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Money-hoarding Germans

October 29, 2012

Germans as a whole are amassing more and more money despite the eurozone debt crisis raging around them and low interest rates, the national central bank has announced. Private debt levels have risen only slowly.

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Money sock filled with euro banknotes and coins
Image: picture-alliance/dpa

While the sovereign debt crisis continues to have a firm grip on much of the eurozone, Germans are getting richer despite a generally unfavorable financial environment, the Bundesbank reported on Monday.

The central bank announced that Germans have never had as much money at their disposal as they have in the second quarter of this year. According to the central bank, private households have collected a record sum of 4.8 trillion euros ($6.2 trillion). Private wealth levels thus rose by another 2.2 percent year-on-year.

Real estate assets and art objects were not even part of the statistics provided by the Bundesbank.

Fiscal uncertainties

Germans financial resources amounted to 184 percent of the country's gross domestic product. The quarter-on-quarter increase was less pronounced, though, standing at a mere 0.2 percent. The Bundesbank attributed the marginal rise to a hefty decline in the value of shares during the second quarter.

According to the central bank, many who have managed to save money have moved a good deal of their wealth into short-term assets so as to ensure that they can react swiftly to a change in interest rate policies.

Private household debt levels rose only marginally in the second quarter of this year. New loans taken out in the period totaled 7 billion euros, with total open receivables now put at over 1.5 trillion euros.

hg/mkg (dpa, Reuters, AFP)