Wolfgang Münchau

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Wolfgang Münchau 2013 in Dublin

Wolfgang Münchau (* 1961 ) is a German business journalist .

biography

Münchau studied mathematics at the Distance University in Hagen , where he obtained his diploma. In Reutlingen he completed an apprenticeship in business administration , at London City University he studied international journalism with an MA

He began his journalistic career in 1988 with the London Times , where he held various positions until 1995, including correspondent posts in Washington and Brussels. Münchau then worked for the Financial Times as a business correspondent until 1999 . In the same year he co-founded the Financial Times Deutschland , where he initially acted as news chief and from September 2001 to August 2003 was editor-in-chief . He moved to Brussels to report on European Union affairs as a Europe columnist and associate editor . His weekly column in the FTD appeared on Mondays.

In 2006, Münchau and Susanne Mundschenk founded the Eurointelligence ASBL business service , an internet platform for economic analyzes of the euro area . In 1989 he was awarded the journalism prize Wincott Young Financial Journalist of the Year . In 2016 Münchau was awarded the Keynes Society Prize.

Positions

In his book The End of the Social Market Economy , published in 2006, Münchau calls for the system of the social market economy to be overcome and the creation of a "market economy without adjectives". He criticizes the German concept of regulatory policy and ordoliberalism according to Walter Eucken and Ludwig Erhard , which is not essentially based on scientific economic theories, but instead is based on legal thinking as well as philosophical and theological concepts. He emphasizes the influence of Christian social teaching in the post-war period in the emergence of an economic dogma that particularly conservative politicians and economists advocate. Reforms of the social market economy, as attempted with Agenda 2010 and the Hartz reforms , could not overcome Germany's weak growth. An unbundling of Rhenish capitalism is necessary, which u. a. the privatization of the banking system and the abolition of the law against unfair competition . The fixation of medium-sized companies in German economic policy is at the core of the problem.

Wolfgang Münchau's viewpoints on the global economic and financial crisis found their way into his book The Meltdown Years , published in 2009 . There he describes how, beginning with the insolvency of the Herstatt Bank in Cologne , global capital adequacy regulations were introduced for banks that created incentives for procyclical lending behavior and thus contributed to the crisis. Münchau identifies most of the previously suspected causes of the global financial crisis only as a trigger, but not as an explanation. With its expansive monetary policy, the only reason the US central bank lowered its interest rates to a historic low at the beginning of the 2000s as the suspected cause of the crisis, because cheap imports from China kept inflation rates low. The author therefore blames incorrect constructions in the global economic and currency system for the financial crisis.

After the ESM ruling by the Federal Constitutional Court in September 2012, Münchau concluded: Now comes the fiscal union .

In the run-up to the 2013 federal election, Münchau spoke out in favor of a red-red-green coalition, as such a government, in his opinion, would be best able to solve the major problems of the euro crisis.

Publications

  • The end of the social market economy. Hanser, Munich / Vienna 2006, ISBN 978-3-446-40559-2
  • Quake. What the global financial crisis means for us and how we can save ourselves. Hanser, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-446-41390-0 ; completely revised and updated edition: Core meltdown in the financial system. ibid., 2008, ISBN 978-3-446-41847-9
  • The Meltdown Years. The Unfolding of the Global Economic Crisis. McGraw-Hill, 2009, ISBN 0071634789
  • Macro strategies. Investing safely when states go bankrupt. Hanser, Munich 2010, ISBN 978-3-446-42345-9
  • Last resort joint adjustment - the euro area between depression and division. Department of Economic and Social Policy of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, Bonn 2010, ISBN 978-3-86872-388-5 ( PDF; 107 KB )

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Wolfgang Münchau: The Meltdown Years , pp. 7-27
  2. ↑ spiegel.de. September 12, 2012: Now comes the fiscal union
  3. ↑ spiegel.de. August 28, 2013

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Münchau, Wolfgang
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German journalist
DATE OF BIRTH 1961