Pro European economists in Germany launch a public appeal to support Merkel's euro rescue policy

In a direct response to the public appeal by Ifo president Hans-Werner Sinn and 170 other economists for a citizen's revolt against last week's summit results and the plans for banking union, a group of pro European economists is about to launch a public campaign in favour of Angela Merkel's euro rescue policy, Spiegel Online reports. Sinn's appeal "damaged the reputation of German economic science", Peter Bofinger said of he is one the five so called economic wise men. The director of the Institute for Economics, a research organization close to the employer's federation, said the appeal was "irresponsible" because it "did not have anything to do with economic arguments". Meanwhile Bofinger and Gustav Horn, a left wing economist close the German unions prepare a public appeal in response to Sinn and in support of Merkel's euro policy. The chancellor also reacted to Sinn's criticism by saying the summit results increased common control and not common liabilities. Meanwhile, 54% of the Germans feel that the different euro rescue efforts do not make any sense, a poll for Spiegel Online showed.

Mark Schieritz on the intellectual dishonesty of Hans Werner Sinn's appeal

Writing in his blog Herdentrieb, Mark Schieritz makes an obvious but important point about Hans Werner Sinn's appeal to the German people not to support the banking union. The appeal says the bank debt of the five crisis countries was €9tr, too much for the non-crisis countries. Schieritz says that this is the gross debt, not the amounted needed to recapitalise the banks. He cited the most pessimistic estimates for Spanish bank recapitalisation at €100-200bn. He says the argument of the appeal is based on a dishonest and deliberately misleading interpretation of numbers.