Bundesbank President Rejects Calls for German Stimulus
September 29 2016 - 1:40PM
Dow Jones News
FRANKFURT—It's absurd to ask Germany's government to spend more
to bolster eurozone growth, German Central Bank President Jens
Weidmann said on Thursday, rejecting growing pressure on Berlin to
loosen its purse strings.
Speaking in the German capital, Mr. Weidmann said a fiscal
stimulus program in Germany was unnecessary given the nation's
robust economy, and would have few positive effects for other
countries anyway.
Earlier this month, European Central Bank President Mario Draghi
joined the chorus of voices that have criticized Germany for
reining in its spending at a time of weak economic growth.
"Countries that have fiscal space should use it," Mr. Draghi
said at a news conference. "Germany has fiscal space."
But Mr. Weidmann argued that Germany's national debt was already
high, and the country's aging population "calls for lower rather
than higher debts."
Mr. Draghi tempered his remarks on Wednesday after a meeting in
Berlin with German lawmakers, who grilled him over the ECB's
easy-money policies and their impact on German savers and
banks.
"Germany does have fiscal space [but] we need to be nuanced,"
Mr. Draghi said. "I never argued for irresponsible fiscal
expansion."
The ECB has come under increasing pressure in Germany, the
largest eurozone economy, since the central bank boosted its €1.7
trillion ($1.91 trillion) stimulus in March. Top German politicians
have warned that ECB policies take money from savers and pensioners
and fuel populism.
In his speech, Mr. Weidmann defended the ECB's current policies,
arguing that an easy-money stance was "sensible and appropriate…in
principle."
"It would be too narrow an approach to judge [ECB] policy purely
from the point of view of savers," since citizens are also workers,
shareholders, taxpayers or property owners, who may benefit from
ECB policies, Mr. Weidmann said.
Still, he called for a prompt end to easy-money policies, as
soon as inflation picks up, and urged policy makers to wait for the
impact of recent measures to play out in the economy before
announcing new ones.
The example of Japan, he said, shows how central banks can't
solve an economy's structural problems through ever greater
stimulus.
"Japan certainly isn't a role model for the eurozone," Mr.
Weidmann said.
Write to Tom Fairless at tom.fairless@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
September 29, 2016 13:25 ET (17:25 GMT)
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