27 October 2008
Ms. Charlotte Knobloch President Central Council of Jews in Germany St.-Jakobs-Platz 18 80331 München
Dear President Knobloch,
I deeply regret that my remarks in the Tagesspiegel of 27 October 2008 have offended the Jewish community. It was not my intention to compare in any way the fate of the Jews after 1933 with the present situation of the managers. Such a comparison would be absurd. I only wanted to argue that the true causes of economic crises are errors in the system that must be identified and corrected. Looking for someone to blame is always the worst approach.
My deep personal friendships with many Jewish colleagues in the world and my shame and horror over what the Jews suffered in Germany have shaped who I am today. This is an unalterable fact. I ask the Jewish Community to forgive my remarks and I retract the comparison.
Sincerely yours,
Hans-Werner Sinn
Original document PDF, 160 KB Document No. 15 in the documentation PDF, 130 KB
Original e-mail and article PDF, 28 KB (in German) Document No. 5 in the documentation PDF, 130 KB (with English translation)
Question: Are managers the victims? Sinn: In every crisis, people look for someone to blame, for scapegoats. Also in the global economic crisis of 1929, no one wanted to believe in an anonymous system failure. Then the Jews in Germany were blamed, today it is managers. Look at the traffic in India. People drive on the left, on the right and on the sidewalks - it's very hazardous. For this reason traffic always blocks up. Are the "managers" behind the wheel to blame or the lack of traffic regulations? (...) Question: Was there really no alternative to the bank rescue package of the German government? Sinn: If nothing had been done, as in 1929, the consequences would have been dramatic: a meltdown in the financial system, mass unemployment, the radicalisation of the Western world, and in the end a systemic crisis of the market economy. German history is quite clear in this point. The Nazis grew out of the crisis between 1929 and 1931. Today's Pied Pipers again stand in waiting.
PDF, 130 KB
This documentation contains the complete interview, the letter of apology and the comments from scholars that were received by the Ifo Institute and declared free for publication by the authors.
"Economist's comments anger Jews", FT.com, 28 October 2008 (PDF, 19 KB).
Statements of the Ifo Institute
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