Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann has called on the euro-area countries to embrace fiscal prudence, arguing in a speech in Hamburg that the tighter the fiscal space, the more central banks will come under political pressure to stabilise economic activity in the short run – even if that does mean compromising on price stability.

Bundesbank Executive Board member Carl-Ludwig Thiele considers Bitcoin a risky and highly speculative form of investment. "It’s also possible for Bitcoin holdings to be completely wiped out," he writes in an op-ed for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. In addition, he draws attention to Bitcoin’s high level of energy consumption, citing Bundesbank estimates that settling a Bitcoin transaction uses roughly 460,000 times as much electricity as a normal transfer.

The October 2023 edition of the Monthly Report examines whether German and euro area price competitiveness is favourable. It also describes how state government finances developed in 2022 and finds that, despite large surpluses overall, recourse to emergency loans was extensive in some cases.