Greens don’t control damage. They create damage that goes out of control.
Germany foreign minister embarks on post-Macron ‘damage control’ in China trip – Germany’s foreign minister begins a visit to China on Thursday aiming to reassert a common European Union policy toward Beijing days after remarks by French President Emmanuel Macron suggested disarray in the continent’s approach to the rising superpower.
“She was sort of perceived as being a troublemaker. I’d be surprised if this does not play a role at all in her visit.”
Frugality? Refusing to pay other countries’ debts? That was “old Germany.”
Now the Germans need a country like Austria to take care of the problem for them – just like the Austrians took care of Merkel’s migrant madness by closing their borders way back when.
‘Frugal four’ nations counter Franco-German EU initiative – Four EU countries have teamed up, rejecting Macron and Merkel’s persistent lobbying for a €500 billion rescue fund. Instead, they have their own scheme on how to save Europe from economic fallout amid the pandemic…
The four countries also indicated that they will neither agree to a mutualization of debt nor an increase in the EU budget. Their draft proposal was seen by the German Press Agency (DPA) on Saturday.
“Our objective is to provide temporary, dedicated funding through the EU budgetû and to offer favorable loans to those who have been most severely affected by the crisis.”
That means reconstruction bonds. Or Eurobonds/Coronabonds light. Or Germany breaking a taboo and knuckling under to France to share debt with other EU countries, if you prefer.
It’s hard to keep up with them. Politicians just can’t burn money fast enough these days.
German Chancellor Angela Merkel broke with her country’s longstanding opposition to raising money together with other – often poorer – EU countries. But the proposal made with French President Emmanuel Macron is limited in scale and duration, which could help her sell it to skeptics back home.
It consists of 500 billion euros ($550 billion) in loans and grants to help countries through the recession, and is viewed by some as a step toward stronger EU ties as the 27-country union faces challenges not just from the virus crisis, but from populist forces in member countries Hungary and Poland who want to loosen the bloc’s ties.
First they roll out a foreign minister who talks tough to Russia and then they provide a finance minister who has trouble spending other people’s money.
Damn. Maybe I could become a social democrat (bourgeois socialist), too.
Germany’s new Social Democrat finance minister, Olaf Scholz, is frustrating both key ally France and his own struggling center-left party by adopting the same fiscal rigor as his conservative predecessor, Wolfgang Schaeuble.
During his first two months as treasury chief of Europe’s largest economy, Scholz has committed to a continued goal of no new debt and limited public spending.
“We act pragmatically and properly – and do not worship a fetish (of fiscal conservatism).”
Observing Hermann 