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| Economy |
| Berlin: Obama just another Bush |
| 2009-03-31 |
| Is the financial crisis for Angela Merkel what the Iraq war was for Gerhard Schröder -- namely, a reason to seriously strain Germany's relationship with the U.S.? One need not answer with an unconditional "yes" to be very concerned. Naturally, at the G-20 meeting in London this week, Europeans will celebrate and praise the new American president. There will be beautiful photo opportunities and demonstrative unity. But the dispute behind the scenes has gotten worse. Barack Obama is demanding a much greater financial commitment from Germany and Europe to revive the economy; Mrs. Merkel and the EU are refusing, and instead urging the Americans to regulate their financial markets more rigidly. There's no question, Mrs. Merkel has good substantive arguments on her side. Mr. Schröder had some as well when he opposed George W. Bush before and during the Iraq war. Nevertheless, Americans and the German opposition -- namely, Mrs. Merkel's Christian Democratic Union -- accused Mr. Schröder of dishonesty. After all, his antiwar views were also motivated by electoral strategy and were not entirely free of general anti-Americanism. But come to think of it, isn't Mrs. Merkel, too, campaigning this year? Her defiant self-assuredness in dealing with Washington may be as popular in Germany as Mr. Schröder's antiwar stance was. The difference between the two chancellors is that Mrs. Merkel's way of formulating her position is not aggressive, but subversive. When she defends her financial policies, she likes to remark with a wink that we shouldn't forget where the crisis began. Everyone knows which country she means. Mr. Obama speaks of a global crisis that demands global responses. For the Germans, this is indeed a global crisis -- but one that must be resolved primarily by the U.S., since it originated there. Therefore, German finance companies that became entangled in dodgy speculations are seen as weak victims who were seduced, while the clever American seducers who caused the real-estate bubble must now be punished. Now the victims are claiming the right to say "no" to new stimulus packages. And they are demanding that the U.S. never again be permitted to seduce -- that it be constrained by "more transparency on the financial markets, which Germany called for long ago," as Mrs. Merkel says. Once, there were enormous hopes. With Barack Obama's election, the trans-Atlantic rift that grew in the Bush years would finally be bridged. Now, in the financial crisis, this hope could prove an illusion. Many Germans believe they are being taken hostage by the U.S., and they want to vent their frustrations. They ask whether Mr. Obama's gigantic stimulus programs are similar to the gigantic war programs of Mr. Bush. The new president seems to be reacting just as drastically to this "world crisis" as the Republicans did to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, demanding the same unconditional allegiance from allies that Mr. Bush did. Are the neo-Keynesians as mistaken today as the neoconservatives were then? Isn't American gigantism the biggest problem? In explaining the Americans' motivations, Germans are reaching conclusions as unfriendly and abstruse as those in the run-up to the Iraq war (greed for oil). On March 9, the German magazine Der Spiegel published a cover story on "The Mistake of the Century -- How the Failure of a Single Bank Triggered the World Crisis." It suggested that the U.S. government purposely allowed the investment bank Lehman Brothers to fail. Why? "Germany was apparently the main goal of the speculation" of Lehman Brothers, the magazine said, "because these kinds of securities are permitted in Germany, but not in France or the United States." And, "There is a great deal of evidence that banks targeted the funds of unwitting German retirees in trading Lehman securities." This interpretation of events is widespread in Germany. Even the head of the Protestant church council, Bishop Wolfgang Huber, supports it. More and more, the diffuse anger about the crisis and its consequences is erupting in social unrest; one need only look to Greece, France, Ireland, Iceland or Eastern Europe. The longer the crisis lasts, the more loudly people will point to its originator, the U.S. Mr. Obama is turning into a lightning rod for European thunder. When he travels to the old Continent for the first time as U.S. president, he most likely won't see cheering crowds as huge as the one that greeted him last summer in front of Berlin's Victory Column. Before the Iraq war, George Bush succeeded in splitting Europe into the "old" and the "new." In the financial crisis, the Continent is unified in its opposition toward his successor, Barack Obama. |
| Posted by:GolfBravoUSMC |
| #2 Just another Yankee out to oppress the Huns. |
| Posted by: ed 2009-03-31 14:58 |
| #1 Obama another bush? If only! It would be an improvement. |
| Posted by: Mike 2009-03-31 14:18 |