BIS, ECB and IMF Publish Third Part of Handbook on Securities Statistics
IMF Press Release No. 12/459
November 28, 2012
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2012/pr12459.htm
The Bank for International Settlements (BIS), the European Central
Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) today jointly
released the third and final part of the Handbook on Securities Statistics, which covers equity securities issues and holdings. The aim of the Handbook
is to assist national and international agencies in the production of
relevant, coherent and internationally comparable securities statistics
for use in monetary policy formulation and financial stability analysis.
The Handbook is the first publication of its kind dealing
exclusively with the conceptual framework for the compilation and
presentation of securities statistics. As such, it directly addresses
one of the recommendations endorsed by the Ministers of Finance and
Central Bank Governors of the Group of Twenty Economies (G20) concerning
the need to fill data gaps and to strengthen data collection.
Recommendation 7 of the report The Financial Crisis and Information
Gaps, prepared by the Financial Stability Board Secretariat and IMF
staff, called on central banks and, where relevant, statistical offices,
particularly those of the G20 economies, to participate in the BIS data
collection on securities and to contribute to the further development
of the Handbook.
Existing international statistical standards, such as the System of National Accounts 2008 and the IMF Balance of Payments and International Investment Position Manual, sixth edition, provided the foundations of the Handbook. It has also benefited from comments of experts from central banks, statistical institutions, and international organisations.
The first part of the Handbook, which covers debt securities
issues, was released in May 2009 and the second part, covering debt
securities holdings, was released in September 2010. The Handbook can be downloaded from the websites of the BIS, the ECB and the IMF, respectively.
Wednesday, November 28, 2012
Tuesday, November 27, 2012
Payment, clearing and settlement systems in the CPSS countries - Volume 2
Payment, clearing and settlement systems in the CPSS countries - Volume 2
CPSS, November 2012
http://www.bis.org/publ/cpss105.htm
The Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) publishes - under the aegis of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) - reference works on payment systems and the other financial market infrastructures in various countries, both CPSS member and nonmember countries. These publications are widely known as Red Books.
Following the enlargement of the CPSS in 2009, this edition of the Red Book for the CPSS countries is in two volumes. The first volume, which covers 10 CPSS countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland), was published in September 2011. This second volume covers the remaining 13 CPSS countries (Belgium, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States) and the euro area and includes a chapter on international arrangements.
Financial market infrastructure that is resilient and effective enhances the stability of the financial system. It also reduces transaction costs in the economy, promotes the efficient use of financial resources, improves financial market liquidity and facilitates the conduct of monetary policy. I hope this new edition of the CPSS Red Book will contribute to the general understanding and awareness of these issues by providing information about arrangements in the CPSS countries.
I should like to thank all of those who contributed to the preparation of this Red Book.
Paul Tucker
Chairman, Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems
CPSS, November 2012
http://www.bis.org/publ/cpss105.htm
The Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems (CPSS) publishes - under the aegis of the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) - reference works on payment systems and the other financial market infrastructures in various countries, both CPSS member and nonmember countries. These publications are widely known as Red Books.
Following the enlargement of the CPSS in 2009, this edition of the Red Book for the CPSS countries is in two volumes. The first volume, which covers 10 CPSS countries (Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Korea, Mexico, Russia, Singapore, Sweden and Switzerland), was published in September 2011. This second volume covers the remaining 13 CPSS countries (Belgium, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Italy, Japan, the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Turkey, the United Kingdom and the United States) and the euro area and includes a chapter on international arrangements.
Financial market infrastructure that is resilient and effective enhances the stability of the financial system. It also reduces transaction costs in the economy, promotes the efficient use of financial resources, improves financial market liquidity and facilitates the conduct of monetary policy. I hope this new edition of the CPSS Red Book will contribute to the general understanding and awareness of these issues by providing information about arrangements in the CPSS countries.
I should like to thank all of those who contributed to the preparation of this Red Book.
Paul Tucker
Chairman, Committee on Payment and Settlement Systems
Wednesday, November 21, 2012
Same-sex marriage debate
1 Making the Same-Sex Case. By Ken Mehlman
Legalizing marriage for gay couples will cultivate community stability and foster family values.The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2012, on page A17
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578128912554107172.html
They say demography is destiny, and in American politics destiny has belonged to those who best aligned their core beliefs with the rapidly changing and ever-improving citizenry.
Conservatives—and I count myself as one—succeed when we attract new supporters to timeless traditions. The Republican Party's loss in this month's presidential election resulted partly from a failure to embrace some of America's fastest-growing constituencies. One area of significant change is in attitudes toward legal equality for gay Americans.
Some misperceive the issue of marriage equality as exclusively progressive. Yet what could be more conservative than support for more freedom and less government? And what freedom is more basic than the right to marry the person you love? Smaller, less intrusive government surely includes an individual deciding whom to marry. Allowing civil marriage for same-sex couples will cultivate community stability, encourage fidelity and commitment, and foster family values.
Same-sex couples today lack the estate-tax protections, Social Security spousal benefits, and joint-filing options available to heterosexual couples. This can mean the difference between staying in the family home or losing it when a partner dies. In 29 states, individuals can be fired based on their sexual orientation. Conservatives believe that individuals should be judged at work based on performance, so shouldn't we fix this?
Conservatives don't need to change core convictions to embrace the growing support for equal rights for gay Americans. It is sufficient to recognize the inherent conservatism in citizens' desire to marry, to be judged on their work, and not to be singled out for higher taxes or bullying at school. These objectives can be achieved while also protecting religious liberty, as demonstrated by states enacting civil marriage with exemptions for religious institutions.
To help Republicans appreciate this changing environment, I helped establish Project Right Side, which commissioned leading GOP polling firm Target Point to survey 16,000 voters over the past year, over-sampling Republican and swing voters in battleground states, including 2,000 such voters on Election Night. Thanks to this and other polling, we know that:
• A majority of Americans favor civil marriage for same-sex couples. Election Day exit polls showed that Americans support marriage equality by 49% to 46%. Majorities of voters in Maine (53%-47%), Maryland (52%-48%), and Washington state (52%-48%) legalized same-sex marriage at the polls, and a majority in Minnesota (51%-49%) voted down a ban on same-sex marriage.
Walter Olson of the Cato Institute analyzed the Maryland data and found majority support for marriage equality in strong GOP precincts that voted for Mitt Romney. Our Election Night exit poll of 2,000 voters in battleground states (of whom 32% were Republican, 36% Democratic and 32% independent) showed a majority opposing the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996: 62% believe that if states recognize same-sex marriage, the federal government should grant same-sex couples the same benefits as heterosexual couples.
• These trends are growing quickly and across all demographics. According to Jan van Lohuizen, a former pollster for President George W. Bush, public support for civil-marriage rights for same-sex couples increased by 1% each year from 1993 through 2009, and by 5% per year in 2010 and 2011. Other polls over the past year show majority support for civil marriage among African-Americans (51%, according to Edison Research), Hispanics (52%, according to Pew) and voters between the ages of 18 and 39 (66%, according to the Washington Post/ABC News). The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows a 41% increase in support among Republicans over the past three years, to 31% from 22%.
• The marriage-equality issue is more important to supporters than to opponents. While this election focused on the economy, President Obama's support for marriage equality was a positive motivator for nearly three out of four Obama voters in battleground states, according to exit polls. Almost half of his voters (45%) said it made them "much more" likely to support him. Only 35% of Romney supporters said that the former governor's opposition made them "much more" likely to support him.
• A majority of independents favor marriage equality. Project Right Side's survey found that 58% of independents in target states support allowing gay couples to marry, with 22% calling it a very high or somewhat high priority. Eighty percent of independents agree that "the government should stay out of the private lives of adults, including gays and lesbians."
• Republicans are increasingly supportive of legal protections for gay Americans. Of the 7,000 Republicans we surveyed, 73% support employment nondiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians, 61% support safe-schools protections (such as those signed into law by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie) and 46% support allowing same-sex couples to jointly file tax returns.
• Voters under 45 strongly favor marriage equality. In our Election Night survey, 60% of such voters said that the law should recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriage. This is consistent with the shares of younger voters who, according to exit polls, supported marriage equality in Maine (60%) and Washington state (58%).
These trends are accelerating, not going away. And I hope and trust that they will accelerate even faster as conservatives, and all Americans who cherish freedom, commitment and stability, support equal rights under the law for all citizens.
Mr. Mehlman, a businessman in New York, served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2005-07. More polling information can be found at www.ProjectRightSide.com.
2 The Wisdom of Upholding Tradition. By
There is a reason why conjugal unions have been distinguished from all others since antiquity.
The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2012, on page A17
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578128841842931734.html
The U.S. Supreme Court decides next week whether to hear challenges to laws defining marriage as the conjugal union of a man and a woman. It does so after two different electoral outcomes. In May, North Carolinians voted to amend their state constitution to protect the conjugal definition of marriage, a definition that 41 states retain. But on Nov. 6, voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington state endorsed a revisionist view of marriage as the union of any two adults.
How should the Supreme Court decide? How should voters?
We can't move one inch toward an answer simply by appealing to equality. Every marriage policy draws lines, leaving out some types of relationships. Equality forbids arbitrary line-drawing. But we cannot know which lines are arbitrary without answering two questions: What is marriage, and why does it matter for policy?
The conjugal and revisionist views are two rival answers; neither is morally neutral. Each is supported by some religious and secular worldviews but rejected by others. Nothing in the Constitution bans or favors either. The Supreme Court therefore has no basis to impose either view of marriage. So voters must decide: Which view is right?
As we argue in our book "What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense," marriage is a uniquely comprehensive union. It involves a union of hearts and minds; but also—and distinctively—a bodily union made possible by sexual-reproductive complementarity. Hence marriage is inherently extended and enriched by procreation and family life and objectively calls for similarly all-encompassing commitment, permanent and exclusive.
In short, marriage unites a man and woman holistically—emotionally and bodily, in acts of conjugal love and in the children such love brings forth—for the whole of life.
These insights require no particular theology. Ancient thinkers untouched by Judaism or Christianity—including Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Musonius Rufus, Xenophanes and Plutarch—also distinguished conjugal unions from all others. Nor did animus against any group produce this conclusion, which arose everywhere quite apart from debates about same-sex unions. The conjugal view best fits our social practices and judgments about what marriage is.
After all, if two men can marry, or two women, then what sets marriage apart from other bonds must be emotional intensity or priority. But nothing about emotional union requires it to be permanent. Or limited to two. Or sexual, much less sexually exclusive. Or inherently oriented to family life and shaped by its demands. Yet as most people see, bonds that lack these features aren't marriages.
Far from being "slippery slope" predictions, these points show that the revisionist view gets marriage wrong: It conflates marriage and companionship, an obviously broader category. That conflation has consequences. Marriage law shapes behavior by promoting a vision of what marriage is and requires. Redefinition will deepen the social distortion of marriage—and consequent harms—begun by policies such as "no-fault" divorce. As marital norms make less sense, adherence to them erodes.
Conservative scaremongering? No. Same-sex marriage activist Victoria Brownworth, like other candid revisionists, says that redefinition "almost certainly will weaken the institution of marriage," and she welcomes that result.
Yet weakening marital norms will hurt children and spouses, especially the poorest. Rewriting the parenting ideal will also undermine in our mores and practice the special value of biological mothers and fathers. By marking support for the conjugal view as bigotry, it will curb freedoms of religion and conscience. Redefinition will do all this in the name of a basic error about what marriage is.
Some bonds remain unrecognized, and some people unmarried, under any marriage policy. If simply sharing a home creates certain needs, we can and should meet them outside civil marriage.
Moreover, if we reject the revisionist's bare equation of marriage with companionship—and the equation of marriage licenses with all-purpose personal approval—we'll see that conjugal marriage laws deprive no one of companionship or its joys, and mark no one as less worthy of fulfillment. (Indeed, using marriage law to express social inclusion might further marginalize whoever remains single.)
True compassion means extending authentic community to everyone, especially the marginalized, while using marriage law for the social goal that it serves best: to ensure that children know the committed love of the mother and father whose union brought them into being. Indeed, only that goal justifies regulating such intimate bonds in the first place.
Just as compassion for those attracted to the same sex doesn't require redefining marriage, neither does preserving the conjugal view mean blaming them for its erosion. What separated the various goods that conjugal marriage joins—sex, commitment, family life—was a sexual revolution among opposite-sex partners, with harmful rises in extramarital sex and nonmarital childbearing, pornography and easy divorce.
Only when sex and marriage were seen mainly as means to emotional satisfaction and expression did a more thorough and explicit redefinition of marriage become thinkable—for the first time in human history. The current debate just confronts us with the choice to entrench these trends—or to begin reversing them.
That debate certainly isn't about legalizing (or criminalizing) anything. In all 50 states, two men or women may have a wedding and share a life. Their employers and religious communities may recognize their unions. At issue here is whether government will effectively coerce other actors in the public square to do the same.
Also at issue is government expansion. Marital norms serve children, spouses, and hence our whole economy, especially the poor. Family breakdown thrusts the state into roles for which it is ill-suited: provider and discipliner to the orphaned and neglected, and arbiter of custody and paternity disputes.
For all these reasons, conservatives would be ill-advised to abandon support for conjugal marriage even if it hadn't won more support than Mitt Romney in every state where marriage was on the ballot.
They certainly shouldn't be duped into surrender by the circular argument that they've already lost. The ash-heap of history is filled with "inevitabilities." Conservatives—triumphant against once-unstoppable social tides like Marxism—should know this best. "History" has no mind. The future isn't fixed. It's chosen. The Supreme Court should let the people choose; and we should choose marriage, conjugal marriage.
Mr. Girgis is a Yale law student and doctoral student in philosophy at Princeton. Mr. Anderson is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. George is professor of jurisprudence at Princeton and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Their book, "What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense," will be published in December by Encounter Books.
Legalizing marriage for gay couples will cultivate community stability and foster family values.The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2012, on page A17
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578128912554107172.html
They say demography is destiny, and in American politics destiny has belonged to those who best aligned their core beliefs with the rapidly changing and ever-improving citizenry.
Conservatives—and I count myself as one—succeed when we attract new supporters to timeless traditions. The Republican Party's loss in this month's presidential election resulted partly from a failure to embrace some of America's fastest-growing constituencies. One area of significant change is in attitudes toward legal equality for gay Americans.
Some misperceive the issue of marriage equality as exclusively progressive. Yet what could be more conservative than support for more freedom and less government? And what freedom is more basic than the right to marry the person you love? Smaller, less intrusive government surely includes an individual deciding whom to marry. Allowing civil marriage for same-sex couples will cultivate community stability, encourage fidelity and commitment, and foster family values.
Same-sex couples today lack the estate-tax protections, Social Security spousal benefits, and joint-filing options available to heterosexual couples. This can mean the difference between staying in the family home or losing it when a partner dies. In 29 states, individuals can be fired based on their sexual orientation. Conservatives believe that individuals should be judged at work based on performance, so shouldn't we fix this?
Conservatives don't need to change core convictions to embrace the growing support for equal rights for gay Americans. It is sufficient to recognize the inherent conservatism in citizens' desire to marry, to be judged on their work, and not to be singled out for higher taxes or bullying at school. These objectives can be achieved while also protecting religious liberty, as demonstrated by states enacting civil marriage with exemptions for religious institutions.
To help Republicans appreciate this changing environment, I helped establish Project Right Side, which commissioned leading GOP polling firm Target Point to survey 16,000 voters over the past year, over-sampling Republican and swing voters in battleground states, including 2,000 such voters on Election Night. Thanks to this and other polling, we know that:
• A majority of Americans favor civil marriage for same-sex couples. Election Day exit polls showed that Americans support marriage equality by 49% to 46%. Majorities of voters in Maine (53%-47%), Maryland (52%-48%), and Washington state (52%-48%) legalized same-sex marriage at the polls, and a majority in Minnesota (51%-49%) voted down a ban on same-sex marriage.
Walter Olson of the Cato Institute analyzed the Maryland data and found majority support for marriage equality in strong GOP precincts that voted for Mitt Romney. Our Election Night exit poll of 2,000 voters in battleground states (of whom 32% were Republican, 36% Democratic and 32% independent) showed a majority opposing the federal Defense of Marriage Act of 1996: 62% believe that if states recognize same-sex marriage, the federal government should grant same-sex couples the same benefits as heterosexual couples.
• These trends are growing quickly and across all demographics. According to Jan van Lohuizen, a former pollster for President George W. Bush, public support for civil-marriage rights for same-sex couples increased by 1% each year from 1993 through 2009, and by 5% per year in 2010 and 2011. Other polls over the past year show majority support for civil marriage among African-Americans (51%, according to Edison Research), Hispanics (52%, according to Pew) and voters between the ages of 18 and 39 (66%, according to the Washington Post/ABC News). The NBC/Wall Street Journal poll shows a 41% increase in support among Republicans over the past three years, to 31% from 22%.
• The marriage-equality issue is more important to supporters than to opponents. While this election focused on the economy, President Obama's support for marriage equality was a positive motivator for nearly three out of four Obama voters in battleground states, according to exit polls. Almost half of his voters (45%) said it made them "much more" likely to support him. Only 35% of Romney supporters said that the former governor's opposition made them "much more" likely to support him.
• A majority of independents favor marriage equality. Project Right Side's survey found that 58% of independents in target states support allowing gay couples to marry, with 22% calling it a very high or somewhat high priority. Eighty percent of independents agree that "the government should stay out of the private lives of adults, including gays and lesbians."
