‘Count Draghila is sucking our accounts dry’, says German daily

Mass-selling German newspaper Bild yesterday accused European Central Bank President Mario Draghi of “sucking dry” the bank accounts of Germany’s savers, a day after the ECB cut interest rates deeper into negative territory. Next to a photomontage of Draghi with fangs and dressed as a vampire, Bild’s headline read: “Count Draghila is sucking our accounts dry.”

Hoping to kick-start economic activity nearly a decade after the euro zone’s debt crisis, the ECB on Thursday cut interest rates deeper into negative territory and promised bond purchases with no end-date to push borrowing costs even lower. The bigger-than-expected stimulus immediately fuelled concerns among frugal Germans, who have complained for years that the ECB’s low interest rates are denying them a decent rate of return on their savings.

During the euro zone crisis, Bild gifted the Italian a spiked Prussian helmet from 1871 to show its confidence that he would adhere to German-style discipline. Draghi put the helmet on a shelf in his office. Voicing Germans’ angst, Helmut Schleweis, president of Germany’s powerful savings banks association, said the ECB’s latest policy package “does more harm than good”. German Finance Minister Olaf Scholz sought to calm savers worried ahead of Thursday’s ECB meeting.

“Most contracts that customers have with their banks do not currently allow such penalty rates, so the problem is not acute,” Scholz said. “Banks’ boards are wise enough to grasp what they would trigger with such penalty rates.