About a year or two ago, I expressed a doubt that the euro could survive a major shock, such as had repeatedly occurred in the Europe of the twentieth century. I mentioned the two World Wars, the Russian Revolution and the Great Depression as three events which would probably have led to a break up of a single European currency, if one had existed at the time. The First World War did, in fact, cause the Gold Standard to break up after 1914, and no-one found a satisfactory way of restarting it. The Great Depression knocked what remained of the Gold Standard on the head, when Britain terminated convertibility in 1931.
There are a few of us – I know Ambrose Evans-Pritchard is one of our group – who do watch the euro from day to day. There are some hedge fund managers who share this habit, because they believe that the euro will eventually break up, as the economics of the Eurozone countries move further and further apart. The table that is most useful is to be found on the Market Data page of The Financial Times. It is the table of Ten Year Government Bond Spreads.
Not everyone is aware that the European Governments of the Eurozone are separately responsible for their Euro-debt, although the euro itself is a single currency. For that reason, the different national denominations of euro debt have different yields. The basic yield is the yield on a German ten year bond. All the other Eurozone countries provide higher yields than Germany, reflecting the fact that Germany has the strongest economy. The gap between the German ten year bond yield and other national ten year yields is called the “Spread versus Bund”
For instance, on November 3rd, the yield on the German bond was 3.84 per cent to maturity. The yield on the French ten year bond, also denominated in euros, was 4.24 per cent, a premium of 40 points, or approximately 10 per cent. The market is valuing the risk of France defaulting on the euro, as compared with the German risk, at around 10 per cent of the yield of the Bund.
These premiums vary from country to country, as one would expect. One would also expect them to rise in a period of financial distress, and they have in fact done so. There are four Eurozone countries in which the premium has risen to a disturbing level. Greece has a spread of 1.59 per cent over Bund, Italy 1.15 per cent, Ireland 1.13 per cent and Portugal 0.90 per cent. The Eurozone countries have lower spreads over the Bund, and stand somewhere between Portugal and France.
One can convert these spreads into percentage premiums over the yield of the Bund. On that basis, Greece offers a 41 per cent premium, Italy and Ireland 32 per cent, and Portugal 23 per cent.
Three of these are small countries, but Italy is one of the four large economies of the Eurozone, Germany, France, Italy and Spain. If Greece, Ireland or Portugal were to come under extreme pressure to leave the Eurozone, it would be possible for the larger countries to bail them out, on the principle that they are too small to be allowed to break up the single European currency.
The Germans might or might not be willing to finance a weak partner in the Euro. In 1992, Germany let Britain fall out of the European exchange rate mechanism rather than reduce German interest rates. One cannot assume that Germany will always fight to maintain the unity of the European monetary system. Historically, the German decision at the Bath summit of September 1992 was hugely important and now looks to have been a great mistake which liberated Britain and limited Germany.
However, the table of Bund Spreads shows that there are now three groups of Eurozone countries, a strong Northern tier of Germany, France and the Netherlands, a weak Southern tier of Greece, Italy and Portugal, with a weak Ireland on the West and a middle group which includes Austria, Belgium and Spain.
Italy is the real problem, a large economy with a relatively low credit rating, with a much lower rate of growth of productivity than Germany. There must be serious doubts about Italy as a Eurozone power, with a 32 per cent higher yield than Germany on the ten year bond. That is a measure of serious risk. It is not clear that the Southern tier of the Eurozone could hold together if the recession becomes a depression.
William Rees-Mogg
for The Daily Reckoning Australia
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About the Author
Leading political editor William Rees-Mogg is former editor-in-chief for The Times and a member of the House of Lords. He has been credited with accurately forecasting glasnost and the fall of the Berlin Wall – as well as the 1987 crash. His political commentary appears in The Times every Monday. His financial insights can only be found in the Fleet Street Letter, the UK's longest-running investment newsletter.
Comment by Peter Carvapai on 6 November 2008:
Dear Mr Rees-Mogg,
The fact that the recent global shocks have affected Germany and the rest of euro bond markets in various levels, creating particular discrepancies in asset prices reveal only that the euro bond markets are not fully integrated.
The fact that global factors can cause volatility of yield differentials among euro government bonds JUST SHOWS that more work has to be done in order to achieve full financial integration.
One cannot assume from this that the Eurozone is about to disintegrate.
Actually, what recent developments have shown is that Denmark, Sweden and Britain should seriously consider to join in.
Comment by Gerry Mav on 1 January 2009:
The recent global political shocks were orchestrated by the America First Bush Administration Republican Party, back in early 2000, when the Administration was suffering from diplomatic fall-out with the European Union.
The High oil price shocks of recent years were designed by the double-crossing Bush Administration to break the Eurozone apart. That's how we got the US financial crises which led to the British financial crises and the fall in the value of the Pound against the Euro to within parity levels.
The Eurozone Reserve Banks are fully loaded with reserves to withsatnd any financial onslaught the Bush Administration threw at it.
Will the Obama Precidency change the kamakazi economic policies of the Bush Administrtion?
Only time will tell.
The Bush Administration threw both the American and British economies over the cliff via the irresponsible kamakazi policies from 2001, which were designed to eventually create financial stress , (which did take place in mid 2007- Us financial crises) on Eurozone lenders , leading to the Bush dreamed collapse and breakup of the Eurozone ( which has not taken place).