• Republicans are increasingly supportive of legal protections for gay Americans. Of the 7,000 Republicans we surveyed, 73% support employment nondiscrimination protections for gays and lesbians, 61% support safe-schools protections (such as those signed into law by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie) and 46% support allowing same-sex couples to jointly file tax returns.
• Voters under 45 strongly favor marriage equality. In our Election Night survey, 60% of such voters said that the law should recognize the marriages of gay and lesbian couples as valid, with the same rights as traditional marriage. This is consistent with the shares of younger voters who, according to exit polls, supported marriage equality in Maine (60%) and Washington state (58%).
These trends are accelerating, not going away. And I hope and trust that they will accelerate even faster as conservatives, and all Americans who cherish freedom, commitment and stability, support equal rights under the law for all citizens.
Mr. Mehlman, a businessman in New York, served as chairman of the Republican National Committee from 2005-07. More polling information can be found at www.ProjectRightSide.com.
2 The Wisdom of Upholding Tradition. By
There is a reason why conjugal unions have been distinguished from all others since antiquity.
The Wall Street Journal, November 21, 2012, on page A17
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323353204578128841842931734.html
The U.S. Supreme Court decides next week whether to hear challenges to laws defining marriage as the conjugal union of a man and a woman. It does so after two different electoral outcomes. In May, North Carolinians voted to amend their state constitution to protect the conjugal definition of marriage, a definition that 41 states retain. But on Nov. 6, voters in Maine, Maryland and Washington state endorsed a revisionist view of marriage as the union of any two adults.
How should the Supreme Court decide? How should voters?
We can't move one inch toward an answer simply by appealing to equality. Every marriage policy draws lines, leaving out some types of relationships. Equality forbids arbitrary line-drawing. But we cannot know which lines are arbitrary without answering two questions: What is marriage, and why does it matter for policy?
The conjugal and revisionist views are two rival answers; neither is morally neutral. Each is supported by some religious and secular worldviews but rejected by others. Nothing in the Constitution bans or favors either. The Supreme Court therefore has no basis to impose either view of marriage. So voters must decide: Which view is right?
As we argue in our book "What is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense," marriage is a uniquely comprehensive union. It involves a union of hearts and minds; but also—and distinctively—a bodily union made possible by sexual-reproductive complementarity. Hence marriage is inherently extended and enriched by procreation and family life and objectively calls for similarly all-encompassing commitment, permanent and exclusive.
In short, marriage unites a man and woman holistically—emotionally and bodily, in acts of conjugal love and in the children such love brings forth—for the whole of life.
These insights require no particular theology. Ancient thinkers untouched by Judaism or Christianity—including Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Musonius Rufus, Xenophanes and Plutarch—also distinguished conjugal unions from all others. Nor did animus against any group produce this conclusion, which arose everywhere quite apart from debates about same-sex unions. The conjugal view best fits our social practices and judgments about what marriage is.
After all, if two men can marry, or two women, then what sets marriage apart from other bonds must be emotional intensity or priority. But nothing about emotional union requires it to be permanent. Or limited to two. Or sexual, much less sexually exclusive. Or inherently oriented to family life and shaped by its demands. Yet as most people see, bonds that lack these features aren't marriages.
Far from being "slippery slope" predictions, these points show that the revisionist view gets marriage wrong: It conflates marriage and companionship, an obviously broader category. That conflation has consequences. Marriage law shapes behavior by promoting a vision of what marriage is and requires. Redefinition will deepen the social distortion of marriage—and consequent harms—begun by policies such as "no-fault" divorce. As marital norms make less sense, adherence to them erodes.
Conservative scaremongering? No. Same-sex marriage activist Victoria Brownworth, like other candid revisionists, says that redefinition "almost certainly will weaken the institution of marriage," and she welcomes that result.
Yet weakening marital norms will hurt children and spouses, especially the poorest. Rewriting the parenting ideal will also undermine in our mores and practice the special value of biological mothers and fathers. By marking support for the conjugal view as bigotry, it will curb freedoms of religion and conscience. Redefinition will do all this in the name of a basic error about what marriage is.
Some bonds remain unrecognized, and some people unmarried, under any marriage policy. If simply sharing a home creates certain needs, we can and should meet them outside civil marriage.
Moreover, if we reject the revisionist's bare equation of marriage with companionship—and the equation of marriage licenses with all-purpose personal approval—we'll see that conjugal marriage laws deprive no one of companionship or its joys, and mark no one as less worthy of fulfillment. (Indeed, using marriage law to express social inclusion might further marginalize whoever remains single.)
True compassion means extending authentic community to everyone, especially the marginalized, while using marriage law for the social goal that it serves best: to ensure that children know the committed love of the mother and father whose union brought them into being. Indeed, only that goal justifies regulating such intimate bonds in the first place.
Just as compassion for those attracted to the same sex doesn't require redefining marriage, neither does preserving the conjugal view mean blaming them for its erosion. What separated the various goods that conjugal marriage joins—sex, commitment, family life—was a sexual revolution among opposite-sex partners, with harmful rises in extramarital sex and nonmarital childbearing, pornography and easy divorce.
Only when sex and marriage were seen mainly as means to emotional satisfaction and expression did a more thorough and explicit redefinition of marriage become thinkable—for the first time in human history. The current debate just confronts us with the choice to entrench these trends—or to begin reversing them.
That debate certainly isn't about legalizing (or criminalizing) anything. In all 50 states, two men or women may have a wedding and share a life. Their employers and religious communities may recognize their unions. At issue here is whether government will effectively coerce other actors in the public square to do the same.
Also at issue is government expansion. Marital norms serve children, spouses, and hence our whole economy, especially the poor. Family breakdown thrusts the state into roles for which it is ill-suited: provider and discipliner to the orphaned and neglected, and arbiter of custody and paternity disputes.
For all these reasons, conservatives would be ill-advised to abandon support for conjugal marriage even if it hadn't won more support than Mitt Romney in every state where marriage was on the ballot.
They certainly shouldn't be duped into surrender by the circular argument that they've already lost. The ash-heap of history is filled with "inevitabilities." Conservatives—triumphant against once-unstoppable social tides like Marxism—should know this best. "History" has no mind. The future isn't fixed. It's chosen. The Supreme Court should let the people choose; and we should choose marriage, conjugal marriage.
Mr. Girgis is a Yale law student and doctoral student in philosophy at Princeton. Mr. Anderson is a fellow at the Heritage Foundation. Mr. George is professor of jurisprudence at Princeton and a visiting professor at Harvard Law School. Their book, "What Is Marriage? Man and Woman: A Defense," will be published in December by Encounter Books.
Basel III complexity: Third round of clarifications
Basel III counterparty credit risk - Frequently asked questions (update of FAQs published in July 2012)
November 2012
http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs235.htm
Today's publication sets out the third set of frequently asked questions (FAQs) that relate to counterparty credit risk, including the default counterparty credit risk charge, the credit valuation adjustment (CVA) capital charge and asset value correlations. FAQs that have been added since the publication of the second version of this document in July 2012 are shaded yellow.
These FAQs aim to promote consistent global implementation of Basel III.
Translations in German, Spanish, French and Italian will be published soon
Wednesday, November 14, 2012
CBO: What Accounts for the Slow Growth of the Economy After the Recession? - Infographic
CBO, November 14, 2012
The U.S. economy has grown slowly since the deep recession in 2008 and 2009. In the three years following the recession, the cumulative growth of the nation’s output—real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product—was nearly 9 percentage points below the average seen in previous economic recoveries since the end of World War II, or less than half the average growth during those other recoveries.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43712-Infographic-SlowRecovery.pdf
The full report is here: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/11-14-12-SlowRecovery.pdf
The U.S. economy has grown slowly since the deep recession in 2008 and 2009. In the three years following the recession, the cumulative growth of the nation’s output—real (inflation-adjusted) gross domestic product—was nearly 9 percentage points below the average seen in previous economic recoveries since the end of World War II, or less than half the average growth during those other recoveries.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/43712-Infographic-SlowRecovery.pdf
The full report is here: http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/11-14-12-SlowRecovery.pdf
Fiscal Rules at a Glance: Country Details from a New Dataset
Fiscal Rules at a Glance: Country Details from a New Dataset. By Nina Budina, Tidiane Kinda, Andrea Schaechter, and Anke Weber
IMF Working Paper No. 12/273
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=40101.0
Summary: This paper provides country-specific information on fiscal rules in use in 81 countries from 1985 to end-September 2012. It serves as background material and update of the July 2012 Working Paper “Fiscal Rules in Response to the Crisis—Toward the ‘Next Generation’ Rules: A New Dataset” and is also available in an easy accessible electronic data visualization tool (http://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/FiscalRules/map/map.htm). The dataset covers four types of rules: budget balance rules, debt rules, expenditure rules, and revenue rules, applying to the central or general government or the public sector. It also presents details on various characteristics of rules, such as their legal basis, coverage, escape clauses, as well as key supporting features such as independent monitoring bodies.
Excerpts:
This paper provides country-specific information on fiscal rules in use in 81 countries from 1985 to end-September 2012.1 It accompanies and updates the July 2012 Working Paper “Fiscal Rules in Response to the Crisis—Toward the ‘Next Generation’ Rules: A New Dataset” (Schaechter, Kinda, Budina, and Weber) and the electronic data visualization tool. The dataset covers four types of rules: budget balance rules, debt rules, expenditure rules, and revenue rules, applying to the central or general government or the public sector. It also presents country-specific details on various characteristics of rules, such as their legal basis, coverage, escape clauses, and takes stock of key supporting features that are in place, including independent monitoring bodies. The electronic dataset codes this information for easy cross-country comparisons and empirical analysis. It includes additionally information on institutional supporting arrangements, namely multi-year expenditure ceilings and fiscal responsibility laws.
A fiscal rule is a long-lasting constraint on fiscal policy through numerical limits on budgetary aggregates. This implies that boundaries are set for fiscal policy which cannot be frequently changed. That said the demarcation lines of what constitutes a fiscal rule are not always clear. For this dataset and paper, we followed the following principles:
How to interpret the country-specific information? The tables in Section II contain all national rules and a cross-reference to Section III if the country also operates under supranational fiscal rules. The date when a rule took effect is shown in brackets. The most recent rules are show first. When a characteristic of the rule was changed over time, the year of the change is shown in the respective column. A description of each rule and the time period to which it applied is included in the bottom part of each table. Supranational fiscal rules are described in Section III.
IMF Working Paper No. 12/273
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=40101.0
Summary: This paper provides country-specific information on fiscal rules in use in 81 countries from 1985 to end-September 2012. It serves as background material and update of the July 2012 Working Paper “Fiscal Rules in Response to the Crisis—Toward the ‘Next Generation’ Rules: A New Dataset” and is also available in an easy accessible electronic data visualization tool (http://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/FiscalRules/map/map.htm). The dataset covers four types of rules: budget balance rules, debt rules, expenditure rules, and revenue rules, applying to the central or general government or the public sector. It also presents details on various characteristics of rules, such as their legal basis, coverage, escape clauses, as well as key supporting features such as independent monitoring bodies.
Excerpts:
This paper provides country-specific information on fiscal rules in use in 81 countries from 1985 to end-September 2012.1 It accompanies and updates the July 2012 Working Paper “Fiscal Rules in Response to the Crisis—Toward the ‘Next Generation’ Rules: A New Dataset” (Schaechter, Kinda, Budina, and Weber) and the electronic data visualization tool. The dataset covers four types of rules: budget balance rules, debt rules, expenditure rules, and revenue rules, applying to the central or general government or the public sector. It also presents country-specific details on various characteristics of rules, such as their legal basis, coverage, escape clauses, and takes stock of key supporting features that are in place, including independent monitoring bodies. The electronic dataset codes this information for easy cross-country comparisons and empirical analysis. It includes additionally information on institutional supporting arrangements, namely multi-year expenditure ceilings and fiscal responsibility laws.
A fiscal rule is a long-lasting constraint on fiscal policy through numerical limits on budgetary aggregates. This implies that boundaries are set for fiscal policy which cannot be frequently changed. That said the demarcation lines of what constitutes a fiscal rule are not always clear. For this dataset and paper, we followed the following principles:
- In addition to covering rules with targets fixed in legislation, we consider also those fiscal arrangements, as fiscal rules for which the targets can be revised, but only on a low-frequency basis (e.g., as part of the electoral cycle) as long as they are binding for a minimum of three years. Thus, medium-term budgetary frameworks or expenditure ceilings that provide multi-year projections but can be changed annually are not considered to be rules.
- We only consider those fiscal rules that set numerical targets on aggregates that capture a large share of public finances and at a minimum cover the central government level. Thus, rules for subnational governments or fiscal sub-aggregates are not included here.
- We focus on de jure arrangements and not to what degree rules have been adhered to in practice.
How to interpret the country-specific information? The tables in Section II contain all national rules and a cross-reference to Section III if the country also operates under supranational fiscal rules. The date when a rule took effect is shown in brackets. The most recent rules are show first. When a characteristic of the rule was changed over time, the year of the change is shown in the respective column. A description of each rule and the time period to which it applied is included in the bottom part of each table. Supranational fiscal rules are described in Section III.
Friday, November 9, 2012
Chinese Strategic Miscalculations in the South China Sea, by Hoang Anh Tuan
Chinese Strategic Miscalculations in the South China Sea, by Hoang Anh Tuan
Asia Pacific Bulletin, No. 181
Washington, D.C.: East-West Center
September 27, 2012
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/chinese-strategic-miscalculations-in-the-south-china-sea
Hoang Anh Tuan is the Director-General of the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.
Excerpts:
Regrettably, China does not yet recognize the extent to which its aggressive course in the South China Sea is damaging its diplomacy with neighboring countries.
China’s current assertiveness in the South China Sea is now slowly but surely eroding its positive image with its ASEAN neighbors as a peacefully rising power. Without exception, countries within Southeast Asia and beyond are very cautious of China’s rise. Even as China’s national economic and global stature increase, its influence, image and “soft power” abroad is declining dramatically.
China now sees “US hands” in both its internal and external affairs. Examples this year of US influence in China’s domestic affairs include Wang Lijun, Chongqing’s former police chief, applying to the US Consulate in Chengdu for political asylum and the blind lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, fleeing to the US Embassy in Beijing. Throughout the region, US allies including Japan, South Korea and the Philippines have all upgraded their already strong military cooperation with the United States. If China continues to ignore the interests or concerns of its neighbors who have a stake in the South China Sea, its aggressiveness is likely to galvanize increased regional cooperation with the United States.
Third, troubles with close neighbors also affect the image and position of China in the world. The most important condition for any country aspiring to ascend to global power status is to maintain good relations with its neighbors. However, if China is unable or unwilling to maintain a cordial relationship with its closest neighbors, how can countries further afield trust and respect this aspiring superpower? As long as China is unable to maintain a significant level of trust and friendship with its neighbors, benevolent global power status for China is likely to remain a pipe dream.
First and foremost, China should take constructive steps to bring about an amicable conclusion to negotiations on the Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea, and implement a face-saving policy renouncing once and for all its U-shaped line. Obviously, this will be a difficult decision for China to take. However, the international dividend and return for China’s peaceful rise would ripple far beyond the neighborhood and confines of the South China Sea.
Asia Pacific Bulletin, No. 181
Washington, D.C.: East-West Center
September 27, 2012
http://www.eastwestcenter.org/publications/chinese-strategic-miscalculations-in-the-south-china-sea
Hoang Anh Tuan is the Director-General of the Institute for Foreign Policy and Strategic Studies at the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam.
Excerpts:
Regrettably, China does not yet recognize the extent to which its aggressive course in the South China Sea is damaging its diplomacy with neighboring countries.
China’s current assertiveness in the South China Sea is now slowly but surely eroding its positive image with its ASEAN neighbors as a peacefully rising power. Without exception, countries within Southeast Asia and beyond are very cautious of China’s rise. Even as China’s national economic and global stature increase, its influence, image and “soft power” abroad is declining dramatically.
China now sees “US hands” in both its internal and external affairs. Examples this year of US influence in China’s domestic affairs include Wang Lijun, Chongqing’s former police chief, applying to the US Consulate in Chengdu for political asylum and the blind lawyer, Chen Guangcheng, fleeing to the US Embassy in Beijing. Throughout the region, US allies including Japan, South Korea and the Philippines have all upgraded their already strong military cooperation with the United States. If China continues to ignore the interests or concerns of its neighbors who have a stake in the South China Sea, its aggressiveness is likely to galvanize increased regional cooperation with the United States.
Third, troubles with close neighbors also affect the image and position of China in the world. The most important condition for any country aspiring to ascend to global power status is to maintain good relations with its neighbors. However, if China is unable or unwilling to maintain a cordial relationship with its closest neighbors, how can countries further afield trust and respect this aspiring superpower? As long as China is unable to maintain a significant level of trust and friendship with its neighbors, benevolent global power status for China is likely to remain a pipe dream.
First and foremost, China should take constructive steps to bring about an amicable conclusion to negotiations on the Code of Conduct (COC) in the South China Sea, and implement a face-saving policy renouncing once and for all its U-shaped line. Obviously, this will be a difficult decision for China to take. However, the international dividend and return for China’s peaceful rise would ripple far beyond the neighborhood and confines of the South China Sea.
