, much more ambitious move by the commission: to use the same treaty clause to create a stabilisation fund of unlimited size that it would also control, this time borrowing against loan guarantees from national governments.

Instead, at the insistence of Germany and allies like the Netherlands and Finland, the largest part of the euro-zone defence system, a war chest of up to €440 billion, will be run as a “special purpose vehicle” controlled by national governments. It will not be controlled by the commission, and will issue money only under tough conditions set by the IMF.

Are you with us, Dave?

Yet if the new euro-zone scheme has not centralised power, it is an open question whether power is flowing to the euro countries, creating an “inner core” of 16 at the expense of outliers like Britain. On the one hand, Germany remains wary of a powerful euro zone, fearing that the French want to build up a political body with the clout to bully the ECB. Basically, sighs a senior figure, the French still think of Mr Trichet as “a civil servant, appointed by the French government”. Moreover, although Germany and France may both talk about enhanced economic governance, they mean very different things by it: for France, interventionism; for Germany, the harmonisation of rigour.

On the other hand, there is much grumbling about Britain’s refusal to join the larger €440 billion defence scheme, when British banks are heavily exposed in places like Spain and Ireland, through cross-ownership and debt holdings (and when Poland and Sweden, which like Britain do not use the euro, will join in). On May 9th a “furious” Christine Lagarde, the French finance minister, confronted Mr Darling, sources say. Other finance ministers asked aloud whether Britain could expect EU solidarity if the pound came under attack.

If Gordon Brown had stayed on as prime minister, it is said, he might have joined the euro-zone defence scheme, though Britain’s Treasury was opposed. To David Cameron’s new government, even with the pro-European Liberal Democrats on board, the very idea may sound fantastical. But it is not: if contagion hits Spain, for instance, Britain will face calls for EU solidarity.

Mr Cameron says he wants to avoid distracting Euro-rows as he takes office. He may not be able to avoid them.

The Baltic states: Euro not bust

Estonia gets a green light to join the euro. Other Baltic states will benefit too

May 13th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

SURPRISES are Estonia’s stock in trade. Its return to the world map in 1991 after a 51-year absence startled outsiders. So did what came next: a fast-growing economy, based on flat taxes, free trade and a currency board. In 2004 it confounded pessimists’ expectations by joining the European Union and NATO. Now it is set to pull off another coup, gaining green lights from the European Commission and the European Central Bank in its bid to adopt the euro on January 1st 2011.

Many thought that highly unlikely. Only two years ago a property bubble in the country popped, rocking the banking system and sending GDP plunging by 14.1% in 2009. Doom-mongers said devaluation was inevitable. But they were wrong. Flexible wages and prices have helped the economy stabilise: unit labour costs fell by 7.5% in the final quarter of 2009. Exports were up by a sixth in the first quarter of 2010 and the central bank forecasts growth this year of 1% (although that depends on the pace of recovery in Sweden and other export markets).

Thanks to a fiscal tightening of a stonking 7.5% of GDP, Estonia easily meets the euro zone’s public-finance rules. Its gross debt in 2009 was only 7.2% of GDP (compared with 115% in Italy), and the government deficit is 1.7% (Greece’s is 13.6%). The concern is sustainability: will future governments be so thrifty? Inflation is low: in the past 12 months the average figure was negative, at -0.7% well below the euro zone’s 1% target. But the ECB report calls for “continued vigilance”, as well as efforts to raise productivity and competitiveness.

The real problem for Estonia is political, not economic. Some euro-zone members (France is often mentioned) think that allowing an obscure and volatile ex-communist economy to join a currency union that already has too many dodgy members should not be a priority. If Estonia is really so solid, why not wait a year to be sure?

Yet that would send a perverse message. Estonia is almost the only country in the whole EU that actually meets the common currency’s rules. All those that use the euro have gaily breached the deficit and debt limits. The grit shown by Estonian politicians and the public in shrinking spending, raising taxes and cutting wages has been exemplary. Punishing Estonia, which obeyed the rules, while bailing out Greece, which has breached them flagrantly, would do little for the euro’s credibility with governments and investors alike.

Estonia has two more hurdles to jump before it can scotch the scoffers: an EU committee meeting at the end of May, followed by a finance ministers’ summit in early June. Few think that France and other doubters will actually block Estonia’s bid; persuasion and horse-trading will probably bring agreement. Then the decision will be irrevocable. That will give heart to Latvia and Lithuania, which hope to join the euro later in the decade. Like Estonia, their currencies are pegged to the euro, so they bear the pain of a rigid monetary regime, but also miss out on the lower borrowing costs and higher investment that membership of the currency can bring.

