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What Is The Three Fiscal Stimulus?

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Germany’s federal government partook in three fiscal stimuli. The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, pushed for a €23 billion over a four year stimulus in October 2008. This was agreed to in November 2008.The stimulus represented 2% of German GDP and included a variety of measures to boost demand. One of these measures was tax reduction on new cars in return for scrapping the old ones, loans to small and medium enterprises and various public works. This stimulus was faced with much criticism as there was concern that the amount offered was not sufficient to have any measurable effect on the German economy and finance ministry officials were of the opinion that the current stimulus was only about half of what was necessary for a useful …show more content…

VAT was deducted by 7%, which lead to a boom in the tourism industry, and certain qualifying companies were allowed a higher tax exemption limit on interest payments. The “minimum mandatory holding period” has been decreased from seven years to five and restructuring of a company is now to be exempt from real estate transfer tax. These changes, in addition to healthcare and employment conditions mentioned above stood to improve businesses and consumers alike, making Germany still attractive to investments. These are classic Keynesian cyclical policies used to boost spending in bad years and balance when in growth. Germany itself is not in direct control of its monetary policy, this is because they are a major constituent of the Eurozone. The European Central Bank, however, is situated in Frankfurt and is based upon the principles of the German Bundesbank. Due to the fact that Germany’s economy is highly important to the Eurozone and European Union, the governing council of the European central bank might work towards what’s good for Germany would be good for the rest of the EU. The European central bank made the decision to lower their key interest rate by 325 basis points, the largest cut ever in such a short period in Europe. In addition to this, the ECB temporarily provided additional liquidity to the banks with immediate liquidity needs, banks were granted access to essentially unlimited liquidity at the ECB’s

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