ABSTRACT
As a fiscal entity, the modern welfare state depends, in its structure and its capacity to act, upon economic factors which its citizens have in common and upon its authority to dispose of financial resources. The requirement of parliamentary authorization of public loans (Art. 115 sentence 1 GG) guarantees that the power to dispose of economic resources, in principle, shall remain with the private sector. The state forgoes the possibility of satisfying its fiscal needs through the public use of productive and expendable property; it restricts itself to partaking of the proceeds from private economic activity. Art. 115 GG links the goals of budgetary flexibility and of protection against excessive predebiting of parliaments and taxpayers by means of a credit limit. The indeterminate legal term "investments" needs to be specified. The constitution allows a certain amount of latitude but it allocates the power to exercise the discretion constitutionally granted.
