THIS! IS! NOT! ARGENTINA! (UPDATE)

The other day, I got an email from Dan Beeton, the International Comms Co-ordinator at the CEPR. As veteran readers will recall, Dan and I have occasionally worked together on debunking the Weisbrot hoax. Dan is a colleague of Mark Weisbrot, so he has an interest in this.

Dan shared with me the latest CEPR paper which draws some compelling comparisons between Greece and Argentina and uses these to make the case against further austerity and in favour of Greece defaulting and leaving the Euro. I’ve promised to help disseminate this paper both on Twitter and on this blog. Not because I agree with it, but because I believe that since a Greek default is desired by a great deal of the population and ultimately inevitable, it is important for its advocates of default to become more rigorous in their argument.  

For the record, as you will know, I’m all for defaulting once we’re running a primary surplus, though I would caution that this will not in itself make Greece’s finances sustainable.

That said, as much as I respect Weisbrot and his colleagues at the CEPR, I’m sick to the back teeth of comparisons between Greece and Argentina. They are just too simple. Argentina was on a foreign currency peg; Greece is in a monetary union, which is like a foreign currency peg. Argentina had an IMF intervention, Greece had an IMF intervention. Argentina defaulted; Greece is expected to default. Hey presto, Greece is Argentina. What worked for one, must surely work for the other. It’s so easy to predict the future when you already know what you want it to look like. So I thought I’d talk you through some of the main ways in which Argentina in 2002 was not like Greece in 2011. I know it won’t convince the defaultniks but at least I’ll get this stuff off my chest. 

First, it’s important to appreciate how big the Argentine budget deficit was when that country defaulted. As I’ve said on this blog ad nauseam, a country with a primary surplus can default anytime – it can still pay its way regardless of what creditors do. A country with a primary deficit has a problem. Argentina’s budget deficit in 2001 was a paltry 3%. At the time, Argentina was paying 3.58% of GDP in interest (same source), so in fact they were running a primary surplus of 0.8%, courtesy of the IMF’s bitter medicine, compared to our projected 2011 primary deficit of 2.3%, which may yet turn out to be much higher, but is only at this non-eye-watering level courtesy of the IMF too. Search the latest CEPR paper for references to Argentina’s primary surplus. Not one. Yeah, I thought so. Even rigorous-minded Keynesians don’t believe deficits matter. You know why? Because cool guys don’t look at explosions.

Similarly, the CEPR paper makes the point that Greece’s exports are much higher as a share of GDP than Argentina’s back when it defaulted, and therefore better placed to drive growth. First, I would point out that Greek exports have grown, by nearly 10% in 2011. Second I need to explain that the share of exports on GDP is not the only thing that determines the sustainability of falling off a currency peg.

In early 2002, Argentina’s current account was nearly balanced, with a deficit of 1.4% of GDP in January. Nearly all gains in competitiveness went into growth. Greece is a different story: we’ve got a current account deficit of over 10% of GDP. Hence, while Argentina was able to grow at the very substantial rate it did using a devaluation of about 65% between 2001 and 2005, it would take a much greater devaluation to replicate this effect in Greece. Remember, even with massive inflation, you can’t devalue by more than 100%, although Keynesians will no doubt find a way (perhaps a tax on holding the national currency?). But even with their ‘modest adjustment’, the Argentines paid dearly for this strategy. You can check here what happened to inflation in the aftermath. It topped 25% in the first year, and was almost 15% the year after that, and has since never recovered to pre-default levels. In fact, Argentina is still blatantly manipulating inflation figures to keep up appearances – so much so that they have to threaten and fine anyone who dares publish more accurate figures (unless they are a union, and then only if they keep their estimates of real inflation for the negotiating table only).

If you are advocating foreign-currency default but don’t know why inflation is bad for a country, I’m tempted to suggest that you deserve to have its massive double-digit slapped across your face. But let me explain nonetheless: inflation means your money is worth less in relative terms and is harder to store, i.e. convert into wealth such as savings or a house. Inflation is a tax on everyone who earns a wage or benefits but has little negotiating power with the government, as well as everyone who saves money in a bank or owns a cash-poor business. It is, on the other hand, a subsidy to anyone whose income comes from investment, anyone who owns gold, anyone who owes money in the national currency, anyone who has the political connections to negotiate higher salaries, and any business able to borrow cheaply.

