Episode 105: Kaput – What is Wrong with the German Economy? with Wolfgang Münchau

This episode of the Global Economy Podcast is a recording of a recent webinar where Fredrik Erixon spoke with Wolfgang Münchau on the state of the German economy.

The German economy is in a bad shape. Its Gross Domestic Product has fallen for two consecutive years and once-mighty German industrial companies struggle to keep up with technological change and global competition. What has gone wrong?

In a new book – Kaput: The End of the German Miracle – Wolfgang Münchau argues that Germany’s economic problems go deep and have evolved over a longer period of time. Its manufacturing-first mentality is entrenched and keeps a hold over the country’s economic imagination – leading to false perceptions about the economy and slow responses to new technological developments.

You can watch a video recording of the conversation here.

Wolfgang Münchau, 63, is the director and co-founder of Eurointelligence, a service that provides daily information about the euro area, targeted at investors and policymakers. He is also the European columnist for the New Statesman, and previously an associate editor and columnist for the Financial Times.

Wolfgang was one of the founding members of Financial Times Deutschland, the German language business daily, where he served as deputy editor from 1999 until 2001, and as editor-in-chief from 2001 until 2003. He previously worked as foreign correspondent in Washington DC and Brussels for the Times, and in Frankfurt for the FT.

Wolfgang’s latest book, Kaput, published by Swift Press, is about the rise and decline of the German economy. Wolfgang and his wife, Susanne Mundschenk, live in Oxford.