Experte zum möglichen Euro-Ausstieg

Wenn Griechenland zur Drachme zurückkehren würde, wäre Deutschland der Hauptverlierer, sagt der Finanzökonom Stephan Schulmeister.Interview: Ulrike Herrmann

Die Rückkehr der Drachme wäre für Deutschland nicht besonders günstig. Bild: dapd

taz: Herr Schulmeister, sollte Griechenland den Euro verlassen und zur Drachme zurückkehren?

Stephan Schulmeister: Nein, bloß nicht. Deutschland wäre der Hauptverlierer.

Wieso Deutschland?

Schon jetzt hat in Spanien, Italien, Irland und Portugal ein Run auf die Banken begonnen. Die Menschen dort räumen ihre Konten leer und legen ihr Geld in Deutschland an. Diese Kapitalflucht würde sich dramatisch verstärken, wenn Griechenland aus dem Euro fliegt. Denn dann würde jeder Italiener denken, dass bald auch die Lira zurückkommt – und seine Euros nach Deutschland überweisen.

Was ist daran schlimm?

Das gesamte Gläubiger-Schuldner-System in Europa würde zusammenbrechen. Wenn die Bankkunden in Spanien, Portugal und Italien ihr Geld abziehen würden, wie es jetzt schon die Griechen tun – dann wären drei Billionen Euro auf der Flucht. Das sprengt jeden Rettungsschirm. Dann crasht der Euro.

Stephan Schulmeister

64, ist Wirtschaftsforscher in Wien. Sein Schwerpunkt sind Finanzmärkte und ihre Folgen für die Realwirtschaft. Zuletzt veröffentlichte er „Mitten in der großen Krise. Ein ‘New Deal’ für Europa“ (Picus Verlag 2010).

Foto: Archiv 

Deutschland sitzt demnach in der Falle …

… in der Falle des Gläubigers. Jede Finanzkrise kennt nur einen Verlierer: den Gläubiger. Denn der Schuldner wird ja seine Schulden los, wenn er nicht mehr zahlen kann. Aber die Deutschen haben durch ihre permanenten Exportüberschüsse ein riesiges Auslandsvermögen in den anderen Eurostaaten aufgebaut. Das wäre dann weg.

Was raten Sie der Kanzlerin in dieser Situation?

Angela Merkel muss ihr Manöver vom Oktober 2008 wiederholen. Damals, mitten in der Finanzkrise, hat sie gesagt: „Alle Einlagen sind sicher.“ Jetzt müsste sie unbedingt EZB-Chef Mario Draghi unterstützen, der eine europaweite Einlagensicherung fordert. Alle 17 Euro-Staatschefs müssten in einer feierlichen Zeremonie erklären, dass man gemeinsam für alle Einlagen haftet.

Aber würden die Spanier und Italiener eine solche Inszenierung noch glauben? Wahrscheinlich würden sie ihr Geld trotzdem nach Deutschland überweisen.

Die Gefahr besteht. Eine Variante wäre, dass die Europäer gemeinsam haften – aber nur für die Konten von Inländern. Die Spanier müssten also ihr Geld in Spanien haben, damit es geschützt ist. Ein solches Vorgehen würde die Kapitalflucht vielleicht stoppen.

Jetzt haben Sie erklärt, warum Deutschland ein Interesse daran hat, dass Griechenland im Euro bleibt. Aber ist das auch im Interesse der Griechen? Wie sollen sie jemals wettbewerbsfähig werden, wenn sie nicht mit einer Drachme die Möglichkeit haben, abzuwerten?

Abwertung ist keine Lösung. 1971 wurden die Wechselkurse international freigegeben. Danach haben Griechen und Italiener mehrfach abgewertet, um ihre Exporte anzukurbeln. Aber langfristig hat das nie etwas gebracht. Denn durch die Abwertung wurden die Importe teurer, so dass die Inflation stieg – und also auch die Löhne. Damit war der Wettbewerbsvorteil wieder weg. Weil die Griechen sich an diesen Mechanismus erinnern, wollen sie im Euro bleiben.

Wenn eine Abwertung nichts bringt – wie sollen die Griechen wettbewerbsfähig werden?

Man sollte aus der Nachkriegszeit bis 1971 lernen. Damals gab es feste Wechselkurse – und trotzdem haben die Südländer aufgeholt.

Der Euro ist eine Art festes Wechselkurssystem. Warum klappt es jetzt nicht?

