In the frantic weeks leading up to the Bundestag's approval of the changes to the financial stabilization fund (EFSF), the German media reopened the debate on the advantages of the euro and on the need for Germany, despite the crisis in peripheral countries, to continue support the single currency. The discussion was started, among others, by a study by the KfW banking group (Kreditanstalt fur Wiederaufbau), the institution participated by the Federation (80%) and by the Lander (20%), completely similar to our Cassa Depositi and loans.
Made public the day after the sentence with which the Constitutional Court of Karlsruhe anchored the launch of every new form of European aid to parliamentary approval, the research, coordinated by the chief economist of the study center, Norbert Irsch, tries to offer some numbers on benefits of the euro for the German economy compared to the hypothesis in which the mark had remained in circulation. "German growth in the last two years, from the third quarter of 2009 to the second quarter of 2011 - explain the bank's researchers - would have been much lower due to higher interest rates and a stronger currency". Not to mention the factor represented by the so-called "transaction costs", significantly reduced thanks to the euro. In total, Germany would have achieved GDP growth of more than one percentage point per year in the last two years (equal to about 30 billion). Hence the KfW's invitation to the political class not to waste future growth potential and to ratify without delay any measure aimed at avoiding a collapse of the Monetary Union.
Evidence of the opposite sign to that which emerges from other economic surveys, conducted since the euro was actually adopted. In particular, it was the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) in the middle of summer, which published the summary of a study by the economist Matthias Kullas: «The weight of German foreign trade with the Eurozone – writes the researcher of the Centrum fur Europaische Politik – is decreased by the introduction of fixed exchange rates, while the weight of foreign trade towards developing countries has increased». In essence, Kullas reasons, the euro would have done nothing but increase and protect the competitiveness of German companies on international markets, allowing them to sell their products at lower prices. The revaluation of the new mark would therefore have positive effects for imports and for consumers and would also contribute to alleviating the age-old problem that is being talked about less and less, namely that of the imbalances in the balance of payments (global imbalances). With an economy biased towards exports, there was a strong outflow of capital abroad and Germany found itself with one of the lowest investment rates in the Eurozone.
The KfW study therefore does not convince many German economists, who are convinced that praising the magnificent fortunes of the euro as an export engine is actually a way to sweep the dust under the carpet. European Parliamentarian Holger Krahmer (Fdp) also joked: "The fact that the KfW says that saving the euro is worthwhile is exactly like a sunscreen manufacturer predicting the sun for the whole year". Observers, both German and foreign, have many doubts about the actual independence of the KfW, currently personally involved in granting credit lines to Greece. Massimo Mucchetti, in last month's Corriere della Sera, also underlined the hypocrisy of the German executive, which on the one hand claims to teach other countries how to keep public debt under control and then itself uses "shadow budgets" to maintain the debt-to-GDP ratio is artificially low.
In fact, while the debt of our Cassa depositi e prestiti would be counted towards the public debt, that of the KfW would not. If we add to this that, unlike the Landesbanken, the state guarantees, which avoid being subject to bankruptcy and impose unlimited liability for the obligations undertaken, are still in force today, and it is easy to understand how the KfW is a bomb clockwork for Berlin. From Frankfurt, the bank's press office replies that things are not exactly like this: “The bank works according to the same principles as other companies. You refinance by half on the market. Only business commissioned by the Bund is actually considered state-owned. And this applies, for example, to the 22 billion euro credit line granted to the Greek government as part of the first aid package,” Wolfram Schweickhardt, Deputy Head of Press Office of the KfW, told Firstonline. But Mucchetti's reasoning nonetheless remains valid, given that in Germany there are other Schattenhaushalte, or shadow budgets: the special ITF fund to finance the investments decided in 2009 with the second economic package at the time of the grand coalition and the special SoFFin fund, launched for bail out German banks. According to calculations by the Institut der deutschen Wirtschaft in Cologne, around 2010 billion euros came out of these funds in 50 alone.
