Germany’s current account recorded a surplus of €24.3 billion in December 2022, up €6.9 billion on the previous month’s level. While the surplus in the goods account actually decreased, the surplus in invisible current transactions, which comprise services as well as primary and secondary income, experienced a considerably stronger increase.

Helmut Schlesinger was president of Germany’s central bank from 1991 to 1993 and is considered a guardian of the culture of stability. This was a culture he established not just within the Bundesbank, but throughout society, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel writes in an op-ed article in the business daily “Börsen-Zeitung”.

Economic activity in Germany may have more or less stagnated in the first quarter of 2022, the Bundesbank’s economists write in the current issue of the Monthly Report. They expect Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine to have had only a limited impact on Germany’s economy at first. Even so, the repercussions of the war are likely to significantly weaken the recovery, which had actually got off to a strong start. “Disruptions to foreign trade and supply chains, soaring energy prices and heightened uncertainty are weighing on enterprises and households,” the report states.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has spoken out in favour of making the rules on debt more binding. "It would be helpful for the rules of the Stability Pact to be simplified," he said in a speech delivered in Freiburg. Furthermore, Mr Weidmann added, a more rigorous interpretation of the rules could be achieved by giving responsibility for fiscal surveillance to an independent authority instead of the European Commission.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann says that non-standard monetary policy measures can have a variety of effects on income and wealth distribution. “Much like conventional interest rate policy, the non-standard measures are more likely to have reduced income inequality,” he said in a speech in Hamburg.