German 1Q GDP Posts Sharpest Fall Since 1970

Generali

StevieJ wrote: »

Germany the parasite of Europe interesting concept.

Kinda. It was more that the Bundesbank was taking account of the impact of others' actions before acting itself.

StevieJ

Generali wrote: »

Kinda. It was more that the Bundesbank was taking account of the impact of others' actions before acting itself.

I agree a little with the point, but I think this time they may just have found that final chamber in the game of Russian roulette.:eek:

Generali

StevieJ wrote: »

I agree a little with the point, but I think this time they may just have found that final chamber in the game of Russian roulette.:eek:

My belief is that they never really addressed the Oste problem. They've just chucked money at it really. I think the idea at the last election was that Merkel would be a sort of cuddly Thatcher - tough in some vague undefined way but not getting rid of all that nice safety net stuff.

purch

It was more that the Bundesbank was taking account of the impact of others' actions before acting itself

Plus it was the only policy they had !!! :eek:

I remember Helmut Schlesinger saying, after weeks and weeks of expectant speculation in the markets, how he had 'summoned the courage' to cut the Discount rate by 1/4 % from about 7 1/2 %....he was worried because M3 was 'racing' away at 3%

kennyboy66_2

Generali wrote: »

My belief is that they never really addressed the Oste problem. They've just chucked money at it really. I think the idea at the last election was that Merkel would be a sort of cuddly Thatcher - tough in some vague undefined way but not getting rid of all that nice safety net stuff.

Imagine what state the UK would be in, if 20 years ago, someone had said, you're doing so well we would like to give you another Northern Ireland, another Scotland, another Wales and Eighteen 'Derek Hatton era Merseysides' to look after.






* hides from inevitable Celtic backlash.
Yes, yes, we stole your oil

Mr_Mumble

Rochdale_Pioneers wrote: »

Which means what exactly?

Comparing UK GDP to German GDP isn't a like-for-like barometer of the health of a nation's economy since government spending is part of GDP. The UK government has a larger deficit so this will increase GDP relative to the Germans. At a later date the UK government will have to repay this debt and this will then drag on economic growth.

We started this with substantially less debt than our bigger competitors - we can run a bigger deficit for a while in order to leave recession quicker and STILL have less debt.

Sticking to Germany this is hardly a fair comparison since they've had a very costly reunification in the past 20 years, excusing Britain's lavish borrowing because of the Berlin Wall falling down is silly.

The budget deficit is caused by tax receipts falling off, not spending.

Agreed to an extent but tax receipts were artificially inflated thanks to the city of London so spending will have to fall in the long-term.

In the last recession borrowing increased 200 basis points (c35% of GDP to c55%)

That's 20,000 basis points.

purch

My belief is that they never really addressed the Oste problem

I think they were hoping that everyone else would help them 'pick up the tab' !!!