It took a pandemic and the threat of war to get Germany to dispense with the two taboos – against debt and monetary financing of budgets – that have strangled its governments for decades. Now, it must join the rest of Europe in offering a positive vision of self-sufficiency and an “anti-fascist economic policy.”
NEW YORK – Germany has just announced another “Zeitenwende”: a turning point when long-held beliefs are abandoned in favor of new, more promising strategies. That term was what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz used to describe the situation on February 27, 2022, days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when he promised to mobilize resources to support the Ukrainians and the democratic values for which they were fighting. Yet as important as this announcement was, it was not accompanied by a reset of Germany’s fiscal regime and monetarist orthodoxy.
NEW YORK – Germany has just announced another “Zeitenwende”: a turning point when long-held beliefs are abandoned in favor of new, more promising strategies. That term was what German Chancellor Olaf Scholz used to describe the situation on February 27, 2022, days after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when he promised to mobilize resources to support the Ukrainians and the democratic values for which they were fighting. Yet as important as this announcement was, it was not accompanied by a reset of Germany’s fiscal regime and monetarist orthodoxy.