Economist Sinn Rattles Merkel Laboring to Save Euro

Dressed in his customary gray three-piece suit at a conference in Frankfurt on June 15, Hans-Werner Sinn folds his hands and listens without expression as a series of speakers criticize his economic theories. Willem Buiter, chief economist at Citigroup Inc., goes so far as to decry them as “nonsense.”

Taking his turn at the microphone shortly afterward, the 64-year-old president of the Munich-based Ifo Institute for Economic Research says he regrets it when investment bankers such as Buiter “lose their composure.” He then lays out once more his argument that Germany is paying more than it thinks for Greece’s fiscal recklessness and that the struggling southern European nation should long ago have left the euro zone, Bloomberg Markets magazine reports in its October special issue on the 50 Most Influential people in global finance.