Free Lunch: Grumbling about German growth

Press quote (Financial Times)
Christian Odendahl
18 January 2016

Behind the headline growth number, Christian Odendahl of the CER usefully sets out the good news and the bad news. Rewriting him slightly, the good news is that domestic demand is largely responsible for the growth pickup; the bad news is that domestic demand is not doing even more, in particular for boosting growth in other countries. ...This does not stop Odendahl and others from complaining that "rebalancing" isn’t happening: "If the eurozone is ever to rebalance... [German] import growth must outstrip export growth, net exports must therefore fall."