Reports that the Bundesbank agreed to increase disgraced board member Thilo Sarrazin’s pension payments by €1,000 a month to accelerate his departure have been greeted with fury and denials.
Embattled Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin may not receive a severance package if he is removed from his post following incendiary claims about race and immigration, a media report said on Thursday.
As the integration debate stoked by Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin continues to smoulder, conservatives have begun calling for heavier sanctions against immigrants they deem unwilling or unable to become part of German society.
With President Christian Wulff expected to announce soon the dismissal of central banker Thilo Sarrazin over inflammatory race and immigration comments, leading politicians called on Friday for a renewed integration debate.
The Bundesbank's leadership on Thursday backed the dismissal of board member Thilo Sarrazin for his controversial remarks on race and immigration. President Christian Wulff had already signalled support for his removal.
Germany's national bank, the Deutsche Bundesbank, has shown signs of irritation that the European Central Bank (ECB) has chosen to buy the state bonds of highly indebted eurozone countries.
The German economy, Europe's biggest, shrank slightly in the first three months of the year due mainly to a viciously cold winter, the country's central bank, the Bundesbank, forecast on Monday.
The German economy contracted by five percent last year, its deepest recession since World War II, according to preliminary figures released on Wednesday.
Controversial comments about immigrants made by Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin were reportedly approved by the bank’s public relations operation and read through by Axel Weber, the head of Germany's central bank, before publication.
Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin was stripped of some of his responsibilities on Tuesday in a symbolic protest of anti-immigrant comments he made last month.
The head of Germany’s central bank said Bundesbank board member Thilo Sarrazin should resign after the former Berlin finance senator said the city's Arab and Turkish populations had no productive function and had too many children.
Axel Weber, the president of Germany’s central bank, said on Saturday that deteriorating public finances means there is little room for tax cuts, which have been made a priority by the country's incoming centre-right coalition.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel may have sought to score political points by slamming central banks last week, but she also echoed fears over growing public debt and waning bank independence.
Several employees from a regional branch of Germany’s central bank were injured last week by mysterious vapours emanating from redeemed bank notes, according to a letter obtained by The Local on Wednesday.
Eight people were injured at the Hamburg headquarters of the German Bundesbank when mysterious gas seeped out of bags of old Deutsche mark coins they were cleaning, authorities reported on Monday.
German industrial production declined further in April, the ministry of industry said Friday, another sign that Europe's biggest economy is slowing down.
Germany's central bank said Friday that growth in Europe's largest economy might be more subdued over the coming months, but it expects a pick-up later as global conditions improve and inflation abates.
