After the Crisis: Towards a Sustainable Growth Model
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After the crisis: towards a sustainable growth model Edited by Andrew Watt and Andreas Botsch, senior researchers, ETUI European Trade Union Institute © European Trade Union Institute, aisbl, 2010 All rights reserved ISBN: 978-2-87452-170-6 D/2010/10.574/06 Price: 20 euros Graphic Design: Coast Photo: ©Getty Printed in Belgium by Impresor Pauwels The ETUI is financially supported by the European Community. The European Community is not responsible for any use made of the information contained in this publication. www.etui.org Table of contents 5 45 75 Introduction Stefan Schulmeister Allan Larsson A general financial transac- Stress-testing Europe’s Part 1 tion tax: enhancing stability social systems Re-regulating and fiscal consolidation the financial sector 79 50 Friederike Maier 17 Andreas Botsch Re-cession or He-cession Sony Kapoor After the financial - gender dimensions of eco- Principles for financial market crisis — a trade nomic crisis and economic system reform union agenda policy 21 Part 2 84 Dean Baker Building a real economy Jill Rubery Recipe for reform: account- for equality, social justice Salvaging gender equality able regulators and a and good jobs for all policy smaller financial sector 57 88 25 Eileen Appelbaum Ewart Keep and Paul De Grauwe After the crisis: employment Ken Mayhew The future of banking relations for sustained Training and skills during recovery and growth and after the crisis – what 28 to do and what not to do Yiannis Kitromilides 61 Should banks be Ronald Schettkat 92 nationalised? Employment after the Mario Pianta crisis: New Deal for Europe Industrial and innovation 32 required policies in Europe Robert Kuttner Reforming finance 66 96 Sandrine Cazes and Wiemer Salverda 36 Sher Verick Inequality and the great Helene Schuberth Labour market policies in (wage) moderation Making finance serve times of crisis society 100 71 Thorsten Schulten 41 Bernard Gazier A European minimum wage Thomas I. Palley Labour market policies after policy for a more sustain- A better way to regulate the crisis: towards social able wage-led growth model financial markets: asset- investment in transitions based reserve requirements After the crisis: towards a sustainable growth model 3 Table of contents Part 3 130 158 Stabilising the macro Richard Murphy and Henning Jørgensen economy through policy Markus Meinzer It’s the policy mix, stupid! reforms and coordination The tax gap at the core of the current financial crisis 163 107 and how to close it Frank Hoffer Heiner Flassbeck Business as usual — means The state is alive but not 135 a very different business yet kicking Sebastian Dullien and Daniela Schwarzer 167 111 The EMU needs a stability Sigurt Vitols Gerald Epstein pact for intra-regional cur- The sustainable company: Capital management rent account imbalances part of the solution to our techniques to control triple crisis? financial risks and 139 help achieve fair and Willi Koll and 171 sustainable growth Volker Hallwirth Iain Begg Strengthening the Macro- Reforming the EU budget to 115 economic Dialogue to promote sustainable growth Pierre Defraigne tackle economic imbalances Reforming global economic within Europe 175 governance – towards Jean Gadrey Bretton Woods III 144 A job-rich ‘post-growth’ Franz Nauschnigg economy 118 Better European financial ar- Nuria Molina-Gallart chitecture to prevent crises 179 Making finance work for Jacques Le Cacheux development Part 4 Towards a low carbon Creating institutional economy? European coordi- 122 complementarities and nation of carbon taxation Gustav A. Horn making the transition to is crucial What role for monetary ecological sustainability policy? 183 151 Pierre Jonckheer 126 Bruno Amable The green New Deal: Andrew Watt A change of model requires proposals for a sustainable It should come automatical- a new balance of power economy ly: European coordination to strengthen the automatic 154 stabilisers Dorothee Bohle and Béla Greskovits Development partnership and solidarity pact: support- ing recovery in East-Central Europe 4 After the crisis: towards a sustainable growth model Table of contents Introduction As the first decade of the 21st century comes to its term, most countries in Europe and the world still find themselves in the midst of the severest financial and eco- nomic crisis in eighty years. Its outcome is still uncertain. Prior to its collapse in 2008, the prevailing concept of laissez-faire finan- cial capitalism had been based on, among other things, the illusion that profits, in particular in the financial sector, could grow at double-digit rates while overall economic growth remained in the low single-digit range. This was reflected, in most countries, in a steady shift in national income from labour to capital. At the same time government policies and structural trends promoted a shift within wage income towards higher-income groups and exerted downward pressure on the terms and conditions of those at the bottom of the labour market. One of the consequences of these trends was