Bill Mitchell on the Germany’s Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau

In the fascinating post below Bill Mitchell analyses the role of Germany’s Kreditanstalt für Wiederaufbau (Reconstruction Credit Institute), a state owned bank:

Bill Mitchell, “The Fiscal Role of the KfW – Part 1,” Billyblog, December 3, 2013.

As he argues, this bank is effectively an instrument of government fiscal policy that has allowed the German government to have lower deficits and lower public debt ratios since 2008.

This bank looks like an instrument of industrial policy too. The rise of Germany as an advanced industrial nation from the 19th century onwards had much to do with state intervention and industrial policy, which arguably continues to this day.