Our interest rates are very heavily affected by what happens around the world,” said Prof. Stanley Fischer, Governor of the Bank of Israel, at the 13th annual Herzliya Conference. One has to look at the “relationship between what’s happening in the global economy and its impact on Israel … One has to do that because we are a small economy … We talk about our mutual economic relations but mutual does not mean equal.”

Prof. Fischer stressed that “We can’t allow the interest rates gaps to get too large … Israel is fortunate in that it realized very early that it didn’t have a choice to close itself off to the world economy … makes no sense in a small economy … We are dealing with a slightly slower growth than we were expecting to have but this should improve.”

Looking ahead, the governor said, “Low interest rates will continue for a very long time.” He added that there’s a “lot of concern” regarding whether “there is a big shock coming” adding that there only would be such a shock if nobody knew about future interest rate hikes and didn’t plan for them. “That should not happen now. The fed has been telling everybody it has to be ready for a change like this” he said but added that this would be unlikely that interest rates would begin to rise before the beginning of 2015 “when I’m safely out of sight.”

One of the governor’s gripes was with the efficiency of the government and he stressed that something needed to be done “so our government will operate in a more efficient manner.” He noted, however, “We have a few efficient ministries,” specifically mentioning the finance and defense ministries, “yes, [defense is] strong, it knows how to check out money.” He added that in the civil service “we only have people that keep changing … the political system is not stable …doesn’t help at all in managing the civil sector.”

Discussing Fiscal law, Fischer said, “I think this economy has … to aim for smaller liability. This state is in a very fragile situation … our situation in the world is a very fragile one. Our situation is not ok. We need to build up reserves … have the possibility in the time of needs to raise money and recruit funds and we can’t do this with big liability.” Fischer predicted, “If we go into significant recession, it will jump up and we will be back where we were in 2003” when the government was unable to raise funds “using a reasonable interest rate.”

A problem that the government is set to face is that the budget formula that calculates GDP growth permits a 5% rise in government spending … but the governments total commitments are 10%.” This will mean cuts that will be “massively difficult … politically difficult.” But he stressed that the danger of not making cuts now was severe.

Echoing past messages, Fischer emphasized the importance of the ultra-Orthodox and Arab populations joining the work force. He said that Israel’s serious poverty problem was concentrated among these two populations and that the ultra-Orthodox only had 40% of its male population in the work force, which translated to only a 4% rise in growth.

A long-time criticism of Fischer’s has been the money spent on the defense industry and he again stressed the need to cut this budget, “we spend lots of money on defense.”

Through it all, throughout his two addresses, Fischer stressed the success of the Israeli economy which has “been through big shocks” yet “sailed on.”

He said that this was a result of “good fundamentals,” mainly a result of the string banking systems. “It’s very conservative and people don’t like that and wish it would take risks” he said, adding that “In 2008 and 2009, our banks were heroes. By 2010, the heroism effect had worn off and the people were complaining.”

“This is a very powerful economy with a force of entrepreneurial ability which is absolutely remarkable,” Fischer noted. “We need to avoid populism. To think about the longer term of where this populace lives,” explain that the definition of populace was doing things which were good for the public in the short run but bad in the long run.

(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)