Germany may have aggravated debt crisis, experts say

The tough approach taken by Berlin to the EU's problem economies has made the crisis even worse, some experts claim. They argue the countries on Europe's peripheries should be supported rather than punished.

 

At the financial crisis summit meeting in October 2008, Chancellor Angela Merkel appeared before television cameras to reassure German depositors that their savings were secure, adding that the government would guarantee all private investments.

It was intended to reassure people and to avoid panic - and it appeared to work.

Such a quick and decisive reaction would have been desirable a year later in the case of the Greek debt crisis, according to Thomas Fricke, chief economist at the German-language newspaper Financial Times Deutschland.

Athens could no longer hide the fact that its economic statistics had been falsified, and the risk premiums for state bonds gradually rose higher.

"If the financial bailout package had been put into place at the end of 2009, with a guarantee that we would not allow Greece to go under, then spiraling interest rates and risk premiums could have been avoided," said Fricke.

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,14999126,00.html