With election day in Germany fast approaching, campaign rhetoric is heating up, especially around the future course of fiscal policy and debt. There are calls to reinstate Germany’s constitutionally-mandated, though now suspended, debt brake, return to the balanced schwarze Null budget and revert to European Union stability and growth pact rules. In some quarters, a failure to do so is seen as potentially unleashing unsustainable fiscal ill winds. That is unsurprising in a country where the word for debt and guilt, ‘Schuld’, is one and the same. But is the Sturm und Drang warranted? Germany merits praise for its ... (full story)