The next task is to stoke growth and cut unemployment (now over 15%). After that, the aim should be to reach Nordic-quality public services and an economy based on brainpower by 2018, when Estonia celebrates its 100th birthday and also holds the presidency of the EU.

Charlemagne: The euro's existential worries

What lies behind differences over the future of the euro

May 6th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

WILL the euro still exist in 10 years’ time? That is a trickier question to answer than it was three months ago, when European Union leaders first lined up in Brussels to wag their fingers at the markets and offer vague declarations of “solidarity” with Greece in its hour of fiscal need. The political will to preserve the euro should not be underestimated, any more than was the political will to create it. Indeed, EU resolve has strengthened since February. But the crisis has worsened even faster.

There is anger in Brussels that it took until May 2nd for the euro-zone countries to put real money on the table: €80 billion ($105 billion) to meet Greece’s borrowing needs, topped up by €30 billion from the IMF. Senior officials blame Germany for the delay. They concede that Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, has a defence: Greece would never have agreed to such an ambitious austerity plan if the bail-out had come sooner. Fine, the officials retort; but rescuing Greece only at the last possible moment before default has raised the cost by billions.

Around Brussels, there is much muttering about German selfishness and even nationalism. When it comes to existential questions about the euro, conventional EU wisdom also has an answer: that the single currency faces either “integration or disintegration.” By this, EU types mean that national governments must choose between doom and surrendering big new chunks of sovereignty over their budgets.

Euro-optimists argue that the bail-out for Greece is the first step towards a “fiscal union” in which stricter rules on budget discipline, backed by painful sanctions, would be offset by bigger transfers from thriftier to wobblier members of the club. Euro-pessimists mutter that Mrs Merkel seems more interested in punishing the profligate than in European solidarity. They point to her call to remove voting rights from spendthrift euro-zone members and for the orderly insolvency of the worst offenders.

The “integration v disintegration” argument is logical and neat. But it is also wrong. Or rather, it is a distraction to judge the euro crisis as a tussle between those clinging to national interests and those ready to centralise more power in the EU.

Deep down, tensions inside the euro-zone involve clashing social contracts and democratic preferences. Post-war German governments have won voters’ consent by offering thrift and monetary stability (a comfort for Germans with a folk memory of life savings lost to hyperinflation), plus an elaborately consensual capitalism. Greek governments have instead spent years buying social peace and votes with public spending, generous pensions, tax breaks, EU money and jobs for life, directed to an array of rent-seeking interest groups. This sort of social contract, lubricated by endemic corruption and lax law-enforcement, has evolved to suit a country emerging from a vile civil war and years of dictatorship in which consensus was painfully absent.

Unfortunately the Greek model has proved itself unsustainable. So Greece’s euro-zone partners, starting with Germany, are being asked to lend huge sums in the name of EU solidarity and peace on the streets of Athens. And that is genuinely hard. German voters, egged on by xenophobic tabloid headlines, do not want to pay for the Greek social contract. Moreover, bailing out a profligate member of the euro-zone breaches a German government pledge to its own voters: that the euro would be as solid as the D-mark. That leaves Germany forced to choose between two bedrock principles in its own social contract: economic stability and EU integration.

Amid voter hostility, Austria’s deputy chancellor and finance minister, Josef Pröll, said this week that Europe was “almost out of patience” with Greek street protests against austerity. The Slovak prime minister, Robert Fico, said he would believe in Greek austerity plans only when he saw them enacted, declaring: “I don’t trust the Greeks.”

Yet IMF-drafted austerity plans also feel like a breach of contract for many ordinary Greeks, even those repelled when violence claims lives in Athens. Cutting civil-service pay seems unfair to officials who earn a pittance. Collecting more taxes may be vital, but will anger Greeks who must endure poor public services, pay bribes to secure decent hospital care and fork out for private tutors to help children betrayed by failing schools. The coming weeks will test whether Greece can change its social contract in ways that will render its economy sustainable. If it cannot, the Greek bushfire will spread. Above all, EU officials fear contagion spreading to Spain, a much bigger economy.

Behavioural science

Changing behaviour was always part of the euro project. Mario Monti, twice an Italian EU commissioner, wanted his country to join the euro precisely so that it would be forced into a more Germanic view of borrowing and spending, and stop robbing future generations to pay today’s interest groups. “I thought the euro would change Italian culture, and it did,” he says. Italy’s public debt may be high, but it has become more careful about deficits.

