Spain Holds Trump Card in Bank Bailout Negotions

By Nicholas Kulish and Raphael Minder, NY Times, June 6, 2012

BERLIN—The bargaining has begun over a deal to rescue Spain’s ailing banks, confronting Europe with urgent choices about whether to try to enforce onerous bailout terms on Madrid as the crisis spreads to the region’s largest economies.

The question has seemingly become one of when, and not if, Spain’s banks will receive assistance from European countries, with investors on Wednesday predicting an imminent rescue and pushing up stocks and bonds on both sides of the Atlantic.

Spain, the euro zone’s fourth-largest economy, is too big to fail and possibly too big to steamroll, changing the balance of power in negotiations over a bailout. Political leaders in Madrid are insisting that emergency aid to their banks avoid the stigma in capital markets that has hobbled countries like Greece, Portugal and Ireland after accepting tough rescue terms. They are also fighting to slow the pace of austerity and economic change that have pushed those smaller countries into deeper recessions.

Spain has the added advantage of seeking help in a changed political environment in which calls for growth have begun to outweigh German insistence on austerity. Unlike Greece, Spain’s government did not run large budget deficits before the crisis, giving it leverage to argue that European aid to its banks should not come weighed down with a politically delicate loss of decision-making power over its own economic and fiscal policies.

Madrid’s trump card in this latest game of euro-zone poker is that the consequences of a Spanish default and exit from the euro zone would probably be so catastrophic that policy makers in Berlin will be willing to bend their bailout rules for Spain, and are on the verge of doing just that.

German officials have said they are prepared to weather a Greek exit from the euro if necessary, but no such claims are made about Spain. As such, Spanish leaders, who feel Madrid has already made many painful changes and spending cuts, are holding out for a deal that requires only a tightening of oversight on the financial sector and no strings attached to the country’s budget powers.

The wrangling over Spain underlines the way the European Union stumbles to solutions for each problem as it arises. Frustration has grown over the uncertainty afflicting the global economy as a result of Europe’s instability and the toll it takes on an already slowing growth rate.

“The strategy of plugging holes only works for so long,” said Friedrich Mostböck, chief economist and head of research for the Erste Group in Vienna. “Eventually, you come to the point where a common euro area requires a common fiscal policy.”

The ultimate solution will hinge on Germany and how much its leaders are willing to bend. Berlin has an incentive to get the Spanish problem under control before Greek parliamentary elections on June 17, to help contain contagion in the event of instability after the vote, said Holger Schmieding, chief economist at Berenberg Bank.

“I’m naïvely optimistic that it would be good to have the Spanish problem solved before the Greek election,” he said, “and my impression is the relevant policy makers think the same.”