Tuesday, October 30, 2012
U2's Bono realizes the importance of capitalism
Notable & Quotable: U2 frontman and anti-poverty activist Bono realizes the importance of capitalism
The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2012, on page A23
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203922804578080453358300198.html
Staff writer Parmy Olson writing at forbes.com, Oct. 22
Bono has learned much about music over more than three decades with U2. But alongside that has been a lifelong lesson in campaigning—the activist for poverty reduction in Africa spoke frankly on Friday about how his views about philanthropy had now stretched to include an appreciation for capitalism.
The Irish singer and co-founder of ONE, a campaigning group that fights poverty and disease in Africa, said it had been "a humbling thing for me" to realize the importance of capitalism and entrepreneurialism in philanthropy, particularly as someone who "got into this as a righteous anger activist with all the cliches."
"Job creators and innovators are just the key, and aid is just a bridge," he told an audience of 200 leading technology entrepreneurs and investors at the F.ounders tech conference in Dublin. "We see it as startup money, investment in new countries. A humbling thing was to learn the role of commerce."
The Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2012, on page A23
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203922804578080453358300198.html
Staff writer Parmy Olson writing at forbes.com, Oct. 22
Bono has learned much about music over more than three decades with U2. But alongside that has been a lifelong lesson in campaigning—the activist for poverty reduction in Africa spoke frankly on Friday about how his views about philanthropy had now stretched to include an appreciation for capitalism.
The Irish singer and co-founder of ONE, a campaigning group that fights poverty and disease in Africa, said it had been "a humbling thing for me" to realize the importance of capitalism and entrepreneurialism in philanthropy, particularly as someone who "got into this as a righteous anger activist with all the cliches."
"Job creators and innovators are just the key, and aid is just a bridge," he told an audience of 200 leading technology entrepreneurs and investors at the F.ounders tech conference in Dublin. "We see it as startup money, investment in new countries. A humbling thing was to learn the role of commerce."
Monday, October 29, 2012
Joseph Schumpeter on how a swelling mass of unemployable college graduates sets the stage for anticapitalist radicalism
Joseph Schumpeter in 1942 on how a swelling mass of unemployed and unemployable college graduates sets the stage for anticapitalist radicalism.
The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2012, on page A21
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444897304578046520760656926.html
Joseph Schumpeter writing in "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy," 1942:
The man who has gone through a college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work. His failure to do so may be due either to lack of natural ability—perfectly compatible with passing academic tests—or to inadequate teaching; and both cases will . . . occur more frequently as ever larger numbers are drafted into higher education and as the required amount of teaching increases irrespective of how many teachers and scholars nature chooses to turn out.
The results of neglecting this and of acting on the theory that schools, colleges and universities are just a matter of money, are too obvious to insist upon. Cases in which among a dozen applicants for a job, all formally qualified, there is not one who can fill it satisfactorily, are known to everyone who has anything to do with appointments . . .
All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite or in which aptitudes and acquirements of a different order count. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment. And it often rationalizes itself into that social criticism which as we have seen before is in any case the intellectual spectator's typical attitude toward men, classes and institutions especially in a rationalist and utilitarian civilization.
Well, here we have numbers; a well-defined group situation of proletarian hue; and a group interest shaping a group attitude that will much more realistically account for hostility to the capitalist order than could the theory—itself a rationalization in the psychological sense—according to which the intellectual's righteous indignation about the wrongs of capitalism simply represents the logical inference from outrageous facts. . . . Moreover our theory also accounts for the fact that this hostility increases, instead of diminishing, with every achievement of capitalist evolution.
The Wall Street Journal, October 29, 2012, on page A21
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444897304578046520760656926.html
Joseph Schumpeter writing in "Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy," 1942:
The man who has gone through a college or university easily becomes psychically unemployable in manual occupations without necessarily acquiring employability in, say, professional work. His failure to do so may be due either to lack of natural ability—perfectly compatible with passing academic tests—or to inadequate teaching; and both cases will . . . occur more frequently as ever larger numbers are drafted into higher education and as the required amount of teaching increases irrespective of how many teachers and scholars nature chooses to turn out.
The results of neglecting this and of acting on the theory that schools, colleges and universities are just a matter of money, are too obvious to insist upon. Cases in which among a dozen applicants for a job, all formally qualified, there is not one who can fill it satisfactorily, are known to everyone who has anything to do with appointments . . .
All those who are unemployed or unsatisfactorily employed or unemployable drift into the vocations in which standards are least definite or in which aptitudes and acquirements of a different order count. They swell the host of intellectuals in the strict sense of the term whose numbers hence increase disproportionately. They enter it in a thoroughly discontented frame of mind. Discontent breeds resentment. And it often rationalizes itself into that social criticism which as we have seen before is in any case the intellectual spectator's typical attitude toward men, classes and institutions especially in a rationalist and utilitarian civilization.
Well, here we have numbers; a well-defined group situation of proletarian hue; and a group interest shaping a group attitude that will much more realistically account for hostility to the capitalist order than could the theory—itself a rationalization in the psychological sense—according to which the intellectual's righteous indignation about the wrongs of capitalism simply represents the logical inference from outrageous facts. . . . Moreover our theory also accounts for the fact that this hostility increases, instead of diminishing, with every achievement of capitalist evolution.
Tax Composition and Growth: A Broad Cross-Country Perspective. By Santiago Acosta-Ormaechea and Jiae Yoo
Tax Composition and Growth: A Broad Cross-Country Perspective. By Santiago Acosta-Ormaechea and Jiae Yoo
IMF Working Paper No. 12/257
October 25, 2012
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=40067.0
Summary: We investigate the relation between changes in tax composition and long-run economic growth using a new dataset covering a broad cross-section of countries with different income levels. We specifically consider 69 countries with at least 20 years of observations on total tax revenue during the period 1970-2009—21 high-income, 23 middle-income and 25 low-income countries. To our knowledge this is the most comprehensive and up-to-date dataset on tax composition and growth. We find that increasing income taxes while reducing consumption and property taxes is associated with slower growth over the long run. We also find that: (1) among income taxes, social security contributions and personal income taxes have a stronger negative association with growth than corporate income taxes; (2) a shift from income taxes to property taxes has a strong positive association with growth; and (3) a reduction in income taxes while increasing value added and sales taxes is also associated with faster growth.
IMF Working Paper No. 12/257
October 25, 2012
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=40067.0
Summary: We investigate the relation between changes in tax composition and long-run economic growth using a new dataset covering a broad cross-section of countries with different income levels. We specifically consider 69 countries with at least 20 years of observations on total tax revenue during the period 1970-2009—21 high-income, 23 middle-income and 25 low-income countries. To our knowledge this is the most comprehensive and up-to-date dataset on tax composition and growth. We find that increasing income taxes while reducing consumption and property taxes is associated with slower growth over the long run. We also find that: (1) among income taxes, social security contributions and personal income taxes have a stronger negative association with growth than corporate income taxes; (2) a shift from income taxes to property taxes has a strong positive association with growth; and (3) a reduction in income taxes while increasing value added and sales taxes is also associated with faster growth.
Friday, October 26, 2012
Vienna 2 proposes enhancements in cross-border supervision to European authorities
Vienna 2 proposes enhancements in cross-border supervision to European authorities
IMF Press Release No. 12/399
October 26, 2012
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2012/pr12399.htm
Excerpts:
The Steering Committee of the Vienna Initiative 2 has submitted observations and proposals on cross-border supervisory practices to a number of European authorities. 1 These focus on critical aspects of home-host cooperation, which are of particular importance for host countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe where locally systemic affiliates of foreign banks operate.
The aim is to provide input for the designing of the supervisory framework for Europe and to communicate systemic concerns of host countries. The proposals have been shared with the EBA, the ECB and the European Commission.
The document reflects the Steering Committee’s views on implementation of cooperation between national authorities in home and host countries during the crisis. It draws on discussions between home and host country supervisors, central banks, fiscal authorities and key parent banks, including at a workshop hosted by the EBRD in London on September 12, 2012. Frequent contacts with other national authorities and with the private banking sector have added further insights.2
Some issues in supervisory practices are particularly relevant to European countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe which mainly host affiliates of the cross border banking groups from the EU that are systematically important for their financial sectors. The last years have shown that the viewpoint of home and host authorities can differ when assessing systemic risk of financial institutions, not least because subsidiaries may account only for a minor part of a banking group yet be systemic in host countries. These concerns can be even more pronounced in countries outside the EU where EU-based banks have systemic operations.
The proposals focus on:
1. Addressing potential conflicts of interest to ensure that supervisory colleges take a wider European perspective.
2. Ensuring that the EBA guidelines are observed and implemented in practice.
3. Fostering more open and active discussions in supervisory colleges.
4. Strengthening the position of the EBA as an “honest broker” in mediation and involving fiscal authorities when fiscal issues are relevant.
5. Bringing the relevant non-EU countries into the supervisory ccooperation framework.
6. Highlighting the need to ensure appropriate conditions for the non-Euro zone countries toparticipate in the banking union ("opting in").
7. Bringing the macro-prudential perspective into the discussion of cross border supervision, including in supervisory colleges.
The Vienna 2 is also preparing detailed comments on the new bank resolution proposal for submission to the relevant European authorities.
---
1 The EBRD, EIB, IMF, World Bank, and European Commission are members of the Steering Committee as well as Italy and Romania, which represent home and host authorities respectively. The Committee is chaired by Marek Belka, President of the National Bank of Poland.
2 The European Commission may have different views on the issues addressed in this document.
IMF Press Release No. 12/399
October 26, 2012
http://www.imf.org/external/np/sec/pr/2012/pr12399.htm
Excerpts:
The Steering Committee of the Vienna Initiative 2 has submitted observations and proposals on cross-border supervisory practices to a number of European authorities. 1 These focus on critical aspects of home-host cooperation, which are of particular importance for host countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe where locally systemic affiliates of foreign banks operate.
The aim is to provide input for the designing of the supervisory framework for Europe and to communicate systemic concerns of host countries. The proposals have been shared with the EBA, the ECB and the European Commission.
The document reflects the Steering Committee’s views on implementation of cooperation between national authorities in home and host countries during the crisis. It draws on discussions between home and host country supervisors, central banks, fiscal authorities and key parent banks, including at a workshop hosted by the EBRD in London on September 12, 2012. Frequent contacts with other national authorities and with the private banking sector have added further insights.2
Some issues in supervisory practices are particularly relevant to European countries in Central, Eastern, and Southeastern Europe which mainly host affiliates of the cross border banking groups from the EU that are systematically important for their financial sectors. The last years have shown that the viewpoint of home and host authorities can differ when assessing systemic risk of financial institutions, not least because subsidiaries may account only for a minor part of a banking group yet be systemic in host countries. These concerns can be even more pronounced in countries outside the EU where EU-based banks have systemic operations.
The proposals focus on:
1. Addressing potential conflicts of interest to ensure that supervisory colleges take a wider European perspective.
2. Ensuring that the EBA guidelines are observed and implemented in practice.
3. Fostering more open and active discussions in supervisory colleges.
4. Strengthening the position of the EBA as an “honest broker” in mediation and involving fiscal authorities when fiscal issues are relevant.
5. Bringing the relevant non-EU countries into the supervisory ccooperation framework.
6. Highlighting the need to ensure appropriate conditions for the non-Euro zone countries toparticipate in the banking union ("opting in").
7. Bringing the macro-prudential perspective into the discussion of cross border supervision, including in supervisory colleges.
The Vienna 2 is also preparing detailed comments on the new bank resolution proposal for submission to the relevant European authorities.
---
1 The EBRD, EIB, IMF, World Bank, and European Commission are members of the Steering Committee as well as Italy and Romania, which represent home and host authorities respectively. The Committee is chaired by Marek Belka, President of the National Bank of Poland.
2 The European Commission may have different views on the issues addressed in this document.
Wednesday, October 24, 2012
Everybody involved was, one, interested, two, dedicated, and, three, fascinated by the job they were doing
Notable & Quotable.
The Wall Street Journal, August 27, 2012, on page A15
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444506004577613080016153006.html
Astronaut Neil Armstrong, who died on Saturday at age 82, speaking about the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon, from NASA'S Johnson Space Center Oral History Project:
I was certainly aware that this was a culmination of the work of 300,000 or 400,000 people over a decade and that the nation's hopes and outward appearance largely rested on how the results came out. With those pressures, it seemed the most important thing to do was focus on our job as best we were able to and try to allow nothing to distract us from doing the very best job we could. . . .
Each of the components of our hardware were designed to certain reliability specifications, and far the majority, to my recollection, had a reliability requirement of 0.99996, which means that you have four failures in 100,000 operations. I've been told that if every component met its reliability specifications precisely, that a typical Apollo flight would have about [1,000] separate identifiable failures.
In fact, we had more like 150 failures per flight, [substantially] better than statistical methods would tell you that you might have. I can only attribute that to the fact that every guy in the project, every guy at the bench building something, every assembler, every inspector, every guy that's setting up the tests, cranking the torque wrench, and so on, is saying, man or woman, "If anything goes wrong here, it's not going to be my fault, because my part is going to be better than I have to make it." And when you have hundreds of thousands of people all doing their job a little better than they have to, you get an improvement in performance. And that's the only reason we could have pulled this whole thing off. . . .
When I was working here at the Johnson Space Center, then the Manned Spacecraft Center, you could stand across the street and you could not tell when quitting time was, because people didn't leave at quitting time in those days. People just worked, and they worked until whatever their job was done, and if they had to be there until five o'clock or seven o'clock or nine-thirty or whatever it was, they were just there. They did it, and then they went home. So four o'clock or four-thirty, whenever the bell rings, you didn't see anybody leaving. Everybody was still working.
The way that happens and the way that made it different from other sectors of the government to which some people are sometimes properly critical is that this was a project in which everybody involved was, one, interested, two, dedicated, and, three, fascinated by the job they were doing. And whenever you have those ingredients, whether it be government or private industry or a retail store, you're going to win.
The Wall Street Journal, August 27, 2012, on page A15
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444506004577613080016153006.html
Astronaut Neil Armstrong, who died on Saturday at age 82, speaking about the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon, from NASA'S Johnson Space Center Oral History Project:
I was certainly aware that this was a culmination of the work of 300,000 or 400,000 people over a decade and that the nation's hopes and outward appearance largely rested on how the results came out. With those pressures, it seemed the most important thing to do was focus on our job as best we were able to and try to allow nothing to distract us from doing the very best job we could. . . .
Each of the components of our hardware were designed to certain reliability specifications, and far the majority, to my recollection, had a reliability requirement of 0.99996, which means that you have four failures in 100,000 operations. I've been told that if every component met its reliability specifications precisely, that a typical Apollo flight would have about [1,000] separate identifiable failures.
In fact, we had more like 150 failures per flight, [substantially] better than statistical methods would tell you that you might have. I can only attribute that to the fact that every guy in the project, every guy at the bench building something, every assembler, every inspector, every guy that's setting up the tests, cranking the torque wrench, and so on, is saying, man or woman, "If anything goes wrong here, it's not going to be my fault, because my part is going to be better than I have to make it." And when you have hundreds of thousands of people all doing their job a little better than they have to, you get an improvement in performance. And that's the only reason we could have pulled this whole thing off. . . .
When I was working here at the Johnson Space Center, then the Manned Spacecraft Center, you could stand across the street and you could not tell when quitting time was, because people didn't leave at quitting time in those days. People just worked, and they worked until whatever their job was done, and if they had to be there until five o'clock or seven o'clock or nine-thirty or whatever it was, they were just there. They did it, and then they went home. So four o'clock or four-thirty, whenever the bell rings, you didn't see anybody leaving. Everybody was still working.
The way that happens and the way that made it different from other sectors of the government to which some people are sometimes properly critical is that this was a project in which everybody involved was, one, interested, two, dedicated, and, three, fascinated by the job they were doing. And whenever you have those ingredients, whether it be government or private industry or a retail store, you're going to win.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Globalization and Corporate Taxation. By Manmohan Kumar, and Dennis Quinn
Globalization and Corporate Taxation. By Manmohan Kumar, and Dennis Quinn
IMF Working Paper No. 12/252
October 22, 2012
http://www.imfbookstore.org/IMFORG/9781557754752
Summary: This paper analyzes the extent to which the degree of international economic integration, both financial and trade, affects corporate tax rates. It explores this issue in the context of strategic behavior by countries, taking into account other global and domestic political economy factors. Tax rates are analyzed using a unique tax dataset for advanced and developing economies extending over five decades. We report a number of novel results: there is no general negative relationship between financial globalization and corporate tax rates and revenues—results vary according to country grouping with OECD countries showing a positive relationship; the United States exhibits a “Stackelberg” type of leadership on other countries; trade integration is inversely correlated with tax rates; and public sentiment and ideology affect tax rates. The policy implications of these findings, particularly given budgetary pressures in the aftermath of the global crisis, are noted.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=40059.0
IMF Working Paper No. 12/252
October 22, 2012
http://www.imfbookstore.org/IMFORG/9781557754752
Summary: This paper analyzes the extent to which the degree of international economic integration, both financial and trade, affects corporate tax rates. It explores this issue in the context of strategic behavior by countries, taking into account other global and domestic political economy factors. Tax rates are analyzed using a unique tax dataset for advanced and developing economies extending over five decades. We report a number of novel results: there is no general negative relationship between financial globalization and corporate tax rates and revenues—results vary according to country grouping with OECD countries showing a positive relationship; the United States exhibits a “Stackelberg” type of leadership on other countries; trade integration is inversely correlated with tax rates; and public sentiment and ideology affect tax rates. The policy implications of these findings, particularly given budgetary pressures in the aftermath of the global crisis, are noted.
http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/cat/longres.aspx?sk=40059.0
Russia's Ex-Finance Chief Has Grim Outlook for EU. By Alexander Kolyandr
Russia's Ex-Finance Chief Has Grim Outlook for EU. By ALEXANDER KOLYANDR
The Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2012, on page A11
MOSCOW—Just over a year ago, Alexei Kudrin came out of the Group of 20 meetings in Washington warning that the U.S. and Europe weren't doing enough to head off economic slowdown. Now, no longer in government but still highly respected for his fiscal prudence, the former Russian finance minister doesn't have to mince words. His message is even more dire.
