The German economy remains robust in a difficult international climate. In the current year, we expect GDP to increase by 2 per cent. That represents a reduction of 0.2 percentage points from our earlier forecast, mainly due to a slowdown in exports caused by sluggish growth in foreign markets...

The article discusses the economic difficulties from which the industrialized nations have been suffering for the past years giving special regard to the controversy as to what concept of economic policy should be adopted in order to overcome the present problems.

"Since the appearance of macroeconomics in the 1940s, economists have created many theoretical frameworks to explain the origin and mechanism of economic fluctuations. However, few of these have managed to gain explanatory power over reality and nor can they solve real-life problems. This book...