Senior Eurocrats insist they are not about to propose fiscal transfers within a single economic union. That is “not the logic” of their plans, says one. The focus is on rules and peer pressure. On May 12th the European Commission will unveil plans for more intrusive surveillance of national budgets, with tougher rules to enforce discipline.

But the euro will not be saved by rules alone. If the currency is to survive, the democratic instincts of Europeans who use it must align more closely. That is exceptionally hard to arrange. But here is a blunt truth: EU governments are not about to pool their national budgets. A convergence of social contracts—getting Greeks to behave more like Germans—may be the euro’s best hope.

Germany and Greece: Neither a borrower nor a lender be

The prospect of a bail-out is causing resentment in both Germany and Greece

Apr 29th 2010 | ATHENS AND BERLIN | From The Economist print edition

A message from Athens

ANGELA MERKEL’S political credibility has not yet been downgraded to junk status, but the past few days have done it no good at all. A few weeks ago the German chancellor was basking in plaudits for taking a hard line against a European bail-out of Greece. That was before George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister, bowed to the inevitable on April 23rd and asked for the €30 billion ($40 billion) loan pledged by Greece’s euro-zone partners, of which Germany’s share is about €8 billion. A further slice, of perhaps €15 billion, may come from the IMF.

Now Mrs Merkel is under fire both from those who had praised her and from those who now blame her for dragging out the rescue, further destabilising financial markets and raising the ultimate cost of the bail-out. Reported politicians’ estimates of the whole bill have soared to €120 billion and far beyond, with a correspondingly greater contribution from Germany.

Many Germans feel they are being forced to choose between two basic principles of their post-war economic order: economic stability and integration within Europe. They gave up the D-mark in 1999 on the understanding that the euro would be equally stable and that German taxpayers would not have to pay for other members’ mistakes. The impending bail-out of Greece—and perhaps later of Portugal and even Spain—would mean the end of that bargain. A Greek bail-out would no doubt face a challenge in Germany’s constitutional court. But to withhold aid would endanger the currency and rattle the banks, some of them German, with billions of euros’ worth of Greek debt on their books.

The crisis could not have come at a politically more awkward moment. On May 9th elections will be held in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany’s most populous state. There, a coalition of the Christian Democratic Union and the liberal Free Democratic Party, the same alliance that Mrs Merkel leads in Berlin, is fighting an uphill battle to remain in office. A loss would cost her government its majority in the Bundesrat, the upper house of the legislature. But the perception that she is dragging out the process to avoid irritating voters is also damaging her credibility both at home and abroad.

Now the process seems to have shifted into higher gear. On April 28th the chiefs of the IMF and the European Central Bank met German parliamentary leaders in Berlin. The finance minister, Wolfgang Schäuble, says the government could agree on legislation by May 3rd and get it through the parliament by May 7th. Voters in North Rhine-Westphalia will then decide whether to punish Mrs Merkel.

If Germans resent having to bail out the Greeks, the Greeks dislike the terms on which the rest of the euro zone and the IMF will come to their aid. The official jobless rate has risen to more than 11%, but that fails to take into account many women reluctant to register as unemployed.

Things are about to become more difficult. A three-year reform programme being put together by the IMF, the European Commission and the ECB aims to cut the budget deficit from 13.6% to 2.7% of GDP in just three years, an ambitious target in a shrinking economy. A new pensions law, which is due to be adopted in May, will raise the retirement age for both men and women and reduce the pensions paid by state-controlled corporations. Applications by civil servants to take early retirement under the existing scheme have already jumped by 30%.

The overstaffed public sector will be severely pruned. No one is certain how many jobs will go. But if the programme is rigorously implemented, more than 100,000 Greek public-sector workers will be put out of work by 2013—by a government that came to power promising “more social protection”.

So far, resignation not fury has marked street protests organised by trade unions and the Greek communist party. Fortunately for Mr Papandreou, his Panhellenic Socialist Movement, known as Pasok, dominates both ADEDY, the umbrella public-sector union, and GSEE, its private-sector partner. But the austerity measures the government adopted before the crisis reached boiling point—civil service pay cuts and a hiring freeze—are only just beginning to bite. Infighting in both unions is on the rise; small private-sector unions have already broken ranks and other hardliners are likely to gain ground.