Alexei Kudrin, left, spoke with Russia's Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak during the VTB Capital investment conference in New York, April 2012.
Keeping Greece in the euro zone? "Already impossible," he says in an interview. Spain and Italy next for the exit? "The probability is very high." And creditors beware—Mr. Kudrin sees both Greece and Spain defaulting on their sovereign debt.
"Everything should be done to avoid it, but I don't feel that the process is under control," says the man who shepherded Russia from default to financial stability.
As if that weren't worrisome enough, the 52-year-old who was named finance minister of the year by various publications on four separate occasions during his tenure says he now fears that Europe's economic problems may turn into political ones.
Democracies, he says, don't always survive when their citizens are asked to make the kinds of economic sacrifices that Europe now faces. Already, some analysts are comparing Greece's shocked polity to the Weimar Republic.
Mr. Kudrin is more cautious, but plans to participate next month in a conference at St. Petersburg State University, where he is now a dean, on the question of how economic hardships can lead to political upheavals. The case studies aren't inspiring—from Communist Poland to the Soviet Union to Latin American dictatorships.
Mr. Kudrin thinks that citizens of the Western countries aren't ready to accept the steep drop in living standards they face, but that if governments fail to cut spending they will get even deeper collapses.
"Russia faced that in the 1990s, but due to [Russian President Boris] Yeltsin we've passed it peacefully," he says. "I'm not sure the Western countries would be able to pass through such hardships; it may be very painful."
Mr. Kudrin sees the recent decisions of the European Central Bank as only a temporary relief because its funds aren't limitless. However, he says, the euro would survive dropouts.
Mr. Kudrin expects European economies to contract further in the short term, before growth resumes, and he urges governments to reduce debt in order to be prepared for growth.
His outlook for the U.S. isn't much better. While the looming "fiscal cliff"—tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take effect Jan. 1—worries analysts and economists, he said the size of the U.S. deficit is the real longer-term risk.
No matter which party wins the White House, the outlook is tough. "Both are in a very difficult position," he says. Even so, the dollar's future is secure, he says.
"Trust in the U.S. dollar is not shaken yet. If the U.S. administration meets the task of the budget consolidation in several years, the dollar will be firm, but even if it weakens, there would be no other currency to replace, given its scale and importance."
The Wall Street Journal, October 23, 2012, on page A11
MOSCOW—Just over a year ago, Alexei Kudrin came out of the Group of 20 meetings in Washington warning that the U.S. and Europe weren't doing enough to head off economic slowdown. Now, no longer in government but still highly respected for his fiscal prudence, the former Russian finance minister doesn't have to mince words. His message is even more dire.
Alexei Kudrin, left, spoke with Russia's Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Storchak during the VTB Capital investment conference in New York, April 2012.
Keeping Greece in the euro zone? "Already impossible," he says in an interview. Spain and Italy next for the exit? "The probability is very high." And creditors beware—Mr. Kudrin sees both Greece and Spain defaulting on their sovereign debt.
"Everything should be done to avoid it, but I don't feel that the process is under control," says the man who shepherded Russia from default to financial stability.
As if that weren't worrisome enough, the 52-year-old who was named finance minister of the year by various publications on four separate occasions during his tenure says he now fears that Europe's economic problems may turn into political ones.
Democracies, he says, don't always survive when their citizens are asked to make the kinds of economic sacrifices that Europe now faces. Already, some analysts are comparing Greece's shocked polity to the Weimar Republic.
Mr. Kudrin is more cautious, but plans to participate next month in a conference at St. Petersburg State University, where he is now a dean, on the question of how economic hardships can lead to political upheavals. The case studies aren't inspiring—from Communist Poland to the Soviet Union to Latin American dictatorships.
Mr. Kudrin thinks that citizens of the Western countries aren't ready to accept the steep drop in living standards they face, but that if governments fail to cut spending they will get even deeper collapses.
"Russia faced that in the 1990s, but due to [Russian President Boris] Yeltsin we've passed it peacefully," he says. "I'm not sure the Western countries would be able to pass through such hardships; it may be very painful."
Mr. Kudrin sees the recent decisions of the European Central Bank as only a temporary relief because its funds aren't limitless. However, he says, the euro would survive dropouts.
Mr. Kudrin expects European economies to contract further in the short term, before growth resumes, and he urges governments to reduce debt in order to be prepared for growth.
His outlook for the U.S. isn't much better. While the looming "fiscal cliff"—tax increases and spending cuts scheduled to take effect Jan. 1—worries analysts and economists, he said the size of the U.S. deficit is the real longer-term risk.
No matter which party wins the White House, the outlook is tough. "Both are in a very difficult position," he says. Even so, the dollar's future is secure, he says.
"Trust in the U.S. dollar is not shaken yet. If the U.S. administration meets the task of the budget consolidation in several years, the dollar will be firm, but even if it weakens, there would be no other currency to replace, given its scale and importance."
Wednesday, October 17, 2012
Bipartisan Agreement On Single-Sex Education
A Right to Choose Single-Sex Education. By Kay Bailey Hutchison and Barbara Mikulski
For some children, learning in girls-only or boys-only classes pays off. Opponents of the idea are irresponsible.October 16, 2012, 7:11 p.m. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443768804578038191947302764.html
Education proponents across the political spectrum were dismayed by recent attempts to eradicate the single-gender options in public schools in Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Maine and Florida. We were particularly troubled at efforts to thwart education choice for American students and their families because it is a cause we have worked hard to advance.
Studies have shown that some students learn better in a single-gender environment, particularly in math and science. But federal regulations used to prevent public schools from offering that option. So in 2001 we joined with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Susan Collins to author legislation that allowed public schools to offer single-sex education. It was an epic bipartisan battle against entrenched bureaucracy, but well worth the fight.
Since our amendment passed, thousands of American children have benefited. Now, though, some civil libertarians are claiming that single-sex public-school programs are discriminatory and thus illegal.
To be clear: The 2001 law did not require that children be educated in single-gender programs or schools. It simply allowed schools and districts to offer the choice of single-sex schools or classrooms, as long as opportunities were equally available to boys and girls. In the vast and growing realm of education research, one central tenet has been confirmed repeatedly: Children learn in different ways. For some, single-sex classrooms make all the difference.
Critics argue that these programs promote harmful gender stereotypes. Ironically, it is exactly these stereotypes that the single-sex programs seek to eradicate.
As studies have confirmed—and as any parent can tell you—negative gender roles are often sharpened in coeducational environments. Boys are more likely, for instance, to buy into the notion that reading isn't masculine when they're surrounded by (and showing off for) girls.
Girls, meanwhile, have made so much progress in educational achievement that women are overrepresented in postgraduate education. But they still lag in the acquisition of bachelor's and graduate degrees in math and the sciences. It has been demonstrated time and again that young girls are more willing to ask and answer questions in classrooms without boys.
A 2008 Department of Education study found that "both principals and teachers believed that the main benefits of single-sex schooling are decreasing distractions to learning and improving student achievement." The gender slant—the math-is-for-boys, home-EC-is-for-girls trope—is eliminated.
In a three-year study in the mid-2000s, researchers at Florida's Stetson University compared the performance of single-gender and mixed-gender classes at an elementary school, controlling for the likes of class sizes, demographics and teacher training. When the children took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (which measures achievement in math and literacy, for instance), the results were striking: Only 59% of girls in mixed classes were scored as proficient, while 75% of girls in single-sex ones achieved proficiency. Similarly, 37% of boys in coeducational classes scored proficient, compared with 86% of boys in the all-boys classes.
Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, Tenn., the winner of the 2011 Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge, went to a 81.6% graduation rate in 2010 from a graduation rate of 55% in 2007. Among the changes at the school? Implementing all-girls and all-boys freshman academies.
In Dallas, the all-boys Barack Obama Leadership Academy opened its doors last year. There is every reason to believe it will follow the success of the first all-girls public school, Irma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School, which started in 2004. Irma Rangel, which has been a Texas Education Agency Exemplary School since 2006, also took sixth place at the Dallas Independent School District's 30th Annual Mathematics Olympiad that year.
No one is arguing that single-sex education is the best option for every student. But it is preferable for some students and families, and no one has the right to deny them an option that may work best for a particular child. Attempts to eliminate single-sex education are equivalent to taking away students' and parents' choice about one of the most fundamentally important aspects of childhood and future indicators of success—a child's education.
America once dominated educational attainment among developed countries, but we have fallen disastrously in international rankings. As we seek ways to offer the best education for all our children, in ways that are better tailored to their needs, it seems not just counterproductive but damaging to reduce the options. single-sex education in public schools will continue to be a voluntary choice for students and their families. To limit or eliminate single-sex education is irresponsible. To take single-sex education away from students who stand to benefit is unforgivable.
Ms. Hutchison, a Republican, is the senior senator from Texas. Ms. Mikulski, a Democrat, is the senior senator from Maryland.
For some children, learning in girls-only or boys-only classes pays off. Opponents of the idea are irresponsible.October 16, 2012, 7:11 p.m. ET
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443768804578038191947302764.html
Education proponents across the political spectrum were dismayed by recent attempts to eradicate the single-gender options in public schools in Virginia, West Virginia, Alabama, Mississippi, Maine and Florida. We were particularly troubled at efforts to thwart education choice for American students and their families because it is a cause we have worked hard to advance.
Studies have shown that some students learn better in a single-gender environment, particularly in math and science. But federal regulations used to prevent public schools from offering that option. So in 2001 we joined with then-Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Susan Collins to author legislation that allowed public schools to offer single-sex education. It was an epic bipartisan battle against entrenched bureaucracy, but well worth the fight.
Since our amendment passed, thousands of American children have benefited. Now, though, some civil libertarians are claiming that single-sex public-school programs are discriminatory and thus illegal.
To be clear: The 2001 law did not require that children be educated in single-gender programs or schools. It simply allowed schools and districts to offer the choice of single-sex schools or classrooms, as long as opportunities were equally available to boys and girls. In the vast and growing realm of education research, one central tenet has been confirmed repeatedly: Children learn in different ways. For some, single-sex classrooms make all the difference.
Critics argue that these programs promote harmful gender stereotypes. Ironically, it is exactly these stereotypes that the single-sex programs seek to eradicate.
As studies have confirmed—and as any parent can tell you—negative gender roles are often sharpened in coeducational environments. Boys are more likely, for instance, to buy into the notion that reading isn't masculine when they're surrounded by (and showing off for) girls.
Girls, meanwhile, have made so much progress in educational achievement that women are overrepresented in postgraduate education. But they still lag in the acquisition of bachelor's and graduate degrees in math and the sciences. It has been demonstrated time and again that young girls are more willing to ask and answer questions in classrooms without boys.
A 2008 Department of Education study found that "both principals and teachers believed that the main benefits of single-sex schooling are decreasing distractions to learning and improving student achievement." The gender slant—the math-is-for-boys, home-EC-is-for-girls trope—is eliminated.
In a three-year study in the mid-2000s, researchers at Florida's Stetson University compared the performance of single-gender and mixed-gender classes at an elementary school, controlling for the likes of class sizes, demographics and teacher training. When the children took the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (which measures achievement in math and literacy, for instance), the results were striking: Only 59% of girls in mixed classes were scored as proficient, while 75% of girls in single-sex ones achieved proficiency. Similarly, 37% of boys in coeducational classes scored proficient, compared with 86% of boys in the all-boys classes.
Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, Tenn., the winner of the 2011 Race to the Top High School Commencement Challenge, went to a 81.6% graduation rate in 2010 from a graduation rate of 55% in 2007. Among the changes at the school? Implementing all-girls and all-boys freshman academies.
In Dallas, the all-boys Barack Obama Leadership Academy opened its doors last year. There is every reason to believe it will follow the success of the first all-girls public school, Irma Rangel Young Women's Leadership School, which started in 2004. Irma Rangel, which has been a Texas Education Agency Exemplary School since 2006, also took sixth place at the Dallas Independent School District's 30th Annual Mathematics Olympiad that year.
No one is arguing that single-sex education is the best option for every student. But it is preferable for some students and families, and no one has the right to deny them an option that may work best for a particular child. Attempts to eliminate single-sex education are equivalent to taking away students' and parents' choice about one of the most fundamentally important aspects of childhood and future indicators of success—a child's education.
America once dominated educational attainment among developed countries, but we have fallen disastrously in international rankings. As we seek ways to offer the best education for all our children, in ways that are better tailored to their needs, it seems not just counterproductive but damaging to reduce the options. single-sex education in public schools will continue to be a voluntary choice for students and their families. To limit or eliminate single-sex education is irresponsible. To take single-sex education away from students who stand to benefit is unforgivable.
Ms. Hutchison, a Republican, is the senior senator from Texas. Ms. Mikulski, a Democrat, is the senior senator from Maryland.
Tuesday, October 16, 2012
Banking Union for Europe – Risks and Challenges
Banking Union for Europe – Risks and Challenges. By Thorsten Beck
http://blogs.worldbank.org/allaboutfinance/banking-union-for-europe-risks-and-challenges
Excerpts:
The Eurozone crisis has gone through its fair share of buzz words — fiscal compact, growth compact, Big Bazooka. The latest kid on the block is the banking union [discussed by economists since even before the 2007 crisis]. But what kind of banking union? For whom? Financed how? And managed by whom?
A new collection of short essays by leading economists on both sides of the Atlantic — including Josh Aizenman, Franklin Allen, Viral Acharya, Luis Garicano, and Charles Goodhart — takes a closer look at the concept of a banking union for Europe, including the macroeconomic perspective in the context of the current crisis, institutional details, and political economy. The authors do not necessarily agree and point to lots of tradeoffs. However, several consistent messages come out of this collection.
Banking union for whom?
One critical question is whether the banking union should be “just” for the Eurozone or for the whole European Union. In my contribution, I argue that the need for a banking union is stronger within a currency union, as it is here where the close link between monetary and financial stability plays out strongest.
The institutional details
Should the responsibilities for running the banking union be concentrated in the ECB? There is certainly a strong argument for centralizing responsibility on the supra-national level. There are clear arguments to separate bank resolution and deposit insurance in an institution outside the ECB, to avoid conflicts between monetary and micro-stability goals and introduce additional monitoring (Dirk Schoenmaker). One argument for a supra-national supervisor is that it would help reduce the political capture of regulators that has been observed across Europe over the past years and became obvious during the current crisis. This lesson can also be learned from Spain, as Luis Garicano points out: “the supervisor must be able and willing to stand up to politicians.” In addition, there is a supervisory tendency to be too lenient toward national champions, while bailing them out is too costly, [and] Andrew Gimber argue, however, that the ECB might not necessarily be a tougher supervisor than national supervisors. It might actually be more lenient, because it is concerned about contagion across the Eurozone and it has more resources available. Tying its hands by rules might therefore be necessary.
Looking west across the Atlantic
This time is not different. Studying history can be insightful, for both economists and policymakers. Accordingly, several observers have looked for comparisons in economic history for clues on how to solve the Eurozone crisis. Joshua Aizenman argues that the history of the United States suggests large gains from buffering currency unions with union-wide deposit insurance and partial debt mutualization. It is important to note, however, that it took the United States a long time to get to where it is now, and quite a lot of institutional experimentation and several national banking crises. And, as is currently being discussed in Europe, the United States had to address both banking fragility and state over-indebtedness. Fiscal and banking unions go hand in hand.
It’s the politics, stupid!
In addition to a banking, sovereign, macroeconomic, and currency crisis, the Eurozone faces a governance crisis. Diverse interests have hampered the efficient and prompt resolution of the crisis. And as financial support for several peripheral Eurozone countries has involved political conflicts both between and within Eurozone countries, so the discussion on the banking union has an important political economy aspect, Geoffrey Underhill points out. More importantly, there is an increasing lack of political legitimacy and sustainability of the Eurozone and for the move toward closer fiscal and banking integration. “Citizens in both creditor and debtor countries increasingly perceive rightly or wrongly that the common currency and perhaps European integration tout court have intensified economic risks.” A banking union can therefore only succeed with the necessary electoral support.
http://blogs.worldbank.org/allaboutfinance/banking-union-for-europe-risks-and-challenges
Excerpts:
The Eurozone crisis has gone through its fair share of buzz words — fiscal compact, growth compact, Big Bazooka. The latest kid on the block is the banking union [discussed by economists since even before the 2007 crisis]. But what kind of banking union? For whom? Financed how? And managed by whom?
A new collection of short essays by leading economists on both sides of the Atlantic — including Josh Aizenman, Franklin Allen, Viral Acharya, Luis Garicano, and Charles Goodhart — takes a closer look at the concept of a banking union for Europe, including the macroeconomic perspective in the context of the current crisis, institutional details, and political economy. The authors do not necessarily agree and point to lots of tradeoffs. However, several consistent messages come out of this collection.