Die gesamte Spielanordnung hat sich verändert. Bis 1971 lohnte es sich nicht, in reine Finanzaktivitäten zu investieren. Denn der Realzins lag bei null, die Rohstoffpreise bewegten sich nicht, die Wechselkurse waren festgelegt – und Derivate gab es nicht. Also haben die Banken das Geld in die produzierende Wirtschaft gesteckt. Genau diese Strategie benötigen wir erneut. Wir müssen langfristige Vereinbarungen über den Ölpreis abschließen, eine Finanztransaktionssteuer einführen und den Zins nach unten drücken.

Was bedeutet das konkret für Griechenland?

Der Schuldenschnitt war falsch konstruiert. Man hat einfach 100 Milliarden von der Gesamtsumme gestrichen. Aber die Zinslast blieb. Griechenland benötigt einen Zinsschnitt, so dass nur noch zwei Prozent auf die Schulden fällig werden.

Das Kalkül von Kanzlerin Merkel ist klar: Sie will die Eurokrise bis zur Bundestagswahl 2013 aussitzen. Gelingt das?

Niemals. Halb Europa ist in einer Rezession. China allein kann die deutsche Wirtschaft nicht retten.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/greek-election-aftermath-1000-years-context

Im Auftrag der Regierungschefs entwickeln die Spitzen der europäischen Institutionen hinter den Kulissen einen Plan für ein neues, stabileres Europa. Der Preis könnte die Spaltung der EU sein. Von F. Eder, A. Ettel, J. Hildebrand und S. Jost

Europas Regierungen müssen weg vom kleinteiligen Krisenmanagement

Eine erste Andeutung wagte Angela Merkel schon. “Es ist natürlich möglich, darüber nachzudenken, wie wir uns in den nächsten fünf bis zehn Jahren weiterentwickeln”, sagte die Bundeskanzlerin in dieser Woche mit Blick auf Europa. “Wenn wir uns unentwegt Denkverbote auferlegen, wird das nicht klappen.” Das war ein Testballon. Er stieg unbemerkt auf. Noch ahnt kaum jemand, dass Merkels Worten schon bald sehr weitreichende Beschlüsse folgen könnten.

Nach den vergangenen zwei Horror-Wochen steht für Regierungschefs und das EU-Spitzenpersonal fest, dass man allein mit kurzfristiger Krisenbekämpfung nicht weiterkommt. Der Euro stürzte in den vergangenen Tagen ab, notierte zwischenzeitlich nur knapp über 1,23 Dollar, so niedrig wie seit zwei Jahren nicht. Gleichzeitig klettern die Risikoaufschläge für die Staatsanleihen von Spanien und Italien auf Rekordwerte. (Link: http://www.welt.de/106397211) Die Krise ist mit voller Wucht zurück.

Ende Juni soll der Masterplan beraten werden

Ein “Weiter so” kann es bei der Euro-Rettung nicht geben. Nun soll eine deutliche Reaktion folgen. Nach Recherchen der “Welt am Sonntag” wollen die Regierungschefs schon auf dem EU-Gipfel Ende Juni über einen Masterplan für Europa beraten. Es geht dabei nicht um akute Krisenbewältigung.

Eine Vision für den Kontinent soll es sein, vor allem aber für die gebeutelte Euro-Zone. “Überall auf der Welt, in Amerika oder Asien, werden wir gefragt: Wo wollt ihr eigentlich hin?”, sagt ein hoher EU-Vertreter. “Darauf müssen wir nach zwei Jahren Krise endlich eine Antwort liefern.”

Er erwartet für das Treffen in vier Wochen “einen großen Wurf”. Das sieht auch ein Vertreter der Währungsunion so: “In der Euro-Zone besteht Einhelligkeit darüber, dass es weitere integrative Schritte geben muss.” Und ein Notenbanker wird staatstragend: “Wir müssen das Fenster aufstoßen zu der Frage, was die Bürger von Europa wollen.”

EU-Institutionen sollen den Masterplan entwerfen

Auf ihrem informellen Treffen am 23. Mai hatten die Staats- und Regierungschefs einen Arbeitsauftrag erteilt an EU-Ratspräsident Herman van Rompuy, Kommissionschef José Manuel Barroso, an den Euro-Gruppen-Vorsitzenden Jean-Claude Juncker und den Chef der Europäischen Zentralbank (EZB) Mario Draghi.

Die Vier sollen einen Fahrplan entwerfen, wie “die EU auf eine neue Ebene” gehoben werden kann. “Drei bis vier Unterredungen” habe diese Präsidentenrunde in den kommenden Wochen geplant, es werden Telefonkonferenzen sein, die Institutionen stünden in engem Kontakt.

