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German politics has already followed many nonsensical dogmas.
After the war, diplomatic relations were only allowed with states that did not recognize the GDR.
In the 1990s it was said that Germany was not a country of immigration.
And only recently, there was a firm principle that euro countries were not allowed to take out joint loans.
Now the political mainstream is clinging to another principle that has become an anachronism: the debt brake.
The government has suspended the rule, according to which the state may only operate on credit to a minimal extent, for two years due to Corona.
But afterwards, the Union and FDP assure as well as SPD chancellor candidate Olaf Scholz, it should apply again without restriction.
If the virus goes, the black-red-yellow XXL coalition promises that the debt brake will come back.
The debt brake in its current form is an investment brake
It is a revival that the republic would be better spared.
Because the positive image that the Article of the Basic Law, which was introduced eleven years ago, still enjoys in large parts of the public, is undeserved.
In its current form, the credit rule is not a debt brake, but an investment brake.
It does not fit into the time of negative interest rates.
And it could dampen the economy before it has picked up again.
Even before Corona, the debt brake had proven too rigid and immobile.
Now it threatens to become a dogma that unnecessarily shackles politics and business.
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