Times Article On Angela Merkel
Pretty good New York Times article titled Angela Merkel Brinksmanship For A Debt Crisis. Here's an excerpted part of the article.
"At critical junctures throughout the crisis, Mrs. Merkel has resisted appeals to appease the financial markets by lowering borrowing costs. Instead, she has wielded the pain of soaring interest rates as a cudgel to extract painful changes — and demand leadership changes — in countries like Greece and Italy that have proven resistant to those changes in the past. It is a clever strategy, one that allows her to juggle divergent interests at home, where the German people do not want her offering more guarantees of taxpayer money to combat the sovereign debt crisis, and abroad, where they are begging her to do so. It is also highly risky.
If the euro is preserved and Europe moves toward a more unified future, Mrs. Merkel will probably win the lion’s share of the credit, perhaps one day being hailed as Europe’s savior. But if her prescriptions turn out to be inadequate, she could reap the blame for presiding over the collapse of the euro, with untold consequences for the world economy. Either way, Mrs. Merkel, a steely champion of austerity and fiscal discipline, seems to have assumed the nickname of her 19th-century predecessor Otto von Bismarck: the Iron Chancellor."
I have a feeling where going to be paying a lot more attention to Germany in the coming years. It is increasingly a country that is leaving the shackles of its past behind. In that regard I'll tell you a short story. Several years ago we hosted an exchange student from a smaller city in Bavaria for a long weekend. Since I speak a little German {from a former life as an exchange student living in Vienna, Austria} I ended up being her tour guide of Chicago for three days. Over the course of that period at some point the war came up and this was her thoughts:
"At critical junctures throughout the crisis, Mrs. Merkel has resisted appeals to appease the financial markets by lowering borrowing costs. Instead, she has wielded the pain of soaring interest rates as a cudgel to extract painful changes — and demand leadership changes — in countries like Greece and Italy that have proven resistant to those changes in the past. It is a clever strategy, one that allows her to juggle divergent interests at home, where the German people do not want her offering more guarantees of taxpayer money to combat the sovereign debt crisis, and abroad, where they are begging her to do so. It is also highly risky.
If the euro is preserved and Europe moves toward a more unified future, Mrs. Merkel will probably win the lion’s share of the credit, perhaps one day being hailed as Europe’s savior. But if her prescriptions turn out to be inadequate, she could reap the blame for presiding over the collapse of the euro, with untold consequences for the world economy. Either way, Mrs. Merkel, a steely champion of austerity and fiscal discipline, seems to have assumed the nickname of her 19th-century predecessor Otto von Bismarck: the Iron Chancellor."
I have a feeling where going to be paying a lot more attention to Germany in the coming years. It is increasingly a country that is leaving the shackles of its past behind. In that regard I'll tell you a short story. Several years ago we hosted an exchange student from a smaller city in Bavaria for a long weekend. Since I speak a little German {from a former life as an exchange student living in Vienna, Austria} I ended up being her tour guide of Chicago for three days. Over the course of that period at some point the war came up and this was her thoughts:
"I know Germany did horrible things during the war. We accept them and are truly sorry for them. However, my grandparents were children during the War. My parents were born after the War and I certainly did not do or condone these things. While I wish those things had never happened, it's not my fault."
I sometimes think we forget that just as our veterans or people with direct experience of the war are dying so are those in Germany, Italy, Japan and the other countries that were directly involved in World War II. It's a brand new world. What was old is new again and we here in the US need to adjust to that.
I will be in Germany over part of the Christmas holiday and will report back on what I find when I'm there. Also going to be in Italy which is now ground zero for the debt crisis and will bring back my thoughts from there as well.
posted by CR English at 9:16 AM
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