Van Rompuy wird Eckpunkte des Plans beim Gipfel Ende Juni präsentieren. Sie sollen in die Schlusserklärung aufgenommen werden. Bis spätestens Ende des Jahres sollen die Staats- und Regierungschefs diese “roadmap” dann offiziell und schwarz auf weiß beschließen. Es könnte ein revolutionäres Schriftstück werden.

An vier Hauptfeldern wird gearbeitet

Nach Informationen der “Welt am Sonntag” arbeiten van Rompuy, Barroso, Juncker und Draghi an Vorschlägen für vier Felder: Strukturreformen, eine Banken-Union, eine Fiskalunion und eine politische Union. Bisher läuft die Arbeit an dem Masterplan nahezu unbemerkt von der Öffentlichkeit. Dabei haben es die Vorschläge, die in den Hinterzimmern der EU-Institutionen zusammengetragen werden, in sich. Am Ende entstünde ein ganz neues Europa – wenn sich die 27 EU-Länder einigen können.

Weil das schwer vorherzusagen ist, operieren die Beteiligten noch im Geheimen: Sie haben wenig Interesse daran, dass ihre Arbeit bekannt wird, “weil der Prozess sehr schwierig ist”. Zunächst müssen sich die vier Institutionen auf einen gemeinsamen Bericht einigen, der anschließend noch die Zustimmung der Regierungschefs finden muss.

Berlin versucht, die Erwartungen zu dämpfen

Schon wird gewarnt. Man dürfe “keine unrealistischen Erwartungen wecken”, heißt es in Berlin. Es wird betont, dass es beim Gipfel Ende Juni zunächst um einen Fahrplan für die nächsten Schritte gehe, die dann in den Folgemonaten abgearbeitet werden müssten. Schließlich gehe es um sehr weitreichende Änderungen, die man nicht auf einem einzigen Gipfel abschließend beraten und beschließen könne. Daher ist es auch möglich, dass viele Vorschläge im Laufe des Prozesses wieder entschärft werden.

Bisher allerdings sind die vier EU-Lenker wild entschlossen, eine wirklich weitreichende “roadmap” zu erarbeiten. Am harmlosesten ist noch der Punkt Strukturreformen: Die Sozialsysteme sollen reformiert, der Binnenmarkt weiter gestärkt werden. Beides ist im Grundsatz weitgehend unumstritten.

Wachstum muss gefördert werden

Es wird vor allem darauf ankommen, diese Maßnahmen als wachstumsfreundlich zu verkaufen und nicht als Sparkurs. Der zweite Bestandteil des Plans, die Banken-Union, ist kniffliger. Die EZB fordert sie als Konsequenz aus der Krise offensiv ein: “Die Lehre ist eine weitere Zentralisierung der Bankenüberwachung”, sagte Draghi in dieser Woche öffentlich und fordert eine gemeinsame Finanzaufsicht in der Euro-Zone.

Zudem plädiert die EZB für einen europäischen Banken-Rettungsfonds, der über eine Abgabe der Finanzinstitute gefüllt werden könnte. Bei der Bundesregierung stießen solche Überlegungen lange auf Ablehnung, schließlich würden deutsche Banken für südeuropäische Konkurrenten mithaften. Andererseits ist auch in Berlin heute vielen klar, dass eine Währungsunion ohne integrierten Bankenmarkt nicht sinnvoll ist. “Ich glaube, der Banken-Union werden die Deutschen letztlich zustimmen”, sagt jemand, der den Fahrplan mitentwirft.

Fiskalunion ist für Berlin heikel

Eine Fiskalunion ist für die Bundesregierung der mit Abstand heikelste Vorschlag. In Berlin würde man darunter gerne nur eine strengere Haushaltsaufsicht verstanden wissen, also eine Weiterentwicklung des Fiskalpakts. Aber im Gegensatz zur Bundesregierung verstehen die vier Beteiligten EU-Institutionen unter einer Fiskalunion auch eine gemeinsame Haftung für Staatsschulden, also Euro-Bonds, die Deutschland heute vehement ablehnt.

Den Architekten des neuen Europa ist klar, dass Gemeinschaftsanleihen ein Langfristprojekt sind. Alle Beteiligten gehen davon aus, dass EU-Vertragsänderungen nötig sind. Und die werden langwierig.

Euro-Agenda für die kommende Dekade

Bei dem Masterplan handelt es sich um eine Euro-Agenda für die kommenden fünf bis zehn Jahre. Schon jetzt zeichnet sich aber ab, dass man dafür einen hohen Preis zahlen könnte: eine weitere Spaltung zwischen den 17 Euro-Ländern und den restlichen zehn, mit Kroatien ab dem kommenden Jahr elf EU-Staaten. Schon als Merkel den Fiskalpakt durchdrückte, nahm sie in Kauf, dass sich mit Großbritannien und Tschechien zwei EU-Partner verweigerten.

