Europe/Germany

Europe’s Macro Muddle (Wonkish) by Krugman

One last point: the Germans are very proud of their own adjustment between the late 1990s and 2007, during which they emerged from economic doldrums and became very competitive. But that adjustment, from a European point of view, looked like my first figure: German belt-tightening was accompanied by what amounted to a highly expansionary monetary policy, which led to fairly high inflation in Southern Europe. So when Germany asks why other countries can’t do what it did, it isn’t just forgetting that we can’t all run trade surpluses; it’s also insisting that other countries replicate its success while denying them the kind of external environment that made its success possible.