Gut, dass es eminente Blogger gibt, die Klasse haben und die bislang beste Analyse der nicht enden wollenden Malaise zwischen Deutschland und Griechenland und Spanien und ... kommt von Michael Pettis. Unter dem Titel
Syriza and the French indemnity of 1871-73
vergleicht Pettis die angeblich so verschwenderischen Griechen mit den Deutschen im 19. Jahrhundert. Der Artikel ist noch wesentlich umfangreicher, aber ich will hier nur auf die Wiedergutmachung Frankreichs im 19. Jahrhundert eingehen.
Pettis handelt die Ersparnisse (1) von Staaten ab und wie Ungleichgewichte zwischen Staaten zu Investitionsblasen führen.
We have a great deal of experience in modern history with the kinds of imbalances from which Europe suffered and continues to suffer, and from the historical precedents three things are clear. First, the imbalances that led eventually to the current crisis had their roots in hidden transfers between different economic sectors within Europe, and not between countries. It is only because of deep institutional differences among the member countries that these imbalances manifested themselves largely in the form of trade imbalances between the different countries in Europe. These hidden transfers artificially forced up the savings rates in some countries and, for reasons that I have discussed elsewhere, it is a matter of necessity, well understood in economics (although too often forgotten by economists), that artificially high savings rates in one part of an economic system must result in higher productive or non-productive investment (in advanced countries usually the latter) or artificially low savings in another part of that system.
Most currency and sovereign debt crises in modern history ultimately represent a conflict over how the costs are to be assigned among two different groups. On the one hand are creditors, owners of real estate and other assets, and the businesses who benefit from the existing currency distortions. One the other hand are workers who pay in the form of low wages and unemployment and, eventually, middle class household savers and taxpayers who pay in the form of a gradual erosion of their income or of the value of their savings. Historically during currency and sovereign debt crises political parties have come to represent one or the other of these groups, and whether they are of the left or the right, they are able to capture the allegiance of these groups.
Exakt dies erfährt z.B. Deutschland gegenwärtig. Beste Beispiele in DE sind die Afd und Pegida als auch sonstige Gidas.
But while distortions in the savings rate are at the root of the European crisis, many if not most analysts have failed to understand why. Until now, an awful lot of Europeans have understood the crisis primarily in terms of differences in national character, economic virtue, and as a moral struggle between prudence and irresponsibility. This interpretation is intuitively appealing but it is almost wholly incorrect, and because the cost of saving Europe is debt forgiveness, and Europe must decide if this is a cost worth paying (I think it is), to the extent that the European crisis is seen as a struggle between the prudent countries and the irresponsible countries, it is extremely unlikely that Europeans will be willing to pay the cost.
Genau dies reflektiert sich in den Artikeln der deutschen Presse und den bedauerlich irrigen und teils von Dummheit strotzenden Kommentaren dazu.
Pettis führt nun zum Vergleich die Französische Wiedergutmachung von 1871 - 73 an.
But the other, to me, very interesting and far more relevant consequence was the French indemnity. As part of the privilege of conquest and as a condition for ending the occupation of much of northern France, Berlin demanded war reparation payments originally proposed at 1 billion gold francs but which eventually grew to an astonishing 5 billion, at least in part because of an explicit decision by Berlin to impose a high enough burden permanently to cripple any possible French economic recovery.
To give a sense of the sheer size of this payment, usually referred to in the literature as the French indemnity, this was equal to nearly 23% of France’s 1870 GDP.(2) Germany’s economy at the time, according to Angus Maddison, was only a little larger than that of France, so Germany was the beneficiary of a transfer over three years equal to around 20% of its annual GDP. This is an extraordinarily large transfer. I believe the French indemnity was the largest reparations payment in history — German reparations after WWI were in principle larger but I don’t think Germany actually paid an amount close to this size, and certainly not relative to its GDP.
Das preussische Reich war damals absolut sicher, Frankreich damit für 50 Jahre am Boden zu halten und auszubluten. Doch es kam anders.
