Ninety years after a generation’s savings were wiped out, the German preoccupation with inflation is giving way. A Hamburg University study published by the Bundesbank shows that any anxiety that inflation will erode savings is concentrated among senior citizens, the unemployed and those on lower incomes. The majority surveyed anticipate inflation at about 2 percent in the coming 12 months.
Polls now reveal that inflation concerns have been supplanted by the consequences of deleveraging from the euro area’s debt crisis. A growing number of young people don’t even know what the word “inflation” means, according to the BdB banking lobby in Berlin.
“Our studies show the Germans have no particular fear of inflation,” Rolf Buerkl, a researcher for Nuremberg-based GfK SE, which produces data on consumer purchasing behavior, said by phone. Whereas Germans’ traditional sensitivity about the risk of soaring prices was fanned during the introduction of euro cash in 2002, “those fears have ultimately not been realized.”
Bloomberg