Spaltung Europas nicht ausgeschlossen

Diese Entwicklung dürfte sich nun mit dem Visionsbericht fortsetzen. Europa nimmt das Risiko der Spaltung in Kauf. “Wir müssen die Euro-Zone vertiefen, um sie zu stabilisieren”, sagt einer der Vordenker. “Die Euro-Zone muss eine Vorreiterrolle spielen”, fügt ein anderer hinzu. Lediglich Kommissions-Präsident Barroso dringt noch darauf, eine neue Architektur für alle 27 EU-Staaten zu entwerfen, nicht nur für die Währungsunion.

In Berlin, in Frankfurt und Luxemburg hält man zwei Geschwindigkeiten für möglich: Was immer geht, soll mit allen Ländern in Angriff genommen werden, alles andere nur mit 17 Euro-Staaten. Das ist ein Strategiewechsel für die europäische Einigung. “Aber dieser Strategiewechsel muss kommen”, sagt ein Zentralbanker. “Das gemeinsame Geld ist Europas prägendes Element.” Das gilt für die Krise wie auch für den Versuch, ihr zu entkommen.

Lin-Manuel Miranda, the Tony Award-winning creator of Broadway’s In the Heights, is currently working on The Hamilton Mixtape, a concept album that tells Hamilton’s life story through rap. Miranda performed parts of the Mixtape at the White House in 2009 and at Lincoln Center in New York City last year. “When I first read about him, I couldn’t get the stories of Tupac and Biggie out of my head,” says Miranda, whose new project coincides with a growing cultural fascination with the founding father.

Ever since the 200th anniversary of Hamilton’s death in 2004—which saw the release of Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Ron Chernow’s Hamilton biography and a well-attended reenactment of the Weehawken (N.J.) duel, in which Hamilton and Burr were played by their own descendants—Hamilton’s fan base has been steadily increasing. He’s been embraced both by Tea Party members (who champion the Federalist Papers) and on the left (who highlight his support of a strong federal government). In the past few months, his name has been invoked by economists in the U.S. and Europe as a source of wisdom on the federal debt and the euro zone crisis. “Europe is at an Alexander Hamilton moment,” former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker declared in January, “but there’s no Alexander Hamilton in sight.”

But it’s not just his brilliant political mind that has seduced people. Hamilton was a slender, fair-skinned, auburn-haired man with a chiseled jaw and azure eyes so alluring that Massachusetts representative Fisher Ames once called them “eminently beautiful.” Henry Cabot Lodge described him as “very attractive,” while a flustered Abigail Adams once wrote to her husband that Hamilton represented “lasciviousness itself.” Or, as a woman named Breanna Lynn more recently put it on Facebook (FB), “I’d tap that.”

Lynn posted this message on the Facebook group “Alexander Hamilton Was the Foxiest of the Federalists,” just one of a string of Hamilton fan pages that have cropped up on the social network. Others have names such as: “I love Alexander Hamilton,” “Alexander Hamilton?…?The Hotness Never Dies,” “Are you Treasurer Sexy?” and “Alexander Hamilton: Too Hot For Your Wallet.” There are Tumblrs, Twitter accounts, and fan fiction communities dedicated to the patron saint of Wall Street. A year ago, Rod Blagojevich admitted to having “a man crush” on him.

“Just Google ‘Alexander Hamilton Is Hot’ and you’ll be surprised [by what] you get,” says Caroline Hamilton (no relation), an English lecturer at the University of Pittsburgh who has written about Hamilton’s modern-day popularity. “Interest in Hamilton has really come back.”

A number of Hamilton appreciation groups are preoccupied with how dashing he looks on the $10 bill, which was redesigned in 2005. The oval around Hamilton’s portrait was removed, his shoulders were broadened, his face given more prominence. “He looks like he’s been Hollywoodized,” says biographer Chernow. “The Treasury Department in all its wisdom has turned him into a real hunk.”

Similar updates have been made to other denominations, but only Hamilton’s has inspired lustful swoons. “The new bill uses the same portrait as before,” says Douglas Mudd, curator of the American Numismatic Association’s Money Museum in Colorado Springs. “But now it’s a little bit more friendly-looking. Aside from his hairdo, you could easily imagine him being a modern person.”

