:00:00. > :00:04.around the world. Time now for our around the world. Time now for our
:00:04. > :00:08.economics editor to discuss the global financial crisis with a panel
:00:08. > :00:13.of top economic thinkers. The plan to save the euro is falling
:00:13. > :00:18.apart again, just in time for the G20 summit in Cannes. This week I'm
:00:18. > :00:21.asking my guests are to fix the world's financial
:00:21. > :00:24.problems or is the lesson last few years that national
:00:24. > :00:28.governments and global markets don't mix?
:00:28. > :00:38.We are filming this special of programmes so you can see the
:00:38. > :00:47.
:00:47. > :00:52.With me to discuss all of this are a With me to discuss all of this are a
:00:52. > :01:00.superbly well-equipped cast. Jim O'Neill, chairman of Goldman Sachs
:01:00. > :01:09.asset management probably best known for coining the phrase "bricks" (
:01:09. > :01:14.chief economist of Citigroup and a former member; and a member of a
:01:14. > :01:17.think-tank based in London. I want to talk about summits, the
:01:17. > :01:20.European Central Bank, International Monetary Fund and
:01:20. > :01:24.course the G20, but let's start first with Greece's announcement
:01:24. > :01:27.that it's holding a referendum on the euro deal because you might say
:01:27. > :01:30.it raises some of the same but from a different direction. Jim
:01:30. > :01:34.O'Neill, in doing this, hasn't the Greek Prime Minister rather
:01:34. > :01:39.up the hole in all these rescue plans, that if ordinary
:01:39. > :01:43.aren't behind it, then it just going to work? The very fact you
:01:43. > :01:47.raised that question suggests that that question will survive
:01:48. > :01:52.beyond what actually happens this week because it is part of the whole
:01:52. > :01:56.underlying dilemma, that especially people in this country often think
:01:56. > :02:00.about the topic and it's not to go away, that's for sure. But it
:02:00. > :02:04.is inconvenient. Everyone, and everyone is so shocked that he
:02:04. > :02:08.should have done this, but to be some kind of legitimacy for
:02:08. > :02:15.these austerity programmes, there? There's a fundamental
:02:15. > :02:19.conflict here between what you could call the primacy of the market, you
:02:19. > :02:23.need crick decision-making, shock and awe tactics, things that
:02:23. > :02:27.easy to understand, and the very slow decision-making in modern
:02:27. > :02:32.democracies, especially democracies under strain like you see the one in
:02:32. > :02:36.Greece but also in other European countries where we had big debates
:02:36. > :02:40.in places like Slovakia or Finland that we don't usually pay that much
:02:40. > :02:45.attention to on the global stage, suddenly moving global markets.
:02:45. > :02:47.how this ultimately gets nobody knows, but that is
:02:48. > :02:54.fundamental conflict that we just have to deal with. What I thought
:02:54. > :02:58.was going to happen is that at one point in time the people who hold
:02:58. > :03:03.the assets, who move the markets, understand that decision-making is
:03:03. > :03:07.slow and cumbersome, and stop these expectations that just the
:03:07. > :03:11.next summit will really come up that final enormous package that
:03:11. > :03:16.will resolve what is a very intractable crisis and will
:03:16. > :03:19.long time to resolve. I think is really - I think most of
:03:19. > :03:25.been said is quite irrelevant. is not about the European Union or
:03:25. > :03:30.the world monetary union, it's about a country on a programme, there are
:03:30. > :03:34.hundreds of those, IMF programmes, this happens to be a troika
:03:34. > :03:37.programme where the Prime has decided to kick the can out of
:03:37. > :03:43.his own hands, into the hands of the people, because he can't basically
:03:43. > :03:46.carry his party with him to make decision. Certain decisions,
:03:46. > :03:52.political decisions, constitutional decisions, may well be legitimately
:03:52. > :03:58.taken by a referendum. This is not one of them. This is simply about
:03:58. > :04:01.IMF programme, troika programme, where a temporary surrender of some
:04:01. > :04:06.national sovereignty is always involved. Politicians take
:04:06. > :04:11.decisions, that's why you have representative democracy, and
:04:11. > :04:18.think it is fully understandable why the man did it. He panicked, he was
:04:18. > :04:27.blocked, and he decided to pass the buck to the electorate. Two angles
:04:27. > :04:30.on it. If let's say that the voters won, maybe that's not a bad thing,
:04:30. > :04:36.because it will give the impression both to the markets and probably to
:04:36. > :04:39.other policy makers that there is more support for them going down the
