Over the past five years, the crisis in Greece has allowed Germany to save 100 billion euros in terms of interest on public debt, a sum exceeding 3% of the GDP of the largest economy in the Eurozone. The German economic research institute Iwh writes this in a study, recalling that on 3 January 2010 the yield on the ten-year Bund was 3,2%, while yesterday it stood at 0,66%.
This fall in German rates was triggered by the Greek crisis, since in times of financial uncertainty investors protected their resources by focusing on safer securities: first of all, precisely on German government bonds, considered by the markets as a safe haven.
Thus, Iwh pointed out, “during the Euroland debt crisis, Germany benefited disproportionately from this effect”. Every time bad news comes out of Greece, Bund yields fall because of the rush to safe-haven.
Not only that: Iwh has calculated that Germany's exposure to Greece, including the third aid plan still to be approved, is 90 billion, a figure lower than the 100 billion saved by Berlin in terms of interest rates.
This means that even if Athens declared bankruptcy and canceled all its debts, Germany would still have gained 10 billion. If, on the other hand, Greece "repaid all or part of the debt", the gains for Berlin would be "substantial".
The suspicion that emerges from the study, therefore, is that Germany is working politically to avoid definitively resolving the Greek crisis and thus continuing to pay very low interest on its public debt.
Germany has also recorded important contracts following the privatization policy carried out by Athens since 2011, including the purchase by the company Fraport of 14 Greek regional airports, including that of Corfu, for around one billion euros.
