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Thursday, November 24, 2005 K-I-S-S-I-N-G-Henry Kissinger writes a love letter to Germany's first female chancellor, Angela Merkel, who's been making the rounds of European capitals this week now that she's officially sworn in:It has been fashionable to deprecate Merkel's apparent charisma deficit during the electoral campaign. But for the chancellor's office, the extraordinary achievement of her rise may prove more relevant. Within a decade, she advanced from obscure scientific researcher in Communist East Germany to chancellor without representing a special constituency of her own against opponents in her own party who had devoted a lifetime scrambling up the political ladder.Translation: She's dull, but she knows how to play her opponents against each other until they self-destruct. Henry's absolutely right. She may surprise people who keep trying to advise her on hairstyle matters. But the first big initiative Merkel's coalition has agreed to (but not passed yet) is a 3% rise in the value-added tax, which depresses the Germans it doesn't bore, and will almost certainly fail to set the world's fifth-largest economy aflame. posted by Michael Scott Moore | 6:17 PM
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"and will almost certainly fail to set the world's fifth-largest economy aflame."
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Yes this is certainly the problem of the current situation in Germany. A social model based on the rich West Germany was maintained after unification depite grave warnings. The SPD split in two whilst trying to bring in a compromised reform that is only showing a very slow recovery rate. Rather than drastic cuts that may have created jobs and growth or keeping the system together a strange reform process tried to offer both and ultimately brought about neither. The grand coalition is left with little consensus for reform (especially among the SPD who fear further lost to the Linkspartei) and a huge budget hole that they have to plug somehow. So now we are left with a 3% rise in VAT, a slow growth rate and probably a further increase in political extremism to the left and the right. Kissinger is correct about Merkel though. Her greatest gift is that the men around her always seem to underestimate her. The strangest story for me is the Stoiber story. Do you think he stepped back thinking the coalition would collapse and hoped to go for the leadership role in a new election? I cant explain it otherwise and a complete miscalculation from him if its true. | |
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