Der Economist über Deutschland - Artikelserie (1)

verfasst von Popeye, 06.12.2002, 09:29

-->Germany is plagued by a severe economic malaise
and by uncertainty about its place in the world,
says Xan Smiley

AT THE heart of Germany's old-new capital, Berlin, a
heady mixture of symbols confronts the visitor. Start
with the Reichstag, restored as the unified nation's
parliament: a ponderous Prussian hulk of a building
with an awkward history, renovated and now capped
with a delicate glass dome, proclaims a peculiar yet
suitably mixed message of old solidity and
adventurous novelty.

Then look across to the Brandenburg Gate, a mocking
reminder of Germany's division that until 1989 stood
gloomily alone in the border wasteland near the site
of Hitler's old bunker. Now that it has been restored,
the horse-drawn chariot on top of the majestic gate
seems poised to take off eastwards into territories
soon again to fall within Germany's economic
embrace.

And the bunker itself, a place that most Germans
would rather expunge from their capital, if not from
their historical memory? The country's leaders have
courageously decided to erect, close to the site of
the bunker, a massive and eerie memorial to a crime
that must not be forgotten, however normal Germany
has now become and however blameless today's
Germans are for the appalling crimes committed by
their grandparents.

On the face of things, Germany has finally come out
of its post-war shell. Twelve years ago it emerged
united, suddenly much more populous and with a far
bigger economy than its chief counterparts in
Europe-although, by taking in the poor east, it
became less wealthy per head. It now has 82m
people, against about 60m each for France and
Britain, which makes it the undisputed giant at the
heart of one of the two richest continents in the
world. The European Union has 370m people against
America's 270m, and a combined annual GDP of $7.9
trillion against America's $10.1 trillion. In little more
than a year's time, if the 15-country EU expands as
expected to take in another ten countries, mainly in
Central Europe, the Union's population will rise to
460m. Hence the symbolism, once again, of moving
Germany's capital in 1999 from the sleepy little
Rhineland town of Bonn, a mere 55km (34 miles)
from the border with Belgium, to raucous,
once-imperial Berlin, just 80km from the frontier with
Poland.


Look east

The shift in Germany's centre of gravity to the east
has been accompanied by the departure of French,
British and Russian troops from German soil, and by
the reduction of once-mighty Russia to the economic
weight of the Netherlands. Moreover, the burgeoning
European club of which Germany is the biggest
member will soon embrace Poland and three Baltic
countries that not so long ago seemed an integral
part of Russia's empire.

Yet just as Germany seems to be retaking its place
at the head of Europe's top table of nations, there is
growing concern (in Germany as well as abroad)
about a"German malaise"-mainly of an economic
kind, but also reflecting uncertainty over how the
country might play its part on the European and
global stage. The chancellor, Gerhard Schröder,
recently won an extremely narrow election victory,
which he owes partly to his decision to thumb his
nose at the government of the United States, a
country whose friendship has been the cornerstone of
German foreign policy for half a century. Germany's
equally important post-war friendship with France has
also fallen into disrepair, although efforts have
recently been made to restore it. A third friendship,
with Britain, seemed to be taking root two years ago,
but never quite flowered.

In sum, for the first time since the second world war,
Germany has given the impression of wanting to
carve out a more independent place in world affairs
for itself-but it does not yet seem to have worked
out what to do with it.
[img][/img]
Germany's economy
remains easily the
biggest in Europe,
larger by a third than
Britain's or France's.
But the mighty
American economy is
now five times as big
as the German one,
against 3.7 times in
1990, and the gap is
widening. For the past
eight years, the
German economy has
been the
slowest-growing in the
whole of the European
Union, so in comparison with its peers it has lost
ground (see chart 1). Recently, Germany has suffered
the indignity of being formally reprimanded by the EU
for letting its deficit get too big.

True, in 1990 it was landed with the colossal financial
burden-however welcome politically-of absorbing a
bankrupt country, the former communist-run German
Democratic Republic. True, Germany's is an
export-driven economy gasping for breath during a
world economic slump. But it is also stifled by a
hugely restrictive and intrusive web of regulations,
and weighed down by one of the most expensive,
inflexible and protected labour forces in the world.


Fading lustre

Many of Germany's greatest firms and institutions are
in trouble. All of its four biggest banks-Deutsche
Bank, HypoVereinsbank, Commerzbank and Dresdner
Bank-require drastic and urgent restructuring. When
in 1999 Germany committed itself to surrendering its
beloved D-mark, the symbol of post-war stability, in
favour of a new European currency that now embraces
12 out of the EU's 15 members, there was much talk
about Frankfurt ousting the City of London as
Europe's financial hub (Britain having stayed out of
the project). But in the past few years the DAX index
of Germany's top companies has slumped even
further than the stockmarkets in New York, London
and Paris, and Frankfurt's much-vaunted Neuer Markt
for high-tech shares, having lost 90% of its value in
the past two years, is closing as a separate market
early next year. In the past couple of years, Germany
has been shocked by formerly rock-solid companies
going bust.

