Averzija do dolga je v Nemčiji povzročila, da se je v treh desetletjih kvaliteta javne infrastrukture drastično poslabšala, da zaradi tega prihaja do velikih zamud v železniškem potniškem prometu, da ni dovolj vlaganj v električno omrežje in telekomunikacijska omrežja in da v Nemčiji ne vedo, kako bi financirali vlaganja v zeleni prehod. Nemška vlada si je leta 2009 z dolžniško zavoro (strukturni deficit v proračunu v višini največ 0.35% BDP, kar omejuje letne zadolžitve vlade) zataknila zanko okrog vratu. Da bi se izognile tej zanki, so nemške vlade ustanovile posebni izvenproračunski sklad za financiranje investicij, kar pa je lani nemško ustavno sodišče ugotovilo kot protiustavno.

In potem pridemo do paradoksa, ki to ni. Zadnja anketa javnega mnenja je pokazala, da 61 % Nemcev želi ohraniti dolžniško zavoro v sedanji obliki, le 35 % pa si želi njeno omilitev. Rezultati ankete med nemškimi ekonomisti so bolj uravnoteženi (48 % jih je za ohranitev sedanje oblike dolžniške zavore, 50% pa jih je za njeno reformo ali popolno odpravo), vendar še vedno dokaj v skladu z nemško filozofijo varčevanja.

Makroekonomski problem restriktivne dolžniške zavore je, kot sem v zadnjem desetletju pisal že neštetokrat, da je v nasprotju z osnovami mainstream makroekonomske teorije, da je v nasprotju z empiričnimi študijami in da je pro-ciklično in s tem “self-defeating”. Vladno varčevanje zaradi varčevanja po eni strani zmanjšuje potencial za bodočo rast (znižuje trajektorijo potencialnega BDP), ker pač brez vlaganj v infrastukturo ni pozitivnih eksternalij za podjetja. Na drugi strani pa vladno varčevanje zaradi varčevanja v času stagnacije ali recesije ne znižuje javnega dolga glede na BDP, ampak to razmerje še povečuje. Razlog sta struktura BDP in fiskalni multiplikator: če v času stagnacije ali recesije vlada zmanjša javne izdatke G zaradi varčevanja, se BDP (= C+I+G+(X-M)) zmanjša že zaradi samega zmanjšanja G, k temu pa je treba dodati še multiplikativno zmanjšanje zaradi učinka na ostale agregate (fiskalni multiplikator je večji od 1, ker vladno zmanjšanje investicij pomeni manj prihodkov od javnih naročil za podjetja in za njihove zaposlene). Ker se je zaradi negativnega multiplikativnega učinka vladnega varčevanja BDP zmanjšal bolj, kot se je zmanjšal dolg D, se torej zaradi varčevanja javni dolg glede na BDP (D/BDP) še poveča, namesto, da bi se zmanjšal, kar je bil namen vladnega varčevanja.

To je ta “self-defeating” učinek vladnega varčevanja v času stagnacije ali recesije. Za matematično izpeljavo in primer poglejte zadnjo empirično analizo IMF (2023) na temo fiskalnih konsolidacij:

Vlade varčujejo v času konjunkture, ko lahko umaknejo stimulus (uravnotežijo proračun oziroma dosegajo primarne presežke) in ko BDP hitreje raste.

To so resnično osnove makroekonomije, empirično potrjene v ogromno študijah. Tudi zadnja študija IMF (2023) za 17 razvitih in 14 držav v razvoju v obdobju 1978-2020 kaže, da fiskalne konsolidacije (vladno varčevanje) v razvitih državah zgolj povečujejo javni dolg (glejte spodnjo sliko), ne pa zmanjšujejo. Po dveh letih od začetka varčevanja se dolg glede na BDP v povprečju poveča za skoraj 2 % BDP, po petih letih pa za 4 % BDP.

Zakaj se tega nemške vlade ne zavedajo? No, saj morda nekatere stranke se, denimo SPD in Zeleni v sedanji mavrični koaliciji so proti dolžniški zavori (ker onemogoča ustrezna javna vlaganja v zeleni prehod), toda tretji koalicijski partner (črni FPD) in njen finančni minister (Lindner) želi varčevati. In tudi opozicijska CDU/CSU je za varčevanje.

Nemška obsesija z varčevanjem pa ni problem zgolj za Nemčijo. Problem je dvojen. Prvič, če nemška vlada zaradi varčevanja zmanjšuje javne investicije, to zaradi trgovinske povezanosti vpliva tudi na ostale trgovinsko povezane države (študija Jana in t’Velda, glavnega ekonomista v DG Economic and Financial Affairs v Evropski komisiji iz leta 2013). In drugič, nemška vlada svojo obsesijo z dolgom vsiljuje tudi drugim članicam EU prek fiskalnega pravila. Po nekajletnem susepenzu fiskalnega pravila se to naslednje leto v reformirani obliki spet vrača in kljub trdim pogajanjem med Nemčijo in Francijo bo to fiskalno pravilo za mnoge EU države precej problematično (več o tem v posebnem komentarju) in bo zniževalo njihovo sposobnost investiranja v infrastrukturo in zeleni prehod ter s tem zniževalo tekočo in dolgoročno gospodarsko rast.