:04:39. > :04:44.path than they might have believed a week ago. If he wins the
:04:44. > :04:47.referendum. If he can get it through, yes. Secondly and slightly
:04:47. > :04:50.facetious but being around markets for 30 years, maybe it's not
:04:50. > :04:56.entirely crazy for European policy makers to keep saying they
:04:56. > :05:01.to do things in the future and to effectively lower expectations of
:05:01. > :05:08.imminent delivery because, in fact, until the past week October
:05:08. > :05:11.out to be the best single month for many stock markets since 1987,
:05:11. > :05:15.simply because I think policy makers said: don't expect anything
:05:15. > :05:17.tomorrow, we are going to spend few weeks waiting on this so it
:05:17. > :05:25.doesn't necessarily have to conflict. I don't really go with
:05:25. > :05:30.that. But what if they vote no? If the whole thing falls
:05:30. > :05:34.will be in for a lot of blame. we may be closer to the endgame. We
:05:34. > :05:39.might be closer to that in any case because, even if he has a referendum
:05:40. > :05:44.and it's won, it is very questionable whether the IMF
:05:44. > :05:52.able to disburse money to Greece in the meantime because the
:05:52. > :05:58.agreement on which, on the programme on which the IMF's disbursement is
:05:58. > :06:01.conditional, has been put up grabs. So if the IMF doesn't
:06:01. > :06:05.disburse then other European countries will not disburse their
:06:05. > :06:10.money and Greece has a disorderly default on 5th December. In that
:06:10. > :06:15.case, the thing unravels in any case and the exit of Greece from the
:06:15. > :06:17.area area with all that implies for the
:06:17. > :06:22.sustainability of the rest of exercise becomes a real possibility.
:06:22. > :06:27.You talk about the endgame. Is that the end of the world or just - It's
:06:28. > :06:31.just the only issue. I'm in a camp that believes Greece doesn't
:06:31. > :06:36.that much, given the banks have discounted a major Greek default
:06:36. > :06:40.a long time. If they leave the euro does that change then? I think
:06:40. > :06:44.would create some clearly additional issues but of much greater
:06:44. > :06:47.dimension, the uncertainty of how the Greeks have operated in the
:06:47. > :06:53.few days has kicked off but growing in the background, is of
:06:53. > :06:57.course the whole issue of Italy. That's of a much greater importance
:06:57. > :07:01.in my judgment than anything that happens in Greece in the next few
:07:01. > :07:06.days. Greece matters because if it were to leave, either in a rage or
:07:06. > :07:11.pushed out effectively by - I quite like the rage. That sort
:07:11. > :07:15.of gets a bit more of an endgame. If they were to leave in a rage it
:07:15. > :07:19.probably would not be quite as damaging as if they were pushed out
:07:19. > :07:24.because if they were pushed out by say a refusal to fund them or their
:07:24. > :07:28.banks, then exit fear contagion would take place and no country
:07:28. > :07:32.the periphery of the euro area would be able to fund itself because they
:07:32. > :07:36.would fear they might introduce their own currencies - Where does
:07:36. > :07:40.the end of the periphery stop in such a scenario? Somewhere after
:07:40. > :07:46.Paris. Just stepping back from the dominos and disaster scenarios,
:07:46. > :07:49.issue about the conflict between Democrat governments trying to reach
:07:49. > :07:55.decisions and the speed which the financial markets have wanted them
:07:55. > :08:00.to act with, although both Jim and Willem are saying they need to wait
:08:00. > :08:03.a bit, there is something here about the whole single European currency
:08:03. > :08:06.project. Is it going to be legitimate at the end of this if
:08:06. > :08:09.governments are perceived just done a lot of - basically
:08:09. > :08:13.stitched everything up and not listened to the people at
:08:13. > :08:17.any point? I think honesty amongst politicians is key here
:08:17. > :08:21.of the problems I believe have in Greece is that they have an
:08:21. > :08:24.opposition leader who paddles alternative path. He says: we
:08:24. > :08:29.need to do this. Now, Greece's main problem inside or outside the
:08:29. > :08:33.is that it has a very bloated and expensive public sector and that it
:08:33. > :08:39.needs to open up its economy a bit more to unleash more
:08:39. > :08:43.energy into the economy rather than sucking all resources into a public
:08:43. > :08:46.sector where now wages are 70 to higher than in the private
:08:46. > :08:49.So that's something they need to fix, whether they are inside or
:08:49. > :08:52.outside, but the problem that they then have in their political
:08:52. > :08:57.is that somebody is offering them an alternative path. It will be OK.