Hamilton’s rags-to-riches story is a big part of his mystique. He was born on the Caribbean island of Nevis in either 1755 or 1757 to parents who never married. After his father left and his mother died, Hamilton worked as a clerk in Danish-controlled St. Croix. He was still a teenager in 1772 when he published a moving essay on St. Croix’s near-destruction by a hurricane; it so impressed local leaders that they raised money to send Hamilton to school in New York. Within five years, the upstart was working alongside George Washington and operating in some of the most prestigious social and political circles in what was to become the United States. “He is the classic American success story. He comes out of nowhere, recreates himself, and sets the world on fire,” says Chernow. “He was the Elvis Presley of his time.”

As Secretary of the Treasury he developed a system for national debt and helped found the central bank. Hamilton foresaw the benefits of an industrialized, merchant economy in ways that his Jeffersonian counterparts did not. “What is good about the American economy is largely the result of the Hamiltonian developmental tradition,” writes Michael Lind in his latest book, Land of Promise: An Economic History of the United States.

“He’s the architect of American capitalism,” says Charles Sahm of the Manhattan Institute, which last month gave out its annual Alexander Hamilton Awards to those, such as Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, who represent “Hamiltonian values.”

He was also deeply flawed—in a cool, brooding, James Dean kind of way. Hamilton developed a reputation as a prolific and unforgiving polemicist, and he never learned to pull his punches, earning as many enemies as he did followers. An affair with a married woman—whose husband successfully blackmailed Hamilton, who was also married—nearly ruined his career. Jefferson disliked him. Adams downright despised him. And after enduring a series of private and public insults, Aaron Burr killed him.

“He was sort of the bad-boy alternative to the Washingtons and Jeffersons in history class,” says Julia Cooperman, 22, a recent graduate of University of Southern California and a “Foxiest of the Federalists” Facebook group member. Cooperman says her Hamilton infatuation began in eighth grade. While other girls fawned over Zac Efron or the Jonas Brothers, she founded an after-school club called the Hamiltonians, where she and her friends discussed 18th century American history—and gushed over how cute Alexander Hamilton was. “We had a Mister Hamiltonian Pageant, where we made the four guys in the club compete to see who most embodied the Hamiltonian ideal,” she says. In other words, who looked the best in a wig.

“I’m sure girls in school have felt this way for decades, it’s just that now we can find each other on the Internet and create websites about it,” says Morgan Herrell, a Yale University junior who, along with her friend Celia Rost, runs the Hot and Historical Tumblr that catalogs which historical figures are the sexiest and why. “Some people find Henry Clay attractive. There’s a Team Daniel Webster out there. It can get competitive.” Herrell says Hamilton is by far the most popular figure on their website. “Whenever we post a picture of him, we get so many page views it’s insane,” she says.

Lin-Manuel Miranda seems like the person best poised to cash in on Hamilton mania; his Mixtape should be released by 2013, and he hopes to turn the album into a full-length Broadway production. What we really need, says Caroline Hamilton, is an Oscar-worthy Hollywood biopic. She even knows who should play him. “We need someone with the right face, who’s the right age, and who’s capable of passionate, articulate utterings,” she says. “You know who’d be perfect? Ryan Gosling.”

Bloc Sets Record in Number of Jobless as Manufacturing Activity Falls; Figures Highlight Widening North-South Divide

Euro-zone data out Friday showing a fresh decline in manufacturing and the highest number of jobless people in the bloc’s history suggested further economic floundering as the region’s debt crisis deepens.

In Spain, which is fighting to rescue one of its biggest banks and avoid becoming another casualty of the crisis, unemployment spiked to 24.3% in April, while manufacturing activity fell to a three-year low, both readings worse than even those of Greece.

Germany and France also posted manufacturing figures at or near three-year lows.

Unemployment in the 17-member bloc rose to a record 17.4 million in April, an increase of 110,000 since March and 1.8 million from a year earlier.

The euro bloc’s unemployment rate remained stable at 11%, following a small upward revision to March’s figure to 11% from 10.9%. The rate, while a record for the bloc, was in line with economists’ expectations.

Aside from the damping effect on consumer confidence and spending, the figures highlight the gaping divide between the euro zone’s prosperous north including Germany and Austria and the struggling south, complicating efforts of policy makers to resolve the region’s debt crisis.

Unemployment fell in Germany to 5.4% in April from 5.5% in March. It was just 3.9% in Austria. By contrast, in Greece, the jobless rate rose to 21.7%, while Italy’s rate set a record at 10.2%. In Spain, with a 24.3% jobless rate, more than half of young people are unemployed.

