Word: pensiones
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...lack of new ideas. "You give us the impression of a man with his back to the wall," Merkel said. Schröder will have to do better if he wants to stem the tide of departing Mittelstand businesses. One place to start: a planned increase in employer pension and health-insurance contributions, due to take effect next year, that has many businessmen considering a move. A late November poll by an association of entrepreneurs found that 7.4% of the 300 companies surveyed had already decided to set up their production facilities abroad, while another 32% are "investigating" a transfer...
...will push a country already stagnating into recession," says Norbert Walter, chief economist of Deutsche Bank. Support for Schröder's Social Democratic Party is so weak that the upper house of parliament, the Bundesrat, which is narrowly controlled by the opposition conservatives, voted against adopting the higher pension and health-insurance contributions as well as Schröder's much-maligned proposal to reform the labor market by turning unemployment offices into temporary job agencies. The labor reforms were suggested by an independent commission headed by Peter Hartz, the personnel chief at Volkswagen. But even Hartz has complained...
...ministers worry that labor concessions would push budget deficits over E.U. limits. So some politicians are playing it tough, either denying union claims outright or linking them to cost-saving and modernization. Other leaders are caving in, delaying or diluting plans to improve labor market flexibility and reform failing pension systems. How governments respond to this wave of strikes - and other walkouts that are still to come - will help determine how their economies weather the economic slump. In the rough-and-ready camp are British Prime Minister Tony Blair and his French counterpart, Jean-Pierre Raffarin. Last week Blair offered...
...charts. The first one, in the cover story on the wine trade, should have listed wine production by country in billions of gallons rather than millions of gallons, as several alert readers pointed out. The second chart, on the Global Investing page, misrepresented the health of two corporate pension plans. As of Aug. 30, Sempra Energy had a pension surplus of $168 million, and Allegheny Technologies had a pension deficit of $32 million, according to revised estimates by UBS Warburg. We attributed our figures to a UBS study, but after we published the story, UBS amended its estimates, saying...
...sharp criticism that the government has faced since announcing a series of tax increases and benefit cuts only weeks after the general election. Last week members of the Green Party, who are in coalition with Schröder's Social Democrats, revolted as parliament passed a controversial bill raising pension-insurance costs. Under the measure, which takes effect Jan. 1, workers and their employers will be required to pay 19.5% of wages as pension contributions, up from 19.1% currently. Opposition parties and some Greens think the hike will hamper competitiveness. The bill also raises the upper limit on wages subject...