Finance

Keeping track of your finances

There’s no escaping the fact that banking is a major business in Germany. There are no end of banks available – the large ones like Deutsche Bank, the consumer-orientated ones like Postbank, regional Volksbanken and Sparkassen, and even a number of private banks.

Some of them are interested in the normal current-account type of customer, others are more into mortgages, and others still into investment banking. Many even sell each other’s products.

So it’s not unusual for someone to have accounts at more than one bank, and if these are in some way interlinked, keeping tabs on everything gets really complicated – to the point where there is a big market for personal finance software. [Read more…]

Finanzkrise & Notleidende Banken

The word Finanzkrise has been used in the past months to describe the state of the World economy.

But generally it is used to refer to any form of crisis in the finance markets. It is, for example, used to describe the inflation of 1929 but also the situation in the Netherlands in the 1630s.

It was selected by the Gesellschaft für deutsche Sprache to be the “Wort des Jahres” (Word of the Year) in 2008.

Coupled with this is the “Unwort des Jahres” of the same year: Notleidene Banken.

This term is ironically used to talk about the banking situation in 2008, as many banks had to be “rescued” by their relevant national governments.

Previously many banks had been making large profits and even after the crisis were still paying their managers high bonuses, whilst at the same time accepting state help.

To hear a simple explanation and a short discussion in German, listen to the podcast:

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Keeping track of your finances

Finanzkrise & Notleidende Banken

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