I find it interesting that this list, with world wide participation only
focuses it's OT posts on US policy/politics.  I thought it would be good for
a change to look at politics in other countries to see how
good/bad/miserable other political arenas are viewed.  Since I know we have
at least one poster from Germany, I thought I'd start there.  It appears
that in Germany the unemployment rate is approaching 12 percent.  Cutting
interest rates has not sparked it's economy, it continues on a downward
spiral.  Maybe a cut in taxes in order.  It seems to work well for us
Americans.  Every time we (democrat or republican) have cut taxes, our
economy is grown considerably.  Maybe Chancellor Schroeder should learn a
little something from history.
Tim

By the way I am not the poster Michael was talking about when he said he
received disparaging remarks from posters on this list.


Arab News, 7 March 2003

Germany's postwar economic miracle is now a distant memory. Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder won his second term of office on the back of his trenchant
opposition to a US-led military attack on Iraq. Had that political platform
not been available to him, it is likely he would have lost and lost badly,
because under his Socialist-led government, the German economy has lurched
from bad to worse.
News this week that German unemployment is approaching 12 percent deepened
the mood of despair that has settled upon the country. The root of Germany's
economic woes is simple. When the going was good, Germans could afford to
pay themselves high wages, high pensions and generous welfare. When the good
times ended, both Schroeder and his predecessor Helmut Kohl failed to
rebalance the books.
Though some limited reform has been pushed through, the major work of
cutting benefits and industrial subsidies remains to be tackled.
Unfortunately, as the economic situation has worsened, so has the political
will to grasp the nettle.
To some extent, Germany's economic problems are frozen by its membership of
the eurozone. The steady campaign of rate cuts by the European Central Bank
has so far failed to kick-start renewed growth, no more in Germany than
elsewhere in the eurozone. Yet this week saw the euro closing at its highest
ever rate against the US dollar. This means that eurozone exports are
becoming more expensive, making it even more difficult for European
businesses to export their way out of their recession.
Germany was always envisaged as the powerhouse of the new European economic
order, with its dynamic new single currency. Few people could have imagined
that within a few years of the euro's introduction, Germany would be
numbered with the more obviously economically unstable Portugal, as the two
eurozone states in the deepest financial trouble.
Yet Germany's modern reputation for financial conservatism and economic
rectitude is not entirely deserved. As with Japan, much of Germany's postwar
recovery was funded by US money. The Germans did the work but the seed
capital came from outside. The Truman presidency wisely took the view that
crippling reparations, such as those imposed on Germany after World War II,
would merely once again lay the foundations for yet further conflict. It was
from the vindictive and crippling reparations that Hitler's Nazis drew their
greatest propaganda that Germany had been stabbed in the back by its former
leaders.
There was, however, another political issue which Hitler was able to ride
all the way to the German chancellorship. This was the mismanagement of the
German economy. In 1928 Germany followed Austria and Hungary into an
inflationary spiral the like of which had never been seen. A loaf of bread
cost billions of marks, wages were paid daily because they lost their value
so rapidly and note issuance in a single day totaled the entire emission for
the previous year. Yet throughout this extraordinary inflation, the best
financial minds in Germany chose to believe that the mark's collapse against
other currencies was caused purely by the appreciation of those other
currencies. It was a refusal to recognize a problem for what it was.
Hopefully Schroeder and his government have been reading their history
books.

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