{"id":8633,"date":"2023-08-03T06:43:28","date_gmt":"2023-08-03T06:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/?p=8633"},"modified":"2024-08-15T09:17:32","modified_gmt":"2024-08-15T09:17:32","slug":"germany-and-debt-fetishism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/germany-and-debt-fetishism\/","title":{"rendered":"Germany and debt fetishism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/economy-finance.ec.europa.eu\/economic-and-fiscal-governance\/stability-and-growth-pact_en\">stability and growth pact (SGP)<\/a> is the EU&#8217;s public debt management rules and embedded in a separate treaty to the T[F]EU treaties. I have <a href=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/subsidiarity-and-proportionality\/\">commented on these treaties<\/a> elsewhere on this wiki. Elsewhere i<a href=\"http:\/\/davelevy.info\/blog\/?s=stability\">n several articles<\/a>, on the blog, I criticise the SGP on my blog, including <a href=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/rejoining-eu-whatll-it-take\/\">here<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/brexits-over-its-just-about-the-mopping-up-now\/\">here<\/a>, and <a href=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/the-economics-hurdle-for-rejoining\/\">here<\/a>. My main criticism is that it binds its members to austerity and monetarism by treaty, with no ability to democratically amend the goals of these policies. Actually, it seems <a href=\"https:\/\/web.archive.org\/web\/20240619152150\/https:\/\/economy-finance.ec.europa.eu\/economic-and-fiscal-governance\/stability-and-growth-pact\/history-stability-and-growth-pact_en\">there is a periodic review<\/a>. &#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>One problem is that the German\u2019s still have a collective memory of the <a href=\"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/stability-growth-pact\/\">Weimar Hyperinflation<\/a>, which they ascribe to loose money and are determined not to repeat it. They have a political consensus in favour of strong debt restraint, except when their banks are the debt holders.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The wikipedia page argues, with many citations that Germany&#8217;s hyperinflation was caused by deliberate policy, of printing money, caused by the need to buy foreign currency to make the war reparation payments imposed by WW1&#8217;s victors. The public finance situation was exacerbated by Germany&#8217;s decision to fund the war through borrowing, although that&#8217;s what everyone came to do. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity\"\/>\n\n\n\n<p>Image: By A.Savin &#8211; Own work, FAL, <a href=\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=81686930\"><em class=\"diigoHighlight id_1a492e82915718ce46b1fa4b294151f7 type_0 yellow\">https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=81686930<span class=\"diigoHighlightCommentLocator\"><\/span><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The stability and growth pact (SGP) is the EU&#8217;s public debt management rules and embedded in a separate treaty to the T[F]EU treaties. I have commented on these treaties elsewhere on this wiki. Elsewhere in several articles, on the blog, I criticise the SGP on my blog, including here, here, and here. My main criticism&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":8635,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"1"},"categories":[137,140],"tags":[138,109,1966,141,1183,1182],"class_list":["post-8633","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-economics","category-politics","tag-economics-2","tag-germany","tag-inflation","tag-politics-2","tag-sgp","tag-stability-growth-pact"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/mastodon.social\/@davelevy_eu\/110824346118392924","error":""},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/GermanFinanceMinistry-wikipedia-FAL-w1080.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8633","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8633"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8633\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11296,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8633\/revisions\/11296"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8635"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8633"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8633"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davelevy.info\/wiki\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8633"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}