When FT Alphaville met with BNP Paribas’ head of currencies Hans Redeker in an informal meeting a couple weeks back, one of the subjects discussed was the need for a weaker euro to stimulate German exports beyond the Eurozone to offset falling demand from within Europe.
On Thursday, BNP Paribas’ FX team makes the point again in reference to the Greek fiscal crisis.
As they noted (their emphasis):
Meanwhile, the Greek tragedy continues with the FT reporting Greece is considering issuing bonds next week. In northern European countries the population has turned hostile on a Greek bailout.
Dutch opinion polls show 92% of the population wants Greece to be moved out of EMU. In Germany, the popular tabloid ‘Bild’ leads a non bail out campaign with 72% of the population against any sort of financial transfer from Germany into southern countries.
We have argued that the legal aspect of transfer payments and its compatibility with Lisbon II and Maastricht has been underestimated. While, EcoFin referred to a ‘Plan B’ if markets would not be satisfied by Greek consolidation efforts without specifying ‘Plan B’ it becomes increasingly clear that lawyers are currently checking what can be done within the existing legal framework.
In other words: ‘Plan B’ has not yet been specified.
Germany and the Netherlands are probably the only European countries which could afford to transfer funds, but it seems to be politically suicidal for both governments to agree to a bailout. It becomes increasingly clear that a sharp decline of the EUR (compensating Germany and Holland via export profitability) could be part of a European solution.
And with that in mind, we thought we’d try to gauge which European member country is currently the most obsessed with the Greek story. Lacking proper quantitative tools, however, we’ve resorted to Google Trends for data gathering.
Hence, while the following results may be interesting, they’re likely skewed by such things as sporting events etc.
Here they are nonetheless.
A 12-month Google.uk search for Greece:
A Google.nl search for Griekenland:
A google.de search for Griechenland:
A google.com trends search for Grecja ( Polish for Greece):
And a Google.es search for Grecia:
Make of them what you will.
Related links:
Greece: Take fewer holidays! (and other suggestions) – FT Alphaville
Germany’s export decision – FT Alphaville