Think really hard of which of the two sides you’re on and you’ll know whether it’s good for you. Rich people and banks are typically winners from massive inflation. The working poor are typically losers. That’s partly the reason why, despite Argentina’s success in battling income inequality, wealth inequality (as measured by the wealth Gini coefficient) has not only failed to come down, but actually increased since the default, from 74% in 2000 to about 75% in 2010, and is in fact way higher than Greece’s.

That’s one point. On to the second. Whatever the fiscal and current account deficit figures, we need to get one thing clear: the Greek state is much, much bigger than Argentina’s was when it defaulted. More than double in size in fact. Even without paying any interest, the Greek state would still be leeching much more money out of its economy than Argentina’s ever did, either pre- or post- default. Hence the potential for growth post-default would be much smaller without, you guessed it, more austerity! Don’t forget, unlike government investment, government consumption does slow down growth.

I can sense your disbelief at this point. The assumption among most commentators is that anyone who flicks the finger at the IMF must be a socialist who believes in an all-encompassing state. But in fact, by 2001, the last full year before it defaulted, Argentina was spending just 18% of GDP in primary government expenditures. Contrast this to Greece’s projected primary spending of 42.7% of GDP in 2011 (which, again, could turn out to be higher). Remember, I’m using the primary spending figure because clearly in a default(nik) scenario we wouldn’t be paying interest at all.

This comparison, incidentally, tells you a little bit about why Argentina grew so fast post-default.

If Greece were to default and revert to spending, minus interest, what Argentina did as a share of GDP in 2001, just before it defaulted, we’d save 24.7% of GDP and, in my preferred scenario, return it to the taxpayer through tax cuts. And according to the IMF’s calculations, a tax cut of that monumental size would boost the Greek economy’s output by 1.3x24.7%=31.1% within 2 years (or anyway that’s how much an equivalent increase in taxes would shave off our output). Libertarians would of course love this, and provided we could find that extra 2.3% of GDP through some other revenue (such as privatisations) it would actually be possible, but defaultniks would typically hate both small states and privatisations, so I don’t expect them to come out in support of us becoming like Argentina in this regard.

Not that we could do that, either. Too much of our primary spending is locked in. The second major difference, you see, between Greece and Argentina is demographics. Greece has for many years been a much older society than Argentina. In 2002, Argentina’s old-age dependency ratio was a mere 16%, while Greece’s ratio for 2011 is just over 28%. You can check this for yourselves here (select ‘detailed indicators’ on the right).

Now by looking at the correlation of health, survivor, sickness and disability spending with old age spending, it is possible to approximate the total impact of ageing: it adds up to about 17% of GDP per annum (if you don’t like my estimate, try your own using the COFOG government spending data provided by Eurostat). Remember I’m only adding to age-related spending the additional spending on other things attributable to ageing.

Now, if our old-age dependency ratio were the same today as Argentina’s back in 2000, it’s only a matter of simple math (and an assumption of linearity which I admit may be wrong) to deduce that we would be spending 7.1% of GDP less on our aged and see a primary spending figure of 38.1%. Still more than twice what Argentina was spending when it defaulted.  Although that would, in theory, put paid to Greece’s primary deficit, cutting that much off pension and health spending would have disastrous effects on Greek society.  In fact, let’s go balls-deep in the defaultnik scenario and assume that Greece cut all of its toxic public procurement budget as well – no new roads, no new arms spending, no nothing – that would save us 13% of GDP at most. We’d still only get down to 25% of GDP, which is still way higher than what Argentina used to spend when it defaulted.  