- No piecemeal approach. Centralizing supervision alone at the supra-national level, while leaving bank resolution and recapitalization at the national level, is not only unhelpful but might make things worse.
- A banking union is part of a larger reform package that has to address sovereign fragility and the entanglement of banks with sovereigns.
- Immediate crisis resolution vs. long-term reforms. There is an urgent need to address banking and sovereign fragility to resolve the Eurozone crisis. Transitional solutions that deal with legacy problems, both at the bank and at the sovereign level, are urgently needed and can buy sufficient time to implement the many long-term institutional reforms that cannot be introduced immediately.
Banking union for whom?
One critical question is whether the banking union should be “just” for the Eurozone or for the whole European Union. In my contribution, I argue that the need for a banking union is stronger within a currency union, as it is here where the close link between monetary and financial stability plays out strongest.
The institutional details
Should the responsibilities for running the banking union be concentrated in the ECB? There is certainly a strong argument for centralizing responsibility on the supra-national level. There are clear arguments to separate bank resolution and deposit insurance in an institution outside the ECB, to avoid conflicts between monetary and micro-stability goals and introduce additional monitoring (Dirk Schoenmaker). One argument for a supra-national supervisor is that it would help reduce the political capture of regulators that has been observed across Europe over the past years and became obvious during the current crisis. This lesson can also be learned from Spain, as Luis Garicano points out: “the supervisor must be able and willing to stand up to politicians.” In addition, there is a supervisory tendency to be too lenient toward national champions, while bailing them out is too costly, [and] Andrew Gimber argue, however, that the ECB might not necessarily be a tougher supervisor than national supervisors. It might actually be more lenient, because it is concerned about contagion across the Eurozone and it has more resources available. Tying its hands by rules might therefore be necessary.
Looking west across the Atlantic
This time is not different. Studying history can be insightful, for both economists and policymakers. Accordingly, several observers have looked for comparisons in economic history for clues on how to solve the Eurozone crisis. Joshua Aizenman argues that the history of the United States suggests large gains from buffering currency unions with union-wide deposit insurance and partial debt mutualization. It is important to note, however, that it took the United States a long time to get to where it is now, and quite a lot of institutional experimentation and several national banking crises. And, as is currently being discussed in Europe, the United States had to address both banking fragility and state over-indebtedness. Fiscal and banking unions go hand in hand.
It’s the politics, stupid!
In addition to a banking, sovereign, macroeconomic, and currency crisis, the Eurozone faces a governance crisis. Diverse interests have hampered the efficient and prompt resolution of the crisis. And as financial support for several peripheral Eurozone countries has involved political conflicts both between and within Eurozone countries, so the discussion on the banking union has an important political economy aspect, Geoffrey Underhill points out. More importantly, there is an increasing lack of political legitimacy and sustainability of the Eurozone and for the move toward closer fiscal and banking integration. “Citizens in both creditor and debtor countries increasingly perceive rightly or wrongly that the common currency and perhaps European integration tout court have intensified economic risks.” A banking union can therefore only succeed with the necessary electoral support.
Sunday, October 14, 2012
Exploring the Dynamics of Global Liquidity. By Sally Chen et al.
Exploring the Dynamics of Global Liquidity. By Sally Chen, Philip Liu, Andrea Maechler, Chris Marsh, Sergejs Saksonovs, and Hyun Song Shin
IMF Working Paper WP/12/246
Oct 2012
JEL Classification Numbers: G01, G15, G18, G32, C23
Keywords: Liquidity, core and noncore financial liabilities, shadow banking, growth
Excerpts
Introduction
Recent financial crises in the U.S. and Europe have brought the impact of liquidity on economic and financial stability into sharp relief. Much of this impact has long been documented. Domestically, liquidity has been seen as having important implications for the real economy and the financial system (for example Friedman and Schwarz, 1963). It can drive up asset prices and encourage risk-taking, with negative consequences for financial stability (Borio and Zhu, 2008). Globally, the allocation liquidity affects macroeconomic and financial developments in ways that are not directly under the control of national policymaker (a theme of recent GFSR and spillover reports, see IMF, 2011a; IMF, 2011b; IMF, 2011c; IMF, 2011d; also Matsumoto, 2011; and Darius and Radde, 2010).
At the most basic level, liquidity can be described as the amount of funding readily available to finance domestic and cross-border asset purchases. Liquidity reflects both the ability and willingness of parties to engage in financial transactions, including intermediation, as well as the capacity of financial markets to absorb temporary fluctuations in demand and supply without undue dislocations in prices. In part because of the many purposes liquidity serves, there is no straightforward way to assess developments in global liquidity conditions.
One challenge in measuring liquidity is that it is largely endogenous and highly cyclical, contributing to the build-up of risks to financial stability and be affected by them in return. While central bank injection of base money plays an important role in liquidity creation, flows in global liquidity are also driven by growth differentials, financial innovation, and market participants’ risk appetite (CGFS, 2011). For example, the recent explosion of collateralized market-based borrowing, where funding expands or contracts depending on the market value of the underlying collateral, has introduced a significant source of endogeneity (IMF, 2011e, 2011f, 2011g). Similarly, if for some reason, private agents become unwilling to transact, much of the liquidity can disappear and the same amount of liquidity as measured by quantity aggregates may go from being abundant to scarce, with attendant price increases, while exacerbating the potentially volatile nature of liquidity.
The case for monitoring global liquidity conditions is not straightforward. While there is conflicting evidence whether national monetary aggregates contain useful information about the business cycles, and possible asset price misalignments, the value of aggregating national monetary aggregates is particularly questionable given their differences. Domestic quantity measures of money aggregates have fallen out of fashion in some countries, such as the United States, because of the lack of empirically-stable relations between money aggregates and macroeconomic variables. At the same time, the global financial crisis has made clear that traditional monetary aggregates on a national level may not capture the full range of liquidity-creating instruments nor the full impact of the activities of large cross border financial intermediaries, which play an increasingly important role in globally integrated capital markets. In particular, the source of funding—whether via deposit funding or wholesale funding—matters. The crisis has also highlighted that financial structure does matter—especially in times of stress, in sharp contrast to the frictionless financial market hypothesis underlying modern monetary theory (Tirole, 2011).
Approaches to liquidity measurement generally fall along two lines: the asset side or the liability side. From the asset side, efforts involve measuring the amount of global credit extended to the private sector, providing valuable insights about the liquidity cycle through the private sector balance sheet expansion. The liability side approach, adopted in this paper, focuses on the funding available to expand financial institutions’ balance sheets and the risks associated with sudden funding reversals, as manifested during the global financial crisis. Put differently, “liquidity” as measured here, is the degree to which institutions can borrow—as measured by the liability side of the balance sheets—and to expand and contract balance sheets through increases in leverage or consolidation based on collateral valuations. A key advantage of the current funding-based approach is that it aims at capturing not only bankbased financial intermediation but also the broader range of wholesale intermediation, something which has proven difficult to do on the credit side.
The use of price and quantity measures together can help better understand developments in liquidity conditions. Quantity indicators, which reflect the size of the risk exposure, tend to be slow-moving, making them ill-suited as forward-looking indicators of crises. Similarly, price indicators are coincident indicators, spiking only when the crisis is already underway, making them equally poor early warning indicators. Combining the behavior of prices and quantities provides a richer framework of analysis. It sheds light on the paradox of risk management, where risk (as reflected by the size of exposures) is often at its highest when its perception (as reflected by the price of funding) is at its lowest. Additionally, analyzing price and quantity measures together helps disentangling the pull- and push-factors driving the behavior of liquidity. Persistent increases in liquidity supply—for example, driven by financial innovations—would result in growing liquidity (quantity) and falling interest rates (prices). By contrast, higher demand for liquidity—driven by rising risk appetite and expectations of higher returns—would result in increases in both price and quantity measures.
Important caveats are in order. First and foremost, there is no theoretical framework to determine an optimal level of global liquidity, nor do we know how global liquidity should behave to promote sound, sustainable global growth with financial stability. Second, financial markets are undergoing rapid transformation, the underlying reality that these indicators try to capture is therefore constantly evolving, at a rapid pace. Finally, serious data shortcomings remain—for example, only a few countries compute flow of funds data while cross-country reporting consistency is still lacking. Thus, any policy conclusions from our measurement exercises should depend on a thorough analysis of the underlying developments. More research is needed to improve the measurement of liquidity and develop a theoretical basis for understanding its economic and financial implications.
IMF Working Paper WP/12/246
Oct 2012
JEL Classification Numbers: G01, G15, G18, G32, C23
Keywords: Liquidity, core and noncore financial liabilities, shadow banking, growth
Excerpts
Introduction
Recent financial crises in the U.S. and Europe have brought the impact of liquidity on economic and financial stability into sharp relief. Much of this impact has long been documented. Domestically, liquidity has been seen as having important implications for the real economy and the financial system (for example Friedman and Schwarz, 1963). It can drive up asset prices and encourage risk-taking, with negative consequences for financial stability (Borio and Zhu, 2008). Globally, the allocation liquidity affects macroeconomic and financial developments in ways that are not directly under the control of national policymaker (a theme of recent GFSR and spillover reports, see IMF, 2011a; IMF, 2011b; IMF, 2011c; IMF, 2011d; also Matsumoto, 2011; and Darius and Radde, 2010).
At the most basic level, liquidity can be described as the amount of funding readily available to finance domestic and cross-border asset purchases. Liquidity reflects both the ability and willingness of parties to engage in financial transactions, including intermediation, as well as the capacity of financial markets to absorb temporary fluctuations in demand and supply without undue dislocations in prices. In part because of the many purposes liquidity serves, there is no straightforward way to assess developments in global liquidity conditions.
One challenge in measuring liquidity is that it is largely endogenous and highly cyclical, contributing to the build-up of risks to financial stability and be affected by them in return. While central bank injection of base money plays an important role in liquidity creation, flows in global liquidity are also driven by growth differentials, financial innovation, and market participants’ risk appetite (CGFS, 2011). For example, the recent explosion of collateralized market-based borrowing, where funding expands or contracts depending on the market value of the underlying collateral, has introduced a significant source of endogeneity (IMF, 2011e, 2011f, 2011g). Similarly, if for some reason, private agents become unwilling to transact, much of the liquidity can disappear and the same amount of liquidity as measured by quantity aggregates may go from being abundant to scarce, with attendant price increases, while exacerbating the potentially volatile nature of liquidity.
The case for monitoring global liquidity conditions is not straightforward. While there is conflicting evidence whether national monetary aggregates contain useful information about the business cycles, and possible asset price misalignments, the value of aggregating national monetary aggregates is particularly questionable given their differences. Domestic quantity measures of money aggregates have fallen out of fashion in some countries, such as the United States, because of the lack of empirically-stable relations between money aggregates and macroeconomic variables. At the same time, the global financial crisis has made clear that traditional monetary aggregates on a national level may not capture the full range of liquidity-creating instruments nor the full impact of the activities of large cross border financial intermediaries, which play an increasingly important role in globally integrated capital markets. In particular, the source of funding—whether via deposit funding or wholesale funding—matters. The crisis has also highlighted that financial structure does matter—especially in times of stress, in sharp contrast to the frictionless financial market hypothesis underlying modern monetary theory (Tirole, 2011).
Approaches to liquidity measurement generally fall along two lines: the asset side or the liability side. From the asset side, efforts involve measuring the amount of global credit extended to the private sector, providing valuable insights about the liquidity cycle through the private sector balance sheet expansion. The liability side approach, adopted in this paper, focuses on the funding available to expand financial institutions’ balance sheets and the risks associated with sudden funding reversals, as manifested during the global financial crisis. Put differently, “liquidity” as measured here, is the degree to which institutions can borrow—as measured by the liability side of the balance sheets—and to expand and contract balance sheets through increases in leverage or consolidation based on collateral valuations. A key advantage of the current funding-based approach is that it aims at capturing not only bankbased financial intermediation but also the broader range of wholesale intermediation, something which has proven difficult to do on the credit side.
The use of price and quantity measures together can help better understand developments in liquidity conditions. Quantity indicators, which reflect the size of the risk exposure, tend to be slow-moving, making them ill-suited as forward-looking indicators of crises. Similarly, price indicators are coincident indicators, spiking only when the crisis is already underway, making them equally poor early warning indicators. Combining the behavior of prices and quantities provides a richer framework of analysis. It sheds light on the paradox of risk management, where risk (as reflected by the size of exposures) is often at its highest when its perception (as reflected by the price of funding) is at its lowest. Additionally, analyzing price and quantity measures together helps disentangling the pull- and push-factors driving the behavior of liquidity. Persistent increases in liquidity supply—for example, driven by financial innovations—would result in growing liquidity (quantity) and falling interest rates (prices). By contrast, higher demand for liquidity—driven by rising risk appetite and expectations of higher returns—would result in increases in both price and quantity measures.
Important caveats are in order. First and foremost, there is no theoretical framework to determine an optimal level of global liquidity, nor do we know how global liquidity should behave to promote sound, sustainable global growth with financial stability. Second, financial markets are undergoing rapid transformation, the underlying reality that these indicators try to capture is therefore constantly evolving, at a rapid pace. Finally, serious data shortcomings remain—for example, only a few countries compute flow of funds data while cross-country reporting consistency is still lacking. Thus, any policy conclusions from our measurement exercises should depend on a thorough analysis of the underlying developments. More research is needed to improve the measurement of liquidity and develop a theoretical basis for understanding its economic and financial implications.
Friday, October 12, 2012
Basel Committee: Dealing with domestic systemically important banks
Dealing with domestic systemically important banks: framework issued by the Basel Committee
October 11, 2012
http://www.bis.org/press/p121011.htm
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued today its Framework for dealing with domestic systemically important banks.
In November 2011, the Basel Committee issued final rules for global systemically important banks (G-SIBs). The G20 leaders endorsed these rules at their November 2011 meeting and asked the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board to work on extending the framework to domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs).
While not all D-SIBs are significant from a global perspective, the failure of such a bank could have a much greater impact on its domestic financial system and economy than that of a non-systemic institution. Some of these banks may have cross-border externalities, even if the effects are not global in nature.
Against this backdrop, the Basel Committee developed a set of principles on the assessment methodology and the higher loss absorbency requirement for D-SIBs. 1 The framework takes a complementary perspective to the G-SIB framework by focusing on the impact that the distress or failure of banks will have on the domestic economy.
Given that the D-SIB framework complements the G-SIB framework, the Committee considers that it would be appropriate if banks identified as D-SIBs by their national authorities are required by those authorities to comply with the principles in line with the phase-in arrangements for the G-SIB framework, ie from January 2016.
Mr Stefan Ingves, Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and Governor of Sveriges Riksbank, noted that "the impact of the failure of a domestic systemically important bank could be significantly greater than that of a non-systemic institution. The principles developed by the Committee address this issue while retaining national flexibility to accommodate the specific characteristics of domestic financial systems. The framework will complement the measures on global systemically important banks announced last year, and contribute to a safer and sounder financial system."
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A framework for dealing with domestic systemically important banks - final document
http://www.bis.org/publ/bcbs233.htm
The framework text sets out the Basel Committee's framework for dealing with domestic systemically important banks.
While not all D-SIBs are significant from a global perspective, the failure of such a bank could have a much greater impact on its domestic financial system and economy than that of a non-system
Excerpts:
I. Introduction
1. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (the Committee) issued the rules text on the assessment methodology for global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) and their additional loss absorbency requirements in November 2011. The G-SIB rules text was endorsed by the G20 Leaders at their November 2011 meeting. The G20 Leaders also asked the Committee and the Financial Stability Board to work on modalities to extend expeditiously the G-SIFI framework to domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs).
2. The rationale for adopting additional policy measures for G-SIBs was based on the “negative externalities” (ie adverse side effects) created by systemically important banks which current regulatory policies do not fully address. In maximising their private benefits, individual financial institutions may rationally choose outcomes that, from a system-wide level, are sub-optimal because they do not take into account these externalities. These negative externalities include the impact of the failure or impairment of large, interconnected global financial institutions that can send shocks through the financial system which, in turn, can harm the real economy. Moreover, the moral hazard costs associated with direct support and implicit government guarantees may amplify risk-taking, reduce market discipline, create competitive distortions, and further increase the probability of distress in the future. As a result, the costs associated with moral hazard add to any direct costs of support that may be borne by taxpayers.
3. The additional requirement applied to G-SIBs, which applies over and above the Basel III requirements that are being introduced for all internationally-active banks, is intended to limit these cross-border negative externalities on the global financial system and economy associated with the most globally systemic banking institutions. But similar externalities can apply at a domestic level. There are many banks that are not significant from an international perspective, but nevertheless could have an important impact on their domestic financial system and economy compared to non-systemic institutions. Some of these banks may have cross-border externalities, even if the effects are not global in nature. Similar to the case of G-SIBs, it was considered appropriate to review ways to address the externalities posed by D-SIBs.
4. A D-SIB framework is best understood as taking the complementary perspective to the G-SIB regime by focusing on the impact that the distress or failure of banks (including by international banks) will have on the domestic economy. As such, it is based on the assessment conducted by the local authorities, who are best placed to evaluate the impact of failure on the local financial system and the local economy.
