Word: germanize
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Just a few weeks ago, Chancellor Angela Merkel seemed content to coast along and see just how bad the financial crisis would get before taking action. As world leaders were piling up huge bailouts, Merkel promised only modest aid for the German economy, and members of her Cabinet even ridiculed other European leaders for engaging in a race to see who could spend the most. But as the new year gets under way, Merkel has clearly joined the race and may be moving ahead of the pack...
...fronts. Merkel's coalition nearly doubled its stimulus package to €50 billion this week and is drafting plans for a €100 billion Germany Fund to provide credit for midsize businesses. And Commerzbank, Germany's second biggest bank, has said it is to be partly nationalized. The German government's bank-rescue fund, the Financial Markets Stabilization Fund (SoFFin), will provide €10 billion in fresh cash to Commerzbank in exchange for a 25% stake plus one share in the bank. "We are weatherproofing our bank for an economically stormy environment. This will enable us to fulfill our responsibility...
...Government officials say the stimulus money will be earmarked for investment in long-term infrastructure projects that will help revive the construction industry, for aid to companies to reduce layoffs and for education. Data on German industrial orders indicate there will be no respite soon. Figures out Thursday showed orders fell a huge 6% in November from the month before, and orders in the final quarter of 2008 were down 43.6% from the same quarter a year ago. (See pictures of the global financial crisis...
...change in Merkel's thinking was forced by the acceptance of economic and political realities. The German economy is sinking faster than most experts thought a month ago. Just this week, Germany's three-year job boom came to a screeching halt when the labor office reported that in December unemployment rose by a seasonally adjusted 18,000, nearly twice the level predicted in a poll of 30 economists by the news agency Bloomberg. It was the first increase in joblessness since February 2006. "The economic crisis has reached the labor market," said Frank-Juergen Weise, head of the Labor...
...role in shaping the debate about what international financial market regulation should look like after the crisis. At the Paris conference on the future of capitalism hosted this week by Nicolas Sarkozy and Tony Blair, Merkel was pushing for greater regulation of financial markets, according to government officials. The German delegation to the G20, which meets again in April, has been pressing for tough regulation of banks, hedge funds and private equity. Next week, Merkel plays host to British Prime Minister Gordon Brown, whose own bailout plans created the template for the U.S.'s, to discuss efforts to revive...