:08:57. > :09:02.don't have to do that austerity. Which of course to my mind isn't
:09:02. > :09:08.path that is open to them . So a bit more enlightened debate -
:09:08. > :09:10.which is why a few months ago they tried this age old solution of: why
:09:10. > :09:13.don't we have a technocratic government, which is also what they
:09:13. > :09:18.are now talking about in Italy because they don't think they can
:09:18. > :09:22.get this honesty in their political debate so they are going down the
:09:22. > :09:25.route of technocrats, saying this is necessary and let's forge a national
:09:25. > :09:33.consensus, but that of course is not what we traditionally understand as
:09:33. > :09:37.democracy. Willem, you mentioned the Greek troika programme which is
:09:37. > :09:40.the Europeans, European Central Bank and the IMF. Has the
:09:40. > :09:42.Central Bank become at the centre of this, has it
:09:42. > :09:47.able to act in a way that governments haven't been able
:09:47. > :09:50.act? Well, it has been forced to act in a way that Central Banks
:09:50. > :09:58.shouldn't be asked to act this has been forced to make up for
:09:58. > :10:02.the minimal fiscal Europe that is required to back up a common
:10:02. > :10:09.currency, and that is, in fact, an illegitimate use of Central Bank
:10:09. > :10:12.powers, but given the absence of anything else they had no choice. To
:10:12. > :10:18.regain legitimacy, intergovernmentallism isn't going to
:10:18. > :10:23.do it obviously because this is supernational; not an
:10:23. > :10:27.intergovernmental entity that is doing the heavy lifting now but you
:10:27. > :10:30.agree it has lost legitimacy? It has done things the Central Bank
:10:31. > :10:34.ought not to do. Maybe people like it. I would take an opposite. I
:10:34. > :10:40.think the ECB's general behaviour on it has made the whole thing worse.
:10:40. > :10:45.This notion that a Central Bank, particularly without some aspects of
:10:45. > :10:47.democracy for all the governments we were discussing, that they can
:10:47. > :10:52.protect every aspect of precious independence
:10:52. > :10:57.much - They are incredibly independent. It is very
:10:57. > :11:00.unrealistic. If you look at their statutes, it's very hard to see how
:11:00. > :11:04.governments could even get rid of them. They are the most
:11:04. > :11:07.Central Bank in the world. this notion of asking the Chinese or
:11:07. > :11:12.other countries to help us out but is that realistic when
:11:12. > :11:15.Bank at the core of the whole thing says: we will do it for now but
:11:15. > :11:19.don't expect us to do it too voluntarily. The whole spirit of how
:11:19. > :11:24.the ECB has behaved in my has made it considerably more
:11:24. > :11:29.challenging than - But it has to behave that way because of its
:11:29. > :11:33.constitution because of the Treaty. It had I think this ludicrous degree
:11:33. > :11:39.of independence - Treaties get changed. No, no, I would
:11:39. > :11:41.favour of that and then time the correct accountability
:11:41. > :11:45.mechanism, the political accountability mechanism for the
:11:45. > :11:49.ECB, which is not the national governments, it is the
:11:49. > :11:55.Parliament. But I interviewed Claude Trichet just before his
:11:55. > :11:58.day earlier this week and I put to him and he thought the ECB
:11:58. > :12:02.behaved marvellously and done everything right, as you
:12:02. > :12:09.surprised to hear, but it is funny because the Jim O'Neill complaint
:12:09. > :12:14.that the rest of the world have too German and constrained, only
:12:14. > :12:19.concentrated on inflation and very halfhearted about the crisis - in
:12:19. > :12:22.Germany it is felt they have not been German enough, buying all this
:12:22. > :12:28.debt, what do you think? They have been propping up the banking
:12:28. > :12:31.and - If they had been so Germanic, I ask you why did their two German
:12:31. > :12:37.representatives resign in a huff? The ECB has shown independence by
:12:37. > :12:40.going down the bond-buying route. The Germans have resigned saying for
:12:40. > :12:45.personal we don't want that, saying we want to block what's going
:12:45. > :12:51.on there - but they go down that route after saying: we don't really