5. This point has two implications. The first is that in order to accommodate the structural characteristics of individual jurisdictions, the assessment and application of policy tools should allow for an appropriate degree of national discretion. This contrasts with the prescriptive approach in the G-SIB framework. The second implication is that because a D-SIB framework is still relevant for reducing cross-border externalities due to spillovers at regional or bilateral level, the effectiveness of local authorities in addressing risks posed by individual banks is of interest to a wider group of countries. A framework, therefore, should establish a minimum set of principles, which ensures that it is complementary with the G-SIB framework, addresses adequately cross-border externalities and promotes a level-playing field.
6. The principles developed by the Committee for D-SIBs would allow for appropriate national discretion to accommodate structural characteristics of the domestic financial system, including the possibility for countries to go beyond the minimum D-SIB framework and impose additional requirements based on the specific features of the country and its domestic banking sector.
7. The principles set out in the document focus on the higher loss absorbency (HLA) requirement for D-SIBs. The Committee would like to emphasise that other policy tools, particularly more intensive supervision, can also play an important role in dealing with D-SIBs.
8. The principles were developed to be applied to consolidated groups and subsidiaries. However, national authorities may apply them to branches in their jurisdictions in accordance with their legal and regulatory frameworks.
9. The implementation of the principles will be combined with a strong peer review process introduced by the Committee. The Committee intends to add the D-SIB framework to the scope of the Basel III regulatory consistency assessment programme. This will help ensure that appropriate and effective frameworks for D-SIBs are in place across different jurisdictions.
10. Given that the D-SIB framework complements the G-SIB framework, the Committee considers that it would be appropriate if banks identified as D-SIBs by their national authorities are required by those authorities to comply with the principlesic institution. Some of these banks may have cross-border externalities, even if the effects are not global in nature.
Against this backdrop, the Basel Committee developed a set of principles on the assessment methodology and the higher loss absorbency requirement for D-SIBs. The framework takes a complementary perspective to the G-SIB framework by focusing on the impact that the distress or failure of banks will have on the domestic economy.
Given that the D-SIB framework complements the G-SIB framework, the Committee considers that it would be appropriate if banks identified as D-SIBs by their national authorities are required by those authorities to comply with the principles in line with the phase-in arrangements for the G-SIB framework, ie from January 2016.
October 11, 2012
http://www.bis.org/press/p121011.htm
The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision issued today its Framework for dealing with domestic systemically important banks.
In November 2011, the Basel Committee issued final rules for global systemically important banks (G-SIBs). The G20 leaders endorsed these rules at their November 2011 meeting and asked the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board to work on extending the framework to domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs).
While not all D-SIBs are significant from a global perspective, the failure of such a bank could have a much greater impact on its domestic financial system and economy than that of a non-systemic institution. Some of these banks may have cross-border externalities, even if the effects are not global in nature.
Against this backdrop, the Basel Committee developed a set of principles on the assessment methodology and the higher loss absorbency requirement for D-SIBs. 1 The framework takes a complementary perspective to the G-SIB framework by focusing on the impact that the distress or failure of banks will have on the domestic economy.
Given that the D-SIB framework complements the G-SIB framework, the Committee considers that it would be appropriate if banks identified as D-SIBs by their national authorities are required by those authorities to comply with the principles in line with the phase-in arrangements for the G-SIB framework, ie from January 2016.
Mr Stefan Ingves, Chairman of the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision and Governor of Sveriges Riksbank, noted that "the impact of the failure of a domestic systemically important bank could be significantly greater than that of a non-systemic institution. The principles developed by the Committee address this issue while retaining national flexibility to accommodate the specific characteristics of domestic financial systems. The framework will complement the measures on global systemically important banks announced last year, and contribute to a safer and sounder financial system."
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A framework for dealing with domestic systemically important banks - final document
October 2012
The framework text sets out the Basel Committee's framework for dealing with domestic systemically important banks.
Background
In November 2011, the Basel Committee issued final rules for global systemically important banks (G-SIBs). The G20 leaders endorsed these rules at their November 2011 meeting and asked the Basel Committee and the Financial Stability Board to work on extending the framework to domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs).While not all D-SIBs are significant from a global perspective, the failure of such a bank could have a much greater impact on its domestic financial system and economy than that of a non-system
Excerpts:
I. Introduction
1. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (the Committee) issued the rules text on the assessment methodology for global systemically important banks (G-SIBs) and their additional loss absorbency requirements in November 2011. The G-SIB rules text was endorsed by the G20 Leaders at their November 2011 meeting. The G20 Leaders also asked the Committee and the Financial Stability Board to work on modalities to extend expeditiously the G-SIFI framework to domestic systemically important banks (D-SIBs).
2. The rationale for adopting additional policy measures for G-SIBs was based on the “negative externalities” (ie adverse side effects) created by systemically important banks which current regulatory policies do not fully address. In maximising their private benefits, individual financial institutions may rationally choose outcomes that, from a system-wide level, are sub-optimal because they do not take into account these externalities. These negative externalities include the impact of the failure or impairment of large, interconnected global financial institutions that can send shocks through the financial system which, in turn, can harm the real economy. Moreover, the moral hazard costs associated with direct support and implicit government guarantees may amplify risk-taking, reduce market discipline, create competitive distortions, and further increase the probability of distress in the future. As a result, the costs associated with moral hazard add to any direct costs of support that may be borne by taxpayers.
3. The additional requirement applied to G-SIBs, which applies over and above the Basel III requirements that are being introduced for all internationally-active banks, is intended to limit these cross-border negative externalities on the global financial system and economy associated with the most globally systemic banking institutions. But similar externalities can apply at a domestic level. There are many banks that are not significant from an international perspective, but nevertheless could have an important impact on their domestic financial system and economy compared to non-systemic institutions. Some of these banks may have cross-border externalities, even if the effects are not global in nature. Similar to the case of G-SIBs, it was considered appropriate to review ways to address the externalities posed by D-SIBs.
4. A D-SIB framework is best understood as taking the complementary perspective to the G-SIB regime by focusing on the impact that the distress or failure of banks (including by international banks) will have on the domestic economy. As such, it is based on the assessment conducted by the local authorities, who are best placed to evaluate the impact of failure on the local financial system and the local economy.
5. This point has two implications. The first is that in order to accommodate the structural characteristics of individual jurisdictions, the assessment and application of policy tools should allow for an appropriate degree of national discretion. This contrasts with the prescriptive approach in the G-SIB framework. The second implication is that because a D-SIB framework is still relevant for reducing cross-border externalities due to spillovers at regional or bilateral level, the effectiveness of local authorities in addressing risks posed by individual banks is of interest to a wider group of countries. A framework, therefore, should establish a minimum set of principles, which ensures that it is complementary with the G-SIB framework, addresses adequately cross-border externalities and promotes a level-playing field.
6. The principles developed by the Committee for D-SIBs would allow for appropriate national discretion to accommodate structural characteristics of the domestic financial system, including the possibility for countries to go beyond the minimum D-SIB framework and impose additional requirements based on the specific features of the country and its domestic banking sector.
7. The principles set out in the document focus on the higher loss absorbency (HLA) requirement for D-SIBs. The Committee would like to emphasise that other policy tools, particularly more intensive supervision, can also play an important role in dealing with D-SIBs.
8. The principles were developed to be applied to consolidated groups and subsidiaries. However, national authorities may apply them to branches in their jurisdictions in accordance with their legal and regulatory frameworks.
9. The implementation of the principles will be combined with a strong peer review process introduced by the Committee. The Committee intends to add the D-SIB framework to the scope of the Basel III regulatory consistency assessment programme. This will help ensure that appropriate and effective frameworks for D-SIBs are in place across different jurisdictions.
10. Given that the D-SIB framework complements the G-SIB framework, the Committee considers that it would be appropriate if banks identified as D-SIBs by their national authorities are required by those authorities to comply with the principlesic institution. Some of these banks may have cross-border externalities, even if the effects are not global in nature.
Against this backdrop, the Basel Committee developed a set of principles on the assessment methodology and the higher loss absorbency requirement for D-SIBs. The framework takes a complementary perspective to the G-SIB framework by focusing on the impact that the distress or failure of banks will have on the domestic economy.
Given that the D-SIB framework complements the G-SIB framework, the Committee considers that it would be appropriate if banks identified as D-SIBs by their national authorities are required by those authorities to comply with the principles in line with the phase-in arrangements for the G-SIB framework, ie from January 2016.
Wednesday, October 10, 2012
Silver Linings in the Indian Economy
Silver Linings in the Indian Economy. By Harun R Khan, Deputy Governor, Reserve Bank of India
Fifth Annual Banking Conference on “The Silver Lining of the Indian Economy” organized by NMIMS School of Banking Management
October 6, 2012, Bombay
http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Speeches/PDFs/SSLIE091012.pdf
Excerpts:
Recent actions start the course correction but momentum needs to be kept
2. Recent policy measures taken by the government are very significant. They have started the course correction from a point where the Indian growth story was close to getting seriously damaged. However, for these measures to succeed it is important to keep up the momentum. More steps and effective implementation over next 2-3 years are necessary to fully recoup the lost ground.The economy has been facing serious headwinds as growth had slowed down to 5.5 per cent or less for the last two quarters over and above the subdued growth rate of 6.5 per cent for 2011-12, a rate even lower than crisis period low point of 6.7 per cent growth in 2007-08. Our saving and investment rate had also slipped since 2008-09. Gross domestic saving rate averaged 32.7 per cent in three years 2010-11 against 35.0 per cent in the preceding three years due mainly to fall in public sector saving rate. Our gross domestic investment rate averaged 34.1 per cent against 34.9 per cent for the same periods as corporate investment rate fell sharply. Preliminary estimates suggest a further sharp drop in household financial savings in 2011-12 at less than 8.0 per cent of the GDP from more than 12 per cent two years back. Also, corporate investment is likely to have declined further. With falling saving and investment, rise in twin deficits and inflation, potential growth had also dropped by one percentage point or more in the post-global financial crisis period. As we know, potential growth indicates the rate of growth the economy can achieve consistent with stable macro-economic conditions.On the other hand, inflation rose sharply to above comfort levels since December 2009 and averaged 9.5 per cent for next 24-months before lowering to sub-eight per cent but still proving to be intransigent. It is staying sticky at over 7 per cent. Centre’s fiscal deficit had slipped during 2011-12 to 5.8 per cent against the budgeted 4.6 per cent for the year and 4.9 per cent in 2010-11. With gross under-recoveries of oil marketing companies working out to over Rs1.8 trillion or 0.8 per cent of GDP due to unrevised prices of diesel, LPG and kerosene, there was little doubt the centre’s GFD/GDP budgeted estimate would then have overshot by a wide margin. Even after the revision of diesel prices and capping of subsidised LPG cylinders, the budget imbalances are obvious, underscoring the importance of further fiscal measures to contain deficit this year.
3. The current account deficit (CAD) had risen to an all-time high of 4.2 per cent of GDP in 2011-12 and 4.5 per cent of GDP during Q4 of 2011-12. In other words, rising twin deficit, slowing growth and sticky inflation provided all the ingredients for a possible economic crisis. Noting this macro-economic deterioration, some international credit rating agencies had already put India’s sovereign rating on a watch list for an impending downgrade that would have pushed India to a subinvestment grade.
The slew of measures in a span of less than a month should count
4. Against this background, the policy actions that were announced in September 2012 should be seen as major initiatives to reverse the course of economic growth path in the country. In a slew of measures of economic reforms, the government raised diesel prices by `5 per litre and capped subsidised LPG cooking gas cylinders to six a year per household. It permitted foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail up to 51 per cent, in aviation sector up to 49 per cent and in some broadcasting services up to 75 per cent. It also approved sale of its minority stakes in four public sector firms -- Oil India (by 10 per cent), Hindustan Copper (9.59 per cent), MMTC (9.33 per cent) and Nalco (12.15 per cent) -- to raise up to `150 billion – half its disinvestment receipts target for the year. These measures were followed up with an announcement that withholding tax liability will be reduced to 5 percent from 20 per cent for the overseas borrowings /bond issuances for infrastructure sector by Indian firms during July 2012 and June 2015.
5. A debt relief package for the state power distribution companies (discoms) has now been approved. Once implemented efficiently, it can turnaround the investment scenario once again. This month, a package for the life insurance sector was also worked out. The package includes easing investment norms for insurers, faster clearance for new products, easing of procedures, allowing banks to sell products of more than one insurance company and possibly some tax concessions for the insurance sector. More sector-specific packages could follow allowing structural bottlenecks to be removed without sacrificing on regulatory discipline.The Cabinet has also cleared foreign equity cap in insurance sectors at 49 per cent through Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2008. It also approved certain amendments to the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill, 2011 that included foreign investment ceiling in the pension sector at 26 per cent or such percentage as may be approved for the insurance sector, whichever is higher, may be incorporated in the present legislation. Besides, it approved several other plans that are important for the economy, such as the 12th Five Year Plan document for taking it to the National Development Council (NDC), amendments to the Companies Bill 2011, the Forward Contracts (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2010 and the Competition Act, 2002. These moves show the intent and the policy direction though the ultimate impact would depend on the political process of law making that follows.There are several unknowns, such as, the timing of debates and votes, the floor management on the day of the vote and most importantly, the process by which political differences are narrowed enough to see the results. The foundation has been laid and one can be confident that the Indian democracy would once again stand the test of the time.
6. On our part, we certainly think that the slew of economic reforms measures undertaken by the government recently would impart a positive momentum to the economy. The Reserve Bank in its Mid-Quarter Review of Monetary Policy noted the likely positive impact of the changes in FDI policy on capital flows and over the long run on higher productivity, particularly in food supplychains. The Reserve Bank had been consistently arguing for need for supply-side responses to help contain inflation. Earlier in its Annual Report released in August 2012, it had highlighted the urgent need to step up non-debt creating inflows, especially in the form of FDI in view of the wide current account deficit (CAD). It had argued for further improving the FDI inflows in sectors such as insurance, retail, aviation and urban infrastructure. It had noted that FDI in retail may be particularly helpful in improving supply chain management through greater investment in backend infrastructure, including cold storage for farm and poultry products.
7. Considering that these steps being undertaken paved the way for a more favourable growth-inflation dynamics, the Reserve Bank moved to address possible liquidity tightening ahead by a pre-emptive 25 basis point cut in its Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) at its Mid-term policy announced on September 17, 2012. CRR is also a potent monetary policy tool and should help in lowering the cost of credit and augmenting its supply, thus improving credit flows. The CRR cut was in addition to a 50 basis point policy rate reduction that the Reserve Bank had effected in April 2012 in anticipation of action for fiscal consolidation and supply-side initiatives.
8. Several policy measures have been taken in less than a month. When these measures get implemented and feed through the system, they would contribute significantly to recovery of India’s growth as well as growth potential. Capital flows have recovered and would go a long way in restoring confidence for business activity in the country. Growth would start improving as a result. Whether the recovery will be quick or slow-paced would depend on several factors, including global conditions, which at the moment are not very conducive in spite of some positive news on labour and housing markets in the US. What is important is that recent actions by the Government have reduced the macro-economic risks and structural impediments.
9. Part of our recent woes was self-inflicted as inadequate movement on policy and implementation fronts worsened investment climate that had already suffered due to global uncertainties and cyclical downturn in the Indian economy. This had added an element of structural retrogression in the Indian economy. The government has now shown its resolve to effectively redress this. If steps announced are well-implemented and if we stay on path of reforms, the economy would turnaround faster than what many expect. But several challenges remain and not only policy changes but effective implementation holds the key to success.
10. The most important challenge would be to further lower the twin deficits by staying on path of fiscal consolidation, keeping a tab on private consumption demand and using expenditure switching policies to lower CAD. Monetary policy would for some more time need to focus on inflation while using available space to support growth to the degree it can. Inflation, if left unattended to, can play the biggest spoil sport. The rupee has already appreciated 6.8 per cent against US dollar since the onset of this new wave of reforms on September 13, 2012. This may help lower inflation somewhat as exchange rate-pass-through takes place. However, it is important to understand that exchange rate is neither a first-best solution nor a sufficient tool for addressing the challenges of structural inflation that we face today. Ultimately, fiscal policy would need to work towards expediting supply-side responses and keeping private consumption demand in reasonable control. Monetary policy would need to be cautious in the interim.
Downward cycle may be bottoming out
11. After a downturn, there are some signs of green shoots that if nursed with appropriate policies, including continuous economic reforms, with an eye on macro-financial stability, can pave the way of recovery for the Indian economy. Falling growth was somewhat arrested in Q1 of 2012-13. At 5.5 per cent, it was marginally better than in the 5.3 per cent in Q4 of 2011-12. While this is not a material improvement, when juxtaposed with the recent policy measures there is hope that growth would improve in coming quarters and more so next year. Rainfall has been deficient by 8 per cent from the long period average in 2012 monsoon season. The deficiency during June and July 2012 has adversely impacted the Kharif crop. However, good rainfall in August and September have improved the soil moisture content and reservoir levels and raised the prospects for a good Rabi crop. As we see subsequent rounds of crop estimates, the deficiency of about 10 per cent in case of foodgrains and oilseeds is likely to be reduced, thus providing a further silver lining.