These trends are likely to intensify in coming months. Concerns over Greece and Spain have brought German government bond yields to record lows, making it easier for households and businesses there to finance new spending. Spanish and Italian bond yields have jumped in recent weeks, with the opposite effect on activity.

The euro’s recent slide will also benefit Germany and its key trading partners such as the Netherlands, economists say, because these countries export a large share of their goods and services outside the euro zone. Greece, Spain and the rest of southern Europe are much less sensitive to foreign trade, meaning they won’t get much lift from the weaker euro, economists said.

The final manufacturing purchasing managers’ index for the 17-nation currency bloc fell to 45.1 in May from 45.9 in April, marking a near-three-year low, Markit Economics said Friday. That is the 10th straight month that the manufacturing PMI has been below the key 50 threshold, which signals activity is shrinking month-to-month. May’s reading was very slightly improved from a preliminary reading of 45.0 published last month.

Outside the bloc, U.K. manufacturing contracted in May to 45.9 in May from a revised reading of 50.2 in April, a survey from Markit and the Chartered Institute of Purchasing and Supply showed.

The data suggests the country’s economy is shrinking in the second quarter of 2012, after contracting in the previous two quarters, placing the U.K. in a technical recession.

Signs that the euro-zone economy is weakening further have added to investor concerns that the bloc will struggle to escape its debt crisis intact. High borrowing costs in Spain have sparked fears that that country could soon need financial aid, joining Ireland, Portugal and Greece. Austerity measures across the bloc have suppressed economic activity, making it harder for governments to repay debts.

In a measure of the strains besetting the euro zone, the yield on two-year German debt turned negative early Friday, with investors briefly prepared to pay up just to protect their capital. Meanwhile Spanish bond yields are at levels considered unsustainable as fears about the country’s troubled banking system and highly indebted regions persist.

“The damage to the real economy caused by the region’s financial and political crises continues to spread across the region,” said Chris Williamson, chief economist at Markit, referring to the PMI data.

He said May’s figures suggest manufacturing will be a “major drag” on gross domestic product in the second quarter. The euro zone barely escaped recession in the first quarter, posting zero growth after a 0.3% contraction in output in the fourth quarter.

But the current rate of decline in manufacturing is still “nowhere near as severe” as at the height of the crisis in 2008/2009 that followed the collapse of investment bank Lehman Bros, Mr. Williamson said.

Underscoring the impact of the downturn on the real economy, Fiat SpA postponed the European launch of two cars for its namesake brand by at least a year, the latest example of the Italian auto maker’s efforts to save money as the region’s car market shrinks.

A weak performance from Germany suggested Europe’s biggest economy is struggling to escape the troubles of its weaker neighbors.

In Germany, Europe’s biggest economy, the manufacturing activity index fell to 45.2 from 46.2 in April. France’s PMI sank to 44.7 from 46.9.

German industrial giant Siemens AG’s Chief Executive Peter Löscher said in April that the global economy seems to be stabilizing, but at a considerably lower level, and last week he said the company’s growth in its home market is set to slow.

“In the core countries, the picture…looks alarmingly weak,” said Ken Wattret, chief euro zone economist at BNP Paribas.

Spain’s manufacturing PMI dropped to 42.0 from 43.5, meaning it is now suffering the biggest month-to-month decline of all the countries surveyed.

There were some slight improvements. Italy’s reading edged up to 44.8 from 43.8, an unexpected improvement that nonetheless left activity contracting at a steep pace. Greece’s reading hit an eight-month high at 43.1, but likewise still showed activity falling sharply month-to-month.

If the euro really is on the verge of collapse, as many pundits are now proclaiming, how come it is still so highly valued against other currencies, including the U.S. dollar?

That may sound like a crazy question, given the euro’s much-publicized decline over the past couple of weeks. It has been dropping as the possibility grows that Greece may seek to pull out of the 17-nation currency union following parliamentary elections there in mid-June. That scenario of a “Grexit” has spooked financial markets and pushed governments and business around Europe to draw up contingency plans.

Yet looked at from a longer perspective than last week, the euro is in fact still pretty expensive. On foreign exchange markets, one euro today buys about $1.25. That’s more than 6 percent above the $1.17 rate in January 1999, when the euro was first introduced as an accounting currency. Back then, it got off to a weaker start even than Facebook’s IPO and quickly fell below parity to the dollar. On Jan. 1, 2002, when euro notes and coins were introduced into general circulation, one euro bought just 90 U.S. cents. It then dropped to a low point of 86 cents in March of that year. That’s 30 percent below where it is today. This chart from the ECB website shows the full picture since the euro’s introduction:

And it’s not just against the dollar that the euro remains relatively strong. The trade-weighted value of the euro against the currencies of the 20 countries that are the European Union’s leading commercial partners shows the same trend. On this index, too, the euro tracks today at a level that is about its midpoint over the 12 years of its existence, far from its historic low.

