Access Investments-European Union- ROMANIA

Europe has so far stuck to the mutualisation model, in which individual states’ debts are underwritten by a common central bank or fiscal bailout system, ensuring security for investors and largely eliminating interest-rate spreads among countries, regardless of their level of indebtedness. In order to prevent the artificial reduction of interest rates from encouraging countries to borrow excessively, political debt brakes are instituted.  In the eurozone, mutualisation was realised through generous ESM bailouts and €1tn ($1.27tn) worth of TARGET2 credit from national printing presses for the crisis-stricken countries. Moreover, the European Central Bank pledged to protect these countries from default free of charge through its “outright monetary transactions” (OMT) scheme – that is, by promising to purchase their sovereign debt on secondary markets – which functions roughly as Eurobonds would. The supposed hardening of the debt ceiling in 2012 adhered to this model.  The alternative – the liability model – requires that each state take responsibility for its own debts, with its creditors bearing the costs of a default. Faced with that risk, creditors demand higher interest rates from the outset or refuse to grant additional credit, thereby imposing a measure of discipline on debtors.  The best example of the liability model is the United States. When US states like California, Illinois, or Minnesota get into fiscal trouble, no one expects the other states or the federal government to bail them out, let alone that the Federal Reserve will guarantee or purchase their bonds.  Indeed, the Fed, unlike the ECB, does not buy any bonds from individual states; investors must bear the costs of any state insolvency. In 1975, New York had to pledge its future tax revenues to its creditors in order to remain solvent.  Of course, the US was not always so strict. Shortly after its founding, it tried debt mutualisation, with Alexander Hamilton, America’s first Treasury secretary, describing the scheme in 1791 as the “cement” for a new American federation.  But, as it turned out, the mutualisation model – used again in 1813 during the second war against the British – fueled a credit bubble, which collapsed in 1837 and thrust nine of the 29 US states and territories into bankruptcy. The unresolved debt problem exacerbated tensions over the slavery issue, which triggered the Civil War in 1861.