Note by the way that Argentina didn’t have to worry about destroying its pension system when it defaulted, because by the time it defaulted it had privatised its pensions system, courtesy of the same hideous reforms that defaultniks hate so much. In an earlier paper, the CEPR credits this with losing Argentina about 1% of GDP in government income annually (presumably, of course that was meant to be the people’s money, not the Government’s, but hey let’s humour them), but they forget to mention that it is precisely this that made it possible for Argentina to default without destroying or confiscating the pensions income of its own citizens.

But in any case, this little exercise suggests that, even if our population was currently as young as Argentina’s when it defaulted, we’d still be in a far worse position to default than they were. But at least we would be able to default.

Remember, ageing is not reversible. Pre-austerity, it used to add a significant 0.46% of GDP to our primary spending per year. At this rate, if we were to balance the 2011 books in one fell swoop, by 2020 we would be running a 4.6% primary deficit once again. Unless we cut pensions and benefits savagely, of course. Which we have, to the towering rage of defaultniks everywhere.

Why is pensions income so important? Well because they are a huge part of the Greek household income. Now there’s no actual calculation available of this, so I’ve had to come up with my own. I can only offer a mix of 2011 and 2010 figures, but that’s a start. Greece’s pensions funds paid out EUR25.6bn on pensions in 2011 (pg. 95 here), against total household consumption of EUR165.8bn in 2010. Household consumption has probably fallen since, so that resulting ratio of 15.4% is definitely an underestimate. So basically, destroying pension funds via default would eat into private consumption in a massive way (it already has). Another big handbrake on growth, I think.


Defaultniks often point out how investment would supposedly soar in a country freed from the burden of debt. but age once again reaches for the handbrake. Without the ability to tap global capital markets, only domestic savings will be left to finance investment and that will not be nearly enough in countries like Greece (discussion here). Savings rates don't typically go up as a country ages; past a certain point they go down: people reach their maximum savings rate at a certain age and then start eating into their savings to pay for the kids' school fees, for healthcare, for whatever have you. Pensioners are, in fact, de facto negative savers. Have a look at the graph below if you don't believe me (source):

If you're feeling really gloomy right now, you've got my gist. The last decade was actually Greece's golden age of age-related saving propensity, if there is such a term. It was the time in our near history when we were most disposed towards saving, and our governments made sure we didn't. Game over.

The difference in household savings rates between 2011 Greece and 2002 Argentina implied by the above graph is about 8% of GDP. That's 8% of GDP less that we Greeks will be able to put into investment, post-default, than Argentina was able to. That's twice our 2010 gross national savings, bottled up for the foreseeable future by the irresistible force of human destiny. It's also more, by the way, than what we're currently paying in interest.

Here’s one final comparator that people often forget, and it’s related to all of the above. 2002 Argentina was way more entrepreneurial than 2010 Greece:  the average Argentine adult is almost three times as likely as the average Greek to be in the process of starting a business as the average Greek adult, even though entrepreneurial activity fell by half post-default: as growth returned, the appetite for enterprise fell quickly. Entrepreneurs are important to growth because they help convert all of that free post-default cash into sustainable wealth. One reason why we’ve got so many fewer of them is, once again, age: it’s easier to take a huge gamble with bankruptcy when you’re 28 (the median age in 2002 Argentina) than when you’re 41 going on 42 (the median age in 2011 Greece), and who would blame you?

The result is that even if Greece could somehow pump all of that money we spend on interest into the economy, it’s doubtful whether it would ever turn into growth of the sort the CEPR and our local defaultniks are hoping for without an exogenous boost to entrepreneurship. Don’t be quick to blame the Euro; Argentina had a currency peg too pre-2002, remember? That’s the whole point. In fact, I think the difference here is largely down to demographics and the size of the state, but it’s harder to prove this, so let’s park it for now.

This is not the end of the long list of differences between 2002 Argentina and 2011 Greece. It’s just all the stuff I could come up with at relatively short notice. But I hope it helps clarify how tenuous and wishful the Greece-Argentina analogies are.


UPDATE: 


Demetri Kofinas, aka @CoveringDelta, has paid me a tremendous compliment by inserting a reference to this analysis on the very successful show he produces on Russia Today - check it out here. Thank you Demetri!