Germany's Economic Dilemma: Debt and Investment

Today we had two stellar guests for a COBT discussion focused on Germany’s significant upcoming election on February 23. We had the pleasure of hosting our good friend Dr. Lars Schernikau alongside Dr. Daniel Stelter. Lars is an energy economist, commodity trader, entrepreneur, and the author of “The Unpopular Truth about Electricity and the Future of Energy.” We have known Lars for a few years now and reached out to him for advice on an expert voice on the German elections, economy and overall macro outlook. He recommended Daniel and we were thrilled to get them both to join us. Daniel is an acclaimed macroeconomist and strategy consultant and his background includes 20 plus years as Senior Partner and Executive Committee Member at Boston Consulting Group. More recently, he founded the think tank “Beyond The Obvious.” We were delighted to visit with Lars and Daniel.
 
We covered a lot of territory in our conversation starting with asking Lars and Daniel for background on whether the upcoming election is likely to bring meaningful economic or policy reforms and probing its broader implications for Germany’s economic trajectory. They shared their unfortunately low expectations for significant change, pointing to Germany’s ongoing economic decline, which has been exacerbated by policy decisions during COVID, including heavy spending and regulatory shifts, and further strained by high energy prices, energy scarcity, and deindustrialization driven by the country’s aggressive transition to renewables and more recent closure of their nuclear plants. We explore Germany’s debt-to-GDP ratio as a strategic advantage, though constrained by debt brake laws, potential reforms to reallocate funds from subsidies and social programs toward more productive investments, hidden liabilities that significantly increase Germany’s actual debt burden, European debt dynamics, the Euro, and speculation on whether the U.S. will prioritize strengthening Germany’s economic resilience or focus on attracting German industries to America for lower energy costs. We touch on potential future scenarios, including the possibility for Germany to delay coal plant closures or access domestic gas reserves, the U.S.’s vested interest in supporting Germany and the EU to maintain geopolitical stability, and the increasing political polarization in Germany. We also discuss how China’s long-term strategic planning in EVs, batteries, and raw materials has outpaced European efforts, the strategic implications of sanctioning Russia, and much more. It was a candid look at the challenges and opportunities facing Germany and Europe and we can’t thank Lars and Daniel enough for sharing their time and thoughts with us.
 
Mike Bradley started us off by highlighting that broader equity markets seem to be focused solely on Trump-Trump-Trump policies, whether that be recent talks between Russia/U.S. on a Ukrainian peace deal or reciprocal tariff threats. He noted that there’s little in the way of market moving economic data this week which might allow broader equity markets to continue gravitating higher. Meta’s stock price has been up twenty consecutive trading days (an equity market record) and NVIDIA will be reporting quarterly results next week, which could create a lot of volatility and set the tone for the Technology sector in the coming weeks. On the crude oil front, he discussed rumors that OPEC might look to delay oil production increases (120kbpd) that were scheduled for April. The recent pullback in crude oil price also seems to be grounded in optimism for a breakthrough in the Ukrainian war. On the natural gas front, European natural gas price is trading at ~$15/MMBtu, down ~$2/MMBtu over the last few weeks, on optimism the EU will allow a more flexible gas storage refill this year. European gas storage levels are 44% full versus the 5-year average of 54% full, which provides a bit of a gas price floor heading into summer. He w