摘要：Despite German complaints about the large size of government budget defi cits in Greece, Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Italy, the fact is that German exports to these countries have risen over the past decade roughly in keeping with these defi cits. Running defi cits is how govern- ments pump income and spending power into the private sector, after all. This poses a problem for Germany: now that these countries are being told to conform to the long-broken eurozone rule limiting such defi cits to just three per cent of GDP, how will this affect their ability to buy Ger- man exports? For example, Germany’s exports jumped sharply in April 2012, but nearly all of this went to countries outside the EU (up over 6% from last year), while sales to eurozone countries shrank 3.6% on the year.
