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I noted previously that Germany might want to leave the EU - as its piggybank status and policy direction is directly at odds with most of its fellow EU members...
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...6507-2,00.html
http://www.spiegel.de/international/...6507-2,00.html
How Brussels Is Trying to Prevent a Collapse of the Euro
By Armin Mahler, Christian Reiermann, Wolfgang Reuter and Hans-Jürgen Schlamp
Part 2: Is Germany to Blame?
The Commission has recommended that Spain, booming until recently, radically restructure its economy. Spain must significantly shrink its bloated construction sector and focus on economic sectors with higher productivity.
France and Italy have been given homework assignments of their own. Both countries are being asked to apply austerity packages and increase labor-market flexibility. France must also get its significant welfare and unemployment expenses under control.
Resentment is growing in the countries most directly affected. But that frustration is not directed, as might be expected, toward the Commission. Instead, it is increasingly surplus countries coming under fire -- with Germany at the forefront.
Representatives from Spain and Portugal especially -- but also from France -- hold Germany accountable for their current woes. They aren't alone in that opinion either. "The Greek crisis has German roots," says Heiner Flassbeck, chief economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in Geneva. It was German wage dumping that got the country's European neighbors in trouble, he says.
At Its Neighbors' Expense
EU officials don't phrase it quite so strongly, but they still accuse Germany more than any other country of gaining advantages for itself at its neighbors' expense, using its policy of low wages to make German products increasingly attractive relative to those from other countries.
As a precautionary measure, officials at Berlin's Finance Ministry have gathered arguments that Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble can put forward in the country's defense. Germany's position is that the countries now in crisis are themselves at fault for their situation. They lived beyond their means for years, the German government says, financing their economic boom on credit. Now the financial crisis has revealed their weaknesses.
Germany didn't have it easy with the euro in the beginning either, continues the argument, because the country wasn't competitive compared to other member countries -- but it regained its strength with a great deal of trouble and effort, through reforms.
German officials point to the fact that the country made its labor market more flexible through the Hartz package of welfare reforms and say that state finances are more stable than before, despite the crisis. They add that taking this same path would lead the currently troubled countries out of the crisis. And, they continue, the federal government is not responsible for lagging wage growth because, in Germany, salaries and wages are negotiated between employers and unions rather than being imposed by the government.
The German government also claims no responsibility for the country's export surplus. German firms are competitive not because of government policy, it says, but because of entrepreneurial decisions and the preferences of customers around the world.
Create More Competition
When this debate flared up recently within the euro-zone countries, Schäuble received support from the top for his position. The southern members of the euro zone shouldn't be ungrateful, warned ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet. After all, he reasons, Germany funded the deficits with its surpluses. Nonetheless, the Commission called on Germany to make further changes as well. The country should boost domestic demand, increase investment in infrastructure and create more competition in the service sector.
The Commission believes the currency union can exist in the long term only if member countries' governments implement reforms and coordinate their economic policies. Schäuble's experts agree. They are proposing -- partly with an eye toward mollifying France -- a common German-French initiative.
Both countries' governments should work toward better coordination, the German financial experts say. Merely monitoring deficits has turned out to be inadequate. In the future, they suggest, euro-zone governments should also focus on combating differing inflation rates and step in early when capital bubbles develop.
France, no doubt, would gladly accept such a proposal. Paris, after all, has long called for Europe-wide financial governance. Until now it was Germany that opposed the idea.
The euro-zone governments have started to rethink their positions, but will action necessarily follow? The past never lacked in good intentions either, but political calculation always won out in the end. How else would Greece have managed to become a member of the common currency zone? Why else would Brussels stand by for so long without taking action? It was far from secret that Greece had been cooking its books for years.
By Armin Mahler, Christian Reiermann, Wolfgang Reuter and Hans-Jürgen Schlamp
Part 2: Is Germany to Blame?
The Commission has recommended that Spain, booming until recently, radically restructure its economy. Spain must significantly shrink its bloated construction sector and focus on economic sectors with higher productivity.
France and Italy have been given homework assignments of their own. Both countries are being asked to apply austerity packages and increase labor-market flexibility. France must also get its significant welfare and unemployment expenses under control.
Resentment is growing in the countries most directly affected. But that frustration is not directed, as might be expected, toward the Commission. Instead, it is increasingly surplus countries coming under fire -- with Germany at the forefront.
Representatives from Spain and Portugal especially -- but also from France -- hold Germany accountable for their current woes. They aren't alone in that opinion either. "The Greek crisis has German roots," says Heiner Flassbeck, chief economist at the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD), in Geneva. It was German wage dumping that got the country's European neighbors in trouble, he says.
At Its Neighbors' Expense
EU officials don't phrase it quite so strongly, but they still accuse Germany more than any other country of gaining advantages for itself at its neighbors' expense, using its policy of low wages to make German products increasingly attractive relative to those from other countries.
As a precautionary measure, officials at Berlin's Finance Ministry have gathered arguments that Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble can put forward in the country's defense. Germany's position is that the countries now in crisis are themselves at fault for their situation. They lived beyond their means for years, the German government says, financing their economic boom on credit. Now the financial crisis has revealed their weaknesses.
Germany didn't have it easy with the euro in the beginning either, continues the argument, because the country wasn't competitive compared to other member countries -- but it regained its strength with a great deal of trouble and effort, through reforms.
German officials point to the fact that the country made its labor market more flexible through the Hartz package of welfare reforms and say that state finances are more stable than before, despite the crisis. They add that taking this same path would lead the currently troubled countries out of the crisis. And, they continue, the federal government is not responsible for lagging wage growth because, in Germany, salaries and wages are negotiated between employers and unions rather than being imposed by the government.
The German government also claims no responsibility for the country's export surplus. German firms are competitive not because of government policy, it says, but because of entrepreneurial decisions and the preferences of customers around the world.
Create More Competition
When this debate flared up recently within the euro-zone countries, Schäuble received support from the top for his position. The southern members of the euro zone shouldn't be ungrateful, warned ECB President Jean-Claude Trichet. After all, he reasons, Germany funded the deficits with its surpluses. Nonetheless, the Commission called on Germany to make further changes as well. The country should boost domestic demand, increase investment in infrastructure and create more competition in the service sector.
The Commission believes the currency union can exist in the long term only if member countries' governments implement reforms and coordinate their economic policies. Schäuble's experts agree. They are proposing -- partly with an eye toward mollifying France -- a common German-French initiative.
Both countries' governments should work toward better coordination, the German financial experts say. Merely monitoring deficits has turned out to be inadequate. In the future, they suggest, euro-zone governments should also focus on combating differing inflation rates and step in early when capital bubbles develop.
France, no doubt, would gladly accept such a proposal. Paris, after all, has long called for Europe-wide financial governance. Until now it was Germany that opposed the idea.
The euro-zone governments have started to rethink their positions, but will action necessarily follow? The past never lacked in good intentions either, but political calculation always won out in the end. How else would Greece have managed to become a member of the common currency zone? Why else would Brussels stand by for so long without taking action? It was far from secret that Greece had been cooking its books for years.
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