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
1) What accounts for Deutsche Brauerei’s rapid growth in recent years? Specifically, what policy choices account for this success?
In 2008, the American economy broke down. Known as the Global Financial Crisis, this is widely considered to be the worst financial crisis since the 1930’s when the stock market crashed and the Great Depression hit.
The governments mainly reduce spending cuts and increases tax on both the nation and firms, and back to applying economics belief, the action will only cause a contraction of the aggregate demand of the whole economy, hence, reducing GDP. It is reported that the fiscal measure includes a 60 percent revenue and 40 percent spending cuts. These actions, has decreased the willingness of firms and companies to invest since the after-tax return has been reduced. Next, the of cutting government spending can also mean less jobs for the peoples in the public sector. Unemployment rate increasing from 9.4% to 11.3% (Ferreira.Joana,2017). Using the multiplier effect will be the best to explain, when there is less jobs for the people, it will mean no income for the unemployed and a drop in purchasing power, more importantly it will be very hard for the people to pay the high taxes. It is also reported that the bailout money has all been used to repay the banks instead of using it to correct the
The federal budget deficit is a much discussed and little understood subject in American politics. The current recession has dramatically decreased tax revenues, driving the United States federal government to increase spending in an attempt to stabilize the economy. As a result the current federal deficit is at over $1.3 trillion dollars. This is approximately $47,754 per U.S. citizen or $137,552 per U. S. taxpayer (U.S. Debt Clock: Real Time, 2012).
Katherine Beckett. 1997. Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics, Oxford University Press. Published in the Crime and Public Policy Series, edited by Norval Morris and Michael Tonry.
After the crash of the market in 2008, Obama created the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act. The act was an “economic stimulus package”(Amadeo). The act would cost $787 billion. The act was meant to help families and small businesses instead of big business so that people in the United States could put trust into the system again which could stimulate spending and growth. For the purpose of stimulating demand, $260 million was put into cutting taxes, tax credits, and unemployment benefits (Amadeo). This included things like tax credit for first-time homebuyers, college tuition, and extended unemployment benefits. Stimulating demand and trust from the people was the biggest fitting puzzle piece of the stimulus package. The only way for an economy to flourish is when people get extra money that they can spend which would create growth in consumer
The biggest cut I made to the national budget was the national resources and environment. This would effect environmentalists, and government departments such as the Environmental Protection Agency. I made this cut, because I felt that there were other areas in the government that needed more attention and priority. I decreased the national resources and environmental spending from 41.6 to 35.6.
Yes, the welfare system has grown since the 1960’s. I feel the fiscal welfare system provides the most aid. Through tax increases the federal government is funded which in turn takes a portion of the tax revenue to fund social welfare programs. In addition, to tax credits, tax deductions, and other tax relief it provides a type of federal subsidy to middle and upper class individuals who have been long thought not to receive social welfare. More so, corporations and organizations receive tax breaks on their income more they spend on social welfare programs. All systems has developed because society has evolved placing individuals in each welfare system. I feel all welfare systems are a necessity because the welfare systems provide a type of
Thank you for your response. I am glad you mention the stimulus checks. To be honest with you, the stimulus checks were a joke and an insult to hard working middle-class people and small businesses. Large Corporation received the biggest bailouts in history, not once, but two or three times. Small businesses like mine, received a $219.00 check, that’s all. That was not even enough to pay the electric bill that cost over $800.00. Granted, our business was not in trouble like most small businesses but, compared to the millions of dollars given to larger companies the government could have given more. With the millions and millions of dollar given to the larger corporations to prevent them from going under, no stipulations were added until later.
Germany had very low employment rates in this time and it made it even harder to get back to a stable economy. In this time a lot of people had no jobs so this also did not help Germany because companies were going out of business. This directly led to the decline of Germany's economy. When having no business’s running the country as no money coming in and can not send anything out.
Fiscal policy: Given the breadth and depth of this recession, it was clear that the Treasury and the entire Obama administration had to take bold actions. In fact, right at the beginning, they were committed to a fiscal stimulus policy package which would be “substantial” enough to pull the economy out of the recession. The final stimulus package signed into law in 2009, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, was totaled $787 billion including about one-third tax cuts and one-third aid for states and the unemployed. Of the rest, labor health and education investment got 8%, and infrastructure investment got about 7%. It also included a large amount of government money to
The policy response from the G.W. Bush is that there are three main parts to the fiscal policy stimulus. An individual tax that the Internal Revenue service sent out started in mid-2008. There were two business provisions that encourage investment during 2008 by increasing limits on expensing investment costs and accelerate depreciation of qualifying investments. The specific steps taken in early 2008 were the home owner purchases rebate and tax cuts.
Initially Merkel was against giving bailouts. Thus with the Greco-European crisis being the forefront, Merkel pushed for greater private-sector investors to absorb some of the rescue burden. She saw to it that European Union bureaucrats went to Athens where they quietly insisted on simple but important things like shortened vacations for the civil servants, higher taxes on swimming pools and lower expenditures on public housing (Applebaum, 2013). In consideration of these reforms, Angela Merkel stated at political rally in Germany “It's not just about getting any further into debt in countries such as Greece, Spain and Portugal, people should not be allowed to receive pension before their German counterparts. We all have to put in some effort. This is important, we cannot have the same currency, yet some have an abundance of holiday leave and others have very little.”The German Chancellor continues “We cannot stand by these countries and allow them to act the way they have up until now. Germany will help, but only if these countries demonstrate they are putting in the necessary effort"(Asymptotix, 2011). Merkel made multiple attempts with banks and governments to reform policies to prevent taxpayers from absorbing the burden of paying bailouts to the indebted countries. Unfortunately, her efforts failed, and European taxpayers suffered the burden of rescuing the Euro (Engelen, 2011). Merkel stated “the reforms that
In this paper I will show that the German Government did have other options to finance its expenditures
The German economy is the largest in Europe and worldwide Germany has the fifth largest economy (“World fact book”, n.d.). It is clear that the German economy holds a key position in the world marketplace. Gross domestic product (GDP) growth is an important consideration for foreign investment as it speaks to the overall health of an economy. GDP growth can be attributed to spending and investments both on and from imports and exports (“What is GDP”, 2005). In 2014 the reported GDP growth rate in Germany was 1.4%, up .9 % from the prior year (“World fact book” n.d.). The Eurozone was deeply affected by a recession stemming from the US and made worse by poor economic conditions in Greece and Spain, among other countries in