{"id":26430,"date":"2015-04-17T04:52:11","date_gmt":"2015-04-17T02:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/?p=26430"},"modified":"2015-04-17T04:55:24","modified_gmt":"2015-04-17T02:55:24","slug":"wolfgang-schauble-on-sensible-finance-policy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.w-t-w.org\/en\/wolfgang-schauble-on-sensible-finance-policy\/","title":{"rendered":"Wolfgang Sch\u00e4uble on Sensible Finance Policy"},"content":{"rendered":"

WOLFGANG SCH\u00c4UBLE, finance minister of Germany, writes: T<\/span><\/span>he immediate sting of the global financial crisis has faded in much of the world.\u00a0 Unfortunately, however, the world economy is not yet out of the woods. It still faces very concrete challenges. We are as badly as ever in need of a common understanding of what needs to be done<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n

Complaints that the European response to the crisis has been ineffective at best, or even counterproductive \u2014 are simply not accurate. There is strong evidence that Europe is indeed on the right track in addressing the impact, and, most importantly, the causes of the crisis.<\/p>\n

First, it has often been said that German insistence on fiscal austerity meant that Germany, the largest economy in the European Union, has \u201cpunched below its weight\u201d \u2014 and thereby pushed the eurozone more deeply into crisis \u2014 by not stimulating more demand. This misses the point. The crisis in Europe was first and foremost a crisis of confidence, rooted in structural shortcomings. Investors started to realize that the member countries of the eurozone were not as economically competitive or financially reliable as the uniform bond yields of the pre-crisis years had suggested. These investors began to treat the bonds of certain countries with much more caution, causing interest rates for those bonds to rise.<\/p>\n

Germany has consistently advocated an approach of structural reforms and reducing public debt without throttling growth. This is not blind \u201causterity.\u201d It is about setting a reliable framework for private-sector activity, preparing aging societies for the future and improving the quality of public budgets.<\/p>\n

In Germany, this approach has shown tangible success: The economic recovery since 2009 has been broad-based, with domestic demand as the main driver of growth. Investment \u2014 both public and private \u2014 is increasing. We are speeding up debt reduction, in line with the I.M.F.\u2019s recent call for \u201csymmetric stabilization\u201d (reducing deficits in good times, to offset deficits in bad times).<\/p>\n

Many European countries are reaping the rewards of reform and consolidation efforts. Countries like Ireland and Spain, which put far-reaching reforms into effect when they hit financial trouble a few years ago, now boast some of the highest growth rates in Europe.<\/p>\n

Some make the absurd claim that Germany \u2014 being a creditor nation\u2014 is actually profiting from the crisis.\u00a0 It is true that the German government now enjoys historically low borrowing costs. But so do almost all other eurozone members. Unconventional monetary policies pursued by the independent European Central Bank seem to have fulfilled their part there. Low interest rates help all borrowers \u2014 but they come at ever-increasing costs to savers and pension funds.<\/p>\n

Some say the answer to the crisis in Europe has been ever-greater liquidity and ever-lower interest rates. Now that we have both, we are finding that these policy tools are no panacea, but create problems of their own. More and more experts on both sides of the Atlantic warn of dangerous bubbles in asset prices and risks to financial stability from ever-increasing leverage (financing by borrowing). And it is clear that the debt burden in many countries cannot be solved by incentives to take on even more debt.<\/p>\n

On the fiscal side, we need to prepare government budgets for an eventual normalization of monetary policy and capital markets.<\/p>\n

The European Central Bank has warned many times that monetary policy cannot substitute for fiscal and structural reforms in member countries. Christine Lagarde, the managing director of the I.M.F., has also called for further structural reforms.<\/p>\n

The priorities for Germany, as the current president of the Group of 7 nations, are modernization and regulatory improvements. Stimulus \u2014 both in fiscal and monetary policy \u2014 is not part of the plan. When my fellow finance ministers and the central bank governors of the G-7 countries gather in Dresden at the end of next month we will have an opportunity to discuss these questions in depth, joined \u2014 for the first time in the G-7\u2019s history \u2014 by some of the world\u2019s leading economists.<\/p>\n

\"Wolfgang<\/a><\/p>\n


\n<\/em><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WOLFGANG SCH\u00c4UBLE, finance minister of Germany, writes: The immediate sting of the global financial crisis has faded in much of the world.\u00a0 Unfortunately, however, the world economy is not yet out of the woods. It still faces very concrete challenges. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[70,13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-26430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-big-banks","category-finance"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t