:12:51. > :12:58.want to do it. This is also the debate - That immediately stops its
:12:58. > :13:02.effectiveness. But the right for the ECB to do it is the way the
:13:02. > :13:09.Bank of England does it. In 1998, completely out of the blue there was
:13:09. > :13:12.a change of mind and hardly anything was spent in one of the most liquid
:13:12. > :13:19.currencies in the world and that reversed the trend. The ambivalence
:13:19. > :13:23.that you see in the ECB statements comes to me from the fact that they
:13:23. > :13:26.are a central bank for 17 sovereign nations so they want to be
:13:26. > :13:31.understood and legitimate in all these countries. On the one hand
:13:31. > :13:34.they say: we do what's necessary, go down the route of bond buying.
:13:34. > :13:38.the same time they sound a bit reluctant because that's what's
:13:38. > :13:42.needed in countries such as Germany or the Netherlands. Not just there
:13:42. > :13:48.but the whole fact of a Central Bank buying - Who else is going to buy
:13:48. > :13:55.the bonds? The fact of a Central Bank buying dodgy foreign debt or
:13:55. > :13:58.accepting to make loans to basically insolvent banks, the Bank of
:13:58. > :14:04.does it under a full sovereign guarantee and that is the
:14:04. > :14:08.difference. If the ECB could do it under full, joint and several
:14:08. > :14:13.guarantee from the 17 that would be entirely legitimate
:14:13. > :14:16.but the Bank of England is not doing a dime of even
:14:16. > :14:21.purchases without a full sovereign guarantee. And which is of course
:14:21. > :14:24.what you can't have - there isn't government to stand behind it - you
:14:24. > :14:29.can, you can have a joint several guarantee. That's not hard.
:14:29. > :14:34.But a question for you. We have new EU President at the helm. You
:14:34. > :14:39.talk about sovereign debt. Not only is he not German, he is Italian.
:14:39. > :14:46.Does that make things easy are worse? He will just have to hold
:14:46. > :14:52.his nose and purchase Italian, Spanish debt to the extent required
:14:52. > :14:55.to stop these falling over into default. That will in turn - these
:14:55. > :14:59.two countries, like Greece are some kind of programme - so he can
:14:59. > :15:02.point to this potentially illegitimate action of the Central
:15:02. > :15:07.Bank as being in because it's not solvency support
:15:07. > :15:12.but liquidity support, which is important task of the Central Bank.
:15:12. > :15:21.Do you think that Mario Draghi is going to have to be more German than
:15:21. > :15:25.the Germans? Is it inconvenient that he is German? He is a very
:15:25. > :15:29.intelligent person who happens have been born in Germany and I know
:15:29. > :15:34.him, and I think of the tough candidates that were up for the job,
:15:34. > :15:38.he is very well qualified but the very fact you are raising his
:15:38. > :15:41.nationality will be picked up in Germany in a big way a his first
:15:41. > :15:49.weeks will be quite challenging for him. The Germans had that debate.
:15:49. > :15:54.I hope so. It's a bit similar. Been there, done that. Of course if they
:15:54. > :15:58.continue buying the bonds don't expect Germans it like it. So if
:15:58. > :16:01.Italian bond yields really dropped next week, people would say: that's
:16:01. > :16:07.because we have an ECB Italian who is deliberately helping -
:16:07. > :16:10.Maybe, but so what? That would be great thing. If the uninformed say
:16:10. > :16:14.uninformed things, it's their constitutional right. Another time
:16:14. > :16:18.when Jean Claude Trichet had to step down because he said he didn't want
:16:18. > :16:23.the International Monetary Fund getting involved, about two days
:16:23. > :16:26.after he said that the Greeks asked the IMF to get involved and they
:16:26. > :16:27.have now been involved in quite a lot of bail-outs of European
:16:27. > :16:30.countries. What do we think about the International Monetary Fund
:16:30. > :16:37.how it has responded to the not just in the eurozone
:16:37. > :16:39.generally over the last couple of years? The IMF has a couple of
:16:39. > :16:44.fundamental advantages over the Europeans bailing themselves out.
