Low interest costs citizens billions – FAZ – Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Berlin (dpa) – Germany’s savers will be lost through the zero interest rate policy of the European Central Bank every year, billions of euros.

The annual Interest credited on savings deposits have shrunk from 2009 to 2015, one – third of their previous height of 13.8 to 4.4 billion euros in the month, the Bundesbank reports published Numbers.

The big winners are the Federal government and the Länder: The expenditure for debt interest rates are strongly shrunk – alone, the Federal government paid in 2015, almost 15 billion Euro less than in 2009, as reflected in the budget figures of the Federal Minister of Finance Wolfgang Schäuble (CDU).

The German savings banks and Giro Association (DSGV) calls for a reparation action: It would be “more than justified, especially if the Federal government would be through a stronger support of saving a portion of these benefits to the disadvantaged savers back”, said President Georg fahrenschon this week.

The CSU requires compensation in another Form: “This money must be returned to the people,” said Bavaria’s Finance Minister Markus Söder on request. “The time is relief ripe for control. We want to relieve the recipients of small-and medium-income to a minimum of 10 billion euros.” DZ Bank chief economist Stefan Bielmeier had suggested on Friday, a state pension Fund, to be financed from the interest savings in the public sector.

The occasion of these claims: in 2009, paid the Federal government nor 38.1 billion Euro lending rates to the banks. In the past year, according to the financial report 2016 of the Ministry, only 23.2 billion – even though the mountain of debt the Federal government is grown by about a trillion euros since 2009.

benefits of the Covenant of the zero interest rate policy, makes a different statement much more clearly, the comparison with the original concerns in the home Schäuble. The Federal householder prophesied in the year 2011 to 2015, an interest charge of 49 billion Euro, which can be read, among other things, in the former annual report of the Federal court of auditors. In fact, because of the interest rate decline of less than half of this amount was due and payable.

For the citizens, in turn, the actual zero-interest-rate-losses are far higher than the lost Interest credited to the savings book. Not in the monthly Figures published by the Bundesbank to the savings deposits, the losses in the case of home loan and savings contracts are included in insurance and other investments.

“The sustained period of low interest rates, increasingly, the personal life plans of millions of German citizens in danger”, writes savings Bank President. “A lot of people see it is realistic and therefore assume that you can no longer go due to a lack of interest income to the date provided for in retirement.” Driving calls for the Federal government to the Amendment of the capital formation act, with the help of the Federal government to increase its promotion of savings.