The Bundesbank registered approximately 55,200 counterfeit euro banknotes with a value of €3.3 million in 2019, representing a 5% decrease on the year.

The trade dispute between the United States and China has escalated over the past two years. However, as a study in the Bundesbank’s latest Monthly Report shows, neither US firms nor US consumers have benefited from the realignment of the country’s trade policy thus far.

In the Bundesbank’s estimation, the German economy is likely to have stagnated in the final quarter of 2019. The two-speed development of the economy continued, according to the latest Monthly Report.

The financial assets of households in Germany increased by €67 billion in the third quarter of 2019 and now amount to roughly €6.3 trillion. These financial assets consist, in particular, of low-risk assets like currency, deposits and claims on insurance corporations and pension funds.

Initial figures from the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis) indicate that the German economy expanded for the tenth consecutive year in 2019. However, momentum has tailed off: GDP growth was only 0.6% on the year, following a year-on-year uptick of 1.5% in 2018.

The inflation expectations of German consumers are relatively well-anchored, a Bundesbank pilot survey of households in Germany between April and June 2019 has found.

In 2018, German enterprises operating outside the financial sector earned 4.2 cent on each euro of sales. According to the current December edition of the Monthly Report, this figure was 4.8 cent in 2017. 

Economic activity in Germany is likely to gradually pick up momentum again, according to the Bundesbank’s latest forecast. Alongside the greatly supportive fiscal policy and highly expansionary monetary policy, this is chiefly due to a rebound in export growth following an extended period of weakness.

Since 2017, the Bundesbank has been upgrading its BPS 1120 cash processing machines to the new BPS M7 model. While the old model worked at a speed of 22 banknotes per second, the M7 can process 33 per second.

In the view of Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, the ECB Governing Council’s forward guidance has contributed to lowering long-term interest rates and stimulating the euro area economy. However, at the 2019 European Banking Congress in Frankfurt, he also highlighted the risks and side effects of a highly expansionary monetary policy. ECB President Christine Lagarde called for increased public investment.