:16:44. > :16:48.has lots of experience with doing that sort of task and it is not a
:16:49. > :16:54.Government. There's a world of a difference between some bureaucrats
:16:54. > :16:57.from the IMF going in and saying: can you please sack some civil
:16:57. > :17:02.servants, raise your retirement age, do whatever it takes to put your
:17:02. > :17:05.state budget and debt levels sustainable footing, and the
:17:05. > :17:08.Europeans telling each other to do that, which is seen as a completely
:17:08. > :17:13.different way of interfering in each other's sovereignty, so very good
:17:13. > :17:16.that we have the IMF on board for simply that reason, and looks
:17:16. > :17:22.we also need their resources. you think, Jim, the IMF can
:17:22. > :17:27.role - The IMF were struggling for a purpose until the global credit
:17:27. > :17:32.crisis. The IMF, in my judgment, was in danger of running out of having
:17:32. > :17:38.any reason to exist. It has a really bad Asian crisis and struggled
:17:38. > :17:42.through this great era of prosperity beforehand so in some ways the
:17:42. > :17:47.crisis has been fantastic for the IMF. There's talk of maybe a new
:17:47. > :17:52.IMF fund for the eurozone, will that help? First of all, in Greece
:17:52. > :17:55.were on the side of darkness, right, because as Dominique Strauss-Kahn,
:17:55. > :17:59.the then Managing Director in May, basically overruled his own staff
:17:59. > :18:05.and agreed to a programme for involving lending without first
:18:05. > :18:09.restructuring the sovereign. Well, Greece was clearly - Do you
:18:09. > :18:13.that would - without writing off some of the debt. Yes, and so
:18:13. > :18:21.really didn't help, so that expertise, which they do have, which
:18:21. > :18:25.is very essential, I think, was the politically emasculated. Hopefully
:18:25. > :18:28.it's like that, you will get a more sensible attitude towards
:18:28. > :18:33.restructuring, writing down the debts of sovereigns but
:18:33. > :18:36.have only very little money and no money in the kitty they can't do
:18:36. > :18:39.much. We had the Bank of England the other day
:18:39. > :18:43.saying: nothing is really going to go right in the global economy until
:18:44. > :18:47.we get to the bottom of this crisis which is the global imbalances, the
:18:47. > :18:50.fact that you have these big creditor countries who just keep
:18:50. > :18:54.saving too much, if you like, and making it very hard for countries
:18:54. > :18:58.like America and Britain or even Greece to get themselves out from
:18:58. > :19:03.under their debt. Jim, do you agree with that? Do you think we could
:19:03. > :19:08.ever get a deal on global imbalances or are we just going to have to
:19:08. > :19:12.watch it play out. I'm baffled when I see people like Mervyn say this.
:19:12. > :19:17.Nine months into the year the Chinese trade surplus is not
:19:17. > :19:22.more than 2% of GDP. Before the global credit crisis it was over
:19:22. > :19:27.10%, so I'm not - So the problem is fixed? I'm not sure about it being
:19:27. > :19:33.fixed but we are definitely the right direction. There
:19:33. > :19:39.a rise in real terms probably close to 30% for the past five years -
:19:39. > :19:47.Which is what Americans have wanted, the Chinese exports to get less
:19:47. > :19:53.competitive. Of course, luckily the Chinese realise and on this
:19:53. > :19:59.particular topic, and I'm struck by how narrow-minded a lot of western
:19:59. > :20:03.leaders seem to be on it, and at times there's a lot of progress. I
:20:03. > :20:08.agree that the global imbalances are a very minor part of the story.