The payments were made in the form of bills of exchange and to a lesser extent gold, silver, and bank notes, and Berlin received the full payment in 1873, two years before schedule. It was during this time that Germany went fully onto the gold standard, and obviously enough the massive indemnity made this not only possible but even easy. It also guaranteed currency credibility almost from the start, and it may jolt modern readers to know that at the time monetary credibility was not assumed to be part of the German DNA, so the additional credibility was welcome.
Pettis beschreibt dann, wie Preussen die enormen Geldmengen anlegten und es ist wichtig festzuhalten, die Reparationen gingen nicht etwa an Privatleute oder Banken, sondern an den preussischen Staat direkt. Es gab also keine wilden Banker-Orgien, sondern der Staat selber handelte.
Far more interesting to me is the impact of the indemnity on Germany. From 1871 to 1873 huge amounts of capital flowed from France to Germany. The inflow of course drove the obverse current account deficits for Germany, and Germany’s manufacturing sector struggled somewhat as an increasing share of rising domestic demand was supplied by French, British and American manufacturers. But there was a lot more to it than mild unpleasantness for the tradable goods sector. The overall impact in Germany was very negative. In fact economists have long argued that the German economy was badly affected by the indemnity payment both because of its impact on the terms of trade, which undermined German’s manufacturing industry, and its role in setting off the speculative stock market bubble of 1871-73, which among other things unleashed an unproductive investment boom and a surge in debt.
Do capital inflows cause speculative frenzies?
As money poured into German, its current account surplus of course reversed into deficits, which by definition means that there was a large and growing excess of investment over savings. Part of this was caused by rising German consumption, but much of it was caused by surging investment. Unlike in peripheral Europe 135 years later, the capital inflows were not mediated through commercial banks into the pockets of households, businesses, and local governments but rather ended up wholly in the hands of Berlin. Germany in the 1870s had an opportunity denied to peripheral Europe in the 2000s, in other words, to control the use of the massive transfer. I will get back to this point a little later.
Wie in Griechenland im 21. Jahrhundert so führte dieser Geldschwall zu stark wachsendem Konsum und diversen Investments, die, wie so oft bei solchen Situation, auch dort investiert wurden, wo man besser nicht investiert hätte.
As money poured into Germany the German economy boomed, along with German consumption, investment (a growing share of which went into projects at home and abroad that turned out in retrospect to be overly optimistic), and into the Berlin and Viennese stock markets. By early 1873 more experienced German, Austrian and British bankers were quietly warning each other of a speculative mania, and they were right. The stock market frenzy culminated in the 1873 global stock market crisis, which began in Vienna in May, shortly after the beginning of the 1873 World Fair, and rapidly spread throughout a world brimming with liquidity (a large part of the first French indemnity payments went directly to London to pay outstanding German obligations). By September the crisis reached the United States with the collapse of Jay Cooke and Company, one of the leading US private banks, and for the first time in history the New York Stock Exchange was forced to close, for ten days. The subsequent global “Long Depression”, which lasted until 1896, was felt especially severely in Germany, one of whose first reactions was the collapse of the railway empire of Bethel Henry Strousberg, a major industrialist at the time whose prehistory included a stint in jail for absconding from a previous job as financial agent with other people’s money (petty criminals who become industrial magnates seem to be another characteristic of globalization periods).
Die wirtschaftliche Lage für Preussen wurde so prekär, dass es Stimmen gab, die die volle Rückgabe der Reparationen forderten.
Within a few years of the beginning of the crisis attitudes towards the French indemnity had shifted dramatically, with economists and politicians throughout Germany and the world blaming it for the country’s economic collapse. In fact so badly was Germany affected by the indemnity inflows that it was widely believed at the time, especially in France, that Berlin was seriously contemplating their full return. The great beneficiary of French “largesse” turned out not to have benefitted any more than Spain had benefitted from German largesse 135 years later.
Es ist traurig, dass dies in der deutschen Qualitätspresse überhaupt nicht angesprochen wird. Interessant auch, das der Wikipedia Artikel über die French Indemnity keine deutsche Übersetzung hat!
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(1) Ersparnisse von Staaten sind anders als Ersparnisse von Privathaushalten nicht Rücklagen, die nicht für den Konsum bestimmt sind, also z.B. von Privathaushalten für die Zukunftssicherung zurückgehalten werden.
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