7/6/2012: Sunday Times June 3, 2012

This is an unedited version of my Sunday Times article from June 3, 2012.

In early 2008, Brian Cowen described Ireland’s predicament with a catchy phrase ‘We are where we are’. Ever since this became synonymous with gross incompetence, epic failure and outright venality of our elites.

Fast forward to May 2012. In the heat of the EU Referendum campaigns, both Government parties have paraded their up-beat assessments of the economy, their own stewardship and achievements. The factual record of the current Government on economic policies is only slightly ahead of that attained by their predecessors.

Don’t’ take my words for this. Look at just where exactly ‘we’ – Ireland – ‘are’ in the crisis after a year of stewardship by the Coalition.

We are officially in a recession. Both GDP and GNP have shrunk in the last half of 2011 and all indications are, growth is unlikely to have returned in Q1 2012 either. Should Ireland post another quarter of negative growth, we will join the club of Italy, Cyprus, the Netherlands and Portugal. This select group of the euro area countries have managed to record GDP declines in three consecutive quarters since the end of June 2011. For Ireland, this abysmal economic performance comes on foot of the overall 17.6% decline in GDP and 24.2% drop in GNP since 2007 peak through the end of 2011. This didn’t stop this Government from declaring, as its predecessors did, various ‘turnarounds’ and ‘improvements’ in the economy, as a part of their credit, even though so far, the actual record of this Government on growth is negative. Since the Coalition came into power, GDP grew just 0.7% and GNP shrunk 4.1%, investment is down 12.8%, personal consumption fell 1.6%, while expatriation of profits by the MNCs operating here rose 24.6%.

Despite accelerating emigration and ever-rising numbers of unemployed being reclassified as engaged in state-sponsored training programmes, the latest unemployment remains stuck at 14.3% exactly identical to that recorded a year ago. In May 2011, there were 444,400 people on the Live Register and 71,231 in various state training schemes, this month these numbers were 436,700 and 82,331, respectively. Year on year, numbers at risk of underemployment rose 3,131. The Government has claimed that it has helped creating some tens of thousands new jobs, ranging from MNCs-supported ‘smart economy’ workers to hospitality sector. In reality, once training programmes are added, the numbers of those drawing unemployment supports rose 3,400 over the tenure of this Coalition.

Not surprisingly, consumer demand – accounting for 52% of our overall economic activity (in comparison, net external trade in goods and services accounts for less than one half of that figure) – is shrinking. Hammered by the push toward debts deleveraging, higher taxes, losses of income due to shrinking earnings and strong inflation in state-controlled sectors, Irish consumers are running away from the shops. Retail sales, ex-motors, have fallen 2.3% year on year in April 2012 in value terms and 3.8% in volume. This marks the fourth consecutive month of dual declines in volumes and value and the steepest rates of declines since October 2011 for value series and since May 2011 for volume. Things used to be getting worse at a slower rate in retail services sector. Now they are getting worse at a faster rate.

Banks reforms are truly not paying off for the Government. The latest banks lending survey for April 2012 shows that Irish banks have uniformly tightened, not relaxed, lending to enterprises in Q1 2012, compared to no change in lending standards recorded in Q4 2011. Things have not improved in consumer lending either, with mortgages lending running at just 5% of the levels seen during the peak. Meanwhile, costs remained the same in Q1 2012 as in Q4 2011 across all sources of funding. Following the estimates of foreign analysts, mirroring this column’s earlier prediction, the Central Bank now quietly admits that more funds will be required to offset rising mortgages arrears. More capital will be called on to bring Irish banks balancesheets to Basel III standards in years to come.

We are nowhere near the end of the crisis relating to housing markets. In Q1 2012 the overall level of mortgages at risk of default or already in default has reached 15.3% of the overall outstanding mortgages, 19.3% of all mortgages balances. This compares to 11.1% for levels and 13.6% for balances a year ago.

The game of extend-and-pretend drags on, as the Government publicly makes bombastic pronouncements about ‘stabilization’ and ‘reforms’ achieved in the sector, while reluctantly admitting that mortgages books are in a mess. The strategic response to this is the Government’s hope that the EU will be forced to mutualize banks debts, shifting them off the books of the state.

Housing markets continue to contract and commercial real estate values are still declining. The latest Residential Property Price Index for April shows that overall national property prices are already 50% down on the peak. Two consecutive monthly rises in Apartments and Dublin sub-markets can be interpreted as either a nascent stabilization, or one of the already numerous ‘false starts’ soon to be followed by renewed prices contractions. Take your pick, but either way we are way off any real recovery here.

Since about mid-2011, the Government has been committing a twin fallacy of referencing our bond yields moderation as a sign of ‘improved confidence’ in its policies. In reality, after massive LTROs that saw billions of euros pumped by the Irish banks into Government bonds, Irish yields are now back at the levels seen in January 2012. Over the last 18 months, the Troika programme has seen billions of Irish bonds taken off the market. This, alongside with the lack of new issuance, has meant that our bonds yields no longer provide a signal as to the expected cost of Irish Government borrowing. Since April 2011, the volumes of Irish Government bonds held by foreign investors have fallen by some 20% - the third steepest rate of decline in Europe after Greece and Portugal. The rate of foreign investors’ exiting Irish Government bond holdings has accelerated once again in the last 2 months. Year on year, Irish Credit Default Swaps spread over Germany is up almost 8% and this week our CDS reached 720bps.

The fact is, even by the above metrics, the current relative stability of our fiscal, financial and economic conditions is being supported by exceedingly optimistic assessments of our future growth and fiscal potential. Currently, Ireland runs the highest level of Government deficits in the euro area. Even if we stick to the EU-IMF adjustment programme, based on Department of Finance projections, in 2015 Ireland’s structural deficit will be the second highest amongst the old euro area member states. And to get to this unenviable position, we will need to carry out some €8.6 billion worth of new cuts between Budget 2013 and Budget 2015, taking more than €9,500 in additional funds out of working families’ budgets.

We are where we are – in a worse place than we were a year ago. Given the rates of economic destruction experienced since the onset of the crisis in 2008, this is doubly damaging to the claimed Government credit of reforms. Economics of the crises tell us that, on average, the harder the fall, the faster is the rise in the recovery. Ireland seems to be bucking this historical trend with our L-shaped recession to-date.

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