:20:08. > :20:11.would be nice to see America running a surplus on trade and China a small
:20:11. > :20:16.deficit, because that's the way capital should flow, but so it's the
:20:16. > :20:20.wrong way round, it's not the the world. The real problem is
:20:20. > :20:25.there's just too much debt in advanced countries, too much
:20:25. > :20:31.government debt and household debt. But isn't debt the flip side of
:20:31. > :20:38.those imbalances? The governor would say that but I'm not sure -
:20:38. > :20:44.Because Europe has had surplus current account for most of the
:20:44. > :20:48.years - past 20 years and it has even more debt, the level of the
:20:48. > :20:52.banks and household sector, in United States. So no, there is
:20:52. > :20:55.simply a deleveraging crisis are facing that will take another
:20:55. > :20:59.decade to deal with. Do you think there's a point to having the G20
:20:59. > :21:02.and, if so, does it have anything to do with global imbalances?
:21:02. > :21:06.anything they can contribute? course there's a point to having
:21:07. > :21:13.G20 and it is the right group to address these issues because it's
:21:13. > :21:17.not as - it's more representative than the G7 was and not as
:21:17. > :21:20.as some of the bigger although it's becoming more
:21:20. > :21:24.by the day because of small past successes, now everybody wants to
:21:24. > :21:28.get into this grouping, so it might be a victim of its own
:21:28. > :21:31.the end. When it comes to imbalances, countries are very
:21:31. > :21:37.touchy about being told by outsiders how to run their economies and
:21:37. > :21:44.especially those countries that have surpluses. They still think in sort
:21:44. > :21:49.of of - selling more stuff around the
:21:49. > :21:54.world than you are buying is still seen as a good thing in countries
:21:54. > :22:00.like China or Germany. Does that matter? Of course it does
:22:00. > :22:04.what is the point in exporting your savings to effectively then buy
:22:04. > :22:09.dodgy debt around the world that you then have to bail out other nations,
:22:09. > :22:12.which is both what China and have been doing. That's not a very
:22:12. > :22:17.good economic model. But if we can't fix that at the European
:22:17. > :22:22.level, it's crazy to think we can fix it at a global level. If you
:22:22. > :22:27.look at the core effectiveness of global co-operation, history tends
:22:27. > :22:36.to suggest that in practice, when global interests happen to coincide
:22:36. > :22:41.with the prime interests of the players domestically, then it works.
:22:41. > :22:44.1985 was a fantastic example of that. When they agreed - Everybody
:22:44. > :22:50.agreed collectively to dollar down. In 1995, when the
:22:50. > :22:57.reverse happened, there was pretty strong consensus between them then.
:22:57. > :23:01.I think effective co-operation involving monetary matters is doable
:23:01. > :23:06.on a global basis including at a G20 level. There's a number of
:23:06. > :23:11.about all of this that are not being discussed enough. The world is not
:23:11. > :23:19.just led by Europe. China will create three more Greeces in the
:23:19. > :23:23.next 12 months. The BRICs create another Italy in the next 12
:23:23. > :23:26.months. Some will have a role to play. We should say you are not
:23:26. > :23:30.actually talking about creating another Italy or Greece because that
:23:30. > :23:37.would be probably bad for the European economy. The equivalent of
:23:37. > :23:45.it. The dilemma is when it comes to fiscal co-operation which goes to
:23:45. > :23:48.the core of EMU, requiring issues on taxing or voting which those
:23:48. > :23:51.countries want to have a say on but there's a lot of evidence that
:23:51. > :23:55.co-operation has succeeded in the past and it can today again. But it
:23:55. > :23:59.doesn't work when you actually are having to give up some control,
:23:59. > :24:05.example on the fiscal side - we've seen that on the eurozone -
:24:05. > :24:08.to be very brief but to link what I said earlier, what is odd is
:24:08. > :24:12.policy makers in the west has been no progress on these things
:24:12. > :24:15.but actually there has been three years ago and it's weird that
:24:15. > :24:20.key western figures don't it in front of their very eyes.
:24:20. > :24:23.China is importing a lot more, and China's exports aren't as strong. If
:24:23. > :24:26.you ask many - you get some people on here, lots of heavy
:24:26. > :24:29.industrial producers don't want to produce in China