fascinating webinar on extension of debt moratorium for developing countries hit by COVID19 pandemic.
Private investor rep:
* debt restructuring a la Ecuador (not Argentina)
* 'we mark to market on daily basis, if you want Private Sector Involvement, that means our investors will question our future strategy'
* private sector will engage - we are doing it with Zambia
*there is countries valuing market access, moratorium on debt payments confused issuers, who did not appreciate the trade-offs
Q: if the private sector is so benevolent, why was there no private response to DSSI (Debt Service Suspension Initiative)?
A: well, it wasnt voluntary.
let's have a discussion, but be aware (a) you need a formal process, with formal advisors; and (b) trade-offs are there
Germany is unhappy with DSSI without private sector involvement because German tax payer money going into debt service to private sector.
It doesnt know how to solve trade-off DSSI/market access, so today the G7 answer: we extend DSSI if country requests IMF loan
talk about the worst of both worlds: G7 solution is IMF austerity + private debt service.
Basically Argentina before Fernandez/Guzman.
to question of what would have private sector done if mandatory involvement in DSSI, asset manager:
'since we mark to market on daily basis, we'd take hit even w one missed coupon payment. We would have asked if it makes sense to adjust portfolio after talking to our investors'
Aberdeen Asset Management rep: we may not have been involved in DSSI, but we engage behind scenes w UNECA and African countries, and what we hear is we want more liquidity, and we work on that with derisking measures (hello #WallStreetConsensus)
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Two amazing Global South progressives and a Nobel prize winner walk into an Oxfam panel on post-neoliberalism
Stiglitz: w neoliberalism, the growth of financial markets changed the political game tremendously
Lula 's special advisor @AAbdenur - clear mismatch - Global North openly exposing industrial policy but pushing IMF/World Bank to continue with austerity and partnerships for hyper-financialisation
missing from this @FT account of the rapid rise of infrastructure as an asset class is the sustained effort that G20 governments have put into derisking infrastructure assets for institutional capital - this is the derisking state in action #WallStreetConsensus
@FT with @BJMbraun we've termed this a weak derisking macrofinancial regime - a set of policies (as in the G20 Infrastructure as an Asset Class agenda, or World Bank Maximising Finance for Development) that seeks to mobilise private capital into infrastructure osf.io/preprints/soca…
BlackRock 's recent acquisition of GIP is a bet that governments - under ideological or real constraints on fiscal space - will not pursue public infrastrucuture projects but instead continue to derisk private capital
I did not expect this, but Rachel Reeves' Mais lecture is a lot more interesting - and dare I say, promising - than either the commentariat focused on fiscal rules or the past weeks of 'maxxed credit cards' would have us believe
some parts are taking a direct swipe at us advocates of Big (Green) State, but it's a careful articulation of the alternative rather than the empty austerity ideology of 'maxxed out credit cards'
1. We're getting climate politics back at the Bank of England.
Remember, under Carney, it became a world leader in climate policy making, not the greenwashed US Fed version of 'disclosure'/single materiality that Bailey prefers.
it is a strategic and tactical mistake for progressives to centre the superrich in climate politics.
Tactics - global tax system is organised to enable rampant tax avoidance + evasion for both high net worth individuals & corporations.
Recent efforts to reform have been far less successful than we'd have expected a decade after Piketty made inequality politically salient at global level. Fighting for global solutions around taxes is important, but shouldnt be the key front.
Global South voices - here the President of Colombia - read in the European/US support of the genocide in Gaza a blueprint, an experiment for ecofascism that 'treats us as disposable lives'.
'we are heading to barbary. Humanity, especially in the South, depends on the road we choose to address the climate crisis produced by the Global North. Gaza is the first experiment to treat us as disposable lives.'
Clearer European minds anticipated this response to von der Leyen - but the damage is done
the @ecb hiked rates to highest level ever today, but this matter less.
@Lagarde promised European Parliament to return ECB to Paris climate commitments but still nothing!
in a new report we show it can do Green Unwinding @AuroreLalucq @henrikehahn greenpeace.de/publikationen/…
we are in the middle of a climate emergency, and the @ecb has stepped back from cleaning its portfolio of dirty bonds -
for no other reason except the (imagined) danger that @lagarde may be seen as 'Mme Climate' instead of fighting inflation.
but fighting inflation & pursuing its 'within mandate' climate rules are not at odds with each other - the opposite.
Mme @lagarde should remind her PR team that subsidising fossil capital, as ECB continues to do via its portfolio of corporate bonds, amplifies supply pressures