Germany, the Bundesbank and their FinMin have a very flawed view of macroeconomics. They seem to have a hard time understanding how money recycling works or there is more than pure economics at play.
The German political class has been keeping wages lower then they should be on purpose. While export corporations have boosted their profits the last 15 years, wages have been kept much lower than they ought to be, killing the competition elsewhere and destroying a sort-of natural recycling mechanism which should protect the other members of their Eurozone: A worker in Germany should be paid 4 to 5 times more than a worker in Portugal.
Indeed the current German surplus is a major problem in EU's economy. Y. Varoufakis, M. Draghi and B. Bernanke have spoken about this openly time and again (see links).
By definition in a monetary union, your surplus[3] is someone else's deficit, but if you take a look at the rhetoric PIIGS are to blame for their poor financial track-record. Someone is simply having his cake and eating it, but not for long.
It's funny that with a 12.1B in surplus the AfD (right-wing nazi-friendly political party) is on the raise in Germany, isn't it?
The German political class has been keeping wages lower then they should be on purpose. While export corporations have boosted their profits the last 15 years, wages have been kept much lower than they ought to be, killing the competition elsewhere and destroying a sort-of natural recycling mechanism which should protect the other members of their Eurozone: A worker in Germany should be paid 4 to 5 times more than a worker in Portugal.
Indeed the current German surplus is a major problem in EU's economy. Y. Varoufakis, M. Draghi and B. Bernanke have spoken about this openly time and again (see links).
By definition in a monetary union, your surplus[3] is someone else's deficit, but if you take a look at the rhetoric PIIGS are to blame for their poor financial track-record. Someone is simply having his cake and eating it, but not for long.
It's funny that with a 12.1B in surplus the AfD (right-wing nazi-friendly political party) is on the raise in Germany, isn't it?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/24/germany-sur...
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2015/04/03/germa...
[3] http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-government-achieves-histo...