12. India grew at a rapid pace with an average growth of 8.7 per cent during 2003-04 to 2007-08 essentially because investment boomed, especially in infrastructure such as power, roads and telecom. In the last three years of this period growth averaged 9.5 per cent before the Lehman crisis changed the world. India’s potential growth was assessed at nearly 8.5 per cent during this period. India’s growth dropped to 6.7 per cent during 2007-08 due mainly to spill over from global financial crisis. India, however, stood out as an island of calm that withstood global financial Tsunami. Its growth dropped less than its peers and it staged a V-shaped recovery clocking 8.4 per cent growth over next two years. However, the euro area crisis, the rising structural problems and high inflation combined to bring about a precipitous fall in India’s growth. The growth dropped to 6.5 per cent in 2011-12 – lower than the crisis-affected growth of 6.7 per cent in 2007-08. More importantly, growth has averaged 5.4 per cent over last two quarters.
13. Is this the new normal? There are strong reasons to believe otherwise. While potential growth may have fallen, we are clearly running a negative output gap with realised growth below potential. With current momentum, we can also recoup our lost potential and after a few years start growing back at 8-8.5 per cent on a sustainable basis. What is important at this stage is to further improve macro-economic conditions by lowering twin deficits and to ensure that inflation stays below the threshold at which high growth cannot be sustained.
14. Growth came down due to exceptional reasons. Firstly, inflation had stayed high for over two years and there is enough theoretical and empirical evidence to suggest that when inflation reaches that high and becomes persistent, the costs of deflation in terms of growth sacrifice turns out to be large. Part of the growth sacrifice occurs for reasons of monetary tightening that high inflation inevitably brings if complete macro-economic destabilization and possible hyper-inflation is to be averted. Hyperinflation risk is not something that can be dismissed lightly. Growth also comes down for reasons beyond monetary tightening. High inflation erodes consumers’ real purchasing power and lowers aggregate demand. It acts as a regressive tax on poor and erodes their consumption base. Producers also postpone investment decisions in an era of heightened uncertainty. To contain the high level of inflation and manage inflationary expectations, monetary policy in India was tightened continuously since February 2010 and these risks were contained even though inflation still remains perceptibly higher than the Reserve Bank’s comfort. Monetary policy needs to factor in the growth-inflation dynamics in a forward-looking manner but keep focussing on inflation for some more time so that inflation persistence is overcome. This would have a positive spin off for growth to recover. As we have stated in the Mid-Quarter Monetary Policy Review of September 17, 2012, when the policy initiatives being taken now by the Government materialize into concrete action, monetary policy will reinforce the positive impact of such actions while continuing to maintain its focus on inflation management.
15. Secondly, growth came down because of unfavourable global climate. The euro area crisis coming on the heels of Lehman crisis is playing on animal spirits. Global trade has decelerated sharply and is impacting investments. Indian industrial growth is found to be highly correlated with global industrial growth. As we integrate more and more with the rest of the world, we have to pay price of globalization even as we reap its benefits. As we have observed in this context, global developments affect our economy through commerce, capital flows, confidence, commodity price, contamination, currency rates and credit rating channels.Global business cycles are, therefore impacting both investment demand and with a lag impacting consumption demand as incomes fall and appetite for leverage reduces.
16. Thirdly, growth came down in India because investment climate was vitiated due to emergence of serious structural bottlenecks related to land, labour, regulatory framework, linkages or availability of funding, partly due to elevated concerns for asset quality. Part of the problem occurred in the mining sector, where judicial and executive efforts to improve governance have created a sort of a hiatus in activity. When a clearer operational regime comes into play businesses would adjust to more normal functioning based on fair returns. The other part of the problem was in the power sector where bulk of the 54 GW of new investments capacities created during the 11th Plan turned into potential bad investments as coal was in short supply. Mitigation of the problem is hopefully in the offing. If debt restructuring of discoms is well executed and coal supplies are quickly ensured, the power sector investments can revive in the 12th Plan. New capacity generation can easily match and possibly surpass that in the 11th Plan. Power sector can turn out to be a major driver of growth once again. As per the plans, the SEB losses are being cut by power tariff revisions.
Investment revival is possible
17. Big steps for reforming power sector are now being taken and can pave the way for revival of investment. The debt restructuring of discoms is being done in an incentive-compatible manner and may not encourage moral hazard or regulatory forbearance. The scheme contains various measures required to be taken by state discoms and state governments for achieving the financial turnaround of the discoms. The restructuring/ reschedulement of loan are to be accompanied by concrete and measurable action by the discoms/ States to improve the operational performance of the distribution utilities. There may not be an immediate fiscal impact for the centre, given that its obligations under the scheme are medium-term in nature, the fiscal impact for the states in the near-term would be the interest outgo on 50 per cent of outstanding short-term loans which are to be taken over by them in a phased manner. While, a great deal of ground would still need to be covered for operational effectiveness of the scheme, it does have the capacity to reverse the falling fortunes of power sector investments. One hopes that the ticking clock of the potential time bomb of the power sector can now be defused. It is worth noting that the accumulated losses of the state power distribution companies (discoms) are estimated to be about `1.9 trillion as on 31st March, 2011.
Financial sector can remain robust with efforts to contain newer fragilities
18. India has stood out amongst its peers with an enviable record on financial stability. India’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of scheduled commercial banks as a percentage of gross advances had declined from 12.7 per cent in 1990-91 to 2.4 per cent in 2010-11. In case of public sector banks, this ration had dropped from 14.0 to 2.3 per cent over the same period. However, during the recent economic downturn, there has been a sharp deterioration in asset quality of the public sector banks (PSBs), as the ratio reversed to 3.2 per cent in 2011-12. While the NPA levels are still low by historical trends or cross-country comparison, newer fragilities were obvious by the high slippage ratio and a spurt in restructuring loans. The slippage ratio of the PSBs increased to 5.7 per cent of gross advances by at the end of 2011-12 from 4.2 per cent a year ago. The recovery also slowed down, especially in the stressed sectors. While some of these changes reflect the NPA cycle that generally tracks economic cycle, the sectoral bottlenecks also had a role to play in such deterioration.
19. There has been movement towards resolving the sector-specific issues, especially in power and aviation. With gradual improvement in economic activity, the stress may be further reduced across all sectors. This will bring back some of the strength of the bank balance sheets that had got eroded in recent years. Unlike many other countries, India is a bank-dominated financial system. Though the role of the financial markets has increased over the year, the financing pattern of the corporates suggests that banks account for over a fourth of total sources of funds for the corporates. As such, maintaining health of the banks is important so that they can nurse recovery by credit expansion with the silver linings already on the horizon. The ratio of bank credit to GDP in India is around 55 per cent, which is much below what is prevalent in many advanced economies. Therefore, the challenge for Indian banks is to facilitate the growth of the real sector through financial products and innovations subject to adequate safeguards and adoption of sound risk management policies. In the Indian context, foreign banks can potentially play a significant supplementing role of resource mobilization to fund higher growth, apart from augmenting competition and efficiency among the banks. For example, foreign banks still have a lot of leeway available for funding infrastructure projects vis-Ã -vis the prescribed exposure limits. Further, given the higher requirements of lending to the priority sectors under the revised policy framework, foreign banks can bring in a lot of innovations and better practices and processes to lend to the critical sectors of the economy like the SMEs and agriculture.
20. The Reserve Bank has been a conservative central bank that accords very high priority to financial stability. It is for this reason that the Reserve Bank is focussed on the implementation of the Basel III norms. It is also training its eyes on curbing increasing slippage and withdrawing regulatory forbearance that supports it in a phased manner. Some transitory sops to infrastructure loans in case genuine delays in commencement of commercial operations are possible but these should be the exceptions rather than the norm. Maintaining financial discipline is of paramount importance and this would certainly demand higher accountability and sacrifice by the promoters. On Basel III, the Reserve Bank has unveiled the broad course that the banks need to follow. With gradual improvements in market conditions, capital raising options for the banks would steadily improve. It should be possible for public sector banks (PSBs) to raise about `1.5 trillion of equity over the period of a little over 5-years till the end of 2017-18. The shareholders’ value locked in the PSBs need to be tapped by innovative means. Stronger banks are in fact needed to support credit flows for higher growth in the Indian economy.
Containment of twin deficits remains a challenge but within our realm
21. The impact of the recent governmental measures in reducing the fiscal deficit is not likely to be very large. In effect the reduction in diesel and LPG subsidies would amount to marginal fiscal correction in the current fiscal year. This underscores the importance of taking both short term measures for moving closer to the budget targets as well as long term steps to structurally correct the deficit, thus eventually lowering the fiscal dominance of monetary policy. Recently, the Kelkar Committee has estimated that GFD/GDP ratio for 2012-13 could slip by 1 percentage point to 6.1 per cent from the budgeted 5.1 per centif corrective measures are not taken. It has also made several recommendations on fiscal consolidation laying down a path to narrow it down to 5.2 per cent in 2012-13, 4.6 per cent in 2013-14 and 3.9 per cent in 2014-15, when the effective revenue deficit can be brought to zero. Improved tax collection, asset sales, pruning of subsidies and rationalization of planned spending holds the key to this path. Disinvestments, minority stake sales, higher PSU dividends, hiking urea prices and widening services tax net are part of the recommended strategy. The bottom line is that a workable path to fiscal consolidation is available – be it through the Kelkar Committee or through the rolling targets set following the 13th Finance Commission. What is important is to get there or at least very close to there through sustained efforts and not become lax in face of political or electoral cycles. It is expected that the government would take further aggressive steps to prevent fiscal slippage this year and complete its borrowing programme broadly in line with what was envisaged and without any undue pressures in the financial markets. This can make substantial contribution to keeping interest rates low and reviving the economy. In fact, the recent announcement of the Central Government’s borrowing calendar for the second half of 2012-13, which sticks to the budgeted borrowing figures reflect Government’s resolve for containing the Gross Fiscal Deficit (GFD). It is, however, imperative that further strong measures forfiscal corrections are implemented in the rest of the year broadly in line with the Kelkar Committee recommendations. Recent appreciation of the Rupee has, besides mitigating the risk of imported inflation, would also greatly aid in containment of GFD by way of reduction in subsidy burden of the Government arising out of high Rupee cost of imported oil.
22. The trends in the external sector are also showing signs of some improvement after considerable stress witnessed last year. The CAD/GDP ratio declined to 3.9 per cent in Q1 of 2012-13 from 4.5 per cent in Q4 of 2011-12. While this is a positive development, it has come about as imports contracted in face of growth slowdown and some benefits accrued from exchange rate pass-through from rupee depreciation in 2011-12 and in the first quarter this year. Macroeconomic and external sector policies would need to still factor in external sector risks in the coming period, especially as event risks emanating from global developments remain significant. Therefore, further efforts would be necessary to contain CAD and bring it in line with its sustainable level of around 2.5 per cent of GDP. The recent reform measures have brought about major change in global investor perception. These investors are now willing to continue investing in India’s long-term growth story. Another silver lining is that India’s net international investment position (NIIP) that reflects the net claims of non-residents on India has improved with the decrease in these claims by US$23.9 billion over the previous quarter to US$220.3 billion as at end-June. While this largely reflects the valuation changes, augmentation of non-debt creating flows in the new phase of economic reforms would certainly lower external financing risks, thus providing a much needed cushion against our external sector pressures.
We need to convert the silver linings to our advantages
23. I would like to conclude by saying that India in the second half of 2012-13 is shaping as very different from India in the first half. There are positives emerging across the horizon. This is reflected in our currency movement that will bring further positive spin offs by lowering inflation, fiscal deficit and reducing corporate stress. Growth could start improving into the next year. Battleagainst inflation is, however, far from over and we need careful calibration of monetary and non-monetary responses to tame it. Late revival of monsoon and steps taken/being planned to improve the supply responses should moderate the inflationary pressure overtime. Stronger fiscal measures on the path envisioned would pave the way for sustained recovery. We have seen marginal improvement in CAD. This should not, however, lull us into any complacency as the path to its sustainability requires several adjustments. It is equally important that correctives now being put in place do not attenuate regulatory prudenceor deflect the focus away from long term sustainability of the external sectorby taking a short term view of the proposed solutions for improving capital flows.
24. The slew of measures in a short span need to be turned into a habit of well-paced action, improved execution and governance and credible commitment without backtracking or reversals. A more gradual-paced reforms earlier enabled us to achieve high growth path. In the context of steps taken/planned for our reforms, one area where we need to focus seriously is on communication, both internal and external. This should encompass convincing our domestic constituency about the experience and benefits of reforms which have to be carried forward for achieving the goals of inclusive growth by having a strong and resilient macro-economy. It would also imply meaningful engagement with the international rating agencies and investor class. There is no reason to believe that these would not work though there are still many a bridge to cross to translate the intentions to deliverables on the ground. The silver linings are now visible on the horizon. We need to build upon them and implement our plans in the right earnest. The door of opportunity is again knocking at us. These silver linings lifting the dark clouds are, however,not something as part of our destiny but they are within our reach, if we work hard on them with all sincerity to convert them to our long term advantages.
Fifth Annual Banking Conference on “The Silver Lining of the Indian Economy” organized by NMIMS School of Banking Management
October 6, 2012, Bombay
http://rbidocs.rbi.org.in/rdocs/Speeches/PDFs/SSLIE091012.pdf
Excerpts:
Recent actions start the course correction but momentum needs to be kept
2. Recent policy measures taken by the government are very significant. They have started the course correction from a point where the Indian growth story was close to getting seriously damaged. However, for these measures to succeed it is important to keep up the momentum. More steps and effective implementation over next 2-3 years are necessary to fully recoup the lost ground.The economy has been facing serious headwinds as growth had slowed down to 5.5 per cent or less for the last two quarters over and above the subdued growth rate of 6.5 per cent for 2011-12, a rate even lower than crisis period low point of 6.7 per cent growth in 2007-08. Our saving and investment rate had also slipped since 2008-09. Gross domestic saving rate averaged 32.7 per cent in three years 2010-11 against 35.0 per cent in the preceding three years due mainly to fall in public sector saving rate. Our gross domestic investment rate averaged 34.1 per cent against 34.9 per cent for the same periods as corporate investment rate fell sharply. Preliminary estimates suggest a further sharp drop in household financial savings in 2011-12 at less than 8.0 per cent of the GDP from more than 12 per cent two years back. Also, corporate investment is likely to have declined further. With falling saving and investment, rise in twin deficits and inflation, potential growth had also dropped by one percentage point or more in the post-global financial crisis period. As we know, potential growth indicates the rate of growth the economy can achieve consistent with stable macro-economic conditions.On the other hand, inflation rose sharply to above comfort levels since December 2009 and averaged 9.5 per cent for next 24-months before lowering to sub-eight per cent but still proving to be intransigent. It is staying sticky at over 7 per cent. Centre’s fiscal deficit had slipped during 2011-12 to 5.8 per cent against the budgeted 4.6 per cent for the year and 4.9 per cent in 2010-11. With gross under-recoveries of oil marketing companies working out to over Rs1.8 trillion or 0.8 per cent of GDP due to unrevised prices of diesel, LPG and kerosene, there was little doubt the centre’s GFD/GDP budgeted estimate would then have overshot by a wide margin. Even after the revision of diesel prices and capping of subsidised LPG cylinders, the budget imbalances are obvious, underscoring the importance of further fiscal measures to contain deficit this year.
3. The current account deficit (CAD) had risen to an all-time high of 4.2 per cent of GDP in 2011-12 and 4.5 per cent of GDP during Q4 of 2011-12. In other words, rising twin deficit, slowing growth and sticky inflation provided all the ingredients for a possible economic crisis. Noting this macro-economic deterioration, some international credit rating agencies had already put India’s sovereign rating on a watch list for an impending downgrade that would have pushed India to a subinvestment grade.
The slew of measures in a span of less than a month should count
4. Against this background, the policy actions that were announced in September 2012 should be seen as major initiatives to reverse the course of economic growth path in the country. In a slew of measures of economic reforms, the government raised diesel prices by `5 per litre and capped subsidised LPG cooking gas cylinders to six a year per household. It permitted foreign direct investment (FDI) in multi-brand retail up to 51 per cent, in aviation sector up to 49 per cent and in some broadcasting services up to 75 per cent. It also approved sale of its minority stakes in four public sector firms -- Oil India (by 10 per cent), Hindustan Copper (9.59 per cent), MMTC (9.33 per cent) and Nalco (12.15 per cent) -- to raise up to `150 billion – half its disinvestment receipts target for the year. These measures were followed up with an announcement that withholding tax liability will be reduced to 5 percent from 20 per cent for the overseas borrowings /bond issuances for infrastructure sector by Indian firms during July 2012 and June 2015.
5. A debt relief package for the state power distribution companies (discoms) has now been approved. Once implemented efficiently, it can turnaround the investment scenario once again. This month, a package for the life insurance sector was also worked out. The package includes easing investment norms for insurers, faster clearance for new products, easing of procedures, allowing banks to sell products of more than one insurance company and possibly some tax concessions for the insurance sector. More sector-specific packages could follow allowing structural bottlenecks to be removed without sacrificing on regulatory discipline.The Cabinet has also cleared foreign equity cap in insurance sectors at 49 per cent through Insurance Laws (Amendment) Bill, 2008. It also approved certain amendments to the Pension Fund Regulatory and Development Authority (PFRDA) Bill, 2011 that included foreign investment ceiling in the pension sector at 26 per cent or such percentage as may be approved for the insurance sector, whichever is higher, may be incorporated in the present legislation. Besides, it approved several other plans that are important for the economy, such as the 12th Five Year Plan document for taking it to the National Development Council (NDC), amendments to the Companies Bill 2011, the Forward Contracts (Regulation) Amendment Bill, 2010 and the Competition Act, 2002. These moves show the intent and the policy direction though the ultimate impact would depend on the political process of law making that follows.There are several unknowns, such as, the timing of debates and votes, the floor management on the day of the vote and most importantly, the process by which political differences are narrowed enough to see the results. The foundation has been laid and one can be confident that the Indian democracy would once again stand the test of the time.