Opinion polls suggest more than 60% of Greeks oppose the government’s decision to call in the fund. The IMF’s reputation for imposing harsh reforms, along with the partial surrender of sovereignty to an American-based institution, seems bound to make Greeks cross. Criticism of Germany, by comparison, is muted.

Europe's sovereign-debt crisis: Acropolis now

The Greek debt crisis is spreading. Europe needs a bolder, broader solution—and quickly

Apr 29th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

THERE comes a moment in many debt crises when events spiral out of control. As panic sets in, bond yields lurch sickeningly upwards and fear spreads to shares and currencies. In September 2008 the failure of once-stellar Lehman Brothers almost brought down the world’s banking system. A decade earlier, Russia’s chaotic default on its sovereign debt rocked the credit markets, felling Long Term Capital Management, a hugely profitable American hedge fund. When the unthinkable suddenly becomes the inevitable, without pausing in the realm of the improbable, then you have contagion.

The Greek crisis—or more properly Europe’s sovereign-debt crisis—looks dangerously close to that (see article). Even as negotiators from the European Union and the IMF are haggling with the Greek government over an ever-growing bail-out package, the yield on Greek debt has ballooned: two-year bonds soared towards 20% this week. Portugal’s borrowing costs jumped. Spain’s debt was downgraded, along with Portugal’s and Greece’s, and Italy came worryingly close to a failed debt auction. European stockmarkets have slumped and the euro itself fell to its lowest level in a year against the dollar.

The road into Hades…

It will strike some as mystifying that a small, peripheral economy should suddenly threaten the world’s biggest economic area. Yet, though it is only 2.6% of euro-zone GDP, Greece sounds three warnings that reach far beyond its borders.

The first is economic. Greece has become a symbol of government indebtedness. This crisis began last October when its new government admitted that its predecessor had falsified the national accounts. It is labouring under a budget deficit of 13.6% and a stock of debt equal to 115% of GDP. It cannot grow out of trouble because of fiscal retrenchment and its lack of export prowess. It cannot devalue, because it is in the euro zone. And yet its people seem unwilling to endure the cuts in wages and services needed to make the economy competitive. In short, Greece looks bust.

Few, if any, European countries suffer from all of Greece’s ills, but many scare investors. Portugal has a high budget deficit and is chronically uncompetitive. Spain has a low stock of debt, but it seems unable to restructure its economy. So too Italy, which is heavily indebted to boot. Non-euro-zone Britain has let its currency fall, but its budget deficit is unnerving.

The second lesson is political. Two weeks ago, having concluded that an eventual Greek restructuring was all but inevitable, we said Europe’s leaders had “three years to save the euro”. We presumed that they would quickly get a proposed €45 billion ($60 billion) deal to stave off an imminent and chaotic Greek default, buying time for an orderly rescheduling and for the other weak economies to begin overdue structural reforms. We overestimated their common sense.

The chief culprit is Germany. All along, it has tried to have it every way—to back Greece, but to punish it for its mistakes; to support the Greek economy, but not to spend any money doing so; to treat this as just a Greek problem, when German banks and German citizens, who lend to Greece, stand to lose money too. German voters do not favour aiding Greece. But rather than explain to them why it is in Germany’s interest, the chancellor, Angela Merkel, has run scared of upsetting them before a big regional election on May 9th.

Playing for time has backfired. Now the mooted rescue plan has climbed above €100 billion because no private money is available. The longer euro-zone governments dither, the more lenders doubt whether their promises to save Greece are worth anything. Each time politicians blame “speculators” (see article), investors wonder if they understand how bad things are (or indeed that investors have a choice). Euro-zone leaders initially refused to seek IMF help because it would be humiliating. Their ineptitude has done far more than their eventual decision to call in the IMF to damage the euro.

This political and economic failure leads to the third Greek warning: that contagion can spread through a large number of routes. A run on Greek banks is possible. So is a “sudden stop” of capital to other weaker euro-zone countries. Firms and banks in Spain and Portugal could find themselves shut out of global capital markets, as investors’ jitters spread from sovereign debt. Europe’s inter-bank market could seize up, unsure which banks would be hit by sovereign defaults. Even Britain could suffer, especially if the May 6th election is indecisive.

What then is to be done? The mounting crisis—and the fact that Greece will almost certainly not pay everybody back on time—will renew some calls to abandon it. That would spell chaos for Greece, European banks and other European countries: the effect would indeed be Lehman-like. Hence the necessity, even at this stage, of a show of financial force, linked to the construction of a stronger firewall between Greece and Europe’s other shaky countries. The priority for European policymakers is to do the same as governments eventually did with the banks: to get ahead of the crisis and to convince investors that they will spend whatever is necessary.

