According to preliminary calculations by the Federal Statistical Office (Destatis), price-adjusted gross domestic product (GDP) in 2023 was 0.3% lower than a year earlier. The calendar-adjusted decline in economic output was 0.1%. According to Destatis, high prices at all stages of the economy dampened economic activity. This was joined by unfavourable financing conditions due to rising interest rates and lower demand from Germany and abroad. 

Helmut Schlesinger was president of Germany’s central bank from 1991 to 1993 and is considered a guardian of the culture of stability. This was a culture he established not just within the Bundesbank, but throughout society, Bundesbank President Joachim Nagel writes in an op-ed article in the business daily “Börsen-Zeitung”.

The statistics on the money markets is on money market transactions, namely on secured, unsecured and certain derivatives money market transactions, concluded by monetary financial institutions (MFIs), with the exception of money market funds.

Germany’s current account recorded a surplus of €29.7 billion in January 2024, down €1.9 billion on the previous month’s level. The goods account surplus increased significantly, but this was outweighed by a stronger decline in the surplus in invisible current transactions, which comprise services as well as primary and secondary income.

The National Cash Forum has been established on the initiative of the Bundesbank, the being, as Bundesbank Executive Board member Burkhard Balz put it, to preserve cash as an efficient and widely used means of payment in a changing payment landscape. The forum will facilitate close dialogue between the associations of the banking industry, retail trade, consumer protection, the CIT industry, vending machine operators and the Bundesbank. The industry is set to meet here at least once a year. 

The nominal effective exchange rates of the euro condense bilateral exchange rates against multiple countries into a single index. As an aggregate, they capture changes in euro exchange rates against various groups of currencies of key trading partners.