Contents page 1 — page 2 — There is good news On a page
Sometimes, you will feel in these days mentally in the early zero years back. For the Younger set: That was the time when, in Germany, over five million people had no work, the national debt exploded, and the economic plight of the country was the recurring theme in television talk shows.
Today, the image warns newspaper in the light of new estimates on the development of tax revenues in front of a “giant hole in the Budget”, which believes American Businessweek, that in Germany the “last days of an Era” began, and the mirror shows on its current Cover a zerrupften Federal eagle, the shakes the last drops from a bottle of champagne. Title line: “The fat years are over”.
Are you?
Actually, the bad news piled up for the last. The Federal government had to revise its forecast for economic growth down repeatedly. Only one half of one percent of the German gross domestic product is expected to grow this year, last year it was forecasted an increase of almost two percent. So the Germans are in the European Union, second to last place, even behind the crisis-ridden Greeks. After that, only Italy comes.
German gross domestic product in trillion of euros source: fred.stlouisfed.org © TIME-graph
However, The low growth rate says more about the past than about the future. The correction of the most recent growth forecast is mostly on rather short-term events in the last Winter. On the international financial markets, the fear of renewed interest unsettled since the us Federal Reserve Bank increases the investors. And in Germany, new exhaust were introduced, testing for the automotive industry. The result was that many manufacturers cut back temporarily on the production, in order to get the transition to the new technology in the handle.
Meanwhile, this process is largely complete, and the belts in the factories running again. This is also shown in the Figures. So, the Federal Statistical office has reported this week that the German economy grew in the first quarter of this year, again neatly.
This article dates back to the TIME no 21/2019. Here you can read the entire issue.
there are Many signs currently that it is for the time being, even so. Although the export economy is suffering from the punitive tariffs of the American President and the impending departure of the British from the European Union. The German company reports of good shops in their own country, The wages are rising, unemployment is low, and the construction industry is booming. The experts of the investment Bank, Barclays Capital believe that the growth of the gross domestic product picks up in the second half of the year, possibly even more. In a recession, so a decline in economic output, and hold it for rather unlikely.
the gap in the Federal budget, on closer inspection, to be smaller than they appear at first glance. In comparison with the last tax estimate last fall of 70 billion euros in the absence of the Federal government until 2023. This is the number that was last week publicly the round. What was not taken into account here, but: A large part of these failures have been factored in by the government in the current budget planning. The actual Etatloch amounts according to the estimates of the Ministry of Finance, to just 10.4 billion Euro spread over a period of five years.
such amount is not a difficult task to raise at an annual volume of the Federal budget in the order of 356 billion euros. While it is unlikely that the government still has enough money left over for additional and unplanned expenditure programmes such as the basic pension or a complete abolition of the solidarity surcharge, at least if you don’t want to give up the goal of a balanced budget. But extensive Savings are expected to be not necessary, and from Federal Finance Minister, Olaf Scholz, also not planned. At least not now.
