Greek bailout ends, but Europe’s debt problems grind on

FRANKFURT, Germany – Greece officially completes its bailout program Monday following eight years of cutbacks enforced in return for massive loans after an economic collapse on the scale of the Great Depression.

The exit is a welcome milestone. But it offers little assurance that the 19country euro currency union has left behind its problems with debt. The huge debt pile in Greece and an even bigger one in Italy will remain a lurking financial threat to Europe that could take a generation to defuse.

Europe’s debt problems have repeatedly raised fears over the past decade of a break-up in the euro, a worst-case scenario that would cause severe economic damage in the region and shake world financial markets and trade.

In Greece, successive governments had borrowed heavily for three decades to fund generous spending on pensions and jobs given to political supporters, while tolerating widespread tax evasion and covering up budget shortfalls. All that blew up mightily in October 2009, when Greece admitted its budget deficit was much bigger than previously reported. Shocked investors would no longer risk loaning Greece money at affordable rates, forcing the government to turn to rescue loans from the other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund.

The loans came with tough conditions: closing deficits, which led to aggressive tax increases and spending cuts; and a raft of reforms aimed at improving tax collection and the business climate in general. The economy, hit hard by spending cuts, shrank by a quarter.

All told, Greece now owes total debt of $366 billion, or more than 180 percent of annual economic output. Of that, $293 billion is owed to eurozone creditors and $37 billion to the International Monetary Fund. In 2012, about $122 billion in debt was lopped off by inflicting losses on private bondholders.

Monday is the day the third and last bailout program expires, meaning no more money is available. Greece will remain subject to quarterly visits by technical experts to make sure it is meeting agreed targets for public finances until the last bailout loan is repaid, in 2060.

The other eurozone countries gave Greece enough cash to cover 22 months of financing needs and significantly eased its debt repayment terms. Greece needs to pass the quarterly reviews to

activate that debt relief. But the country will get no new reform requirements.

Some experts say that the best way to help Greece would be for eurozone countries to write off a part of the loans. But governments have balked at that. The bailouts were unpopular, particularly in Germany, and loan forgiveness would be a tough sell for leaders such German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

The IMF and prominent economists say that if part of Greece’s loans are not written off, its debt loan will eventually start to rise out of control again.

Greece is meant to run exceptionally large budget surpluses before interest payments – so-called primary surpluses of 3.5 percent of GDP through 2023, and 2.2 percent thereafter. The IMF says very few countries historically have been able to do that.

It says countries often quickly undo cuts as people get fed up over lost services. Spending on state health care in Greece, for instance, has been squeezed to one of the lowest levels in the eurozone, with the poorest 20 percent of Greeks saying they spend 44 percent of household income on out-of-pocket medical expenses and many reporting they have simply done without medical care.

George Pagoulatos, a professor at the Athens University of Economics and Business, says that in the end the country’s creditors may have to lower their expectations for how much Greece can save. He thinks lower surpluses plus better economic growth from the probusiness reforms could be the key to make debt sustainable.

“It doesn’t mean that tax evasion has been eradicated or that governments will no longer do favors for their supporters,” Pagoulatos said.

But the degree of reform should not be underestimated. The changes over eight years “have been very significant and they must have an impact on productivity.”