So what does this mean? If you believe that markets are rational, there are three possible conclusions:

1. the euro still has a heck of a long way to fall – at least 30 percent and probably more

2. markets don’t yet believe that the euro zone is about to collapse, or

3. something else is supporting the currency; for example, the German economy’s renewed strength.

The wonderful thing about foreign exchange markets, of course, is that they can be highly irrational. Paul De Grauwe and Pablo Rovira Kaltwasser, economists at the University of Leuven in Belgium, recently published a paper entitled “Animal Spirits in the Foreign Exchange Market,” which concludes that traders form optimistic or pessimistic views about currencies that have little or nothing to do with economic fundamentals and that they readily swap for reasons that can defy logic.

Certainly, looking at the dollar’s high volatility against, first, the German mark and then the euro over the past 30 years, you might think that the U.S. and European economies have been massively diverging. The dollar started a dizzying climb in the feel-good 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, only to fall sharply in the mid-1980s, after the U.S. Treasury persuaded Japan and Europe to declare that it was overvalued – the famous 1985 “Plaza Accord.” Yet De Grauwe makes the point that the underlying economic situation doesn’t begin to warrant such big changes because, while there have been differences in GDP growth, purchasing power parity comparisons, and other indicators, they haven’t been big enough to warrant such violent market shifts. “The fundamentals have moved relatively little, but the foreign exchange markets have moved a lot,” he says.

How, then, to account for the euro’s trajectory, and particularly its current relative strength in the face of all that political and economic turmoil in Greece, Spain and other reeling countries?

It’s possible to make the case that the euro’s decline following its introduction was due to uncertainty about its prospects and solidity. After all, this was a new currency union in a world that is generally skeptical about such things. It didn’t help that the Europeans had a lousy track record of economic and monetary convergence; George Soros famously made a killing in 1992 by betting that the British pound would not be able to stay in the euro’s precursor, the “exchange rate mechanism” of the European Monetary System.

More puzzling is why the euro then went on to rise so sharply in the period before the 2008 financial crisis. Economic growth in the euro zone was actually quite sluggish in those years, substantially lower than in the U.S. and many other countries. Between 2002 and 2007, the euro area economy grew at an average annual rate of just 2 percent, compared with 2.6 percent in the U.S. and a buoyant 4.4 percent for the world economy as a whole. Yet in that period, the euro appreciated strongly.

Interest rates are often used to justify currency fluctuations, and the European Central Bank’s traditionally hawkish views on inflation may have helped to underpin the currency – even if the interest rate differential between Europe and the U.S. has not been substantial. Since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the explosion of the financial crisis in 2008, the European Central Bank has also lagged behind the U.S. Federal Reserve and the Bank of England, both of which have adopted aggressive policies of “quantitative easing” – big injections of liquidity into the financial system. But that has changed in the past six months, starting in November when the ECB started providing commercial banks with 1 trillion euros’ worth of cheap loans, in a bid to ease euro zone tensions. So what was the impact of that decision on the foreign exchange markets at the time? Answer: barely a ripple.

De Grauwe actually thinks that the prevailing market view, namely that the euro is a bit overvalued, is about right. He considers that it’s now above what he calls its “equilibrium value” and thus could go lower, to about $1.15 to $1.20. In other words, there’s still a Greek withdrawal discount to be had. But we are still far from the worst-case scenario of the collapse of the euro itself.

The euro’s recent fall might, in fact, be a case of a self-fulfilling prophecy, just as the 1985 Plaza Accord was. After all, European politicians are also now publicly discussing the worst-case scenarios, easing the nervousness of foreign exchange traders.

The irony of all this is that a massive euro devaluation would be one of the best things that could possibly happen right now for the euro zone, because it would instantly make exports far more competitive. That would help not just Greece out of its current misery but also all the struggling euro zone countries, from Spain to Italy to Ireland, and potentially trigger a German boomlet that could lift the entire continent.

Time, perhaps, for European politicians to talk up the crisis scenario even more forthrightly, in the hope that those animal spirits in the foreign exchange markets overreact with a historic selloff – and in the process actually head off the very scenario that they are betting on.

In 1949, Reinhold Niebuhr published a book called “Faith and History.” Niebuhr noticed a secular religion that was especially strong in the years after World War II. It was the faith that historical forces were gradually bringing about “the unification of mankind.”

