Evropski politiki, pa tudi ekonomisti, bi se morali pri svojem razmišljanju in ukrepanju malce bolj poglobiti v zgodovino. Zgodovina je namreč zakladnica izkušenj, predvsem zelo mučnih izkušenj, iz katerih se, predvsem kadar se sistematično pojavljajo, lahko naučimo, česa danes zares ne velja več poskušati. Evropska monetarna unija je tak novodobni eksperiment, ki je glede na značilnosti, dokaj podoben obdobju zlate valute pred letom 1914 ter obdobju med obema vojnama. “Zlati avtomatizem” je sicer krasen učbeniški primer, kako se notranje ravnotežje (cene in zaposlenost) avtomatsko prilagajajo zunanjemu (plačilni bilanci). Problem je le v tem, da ta učbeniški pripomoček preskoči temnejše plati avtomatskega prilagajanja, to pa so predvsem dolga obdobja deflacije, gospodarske depresije, zniževanja plač in/ali velike brezposelnosti.

Za hiter zgodovinski pregled temnejših plati zlatega avtomatizma, za katerega je Barry Eichengreen povedal, da ga zaradi socialne krutosti ne moreš uveljavljati v demokracijah, priporočam knjigo Marka Blytha – Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea (2013) ter seveda izvrstni pregled Barrya Eichengreena – Golden Fetters: The Gold Standard and the Great Depression, 1919-1939.

Kevin O’Rourke v The Economistu opozarja na negativne zgodovinske izkušnje iz časov zlate valute ter še posebej na mučno britansko izkušnjo med obema vojnama, ko je zganjala učbeniško politiko varčevanja kot miks restriktivne monetarne in fiskalne politike. Toda rezultat tega je bil – namesto zmanjšanja – stalno povečevanje zasebnih in javnega dolga zaradi delovanja učinka deflacije. O’Rourke je zaradi tega kategoričen, da evro območje ne bi smelo delati podobnih napak:

The pernicious effects of deflation on debt sustainability were further in evidence in the interwar period. As the IMF pointed out recently, interwar Britain was what current euro-orthodoxy would regard as a model pupil. It ran a primary surplus equivalent to about 7% of GDP throughout the 1920s, it was committed to repaying its war debts, and it experienced “internal devaluation”, which is what deflation is called nowadays in the context of individual euro-zone member states. And yet the net effect of all this virtue was a substantial increase in the British debt-to-GDP ratio, largely as a result of deflation. As the IMF drily notes, “The U.K. interwar episode is an important reminder of the challenges of pursuing a tight fiscal and monetary policy mix, especially when the external sector is constrained by a high exchange rate.”

An adjustment strategy based on the expectation that already over-indebted countries will pay back what they owe in an environment of falling prices seems doomed to failure; all the more so if “internal devaluation” at the level of individual member-states is replaced by euro-zone-wide deflation. But outright deflation would be much more costly than that. If economic historians have learned anything from the Great Depression, it is that deflation is dangerous. First, nominal wages are sticky downward: as Ben Bernanke and Kevin Carey showed for the interwar period, this implies that price deflation, if achieved at all, leads to higher real wages and unemployment. Second, deflation is harmful in other ways, increasing the real value of private as well as public debt, raising real interest rates, and leading agents to postpone expensive purchases. And interwar deflation ultimately had terrible political consequences, as well as economic ones. 

The euro zone really shouldn’t want to go there.

Vir: Kevin O’Rourke, The Economist

Podobnega mnenja sta tudi Barry Eichengreen & Peter Temin, ki poudarjata, da je monetarni sistem dejansko sistem, ki ima na eni strani suficitarne, na drugi pa deficitarne države, zato prilagajanja nikoli ne bi smeli obesiti samo na deficitarne države, da z interno devalvacijo in s tem deflacijo ter posledičnim povečanjem brezposelnosti same rešijo problem neravnotežij v sistemu:

But the gold standard was not just a monetary arrangement. It was also an ideology. Depression-era choices were made according to a worldview in which maintenance of the gold standard was the primary prerequisite for prosperity. Policies were therefore formulated to preserve the gold standard, not to stabilise output and employment. Central bankers thought that maintaining the gold standard would restore employment, while attempts to increase employment directly would fail. The collapse of output and prices and the loss of savings as banks closed in the early 1930s were precisely what the gold standard promised to prevent.

…

Adopting the euro is, if anything, an even harder commitment than gold. Countries could leave the gold standard during crises without enraging investors, but countries cannot temporarily abandon the euro in times of crisis (Eichengreen 2007, Blejer and Levy-Yeyatia 2010), proposals for Greece to take a euro-holiday notwithstanding (Feldstein 2010).

But the Eurozone did not simply follow the gold standard; it also followed Bretton Woods. The importance of this lays not so much in the Bretton Woods system itself as the negotiations leading up to it. Keynes, one of the key negotiators, had come to realise the pernicious influence of the gold standard as it operated in the interwar years. He acknowledged that deflating in response to a loss of reserves, under already deflationary circumstances, was harmful not only for the initiating country but also its neighbours.

His plan for avoiding this outcome in the post-war world was that surplus countries would be obliged to curtail their imbalances just as deficit countries were obliged to curtail theirs. Keynes’s plan did not come to fruition because of a disagreement between the US and Britain. But that the question was unresolved is no excuse for forgetting it now.

…

The point is that an international monetary system is to be a system in which countries on both sides of the exchange rate contribute to its smooth operation. Actions by surplus countries, and not just their deficit counterparts, have systemic implications. They cannot realistically assign all responsibility for adjustment to their deficit counterparts.

Keynes drew this lesson from the Great Depression. It was why he wanted measures to deal with chronic surplus countries in the international monetary plan he developed during World War II. Sixty-plus years later, we seem to have forgotten his point.

Vir: Barry Eichengreen & Peter Temin, Voxeu