The world must seem a confusing place if you are sitting in Angela Merkel’s chair. The chancellor has been under sustained international fire for the stellar performance of German companies in global markets. Now Ms Merkel’s critics are accusing her of beating a retreat from the economic reforms that have underpinned this success.
For the past several years, Germany has been berated as the villain of the single currency. Berlin, the popular (do I mean populist?) narrative has run, has refused to bail out the eurozone’s troubled periphery. It will not put its imprimatur on a new class of eurobonds. Germany’s hefty current account surplus has pushed Greece, Spain, Portugal and others into savage deflation. The strains on monetary union are not the fault of the weak economies but of Germany’s super-competitiveness.
There is quite a bit wrong with this argument. Greece’s problems have more to do with an absence of effective governance in Athens than with the fact that Mercedes and BMW produce really nice cars. The boom-to-bust housing markets in Spain and Ireland can be linked only tangentially to the technical skills of Germany’s machine tool industry. Italy is, well, Italy. France is still terrified of letting go of the past.