All Commentaries

Celebrating his 92nd birthday later this month, former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt is as penetrating as ever in his political and economic judgments, as a long conversation with him in his Hamburg office shows...

‘We are not amused.’ The frosty words forever on the pursed lips of Queen Victoria 150 years ago seem to match the mood of Chancellor Angela ‘Ironsides’ Merkel as she contemplates renewed US monetary adventurism...

Europe breathed a deep sigh of relief when, at a moment of deep crisis in May, finance ministers conjured up a new structure to resolve the imbroglio in economic and monetary union, or EMU...

The word from Asia is music to the ears of Germany, the largest country in Europe's economic and monetary union and the one that is particularly in favour of cracking the whip over errant members of the single currency zone...

Can the euro maintain its position as a world currency after the sovereign-debt crisis? Only if the euro area ceases to be a free-wheeling collection of states and is more closely controlled by the creditor nations of northern Europe, led by Germany...

For two years momentum has been building for a German – Axel Weber, the Bundesbank president – to become the next head of the European Central Bank when Frenchman Jean-Claude Trichet retires in the autumn of next year. The idea is a thoroughly bad one...

Cashing in on intervention. Should central banks try to make a profit from their intervention operations? The near-universal answer is no, but it certainly helps their own confidence if they do...

"Simply put, export growth leads to job growth and economic growth," President Barack Obama said as he set up an industry panel to help him achieve his ambitious target of doubling American exports over the next five years...

If even more evidence was needed that German and American economic thinking operates on completely different wavelengths, the last fortnight has brought it. President Barack Obama has piled on the pressure for Germany to do more to boost domestic growth ...

After the birth of the euro in 1999, Wim Duisenberg, the first president of the European Central Bank, spent too much time playing golf in his first years in office -- and didn't do enough to force discipline on errant members of the single currency...