The Bundesbank writes in its current Monthly Report that the German government budget surplus looks set to increase still further in the current year but be more or less entirely run down in 2016. Rising expenditure in connection with the influx of refugees is one of the rea-sons. This is where the benefits of maintaining a safety margin to the fiscal limits pay off, since they enable unexpected expenses to be quickly covered without leaving a hole in the budget.

Persistently low interest rates pose risks to financial stability, warn Bundesbank Deputy President Claudia Buch and Executive Board member Andreas Dombret at the press conference to unveil the Bundesbank's 2015 Financial Stability Review. This, they caution, applies particularly to banks and insurers.

The countercyclical capital buffer is designed to make banks more resilient and thus combat the threat of financial crises. A Bundesbank paper profiles this new instrument and explains how it makes banks provide for lean years during years of plenty.  

The new €20 banknote provides for even greater security in cash payments. Its new security feature - a window in the hologram stripe - would be very difficult to forge, says Bundesbank Executive Board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele. The new banknote was launched on the 25th of November.

"Without data, policies cannot move forward," said Min Zhu of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) at the 3rd IMF Statistics Forum in Frankfurt. Around 150 data producers, policy makers and academics discussed the future of statistics at the high-level, two-day conference, which was hosted by the Bundesbank.

Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has been awarded the International Prize of the Hayek Foundation. The award was mainly in recognition of Mr Weidmann's commitment to stability-oriented monetary policymaking by central banks and his opposition to excessive government debt.

The longer euro-area monetary policy remains loose, the greater its risks. In this regard, Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann, speaking at the European Banking Congress in Frankfurt am Main, referred to excesses in the financial markets and problems being faced by life insurers. Moreover, "... we should not ignore the risk that fiscal policy could get used to the very low interest rates".

Communication in real time is something we all take for granted. And consumers nowadays expect to be able to bank just as quickly. Bundesbank Executive Board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele says that providers vying for a stake in the new digital services market will only prevail if they can inspire long-term confidence in consumers.

According to the current issue of the Bundesbank's Monthly Report, the German economy remained on its growth path in the third quarter of 2015. Real GDP rose by a seasonally and calendar-adjusted 0.3% between July and September compared with the previous quarter. Domestic consumption was the main driver of economic growth.

In a speech held in Frankfurt, Raghuram Rajan, Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, criticised the ultra-accommodative monetary policy across the world, claiming that it would not sustainably achieve higher growth and that it could also have tremendous consequences for financial stability. "The sooner we get out, the better," he said.