07 May 2013

Martin Wolf: The German model is not for export

If one wants to understand how far the folly goes, one must study the European Commission’s work on macro-economic imbalances. Its features are revealing. Thus, it takes a current account deficit of 4 per cent of GDP as a sign of imbalance. Yet, for surpluses, the criterion is 6 per cent. Is it an accident that this happens to be Germany’s? Above all, no account is taken of a country’s size in assessing its contribution to imbalances. In this way, Germany’s role is brushed out. Yet its surplus savings create huge difficulties when interest rates are close to zero. Its omission makes this analysis of “imbalances” close to indefensible.

The implications of the attempt to force the eurozone to mimic the path to adjustment taken by Germany in the 2000s are profound. For the eurozone it makes prolonged stagnation, particularly in the crisis-hit countries, highly likely. Moreover, if it starts to work, the euro is likely to move upwards, so increasing risks of deflation. Not least, the shift of the eurozone into surplus is a contractionary shock for the world economy. Who will be both able and willing to offset it?

The eurozone is not a small and open economy, but the second-largest in the world. It is too big and the external competitiveness of its weaker countries too frail to make big shifts in the external accounts a workable post-crisis strategy for economic adjustment and growth. The eurozone cannot hope to build a solid recovery on this, as Germany did in the buoyant 2000s. Once this is understood, the internal political pressures for a change in approach will surely become overwhelming.

Europe will not become a bigger Germany. It is foolish to believe it ever could. The eurozone will either achieve a better-balanced resolution of its difficulties or break up. Which of the two will it be? That remains the big unanswered question.

© Financial Times