面对60年来最大经济危机，德国人为什么还能如此悠闲？

 

  郑风田  陈雪 中国人民大学

经济危机席卷了全世界，欧洲也不可避免地卷进这场风暴之中。欧盟的三大巨大有两个都闹得不可开交，法国爆发了大罢工，还发生了大骚乱，英国有很多不满者走向街头抗议，但欧盟的另外一个巨德国人却似乎还保持着出奇的平静。是不是德国这次受危机不重？非也，德国的经济增长率将预测缩减至5.3%，这次危机对出口打击最大，而德国GDP40%仰仗出口，这次危机制造业衰退最厉害，而德国又是欧盟与全球的最大制造业中心之一。所以你可以想一想，德国人不急得如热锅上的蚂蚁也怪呢？但事实上呢？目前的德国人感觉还挺好的，似乎对自己的未来尚未感到焦虑。德国人正在经历着60年以来最大的经济危机，可为什么德国人能够如此冷静呢?NEWSWEEK最近的一期文章对德国进行了很有意思的报道，摘录几点供大家欣赏。

 

因为很多德国人租用住房，德国既没有经历房地产价格泡沫，也没有象美国那样用信用卡疯刷的透支超前消费，高福利政策让德国人吃了“定心丸”。

  在柏林，人行道两旁的饭店里，顾客仍然络绎不绝。由于政府的贸易刺激计划和财政刺激计划的推行，三月的汽车销售量比去年上升了40%；只有13%的德国人称他们的个人账户受到了金融危机的影响。三月末，一次酝酿已久的抗议计划最终只吸引了少数的反对全球化的抗议者及左翼人士。

其实原因很简单，大部分德国人并未感到经济危机影响的原因是他们确实并未受到是实质的影响。3月，德国失业率才缓慢上升至8.6%，与上世纪80年代早期的失业率基本持平，在去年11月这个数字是7.4%。尽管失业率有所上升，但它还远远低于2005年的12.6%的水平。加上几年来的成本削减及工资紧缩计划，工会最终满足了部分加薪的要求，最近一期的工资上升计划也是13年来最高的一次。能源价格的下降和税收减免刺激增加了大家对未来的预期。

   德国银行是美国资产的最大投机者，但是普通的德国居民却没有投资于美元。事实上，德国既没有经历房地产价格泡沫（因为很多德国人租用住房），同时也没有象美国那样到处充斥着繁荣的信用卡消费；尽管德国的股市也遭遇着下降，但他对德国居民并未造成十分巨大的影响，因为很多德国人并没有直接投资于股市。对于那些已经退休的老人来说，国家的退休金以及保险政策足以让他们继续平静的生活。

  

曾经经历的苦难比现在还重呢，过去长期的经济停滞期增加了德国人的抵抗力.

德国人保持冷静还有一个重要原因：之前他们已经遭遇了寒冬。早在20世纪90年代初期和2000年左右，德国就经历了一段长期的经济停滞。与前段时期相比，如今的德国人比以前更加“高枕无忧”：他们中50%正在接受着政府的福利，养老金及各种补助。金融危机的到来，使得高福利不再成为最为迫切的改革对象，相反，高福利逐渐成为这个国家经济刺激计划的一部分。

 

九月大选临近，政府也需要平静的选民

 由于九月国家大选临近，政府正在努力地缓解失业问题，因为大规模的失业会为左翼份子提供很好的机会。在九月大选举行之前，如何通过各种补贴和福利政策最大限度地减轻经济危机对国民造成的影响是德国政府现阶段最为关心的问题。

 

德国人的这种平静还能够持续多久？

但是，德国人的悠闲能够一直持续下去吗？随着经济危机的影响进一步扩散，占德国GDP40%的出口也正在下降。德国人相信他们的福利政策会以一种与美国不同的方式消化这次经济危机的影响：大多数工人仍然在享受着各种福利，很少人会担心他们会失去医疗保险。由于近来政府为50000家企业提供了补贴以保证一百多万工人的就业问题，因此，尽管汽车以及机械出口行业已经下滑了近50%，它对失业的影响还尚未显现。在未来的几个月，德国人的平静将逐渐受到挑战。

让我们试目以待？

（编译者 郑风田为中国人民大学教授；陈雪为中国人民大学硕士生）

 

阅读资料：

Partying Like It’s 2008 Germany is one of the worst-hit economies in the developed world. So why is everybody so calm?

