@Tiberio Cito da Adults in the room, parte I capitolo 4.

Many of my economist friends – who suspected that I was about to land the worst job in the universe – wrote to me, emailed and phoned to lend support. Some suggested that on my first day in office I should introduce capital controls. That is, rather than wait for the ECB to close down our banks and ATMs on the grounds of halting the very bank run that they had begun, why not pre-empt them by slapping restrictions on how much cash depositors could withdraw from their accounts or wire abroad? The idea was that by slowing the bank run we could buy more time before the banks were closed in which to negotiate under calmer circumstances. There were three reasons for rejecting this counsel.

The first was that imposing capital controls would have been the obvious first step of a party that intended to return to the national currency in order to devalue it and thus gain competitiveness: in that case, introducing capital controls would be essential to prevent the outflow of money caused by the expected devaluation. In other words, introducing capital controls would have been the right move only if we were intending to leave the eurozone – to opt for Grexit – and would therefore have contradicted both my negotiating aims and my strategy for signalling credibly what these aims were. Moreover, even if we managed to convince Brussels of our sincere desire to remain within the euro, capital controls would signal a willingness to become second-rate citizens of the eurozone, as stragglers who had euros but who could not do as they pleased with them. My intention was to signal the precise opposite.

The second reason was that the time available for negotiations was fixed by our debt repayment schedule, so capital controls would not actually buy us any time. These repayments were due to begin in April 2015 and continue until August, which demanded a new agreement by June 2015 at the very latest. Even if I could have waved a magic wand to stop the bank run dead, the negotiations would still have to be completed within four to five months at the very most. Capital controls would not change this one iota.

The third reason was that capital controls are inconsistent with monetary union, whose spirit and reality they violate. The whole point of the eurozone or any common currency area is that money is free to move unimpeded. If I were to introduce capital controls on day one of our administration, how could I censure the ECB for threatening us with them? The moment I did so, all the accusations against me and the Syriza government – of being anti-European, of preparing Greece for Grexit, of undermining the indivisibility of the eurozone – would be vindicated. Moreover, our own people would be puzzled: why is a government that is pressing for a good agreement within a common currency area stopping us from getting our money out of our own bank accounts and from sending it to other countries in the same monetary union? The blame game would have been lost before the negotiations even started.

Another suggestion for helping a Syriza government buy time during the negotiations came from, among others, Thomas Mayer, formerly chief economist at Deutsche Bank. His idea was to introduce a second currency parallel to the euro within Greece in order to create more liquidity and space for us to manoeuvre. It was an interesting idea but one I had actually considered and rejected in 2010 as a solution to the euro crisis. 19 Its gist was that wage rises, aimed at reversing austerity, be awarded in a new currency backed by government debt. The new currency would of course devalue immediately in relation to the euro. Thus, while Greek workers’ pay packets and pensions would increase a little, Greek labour, as measured in euros, would devalue in relation to German, French or Portuguese labour, making Greece more competitive.

I gave Thomas Mayer two reasons why I could not endorse a parallel currency. First, ‘Parties and interests opposed to us are already creating an atmosphere of terror by claiming that we have a hidden agenda to bring Greece out of the euro, plunder people’s savings and put Greece on the road to becoming a new Argentina. Your proposal’s propaganda value to our opponents would tend to infinity.’ Second, there was no need for it because the parallel payments system that I was working on provided us with the flexibility we required. Months later it struck me that these two measures – capital controls and a parallel currency – would be wielded by Germany’s finance minister, Dr Wolfgang Schäuble, against me. The early decision to reject the enemy’s own weapons was thus vindicated, and yet, soon after I resigned the finance ministry I was accused of devising diabolical plans to introduce them both.

C’est la vie in Bailoutistan.

Commento nel messaggio successivo.

@Tiberio Si trattava di una strategia keynesiana (Keynes si guadagnò la sua reputazione di economista geniale per questa mossa controintuitiva: silverbearcafe.com/private/04.… - spiegata meglio in "The price of peace" di Zachary D. Carter), compiuta per guadagnare credibilità, e per rendere credibile politicamente anche l'unione monetaria.

La strategia fallì perché il governo greco, sotto pressione, si comportò come se avesse perso il referendum e perché alla controparte non interessava la credibilità politica collettiva dell'Unione, bensì il potere del complesso governativo-bancario a trazione tedesca, contro la democrazia: che cosa sarebbe successo se i greci avessero dimostrato che la volontà del popolo poteva prevalere sulla finanza?

Quella volta l'irreprensibile Draghi non disse "Whatever it takes" (avrebbe potuto farlo: qz.com/1038954/whatever-it-tak…) ma bloccò la circolazione dei capitali in Grecia per aumentare la pressione sulla democrazia greca.