At the end of September, Federal Finance Minister Christian Lindner gave a remarkable diagnosis of the state of the German economy in a name article in Der Spiegel. He wrote: “In the Corona crisis we experienced a demand shock. Here the state replaced a lack of demand with tax money. …
The European Central Bank has apparently decided to force through the restrictive path it embarked on in the summer – even if it becomes clearer every day that it is wrong. Even large institutions built on rationality like the ECB can run such a childish programme of defiance when their leadership is intellectually overwhelmed and has once surrendered completely to political pressure. …
Fifty years ago, there was a very special situation in the global economy: There was a major supply shock, oil prices rose, but oil continued to be consumed in almost unchanged quantities, oil producers made enormous profits, measured inflation rates in Western countries went up and central banks raised interest rates to fight inflation. …
On September 21, I attended a hearing of the Bundestag’s Finance Committee on the question of who should take responsibility for the high rates of price increases currently being measured. The Bundestag itself sums up this hearing under the title “ECB’s responsibility for inflation disputed” …