Germany's once well-regarded education system, too,
has lost its lustre. When the OECD last year
published the results of its Programme of
International Student Assessment (PISA) on the
attainments of 15-year-olds in 30 rich countries,
Germany came an embarrassing 21st, suggesting,
among other things, that the famously high quality of
Germany's shop-floor workers may soon start to fall.

Even standards of public morality and civic virtue
seem to be declining. A few years ago a party
slush-fund scandal tarnished the name of Helmut
Kohl after 25 years at the head of the Christian
Democrat party, 16 of them as Germany's chancellor.
In the past couple of years a rash of scandals
involving all the main parties has erupted. And note
that Transparency International, a Berlin-based body
that rates countries according to the cleanliness of
their public ethics, puts Germany in 18th place in its
latest league table, one rung below Chile.

Most German politicians these days intone in unison
that"we need reform", but few seem to recognise
how urgent and radical it has to be if their economy
is to regain its old fizz. Before the election in
September, neither of the two main parties-Mr
Schröder's centre-left Social Democrats and Edmund
Stoiber's conservative combination of Christian
Democrats and their Bavarian sister party, the
Christian Social Union-dared promote any ideas that
might rattle the country's comfortable consensus. In
the eyes of Anglo-Saxon-minded free-marketeers, the
Germans are simply in denial, their government
"sleepwalking into stagnation".


But why worry?

Many Germans, on the centre-right as well as the
centre-left, think their laisser-faire critics are
exaggerating. Carpers have been saying much the
same thing for decades, yet Germany remains a rich
and comfortable country that treats its old, its sick
and its unemployed far more generously than does,
say, America or Britain."Germans live very well. We
have a fantastic welfare system," said Alfred Tacke, a
confidant of Mr Schröder in the economics ministry.
"Our infrastructure is fantastic. Our workers have six
or even eight weeks' holiday a year." The Americans,
he says, work about 25% more hours in a year. So
what, he seems to be implying, if Germany drops a
few places in those league tables of growth and
productivity?

He has a point. For quality of life and protection of
the weak, his country remains at the top of the
league. Its welfare system is enviably generous. Its
environmental and health standards are high. Its
sense of civic virtue, despite that rash of corruption
scandals, remains pretty solid. Public discourse is
vigorous but dignified. Germany is an eminently
civilised country with a solidly entrenched democracy.
It threatens nobody. The ghosts of Hitler have been
laid as well as they can be. If compromise and
consensus slow down growth but deliver civil
serenity, then let us-say many Germans- pay the
price.

But the price could well rise. Some demographic
projections suggest that, without net immigration on
a grand scale, Germany's population could shrink from
82m today to about 60m, the same as France's and
Britain's, within 30 years. That would make public
pensions and health care at their present level
unaffordable.

In his first term of office, Mr Schröder started some
reforms, albeit tentatively, in several important
areas: taxation, labour-market law and pensions. But
as election day approached, they slowed to a halt. As
Mr Tacke observed,"Reformist programmes don't win
elections." Now that the chancellor is back in the
saddle for the next four years, will he become more
reform-minded again? The first place to look for an
answer is German politics.
Quelle: Economist vom 6.12.02

Thread gesperrt

 

gesamter Thread:

• Der Economist über Deutschland - Artikelserie (1) - Popeye, 06.12.2002, 09:29
  • Re: Der Economist über Deutschland - Artikelserie (2) - Popeye, 06.12.2002, 09:33
    • Re: Der Economist über Deutschland - Artikelserie (3) - Popeye, 06.12.2002, 09:42
      • Britische Kapitalisten sagen aller Welt, wo's lang geht? LOL! (owT) - Wal Buchenberg, 06.12.2002, 10:08
        • auch so mancher deutsche Marx-Fan versucht das gelegentlich ;-) owT - silvereagle, 06.12.2002, 10:13
          • @silvereagle, der unabhängige Kopf - Wal Buchenberg, 06.12.2002, 12:04
            • Take it easy, Wal - silvereagle, 06.12.2002, 13:20
        • Gestern seltsame Pressekonferenz des Economist in Berlin - El Sheik, 06.12.2002, 10:25
      • Re: Der Economist über Deutschland - Artikelserie (4) Mit Anhang für @Wal B. - Popeye, 06.12.2002, 10:40