Vse to pa iz Nemčije dela tujek v EU oziroma jo sili iz EU oziroma pomeni nemški Brexit, kot to lepo ilustrira komentator v Financial Timesu.

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It is Germany’s version of Brexit — an act of national self-harm that has placed it at a massive disadvantage to its peers and “strangled its own investments in the future”.

That was the conclusion three young academics — Max Krahé, Philippa Sigl-Glöckner and Alexander Thiele — recently reached when assessing Germany’s “debt brake”, its constitutional curb on deficit spending.

It was “high time” to change it. “Without it there are only two options left — a permanent emergency without limits on debt, or a Germany that doesn’t invest and massively falls behind in economic terms,” they wrote in the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung.

Their take was typical of the wave of passionate commentary and polemic set off by a landmark constitutional court ruling in November that touched off a political crisis and threw the country’s public finances into turmoil.

The judges in Karlsruhe said the government’s use of an off-budget fund to finance green projects and Germany’s industrial transformation had violated the debt brake, a fiscal rule that has been enshrined in the German constitution since 2009.

For many left-leaning politicians, there was only one sensible response to the verdict — the debt brake had to go. But that is not how the German public sees it.

For many, it has a hallowed place in the national consciousness, with echoes of the role of the National Health Service in the UK. According to a recent poll by Wahlen, 61 per cent of Germans want to maintain the debt rule in its current form, and only 35 per cent want it loosened.

Among economists, however, opinion is more mixed. A recent poll of economists by the Ifo Institute and FAZ found that 48 per cent want to keep it as it is, while 44 per cent advocate its reform. Some 6 per cent would like to see it abolished completely.

“The debt brake divides the profession into two equally large camps,” said Niklas Potrafke, head of Ifo’s centre for public finances and political economy. “Some see it as an anchor of stability, others as an investment blocker.”

In force since 2016, the rule limits Germany’s structural deficit to 0.35 per cent of gross domestic product, adjusted for the economic cycle.

For years, politicians on the left have denounced it as an unnecessary straitjacket that badly constrains the government’s freedom of action. Robert Habeck, the Green economy minister, told a Green party congress in November that the debt brake was an anachronism, stemming from a time when “climate policies weren’t taken seriously, when wars belonged to the past, when China was the cheap workbench of the world”.

“With the debt brake in its current form we’re like a boxer who’s entered the ring with both hands tied behind his back,” he said. “The others put horseshoes in their gloves and we don’t even have our arms free.”

Others in the government, particularly the Social Democrats of Chancellor Olaf Scholz, share his views. But the third party in Scholz’s coalition, the fiscally hawkish Free Democrats (FDP), beg to differ.

Christian Lindner, finance minister and FDP leader, told public broadcaster ARD on December 17 that the priority for Germany must be to reduce its level of public debt, and so “ensure we’re able to act in future crises”.

He said the country had already made great progress on this path: its debt-to-GDP ratio had fallen to 64 per cent, from 69 per cent when Lindner entered government in 2021. And that, he added, must continue.

“For that reason and unless there’s a real need, we can’t just take on more debt than is allowed,” he said.

Supporters of the debt brake recall the dire situation Germany faced in 2009, with its state coffers emptied by reunification and the stimulus measures and bailouts pushed through during the global financial crisis.

“We are in a vice of debt,” Peer Steinbrück, finance minister, famously said as it was voted into law. Some 15 per cent of the budget was going towards servicing the national debt, he said.

Angela Merkel, then chancellor, even evoked a national symbol of thrift and prudence, the Swabian housewife, to justify the new fiscal orthodoxy.

In a speech in December 2008 touching on the financial crisis, she said the “schwäbische Hausfrau . . .  would have shared with us this worldly wisdom: that in the long term you can’t live beyond your means”.

But the popularity of the debt brake also taps into something deeper: Germans’ aversion to debt.

The German word Schuld means both debt and guilt, a blurring of morality and finance that, according to the economic historian Carl-Ludwig Holtfrerich, is unique among big trading nations.

Yet ever since its introduction, the rule has proven controversial. Critics of the brake, which had to be suspended during the Covid-19 pandemic and the first two years of the war in Ukraine, say that it makes no distinction between debt raised to finance public investments and that taken out to cover normal state spending.

“[It] might work in theory, but in practice it’s too inflexible,” said Harald Fadinger of Mannheim university, one of the participants in the Ifo/FAZ poll. He said that when faced with the need to make savings, governments tend to slash investments rather than welfare spending.

The result, some experts say, is clear to see in Germany’s decaying infrastructure, chronically late trains and hopelessly analogue public administration.

“Considering how Germany ran down its public capital stock over the past 30 years and now faces additional challenges in the areas of climate and defence, reforming [the brake to allow exemptions for investments] would be important,” Fadinger said.

Vir: Financial Times