…and the expensive way back

The economics starts with the politics. Europe will not stem this crisis unless its decision-making apparatus is overhauled and Germany radically changes its tune. Mrs Merkel needs to go on German television and explain to her people what is at stake—laying out how much Germany has gained from the euro and what it has to lose from a cascade of chaotic sovereign defaults. Germans need to understand the risks to their banking system and their prosperity. They need to understand that stemming Greece’s debt crisis is less an act of charity than of self-interest. However unfair it seems—and the frugal Germans are as furious about the profligate Greeks as the rest of the world was about bankers—a bail-out is justifiable on the same logic: doing nothing would cost them even more.

The resolve cannot stop at Germany’s borders. Financial markets have no idea who is in charge. Europe’s Byzantine decision-making structure does not help but Germany needs to ensure that decisions are reached fast, that Europe speaks with one voice—and that co-ordination with the IMF is smooth. As a way to convince financial markets that the political weather has changed, the euro zone should set up a single crisis-management committee, with the power to take decisions.

Political resolve won’t work unless the underlying economics make sense. The first test of this is the Greek package. In return for fiscal and structural adjustments that give the economy a hope of stabilising its debts, this must provide enough money to prevent a forced default. Up to €150 billion may be needed over the next three years—better to err by offering too much. But the firebreak between Greece and the other embattled sovereigns of the euro zone is even more important. In economic terms, that should not be too hard to justify. Despite their problems, no country other than Greece is manifestly bust. Portugal is in the greatest danger, but it has a better history of fiscal adjustment which, under plausible assumptions, could allow its debt to stabilise at a manageable level. Spain and Italy could be made insolvent by a long period of high interest rates. But none has the near-inevitability of Greece.

Europe’s policymakers must make those distinctions clearer. The vulnerable economies must step up the reforms they need to rein in deficits and boost growth. Portugal, especially, needs action. The European Central Bank should demonstrate that it has the tools to maintain liquidity even if there is panic. Euro-zone governments should pre-emptively create inter-governmental liquidity lines. Thanks to extraordinary incompetence, Europe’s leaders have almost ensured that the Greek rescue failed before it began. They are paying for that today.

Greece's debt crisis: On the edge of the abyss

Europe's leaders must act fast to stop Greece’s market contagion spreading

Apr 28th 2010 | From The Economist online

IF A sense of panic has started to grip Europe over the potential for Greece to default on its debts, and the contagion to spread rapidly to the continent’s other struggling economies, it has not yet struck Herman Van Rompuy, the president of the European Council. He insisted on Wednesday April 28th that there was “no question” of Greece's debts being restructured. He also said leaders of the euro-zone countries would meet next month to consider how to activate their proposed joint lending programme with the IMF to support Greece. Jean-Claude Trichet, president of the European Central Bank, delivered an almost identical message, saying that a Greek default was “out of the question”.

The calm demeanour of Mr Trichet and Mr Van Rompuy is not shared by the markets. On Wednesday Greece said that it would ban the short-selling of shares for two months to prevent speculators doing further damage to the country’s banks. The previous day, shares in Greek banks had plunged by nearly 10% and the Athens stockmarket as a whole fell by 6% on fears that the country would soon suffer another downgrade of its debts. Those fears proved entirely justified. After the markets closed Standard & Poor’s heaped indignity on Greece by cutting the rating of its sovereign bonds to “junk” status. It also cut Greece's banks to “junk” because of their hefty exposure to government debt.

The markets still see the risk of a Greek default as high

Although the move to ban short-selling steadied Greece's stockmarket somewhat on Wednesday, the chances of the country defaulting on its debts were still perceived by the bond markets as high. Spreads on Greek government bonds (the risk premium compared with German bonds) reached a 13-year high as investors worried that the proposed rescue plan for Greece could stall. Talks between Greece, the European Union and the IMF got under way last week.

Greece was initially seeking up to €45 billion ($60 billion) in emergency loans from euro-zone governments and the IMF this year, the first chunk of which will be needed by May 19th, when the Greek government must refinance a €8.5 billion bond. But as the crisis has worsened it has become clear that Greece could need much more. On Wednesday it was reported that the EU and IMF were preparing a package worth up to €120 billion over three years—if so, the biggest sovereign rescue yet attempted. Nevertheless, even aid on this scale might only postpone an eventual default, if Greece's economy fails to grow faster than its debt pile.

