Different views on the Deutsche Bundesbank - Academic and political voices

Herbert Ehrenberg (SPD), member of the German Bundestag, Gewerkschaftliche Monatshefte, IG Bau-Steine-Erden, June 1967
"If the Deutsche Bundesbank fails to comprehend that it is its duty to support the Federal Government's general economic policy, then Parliament will have to readdress the central bank's position."

John Major, UK Prime Minister, Die Zeit, 6 July 1990
"It would be difficult to convince me that a European central bank will be as effective in its anti-inflationary policy as the Bundesbank is."

Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Danish Minister of Economic Affairs, Fernseh-/Hörfunkspiegel Ausland, 25 January 1991
"If the Bundesbank's Directorate even blinks, it sends shock waves through the capital markets across the whole of Europe without us having even the slightest means of intervention."

Jacques Delors, President of the European Commission, 1992
"Not all Germans believe in God, but they all believe in the Bundesbank."

Margaret Thatcher, former UK Prime Minister, Der Spiegel, 25 October 1993
"If I were German, I would definitely keep the Bundesbank and the D-mark."

Helmut Schmidt, former Federal Chancellor, co-editor of Die Zeit, WirtschaftsWoche, 2 May 1996
"The Bundesbank President is Germany's most powerful opponent of monetary union."

Professor James M Buchanan, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and University of Virginia, Handelsblatt, 15 May 1996
"Don't let them destroy your Bundesbank. The destruction of the central bank in Frankfurt will cost the Germans and Europe dearly."

Willem Frederik Duisenberg, President of De Nederlandsche Bank, Le Monde, 18 July 1996
"It's [the Bundesbank] like cream, the more you whip it the harder it gets."

Professor Paul Krugman, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, WirtschaftsWoche, 24 April 1997
"I had hoped that the European Central Bank would act as pragmatically as the Fed after 1999. It's now becoming clear, however, that the Bundesbank is dictating the terms of monetary union. […] European banks keep assuring me that the euro will be even stronger than the D-mark. All I can say to that is: That's exactly what I'm afraid of."

Professor Franco Modigliani, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Die Welt, 15 June 1997
"[A] policy of high real interest rates led to mass unemployment in Europe. […] Worldwide, there is currently mass unemployment only in countries that are under the direct influence of the Bundesbank."

Helmut Kohl, Federal Chancellor, Süddeutsche Zeitung, 26 June 1997
"As the Federal Chancellor, I sometimes have a problem with the Bundesbank. As a citizen, I'm glad that it exists."

Professor Herbert Giersch, University of Kiel, Central Banking, Spring 1998
"..., by virtue of its behaviour it [the Deutsche Bundesbank] has created for itself an aura, virtually a mythical status, of having created and protected a healthy culture of stability in Germany."

Professor Peter Bofinger, University of Würzburg, Handelsblatt, 29 October 1998
"The Bundesbank has managed to retain its credibility not because of but rather in spite of its monetary target."

Professor Martin Feldstein, Harvard University, Central Banking, August 2003
"Before economic and monetary union, the Bundesbank set the tone of inflation for the whole of the European continent. Countries felt they should try to keep up with the D-mark."

Professor Manfred J M Neumann, University of Bonn, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 18 November 2006
"… in the mid-1970s, the Bundesbank introduced a concept of annual monetary targets based on Friedman's basic monetarist idea which, on the whole, proved its worth for more than two decades."