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ANGELA MERKEL

Merkel calls for tighter rules at G20 summit

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Finance Minister Peer Steinbrück are lobbying for tighter global finance cooperation and regulation at the Washington G20 economic summit this weekend.

Merkel calls for tighter rules at G20 summit
Merkel and UK prime minister Gordon Brown at the summit Photo:DPA

Speaking ahead of the meeting, Merkel told the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, “I see a number of actors with which we can start working – there is for one, the forum for financial stability, in which the regulatory authorities and the central banks of the industrial countries work together.

“This forum has already prepared a whole row of suggestions, for example for the transparency of the finance markets and the regulatory structures, which are at least in part already implemented. This forum for financial stability must be expanded to include important developing countries.

“We must also consider how we can improve the cooperation between the national regulatory authorities and the various institutions, for example the international monetary fund and the forum for financial stability.”

She also said governments must better dovetail the bank-specific viewpoint of the regulators with the market-related viewpoint of the IMF, and strengthen the latter’s role. “In general, there must be no more blind spots in which risks can be built up unseen,” Merkel said.

Merkel has positioned herself at the more interventionist end of views at the Washington summit, saying the German social market model should become the basic model of the world.

“We are experiencing the excesses of the markets at the moment. These must be limited so that such a crisis is not repeated,” she told the paper.

She said the crisis was demonstrating the kind of damage which could be wreaked when what she called the necessary insight was missing internationally and structural limits were not tight enough.

“The international community must now ensure that they work together, and I expect that the banks support this process,” she said. “Therefore I have no understanding for the warnings against too much regulation and state influence – now, shortly after the state has prevented the situation from worsening. That is unreasonable.”

Her comments came as several organisations warned against introducing too much regulation. The German chamber of industry and trade, DIHK, warned the politicians not to go too far. Manager Martin Wansleben told the Tagesspiegel newspaper, too much regulation, “increases financing costs for companies, and reduce the business options.” He called for the G20 states to act reasonably.

He said he supported the German government’s proposal to create an international credit register which he said could make clear where risks lay.

But the German Industry Association, BDI, was more reserved, the paper reported, calling for concrete suggestions for a lasting stabilisation of the finance markets to limit the affect of the finance crisis on the real economy and avoid a further weakening of the world economy.

Jürgen Großmann, head of energy giant RWE said more regulation was not needed. “We do not need more regulation which strangles economic initiative, but improved international cooperation, for example, in the financial area, in order to close regulatory gaps,” he told the Handelsblatt newspaper.

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ECONOMY

How is Denmark’s economy handling inflation and rate rises?

Denmark's economy is now expected to avoid a recession in the coming years, with fewer people losing their jobs than expected, despite high levels of inflation and rising interest rates, The Danish Economic Council has said in a new report.

How is Denmark's economy handling inflation and rate rises?

The council, led by four university economics professors commonly referred to as “the wise men” or vismænd in Denmark, gave a much rosier picture of Denmark’s economy in its spring report, published on Tuesday, than it did in its autumn report last year. 

“We, like many others, are surprised by how employment continues to rise despite inflation and higher interest rates,” the chair or ‘chief wise man’,  Carl-Johan Dalgaard, said in a press release.

“A significant drop in energy prices and a very positive development in exports mean that things have gone better than feared, and as it looks now, the slowdown will therefore be more subdued than we estimated in the autumn.”

In the English summary of its report, the council noted that in the autumn, market expectations were that energy prices would remain at a high level, with “a real concern for energy supply shortages in the winter of 2022/23”.

That the slowdown has been more subdued, it continued was largely due to a significant drop in energy prices compared to the levels seen in late summer 2022, and compared to the market expectations for 2023.  

The council now expects Denmark’s GDP growth to slow to 1 percent in 2023 rather than for the economy to shrink by 0.2 percent, as it predicted in the autumn. 

In 2024, it expects the growth rate to remain the same as in 2003, with another year of 1 percent GDP growth. In its autumn report it expected weaker growth of 0.6 percent in 2024.

What is the outlook for employment? 

In the autumn, the expert group estimated that employment in Denmark would decrease by 100,000 people towards the end of the 2023, with employment in 2024  about 1 percent below the estimated structural level. 

Now, instead, it expects employment will fall by just 50,000 people by 2025.

What does the expert group’s outlook mean for interest rates and government spending? 

Denmark’s finance minister Nikolai Wammen came in for some gentle criticism, with the experts judging that “the 2023 Finance Act, which was adopted in May, should have been tighter”.  The current government’s fiscal policy, it concludes “has not contributed to countering domestic inflationary pressures”. 

The experts expect inflation to stay above 2 percent in 2023 and 2024 and not to fall below 2 percent until 2025. 

If the government decides to follow the council’s advice, the budget in 2024 will have to be at least as tight, if not tighter than that of 2023. 

“Fiscal policy in 2024 should not contribute to increasing demand pressure, rather the opposite,” they write. 

The council also questioned the evidence justifying abolishing the Great Prayer Day holiday, which Denmark’s government has claimed will permanently increase the labour supply by 8,500 full time workers. 

“The council assumes that the abolition of Great Prayer Day will have a short-term positive effect on the labour supply, while there is no evidence of a long-term effect.” 

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