6. On our part, we certainly think that the slew of economic reforms measures undertaken by the government recently would impart a positive momentum to the economy. The Reserve Bank in its Mid-Quarter Review of Monetary Policy noted the likely positive impact of the changes in FDI policy on capital flows and over the long run on higher productivity, particularly in food supplychains. The Reserve Bank had been consistently arguing for need for supply-side responses to help contain inflation. Earlier in its Annual Report released in August 2012, it had highlighted the urgent need to step up non-debt creating inflows, especially in the form of FDI in view of the wide current account deficit (CAD). It had argued for further improving the FDI inflows in sectors such as insurance, retail, aviation and urban infrastructure. It had noted that FDI in retail may be particularly helpful in improving supply chain management through greater investment in backend infrastructure, including cold storage for farm and poultry products.
7. Considering that these steps being undertaken paved the way for a more favourable growth-inflation dynamics, the Reserve Bank moved to address possible liquidity tightening ahead by a pre-emptive 25 basis point cut in its Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) at its Mid-term policy announced on September 17, 2012. CRR is also a potent monetary policy tool and should help in lowering the cost of credit and augmenting its supply, thus improving credit flows. The CRR cut was in addition to a 50 basis point policy rate reduction that the Reserve Bank had effected in April 2012 in anticipation of action for fiscal consolidation and supply-side initiatives.
8. Several policy measures have been taken in less than a month. When these measures get implemented and feed through the system, they would contribute significantly to recovery of India’s growth as well as growth potential. Capital flows have recovered and would go a long way in restoring confidence for business activity in the country. Growth would start improving as a result. Whether the recovery will be quick or slow-paced would depend on several factors, including global conditions, which at the moment are not very conducive in spite of some positive news on labour and housing markets in the US. What is important is that recent actions by the Government have reduced the macro-economic risks and structural impediments.
9. Part of our recent woes was self-inflicted as inadequate movement on policy and implementation fronts worsened investment climate that had already suffered due to global uncertainties and cyclical downturn in the Indian economy. This had added an element of structural retrogression in the Indian economy. The government has now shown its resolve to effectively redress this. If steps announced are well-implemented and if we stay on path of reforms, the economy would turnaround faster than what many expect. But several challenges remain and not only policy changes but effective implementation holds the key to success.
10. The most important challenge would be to further lower the twin deficits by staying on path of fiscal consolidation, keeping a tab on private consumption demand and using expenditure switching policies to lower CAD. Monetary policy would for some more time need to focus on inflation while using available space to support growth to the degree it can. Inflation, if left unattended to, can play the biggest spoil sport. The rupee has already appreciated 6.8 per cent against US dollar since the onset of this new wave of reforms on September 13, 2012. This may help lower inflation somewhat as exchange rate-pass-through takes place. However, it is important to understand that exchange rate is neither a first-best solution nor a sufficient tool for addressing the challenges of structural inflation that we face today. Ultimately, fiscal policy would need to work towards expediting supply-side responses and keeping private consumption demand in reasonable control. Monetary policy would need to be cautious in the interim.
Downward cycle may be bottoming out
11. After a downturn, there are some signs of green shoots that if nursed with appropriate policies, including continuous economic reforms, with an eye on macro-financial stability, can pave the way of recovery for the Indian economy. Falling growth was somewhat arrested in Q1 of 2012-13. At 5.5 per cent, it was marginally better than in the 5.3 per cent in Q4 of 2011-12. While this is not a material improvement, when juxtaposed with the recent policy measures there is hope that growth would improve in coming quarters and more so next year. Rainfall has been deficient by 8 per cent from the long period average in 2012 monsoon season. The deficiency during June and July 2012 has adversely impacted the Kharif crop. However, good rainfall in August and September have improved the soil moisture content and reservoir levels and raised the prospects for a good Rabi crop. As we see subsequent rounds of crop estimates, the deficiency of about 10 per cent in case of foodgrains and oilseeds is likely to be reduced, thus providing a further silver lining.
12. India grew at a rapid pace with an average growth of 8.7 per cent during 2003-04 to 2007-08 essentially because investment boomed, especially in infrastructure such as power, roads and telecom. In the last three years of this period growth averaged 9.5 per cent before the Lehman crisis changed the world. India’s potential growth was assessed at nearly 8.5 per cent during this period. India’s growth dropped to 6.7 per cent during 2007-08 due mainly to spill over from global financial crisis. India, however, stood out as an island of calm that withstood global financial Tsunami. Its growth dropped less than its peers and it staged a V-shaped recovery clocking 8.4 per cent growth over next two years. However, the euro area crisis, the rising structural problems and high inflation combined to bring about a precipitous fall in India’s growth. The growth dropped to 6.5 per cent in 2011-12 – lower than the crisis-affected growth of 6.7 per cent in 2007-08. More importantly, growth has averaged 5.4 per cent over last two quarters.
13. Is this the new normal? There are strong reasons to believe otherwise. While potential growth may have fallen, we are clearly running a negative output gap with realised growth below potential. With current momentum, we can also recoup our lost potential and after a few years start growing back at 8-8.5 per cent on a sustainable basis. What is important at this stage is to further improve macro-economic conditions by lowering twin deficits and to ensure that inflation stays below the threshold at which high growth cannot be sustained.
14. Growth came down due to exceptional reasons. Firstly, inflation had stayed high for over two years and there is enough theoretical and empirical evidence to suggest that when inflation reaches that high and becomes persistent, the costs of deflation in terms of growth sacrifice turns out to be large. Part of the growth sacrifice occurs for reasons of monetary tightening that high inflation inevitably brings if complete macro-economic destabilization and possible hyper-inflation is to be averted. Hyperinflation risk is not something that can be dismissed lightly. Growth also comes down for reasons beyond monetary tightening. High inflation erodes consumers’ real purchasing power and lowers aggregate demand. It acts as a regressive tax on poor and erodes their consumption base. Producers also postpone investment decisions in an era of heightened uncertainty. To contain the high level of inflation and manage inflationary expectations, monetary policy in India was tightened continuously since February 2010 and these risks were contained even though inflation still remains perceptibly higher than the Reserve Bank’s comfort. Monetary policy needs to factor in the growth-inflation dynamics in a forward-looking manner but keep focussing on inflation for some more time so that inflation persistence is overcome. This would have a positive spin off for growth to recover. As we have stated in the Mid-Quarter Monetary Policy Review of September 17, 2012, when the policy initiatives being taken now by the Government materialize into concrete action, monetary policy will reinforce the positive impact of such actions while continuing to maintain its focus on inflation management.
15. Secondly, growth came down because of unfavourable global climate. The euro area crisis coming on the heels of Lehman crisis is playing on animal spirits. Global trade has decelerated sharply and is impacting investments. Indian industrial growth is found to be highly correlated with global industrial growth. As we integrate more and more with the rest of the world, we have to pay price of globalization even as we reap its benefits. As we have observed in this context, global developments affect our economy through commerce, capital flows, confidence, commodity price, contamination, currency rates and credit rating channels.Global business cycles are, therefore impacting both investment demand and with a lag impacting consumption demand as incomes fall and appetite for leverage reduces.
16. Thirdly, growth came down in India because investment climate was vitiated due to emergence of serious structural bottlenecks related to land, labour, regulatory framework, linkages or availability of funding, partly due to elevated concerns for asset quality. Part of the problem occurred in the mining sector, where judicial and executive efforts to improve governance have created a sort of a hiatus in activity. When a clearer operational regime comes into play businesses would adjust to more normal functioning based on fair returns. The other part of the problem was in the power sector where bulk of the 54 GW of new investments capacities created during the 11th Plan turned into potential bad investments as coal was in short supply. Mitigation of the problem is hopefully in the offing. If debt restructuring of discoms is well executed and coal supplies are quickly ensured, the power sector investments can revive in the 12th Plan. New capacity generation can easily match and possibly surpass that in the 11th Plan. Power sector can turn out to be a major driver of growth once again. As per the plans, the SEB losses are being cut by power tariff revisions.
Investment revival is possible
17. Big steps for reforming power sector are now being taken and can pave the way for revival of investment. The debt restructuring of discoms is being done in an incentive-compatible manner and may not encourage moral hazard or regulatory forbearance. The scheme contains various measures required to be taken by state discoms and state governments for achieving the financial turnaround of the discoms. The restructuring/ reschedulement of loan are to be accompanied by concrete and measurable action by the discoms/ States to improve the operational performance of the distribution utilities. There may not be an immediate fiscal impact for the centre, given that its obligations under the scheme are medium-term in nature, the fiscal impact for the states in the near-term would be the interest outgo on 50 per cent of outstanding short-term loans which are to be taken over by them in a phased manner. While, a great deal of ground would still need to be covered for operational effectiveness of the scheme, it does have the capacity to reverse the falling fortunes of power sector investments. One hopes that the ticking clock of the potential time bomb of the power sector can now be defused. It is worth noting that the accumulated losses of the state power distribution companies (discoms) are estimated to be about `1.9 trillion as on 31st March, 2011.
Financial sector can remain robust with efforts to contain newer fragilities
18. India has stood out amongst its peers with an enviable record on financial stability. India’s gross non-performing assets (NPAs) of scheduled commercial banks as a percentage of gross advances had declined from 12.7 per cent in 1990-91 to 2.4 per cent in 2010-11. In case of public sector banks, this ration had dropped from 14.0 to 2.3 per cent over the same period. However, during the recent economic downturn, there has been a sharp deterioration in asset quality of the public sector banks (PSBs), as the ratio reversed to 3.2 per cent in 2011-12. While the NPA levels are still low by historical trends or cross-country comparison, newer fragilities were obvious by the high slippage ratio and a spurt in restructuring loans. The slippage ratio of the PSBs increased to 5.7 per cent of gross advances by at the end of 2011-12 from 4.2 per cent a year ago. The recovery also slowed down, especially in the stressed sectors. While some of these changes reflect the NPA cycle that generally tracks economic cycle, the sectoral bottlenecks also had a role to play in such deterioration.
19. There has been movement towards resolving the sector-specific issues, especially in power and aviation. With gradual improvement in economic activity, the stress may be further reduced across all sectors. This will bring back some of the strength of the bank balance sheets that had got eroded in recent years. Unlike many other countries, India is a bank-dominated financial system. Though the role of the financial markets has increased over the year, the financing pattern of the corporates suggests that banks account for over a fourth of total sources of funds for the corporates. As such, maintaining health of the banks is important so that they can nurse recovery by credit expansion with the silver linings already on the horizon. The ratio of bank credit to GDP in India is around 55 per cent, which is much below what is prevalent in many advanced economies. Therefore, the challenge for Indian banks is to facilitate the growth of the real sector through financial products and innovations subject to adequate safeguards and adoption of sound risk management policies. In the Indian context, foreign banks can potentially play a significant supplementing role of resource mobilization to fund higher growth, apart from augmenting competition and efficiency among the banks. For example, foreign banks still have a lot of leeway available for funding infrastructure projects vis-Ã -vis the prescribed exposure limits. Further, given the higher requirements of lending to the priority sectors under the revised policy framework, foreign banks can bring in a lot of innovations and better practices and processes to lend to the critical sectors of the economy like the SMEs and agriculture.
20. The Reserve Bank has been a conservative central bank that accords very high priority to financial stability. It is for this reason that the Reserve Bank is focussed on the implementation of the Basel III norms. It is also training its eyes on curbing increasing slippage and withdrawing regulatory forbearance that supports it in a phased manner. Some transitory sops to infrastructure loans in case genuine delays in commencement of commercial operations are possible but these should be the exceptions rather than the norm. Maintaining financial discipline is of paramount importance and this would certainly demand higher accountability and sacrifice by the promoters. On Basel III, the Reserve Bank has unveiled the broad course that the banks need to follow. With gradual improvements in market conditions, capital raising options for the banks would steadily improve. It should be possible for public sector banks (PSBs) to raise about `1.5 trillion of equity over the period of a little over 5-years till the end of 2017-18. The shareholders’ value locked in the PSBs need to be tapped by innovative means. Stronger banks are in fact needed to support credit flows for higher growth in the Indian economy.
Containment of twin deficits remains a challenge but within our realm
21. The impact of the recent governmental measures in reducing the fiscal deficit is not likely to be very large. In effect the reduction in diesel and LPG subsidies would amount to marginal fiscal correction in the current fiscal year. This underscores the importance of taking both short term measures for moving closer to the budget targets as well as long term steps to structurally correct the deficit, thus eventually lowering the fiscal dominance of monetary policy. Recently, the Kelkar Committee has estimated that GFD/GDP ratio for 2012-13 could slip by 1 percentage point to 6.1 per cent from the budgeted 5.1 per centif corrective measures are not taken. It has also made several recommendations on fiscal consolidation laying down a path to narrow it down to 5.2 per cent in 2012-13, 4.6 per cent in 2013-14 and 3.9 per cent in 2014-15, when the effective revenue deficit can be brought to zero. Improved tax collection, asset sales, pruning of subsidies and rationalization of planned spending holds the key to this path. Disinvestments, minority stake sales, higher PSU dividends, hiking urea prices and widening services tax net are part of the recommended strategy. The bottom line is that a workable path to fiscal consolidation is available – be it through the Kelkar Committee or through the rolling targets set following the 13th Finance Commission. What is important is to get there or at least very close to there through sustained efforts and not become lax in face of political or electoral cycles. It is expected that the government would take further aggressive steps to prevent fiscal slippage this year and complete its borrowing programme broadly in line with what was envisaged and without any undue pressures in the financial markets. This can make substantial contribution to keeping interest rates low and reviving the economy. In fact, the recent announcement of the Central Government’s borrowing calendar for the second half of 2012-13, which sticks to the budgeted borrowing figures reflect Government’s resolve for containing the Gross Fiscal Deficit (GFD). It is, however, imperative that further strong measures forfiscal corrections are implemented in the rest of the year broadly in line with the Kelkar Committee recommendations. Recent appreciation of the Rupee has, besides mitigating the risk of imported inflation, would also greatly aid in containment of GFD by way of reduction in subsidy burden of the Government arising out of high Rupee cost of imported oil.
22. The trends in the external sector are also showing signs of some improvement after considerable stress witnessed last year. The CAD/GDP ratio declined to 3.9 per cent in Q1 of 2012-13 from 4.5 per cent in Q4 of 2011-12. While this is a positive development, it has come about as imports contracted in face of growth slowdown and some benefits accrued from exchange rate pass-through from rupee depreciation in 2011-12 and in the first quarter this year. Macroeconomic and external sector policies would need to still factor in external sector risks in the coming period, especially as event risks emanating from global developments remain significant. Therefore, further efforts would be necessary to contain CAD and bring it in line with its sustainable level of around 2.5 per cent of GDP. The recent reform measures have brought about major change in global investor perception. These investors are now willing to continue investing in India’s long-term growth story. Another silver lining is that India’s net international investment position (NIIP) that reflects the net claims of non-residents on India has improved with the decrease in these claims by US$23.9 billion over the previous quarter to US$220.3 billion as at end-June. While this largely reflects the valuation changes, augmentation of non-debt creating flows in the new phase of economic reforms would certainly lower external financing risks, thus providing a much needed cushion against our external sector pressures.
We need to convert the silver linings to our advantages
23. I would like to conclude by saying that India in the second half of 2012-13 is shaping as very different from India in the first half. There are positives emerging across the horizon. This is reflected in our currency movement that will bring further positive spin offs by lowering inflation, fiscal deficit and reducing corporate stress. Growth could start improving into the next year. Battleagainst inflation is, however, far from over and we need careful calibration of monetary and non-monetary responses to tame it. Late revival of monsoon and steps taken/being planned to improve the supply responses should moderate the inflationary pressure overtime. Stronger fiscal measures on the path envisioned would pave the way for sustained recovery. We have seen marginal improvement in CAD. This should not, however, lull us into any complacency as the path to its sustainability requires several adjustments. It is equally important that correctives now being put in place do not attenuate regulatory prudenceor deflect the focus away from long term sustainability of the external sectorby taking a short term view of the proposed solutions for improving capital flows.
24. The slew of measures in a short span need to be turned into a habit of well-paced action, improved execution and governance and credible commitment without backtracking or reversals. A more gradual-paced reforms earlier enabled us to achieve high growth path. In the context of steps taken/planned for our reforms, one area where we need to focus seriously is on communication, both internal and external. This should encompass convincing our domestic constituency about the experience and benefits of reforms which have to be carried forward for achieving the goals of inclusive growth by having a strong and resilient macro-economy. It would also imply meaningful engagement with the international rating agencies and investor class. There is no reason to believe that these would not work though there are still many a bridge to cross to translate the intentions to deliverables on the ground. The silver linings are now visible on the horizon. We need to build upon them and implement our plans in the right earnest. The door of opportunity is again knocking at us. These silver linings lifting the dark clouds are, however,not something as part of our destiny but they are within our reach, if we work hard on them with all sincerity to convert them to our long term advantages.
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