By Stefan Theil | NEWSWEEK  Published Apr 11, 2009

The economic crisis has taken its toll in Europe. Governments in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Latvia have collapsed. Violent street protests have erupted in France and Britain. Yet Germany remains unfazed. While its economy is forecast to contract by 5.3 percent this year—compared with 4 percent in the U.S., 3.7 in Britain and 3.3 in France—Germans are remarkably angst-free about their prospects.

 

When spring temperatures finally arrived in late March, Berlin's sidewalk restaurants were packed. Its roads were choked with shiny convertibles tanked up on newly cheap gasoline. Consumer spending has held up; March auto sales were up 40 percent over last year, thanks to the €2,500 government trade-in incentive that came with Germany's fiscal-stimulus plan. Only 13 percent of Germans tell pollsters their personal finances might be affected by the crisis. A long-planned protest in Berlin in late March managed to attract only a few thousand antiglobalization activists and left-wing fringe types. "Why Is It Still So Quiet?" the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper asked in a recent headline, intrigued by the idea that the country's citizens might be sitting out the grimmest recession in 60 years.

 

The main reason that most Germans have yet to feel affected by the crisis is, to put it simply, that they haven't been affected. Unemployment, at 8.6 percent in March, only began to creep up in December when it was at 7.4 percent, and is still near lows last seen in the early 1980s. German banks were among the biggest speculators in toxic U.S. assets, but that has had few repercussions for ordinary Germans. They saw neither a bubble in real-estate prices (in fact, they're a nation of renters) nor a boom in credit-fueled consumer spending, the implosion of which is now hurting the United States, Britain, Ireland and Spain. Though German stocks are down 41 percent from their 52-week highs (versus 39 percent for the Dow Jones), it affects few private households, as few Germans own stocks directly. For their retirement they depend on state pensions and life-insurance policies, whose returns (and risks) don't show up on monthly statements.

 

What's more, most Germans seem to be enjoying a sweet spot they haven't seen in decades. Even with the recent jump, joblessness is still far below its 2005 peak of 12.6 percent. After years of cost-cutting and wage restraint, unions finally negotiated some raises; the latest round of pay hikes was the highest in 13 years. Plummeting energy prices and a stimulus tax cut have brightened the mood as well.

 

The good times may last a little while yet. Even as the recession begins to bite—mainly via a sudden collapse in Germany's exports, which account for some 40 percent of GDP—its impact will be muffled. Germans trust their welfare state to cushion the blows in a way unimaginable in the United States. Most workers are eligible for benefits, and few of them have to worry about losing their health insurance.

 

Jobs are slow to disappear, in part due to worker protections. Layoffs in Germany's hard-hit export industry—orders in such key sectors as cars or machinery are down by about 50 percent—have been kept artificially low, thanks to a newly expanded government subsidy that is paying 50,000 companies to keep more than 1 million workers on the payroll even though they no longer have work to do.

 

Moreover, with a national election coming up in September, Chancellor Angela Mer-kel's coalition government is desperate to tide over the job market, as are big German companies, which fear that massive layoffs might lead to a big win for a left-wing coalition. "Every German company will try not to lay off workers before the election," says Daimler public-affairs executive Martin Jäger.

 

Also helping Germans keep their cool: the attitude that whatever happens, they've probably been there before. Germans have endured worse than the 11.6 percent unemployment predicted for 2010 by the OECD, and have been through long phases of economic stagnation as recently as the 1990s and early 2000s. Paradoxically, many Germans may now sleep even easier, especially among the nearly 50 percent who receive government benefits, pensions or civil-service salaries. With the reversal of the political winds, welfare-state reform no longer seems on anyone's agenda. On the contrary, some benefits were expanded as part of the country's stimulus program.

 

The rosy mood will be tested in the coming months as insolvencies and layoffs start to hit harder, and could turn truly sour should the German exports fail to bounce back next year as expected. But until then, Europe's biggest economy won't let a little downturn spoil the day.