blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/jeremywarner/...cle-in-pictures/....Germany is experiencing a sharp V shaped recovery, more so than any other major advanced economy as industrial production, poleaxed by the banking crisis, bounces back. The German economy has already clawed back 70 per cent of the output lost in the crisis and is expected to be back to pre-crisis levels in the first half of next year.
blogs.telegraph.co.uk/finance/files/2010/...haped-recovery.gifNor is this recovery entirely down to industrial production. Services have bounced back sharply too.

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One reason for this is that since 2003, Germany has sharply increased its competitiveness against the Eurozone’s peripheral economies.

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Germany has acted to reduce once internationally uncompetitive rates of corporation tax. For multinationals, the tax regime in Germany is now marginally more competitive than the UK.

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More importantly, unit labour costs have been significantly reduced relative to the rest of the eurozone. Germans have become progressively worse off, relative to their european peers, over the last ten years. The pain of squeezed disposable incomes is now paying dividends in enhanced export competitiveness.

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Germany has invested heavily in energy efficiency, further reducing its costs.

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In marked contrast to other advanced economies, unemployment barely rose during the crisis and is now back below pre-crisis levels. This was only partly due to government policy to subsidise employment during the downturn. Employees also agreed part time working arrangements, which employers were happy to accept so as to preserve a skilled workforce for the upturn.

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Levels of youth unemployment have remained amongst the lowest in Europe, thanks largely to Germany’s apprenticeship system. The pay is marginal, but the young worker ends up trained.

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German companies are investing as heavily abroad as at home.
Particularly in China, where German investment is now almost as big as for the entire EU 15 put together.

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German trade with BRIC states has grown at such a rate that it now exceeds trade with the US, once Germany’s biggest market after Europe.

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Contrary to received wisdom, the problem of subdued domestic demand in Germany isn’t primarily one of lack of consumption. Infact it is private investment that has been the problem. Post the re-unification boom, much of Germany’s surplus of savings flowed into the periphery of the eurozone, where it financed unsustainable real estate and construction booms.
But this is now changing. More of the surplus is now staying at home, funding a renewed domestic investment boom which restores Germany’s position as the engine room of Europe.

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Employment intentions are rising too. When asked what the biggest risks to the German recovery are, businesses tend to answer that it is not the crisis in the fringe economies of the eurozone, but lack of a sufficient supply of skilled labour and rising commodity prices.
Imports are now rising more strongly than exports.
But Germany could never tolerate a current account deficit. That would indeed be asking too much.
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