Apalancar EFSF para expandirlo: ¿podrá funcionar?

Genevieve Signoret

EFSF = Fondo Europeo de Estabilidad Financiera. Apenas siendo ratificado (esperamos) este mes en Alemania y en el resto de la zona del euro en octubre. Sólo mide 440MMn euros; se estima que se requerirá tres veces eso para prevenir una intensificación y contagio de la crisis bancaria ya en curso. Luego, se han flotado propuestas para que el fondo se pueda expandir mediante el apalancamiento. Martin Wolf explica cómo:

by issuing guarantees rather than loans, or borrowing from the European Central Bank, or by borrowing in the markets. But if action needs to be immediate, as it does, the only entity able to supply the needed funds is the central bank.

¿Podrá funcionar? Wolf contesta siete veces:

First, if agreement were reached on action on the necessary scale, it should halt the panic. Second, it may be impossible to obtain such consent, particularly if funding relied heavily on the ECB, at least in the short run. Mario Draghi, the incoming Italian president of the bank, would find himself in the invidious position of being compelled to save his own country in the teeth of complaints from the German public over the debauching of their central bank.

Third, once banks and sovereigns become heavily dependent on official finance, they may find it quite hard to return to the market. Fourth, such actions cannot solve the deeper difficulty that currently uncompetitive countries will need a sizeable inflow of external funds for a very long time, little of which is likely to come from the now fearful private sector.

Fifth, it is likely that after such a rescue, the imprudent will just go back to their bad old ways, making further rescues necessary. Sixth, internal transfers can be halted only if there is adjustment inside the eurozone, including by the surplus countries, of which there is little sign. Thus the eurozone risks turning into an illegitimate transfer union. Finally, there is a danger that an ambitious programme would degrade the standing of the soundest eurozone sovereigns, though a collapse might do almost as much damage to their ratings.

El quinto punto se trata del riesgo moral. Empero, no es el momento de combatir el riesgo moral. Peleemos contra el riesgo moral al momento de diseñar, aplicar y actualizar las regulación bancaria y las reglas fiscales, no ahora que estamos parados en el precipicio.

¿No fue esa la lección de Lehman Brothers?