Word: schr
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There's a Gerhard Schröder joke making the rounds in Germany that perfectly captures the hapless Chancellor's predicament. Schröder tries to console an unemployed architect, telling him, "If I weren't Chancellor, I'd be building houses." The irate architect shoots back: "If you weren't Chancellor, I'd be building houses, too." Barely two months after he won re-election by a wafer-thin margin, Schröder's handling of the country's sputtering economy has made him the most unpopular leader in postwar Germany. People feel betrayed and lied to by Schr...
...thing that infuriates voters is the knife-point targeting of the taxes being introduced by Schröder and his Finance Minister, Hans Eichel. Dog owners will get slapped with a tax of 16% on pet food; company cars will be hit with a 1.5% tax, leading the auto industry to predict 150,000 fewer cars will be sold next year. Air travelers were threatened with a 15% tax on frequent-flyer miles, prompting national airline Lufthansa to say it was considering moving its program overseas, which would eliminate 500 jobs. The government will impose a flat...
...morbid state of Germany's government wasn't on the agenda last week when Chancellor Gerhard Schröder and French President Jacques Chirac held a working dinner at a castle outside Berlin. Yet, perversely, Schröder's problems could help get relations between Paris and Berlin over a difficult hump. France has been nursing the Continent's most important relationship with a sense of wounded pride for the last few years. Not only did reunification make Germany the bigger partner, but the imminent prospect of a big-bang enlargement of the European Union threatened to put the Germans...
With Deutsche Telekom posting a record €24.5 billion loss for the first three-quarters of the year, just about the only thing going smoothly in Germany's economy right now is music sales. A savage single satirizing Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, The Tax Song, soared toward No. 1, selling over 300,000 copies since its release. The song is part of a wave of 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...
...agreements on a further 25 are due to expire at the end of the year. Fixing the problem fell to Berlin, say NATO officials, in part because its capability needs to be bolstered: the Bundeswehr had to rent Ukrainian Antonovs to get cargo to Afghanistan last spring, and the Schröder government, pleading budget problems, has already reduced its order for the A400M from a promised 73 planes to just 40. NATO officials hope Berlin will pull together enough allies to commit to the long-term lease of eight to 10 such planes. The Dutch have been tasked with...