Old nationalisms would fade away, many people believed. Transportation and communications technologies would unite people. Values would converge.

This optimistic faith was at the heart of many postwar projects, first the United Nations and then the European Union. The idea was to create multilateral bodies that would hasten the process of convergence, harmonization and peace.

Unfortunately, this moral, cultural and political convergence never happened. In the decades since, people in different nations, even people within nations, have become less alike in at least as many ways as they have become more alike.

The United States is a single nation with a common history, a common currency and a strong identity. Yet the country has become more polarized, not less. The country has become more difficult to govern, not less.

As communications technology has become more global, people’s tastes have become more parochial, not less. Ethan Zuckerman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology notes in The Wilson Quarterly that 95 percent of news consumed by American Internet users is published within the United States, and people in many other countries consume even less foreign news than we do.

The failure of convergence is most striking in Europe. True, a tiny sliver of European society is becoming more transnational. But only 2 percent of Europeans live in a different European nation than their country of citizenship.

On the whole, European nations still have very different understandings of the rule of law and political order, different work ethics and conceptions of citizenship. If you look at the European Values Study, for example, you see stark values differences across the Continent.

Less than 40 percent of Danes believe that work is a “very important” part of their lives, compared with roughly 65 percent of the French. More than 80 percent of the Croats believe that a parent’s duty is to do what’s best for their children, even at the expense of their own well-being. Only about 55 percent of Germans agree.

The world feels different depending on what nation you’re in. According to Pew Research surveys, 73 percent of Germans think that economic conditions are good right now. In France, 19 percent think that, and in Spain it’s 6 percent.

If you look at the World Values Survey, you see that people in most Western nations are becoming more distrustful of their neighbors, not less. There are huge variations across nations, but levels of social and political trust have been declining almost everywhere except the Nordic countries. If there’s convergence, in other words, it’s in our increasing agreement that we don’t trust each other.

Today’s European economic crisis grows directly out of this segmentation. The euro crisis is not a crisis of debt. Total European debt levels are not that high. It’s a crisis of legitimacy.
Debt burdens are divergent across nations, and Europeans with one set of habits and values do not want to bail out Europeans with other habits and values.

The fathers of the European project believed monetary union would bring people together. But when you jam nations with diverging values together, you only end up propelling them apart.

So we face the likelihood that the euro will crack up. This is not an outcome to be desired. The ensuing recession and chaos could be horrible on both sides of the Atlantic. But we should prepare for a crackup because the underlying sense of shared identity required for the euro’s survival is not there.

Regular Europeans are losing faith in the European project. Most Europeans now believe integration has harmed their economies. In all countries except Italy, majorities oppose giving Brussels more budgetary sovereignty, according to Pew Research surveys. The most popular major European politician is Angela Merkel, who is holding tough on more bailouts. She has 80 percent approval in Germany, 66 percent approval in Britain and 76 percent approval in France.

Europe continues to suffer from the same problem that has plagued it for the past half-millennium. There are too many nations in too small a space. There are no historical trends or technocratic schemes that are altering that basic flaw.

The larger issue is, how will the world cope with its own segmentation? How do you govern amid divergence? If multilateral organizations can’t bind nations, do we simply resort to an era of regional hegemons — or chaos?

The first step, surely, is abandoning the illusions of convergence and the schemes based upon them. In 1949, Niebuhr questioned the naïve belief that history drives toward unity. He cited the book of Psalms: “He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.”

Politically speaking, there’s nothing worse for Greece (and the rest of Europe) than the announcement today from Nuremberg, Germany, that German unemployment fell in May to its lowest level in two decades of record-keeping.

The Federal Labor Agency reported that Germany’s seasonally adjusted jobless rate fell to 6.7 percent, from 6.8 percent in April. Greece? At last measurement back in February, its unemployment rate was 21.7 percent.

Demand for workers in Germany “remains at a high level” and a turning point toward higher unemployment “definitely” isn’t in sight, Frank-Juergen Weise, the labor agency’s head, told reporters in Nuremberg, according to Bloomberg News.

To date, the European financial crisis has been outright good for Germany. It has lowered the value of the euro, making German goods more competitive on the world market. The good news won’t last if the situation really unravels, because then German banks will take enormous losses on loans to bigger nations like Spain. But for now, it’s hard to keep Germans focused on the gravity of the situation.

Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti today pressed German Chancellor Angela Merkel to take more dramatic action to keep the crisis from spiraling out of control.

It’s hard to remember, but back in 2006 Germany’s unemployment rate was higher than Greece’s. The crossover occurred around 2008, and there’s been no looking back.