Investors do not seem convinced that euro-zone governments will be able to muster the political will to hammer out an agreement. Germany, as the largest euro member, is vital to any effort to save Greece, but it is wavering. German public opinion is firmly set against dipping into the public purse to help the profligate Greeks. Angela Merkel, Germany’s chancellor, is in a tight spot. If she agrees to extend aid quickly to Greece a voters’ backlash back home may send her party crashing to defeat in regional elections set for May 9th. But if she sits back and watches Greece slide towards default, the contagion is sure to spread rapidly to other, bigger EU countries with debt problems—Mrs Merkel could then end up being blamed for triggering a far worse conflagration across Europe, including a fresh banking crisis.

Portugal is touted as the next European country at risk

Fears that Greece's fiscal crunch would spread to other euro-area countries have sent the region’s single currency reeling to a one-year low against the dollar. S&P's decision on Tuesday also to downgrade the debt of Portugal by a couple of notches pushed European and world stockmarkets lower. Portugal, despite a smaller budget deficit and lower public debt than Greece, is widely touted as the next European country that may suffer a sovereign-debt crisis. Portugal's slow-growing economy, drastic loss of competitiveness and high public and private indebtedness are all weaknesses that markets might put to greater test.

If Portugal comes under intense pressure, contagion might then spread to Ireland, Italy or Spain, the other euro-area countries with some mixture of big budget deficits, poor growth prospects and high debts. Only swift and decisive action by the leaders of Europe's big economies is likely to head off the current crisis. Default by a smaller member such as Greece would be a body blow to the euro's standing but it need not spell the end of the currency. However, that might not be the case if the problems spread further afield.

Eastern Europe's economies: What went right

If Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece want a lesson in how to take hard decisions, they should look eastward

Mar 18th 2010 | From The Economist print edition

IN THE depths of the financial crisis a year ago, it was easy to see how the woes of the ex-communist economies could cause huge problems for the rest of Europe. Western banks had lent recklessly in foreign currency to firms and households stricken by the downturn. If they all fled for the exit at once, dumping assets and stopping lending, the result would be carnage both at home and abroad. Also scary was the prospect of a currency crisis. If Latvia were forced off its peg with the euro, its Baltic neighbours might topple too. A combination of weak governments and angry voters looked ominous enough for some commentators, including this newspaper, to fret that the bill for bailing out new members from the east could be big enough to threaten the European Union.

In the event, the ex-communist economies have so far ridden out the storm (see article). Ex-communist Europe still has to grapple with its share of problems: an ageing workforce, bossy officials and poor infrastructure. But nobody has defaulted and nobody has rioted. Something went right—and it holds lessons for troubled countries in western Europe.

As easy as jeden, dwa, trzy

One reason for the ex-communist countries’ relative fortune is that they are not a homogenous block all of which is suffering in the same way. Few other countries had the huge debts that made Hungary so wobbly, or the gaping current-account deficit that made Latvia so vulnerable. Slovenia and Slovakia were shielded from currency speculators by being in the euro area. Poland, by far the biggest of the new EU countries, is in a category of its own: thanks to good government and good luck, it was the only European economy to boast economic growth in 2009. In short, Poland, Estonia and Bulgaria are as different in their way as are France, Finland and Greece.

International organisations also deserve some praise. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development helped stabilise the region’s banks, bringing foreign lenders together to ensure an orderly deleveraging instead of a rout. Both the European Commission and the European Central Bank realised that problems beyond the euro area could create headaches inside it. Their cheap loans helped foreign creditors and countries alike. And the IMF showed itself to be a collegial and flexible organisation, not the aloof, rigid outfit that EU leaders have foolishly rejected as a source of help for Greece and other troubled members of the euro.

Yet the greatest credit should go to the resilience and level-headedness of the region’s own politicians and citizens. Seemingly weak minority governments in places like Hungary and Latvia proved capable of making enormous fiscal adjustments. The east European economies, for all their faults, have shown more flexibility in both labour markets and in what they produce than have many older EU members. Moreover, the cuts in spending and increases in taxes and the retirement age that some ex-communist countries have imposed over the past year were much more savage than anything that Greece or Spain have so far contemplated.

That is salutary for the many countries that have yet to change public expectations enough to make big, painful structural changes more acceptable. Greece and the other Mediterranean countries in the euro area—Spain, Portugal and even Italy—nowadays seem to be sicker than ex-communist Europe. They should look east for a cure.