a structural weakness in the growth of demand. Two opposite but complementary growth models emerged, both based on the necessity to address this structural demand-side weakness: either in- creased household borrowing (e.g. US, UK, Spain), usually on the back of specula- tive bubbles in asset prices, or export-led growth (Germany, Japan, China) driven by wage moderation relative to productivity trends. Growing global economic im- balances were the result. The crisis has clearly shown that both growth models indi- vidually, and their perverse symbiosis, have proven economically unsustainable. Meanwhile a longer-term crisis was brewing: the ecological unsustainability of the prevailing economic model. This interacted with the economic crisis most obviously in the form of rapidly rising commodity prices during the bubble phase. But the issues – the impossibility of perpetually increasing per capita goods con- sumption plus growing populations on a planet with finite material resources and tolerance of rising emissions – are more fundamental and remain largely unad- dressed, as testified by the failure of the Copenhagen summit at the end of 2009. The devastating economic and financial crisis has revealed the limitations of financial capitalism and has opened up a window of opportunity to propose and implement the progressive reforms that Europe needs to shift to an equita- ble and socially and ecologically sustainable growth model. However, as real or imagined signs of recovery are perceived, conservative forces are clearly seeking to re-establish their intellectual hegemony, limit the extent of progressive policy reforms, and return to ‘business as usual’. Indeed, with government finances strained and unemployment high, some are seeking to turn the clock back to the discourse of the early 1990s and launching renewed and aggressive attacks on the public sector, welfare states and workers’ rights. It is against this background that the European Trade Union Institute has brought together critical and progressive academics and researchers from Eu- rope and the United States to help launch a debate on setting an agenda for a reformed capitalism ‘after the crisis’. This book is the outcome. While a grow- ing number of publications have appeared dealing primarily with analyses of the causes of the crisis, the central aim of this book is to move the agenda from After the crisis: towards a sustainable growth model 5 Introduction the question ‘How could all this have happened?’ towards issues of what a new growth model should look like in the aftermath of the crisis. Each contributor to this book was asked to produce a short analysis and policy-oriented proposals in one area relevant to a post-crisis world. In most cases further reading is sug- gested for those who would like to follow up the issue in question in more detail. The opinions presented here are those of the respective authors, and no attempt has been made by the editors to shoe-horn the contributions into a specific policy agenda. As a result, there are also some overlaps and – we hope productive – contradictions between different texts. However, a number of common themes emerge and this Introduction seeks to tease them out. One thing unites them all, and that is the recognition that the crisis was more than a failure of finan- cial markets: re-regulation of financial markets is necessary, but not sufficient to prevent future damage and to stabilise the overall economy. Rather, a broad agenda of change in a number of policy areas is needed to address the underlying causes in the economic, social and ecological fields. In short, what is needed is a transformation of the existing growth model. The 39 contributions to this book are divided into four thematic sections. The first deals with financial market re-regulation; the second with labour mar- ket and social policies for more equality, social justice and good jobs for all; the third with macroeconomic policy reform and coordination; while the fourth cov- ers institutional complementarities and issues raised by the imperative of eco- logically sustainable growth. Re-regulating the financial sector According to IMF figures, the total cost of the financial crisis will amount to the astronomic figure of $12 trillion or 20 percent of annual world output. This in- cludes capital injections pumped into banks, the cost of neutralising the so-called ‘toxic assets’ (paper that is worthless or at least impossible to value) in balance sheets, debt guarantees and vast liquidity support from central banks. As a re- sult of short-term interventions from governments and central banks, countries of the G20 face a combined budget deficit of 10 percent of their GDP in 2009, the biggest since World War II. The starting point of the crisis was undoubtedly the failings in the financial sector. For this reason, section 1, Re-regulating the financial sector, takes stock of what went wrong in the world of finance as a point of departure for setting out a wide range of regulatory measures that are deemed essential to clean up the mess and, crucially, to prevent major crises in the future.