Joachim Nagel President of the Bundesbank
Economist Joachim Nagel at the helm of the Bundesbank succeeds Jens Weidmann starting from the new year
The German economist Joachim Nagel and the new head of the Bundesbank. The government’s proposal of Olaf Scholz he thus takes a choice of “continuity” for the leading financial institution in a context of soaring prices. It is one of the first important appointments of the Social Democratic chancellor who has recently come to power at the head of a coalition with the Greens and the liberals of the FDP.
His candidacy was proposed by the government to replace the current resigning president Jens Weidmann, who will step down from his post on December 31st. Nagel “is an expert figure who will ensure continuity” to the Bundesbank, the finance minister said Christian Lindner in a tweet.
Effectively Nagel, 55, knows the central bank well, having worked there for 17 years. Close to the Social Democratic Party (SPD), he is seen as a compromise candidate for the “Buba”, as the German Central Bank is called.
Nagel’s appointment, which will be official in the next few days, comes in a moment of tension for the Bundesbank, while inflation rose in Germany to more than 5%, above the euro zone average, and well above the European Central Bank (ECB) 2% target.
“Faced with the risk of inflation, the importance of a stability-oriented monetary policy grows,” he also tweeted Lindner, leader of the Liberal Party and supporter of fiscal and monetary orthodoxy. In a country obsessed with price stability, where the Bundesbank was once revered for its relentless fight against inflation, the European Central Bank’s more accommodating policy does not appeal to some people.
Jens Weidmann, an influential member of the European Central Bank’s governing council, has been regularly outnumbered in recent times by the institution’s doves, who are reluctant to tighten the credit screw too quickly. His term, the second since 2011, actually expired in 2027, but in October he announced his resignation calling into question personal reasons.
Weidmann, a former councilor of Angela Merkel, has often expressed his discomfort with the ECB’s generous price to buy large quantities of government bonds on the market to reduce the lending costs of eurozone countries, fearing that this could slow down the fiscal policy discipline of the most indebted countries .
Who is the economist Joachim Nagel, the new president of the Bundesbank
Joachim Nagel has a doctorate in economics from the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (West) and is a member of the Social Democratic Party. He has been deputy head of the banking division at the Bank for International Settlements, the umbrella body of the world’s central banks, since 2020, having spent most of his career at the Bundesbank.
During his time at the Buba, until 2016, he was responsible for market operations and information technology. Weidmann praised his “determination”, “communication skills” and “in-depth knowledge of the financial markets” when he left the central bank to join the board of the state bank of KfW development, a post he held for four years. The business newspaper “Handelsblatt” refers to him as “a ordo-liberal supporter of the market economy “.
In Joachim Nagel, commented Carsten Brzeski, economist of ING, la Bundesbank it has gained an “almost natural and internally trained” successor, who should “take up Mr. Weidmann’s position as the guardian of a more conservative monetary policy”.
Congratulating Nagel, the president of the ECB Christine Lagarde wrote a German-language tweet in which he reveals he feels “impatient to work with such an experienced central banker on the Governing Council and to implement the mandate of the ECB“.
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