Europe turning Japanese
Euro-zone debt crisis has uncanny parallels to Japan's 'lost decades', with low growth, the rise of deflation and a rapidly ageing population
Monetary policy that cannot get traction; weak banks that cannot or will not lend; an economy trapped in a twilight world of low growth, haunted by the spectre of deflation.
If this combination sounds familiar, that's because it is.
The euro zone, still drowning in debt bequeathed by the great financial crisis, increasingly resembles Japan in the 1990s as it struggled with its own balance sheet recession brought on by the bursting of an asset bubble.
Japan was long viewed with pity for its failure to shake off its torpor. Its central bank was criticised for policy timidity.
In light of the euro zone's wide output gap, reflected in record high unemployment, and the mountain of debt that governments and the private sector still need to pay down, some economists say inflation risks falling uncomfortably short of the ECB's target of just below 2 per cent.
In a report, JP Morgan said it expects core inflation, excluding taxes, to drop below 1 per cent, from 1.1 per cent in the 12 months to May, and remain below that level at least until the end of 2015.
Downward pressure on prices is especially great in countries on the euro-zone periphery.
With the option of exchange rate depreciation closed off, their only way to regain competitiveness is to hold down wages and other costs. Greece, for example, is mired in deflation for the first time in 45 years, adding to the real burden of its debt. Others might join it, JP Morgan reckons.
ECB policymakers acknowledge that the threat to price stability lies to the downside and say they are ready to relax policy further if necessary. For some economists, additional easing is a question of when, not if.
"We're not there yet, and QE is not our base case. But the lesson from the Japan of the 1990s is that the longer Europe waits to clean up bank balance sheets, the larger deflation looms," said Joachim Fels at Morgan Stanley.
Warnings about the dangers of delay are coming thick and fast, especially as the failure of Europe's banks to transmit low ECB interest rates to firms and households in southern Europe is splintering the 17-country bloc.
"To reverse these dynamics, bank losses need to be fully recognised, frail but viable banks recapitalised, and non-viable banks closed or restructured," the International Monetary Fund said on Monday.
Japan took the best part of a decade to deal with "zombie" banks hit by crashing property prices, while euro-zone arrangements to share the cost of future bank failures might not come into effect until 2019.
ECB policymaker Joerg Asmussen says that is too late.
What's more, the proposed agency to shut bust banks will not have an immediate backstop fund to do its job while it builds up a war chest funded by an industry levy.
Demographics are another disturbing parallel. Japan's working-age population peaked as a percentage of its total population in 1990, marking the end of a golden era of growth. Japan now has more people over 60 - 32 per cent of its population - than any other country, the UN says.
Yet Japan is not alone. Many countries in the European Union will also need to cope with rapidly ageing populations, including Portugal, Ireland and Latvia.
Andrew Milligan, an economist with Standard Life in Edinburgh, is particularly concerned about Italy.
Not only does Italy rank joint second with Germany in the over-60s league, but its weak economic and political institutions will make it harder to push through the structural reforms needed to reverse very low trend productivity growth.
Unless those barriers to change are removed, a lost decade or longer could be in store.
"While overall the West does not suffer from the scale of the difficulties that have plagued Japan, certain European countries, such as Italy, are much more vulnerable to going down the Japanese path than others," Milligan said.
The tricky balancing act for the ECB is to let bond markets apply sufficient pressure on governments to reform while providing enough monetary support to aggregate demand. Hence ECB president Mario Draghi's reassurance that interest rates will stay at current or lower levels for an extended period.
"On the one hand it is helpful that the ECB is adopting some form of forward guidance. It helps offset the view that the rest of the world will follow the path of US policy and clearly has fed into a somewhat lower euro. However, major questions still remain about the ability of the ECB to support individual economies in difficulty," Milligan added.
