The Perils of Ignoring History: The Prospect of History Repeating Itself

People line up outside the Postscheckamt in Berlin to withdraw their deposits in July 1931. The 1931 European banking crisis contributed directly to the breakdown of democracy.

The European Union was created to avoid repeating the disasters of the 1930s, but Germany, of all countries, has failed to learn from history. As the euro crisis escalates, Berlin should remember how the banking crisis of 1931 contributed to the breakdown of democracy across Europe. Action is urgently needed to stop history from repeating itself.

Is it one minute to midnight in Europe?

The failure of German public opinion to grasp the dire state of affairs in Europe today is inviting a repeat of precisely the crisis of the mid 20th century that European integration was designed to avoid.

With every increase in the probability of a disorderly Greek exit from the monetary union, the pressure on the Spanish banks increases and with it the danger of a Mediterranean-wide bank run so big that it would overwhelm the European Central Bank. Already there has been a substantial re-nationalization of the European financial system. This centrifugal process could easily continue to the point of complete disintegration.

We find it extraordinary that it should be Germany, of all countries, that is failing to learn from history. Fixated on the non-threat of inflation, today’s Germans appear to attach more importance to the year 1923 (the year of hyperinflation) than to the year 1933 (the year democracy died). They would do well to remember how a European banking crisis two years before 1933 contributed directly to the breakdown of democracy not just in their own country but right across the European continent.

Astonishingly few Europeans (including bankers) seem to remember what happened in May 1931 when Creditanstalt, the biggest Austrian bank, had to be bailed out by a government that was itself on the brink of insolvency. The ensuing European bank crisis, which saw the failure of two of Germany’s biggest banks, ushered in the second half of the Great Depression. If the first half had been dominated by the American stock market crash, the second was all about European banks going bust.

What happened next? The banking crisis was followed by President Hoover’s one-year moratorium on payment of World War I war debts and reparations. Nearly all sovereign borrowers subsequently defaulted on all or part of their external debts, beginning with Germany. Unemployment in Europe reached an agonizing peak in 1932: In July of that year, 49 per cent of German trade union members were out of work.

The political consequences are well known. But the Nazis were only the worst of a large number of extremist movements to benefit politically from the crisis. “Anti-system” parties in Germany — including Communists as well as fascists — had won 13 percent of votes in 1928. By November 1932, they won nearly 60 percent. The far right also fared well in Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania. Communists gained in Bulgaria, France and Greece.

The result was the death of democracy in much of Europe. While 24 European regimes had been democratic in 1920, the number was down to 11 in 1939. Even bankers know what happened that year.

Those of us who repeatedly warned in the 1990s that the experiment of monetary union would end badly would be gloating now — if we were not so troubled by the prospect of history repeating itself.

Losing Faith

What is the situation today? Europe’s periphery is in depression. According to the IMF, gross domestic product will contract this year by 4.7 percent in Greece and 3.3 percent in Portugal. Unemployment is 24 percent in Spain, 22 percent in Greece and 15 percent in Portugal. Public debt already exceeds 100 percent of GDP in Greece, Ireland, Italy and Portugal. These countries, along with Spain, are now effectively shut out of the bond market.

Now comes the banking crisis. We have warned for more than three years that continental Europe needed to clean up its banks’ woeful balance sheets. Next to nothing was done. In the meanwhile, a silent run on the banks of the euro zone periphery has been underway for two years now: cross-border, interbank and wholesale funding has rolled off and been substituted with ECB financing; and “smart money” — large uninsured deposits of high net worth individuals — has quietly exited Greek and other “Club Med” banks.

But now the public is finally losing faith and the silent run may spread to smaller insured deposits. Indeed, if Greece were to exit, a deposit freeze would occur and euro deposits would be converted into new drachmas: so a euro in a Greek bank really is not equivalent to a euro in a German bank. Greeks have withdrawn more than €700 million ($875 million) from their banks in the past month.

More worryingly, there was also a surge of withdrawals from some Spanish banks last month. On a recent visit to Barcelona, one of us was repeatedly asked if it was safe to leave money in a Spanish bank. This kind of process is potentially explosive. What today is a leisurely “bank jog” could easily become a sprint for the exits. Indeed, a full run on other PIIGS banks would be impossible to avoid in the event of a Greek exit. Rational people would ask: Who is next?

In the meantime, the credit crunch in the euro-zone banks on the periphery remains severe as banks — unable to achieve the new 9 percent capital targets by raising private capital — are selling assets and contracting credit, thus making the euro-zone recession more severe. Fragmentation and balkanization of banking in the euro zone, together with domestication of public debt, is now well underway.

The process of political fragmentation is also speeding up. In the last Greek elections, seven in 10 voters cast their ballots for smaller parties opposed to the austerity program imposed on Greece in return for two EU-led bailouts. Established parties are also losing out to splinter parties in Italy, where the comedian Beppe Grillo’s Five Star Movement has just won control of the city of Parma, and in Germany, where a maverick party called the Pirates is all the rage. Less frivolous populists now have substantial support in France, the Netherlands and Norway. This trend is ominous.

Not Optional

Until recently, the German position has been relentlessly negative on all such proposals. German officials have repeatedly opposed the direct recapitalization of troubled banks. Chancellor Merkel has consistently ruled out euro bonds. Some German spokesmen have made it sound as if they actually want a Greek exit from the euro zone. Others have been over-eager to impose the same fiscal regime on Spain as has already been imposed on Portugal.

We understand German concerns about moral hazard. Putting German taxpayers’ money on the line will be hard to justify if meaningful reforms do not materialize on the periphery. But such reforms are bound to take time. Structural reform of the German labor market was hardly an overnight success. By contrast, the European banking crisis is a financial hazard that could escalate in a matter of days.

We have tried to come up with proposals that address German anxieties. But we want to emphasize that action is urgently needed. Germans must understand that bank recapitalization, European deposit insurance and debt mutualization are not optional. They are essential steps to avoid an irreversible disintegration of Europe’s monetary union. If Germans are still not convinced, they must understand that the costs of a breakup of the euro zone would be astronomically high — for themselves as much as for anyone.

After all, Germany’s current prosperity is in large measure a consequence of monetary union. The euro has given German exporters a far more competitive exchange rate than the old deutsche mark would have. And the rest of the euro zone remains the destination for 42 percent of German exports. Plunging half of that market into a new Depression can hardly be good for Germany.

Ultimately, as Chancellor Merkel herself acknowledged last week, monetary union always implied further integration into a fiscal and political union.

But before Europe gets anywhere near taking this historical step, it must first of all show that it has learned the lessons of the past. The EU was created to avoid repeating the disasters of the 1930s. It is time Europe’s leaders — and especially Germany’s — understood how perilously close they are to doing just that.

 

Spiegel has the full article

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