Good thing for Germany, that is. With their unemployment near a two-decade low and the budget deficit virtually eliminated, voters understandably backed Merkel’s steady, conservative handling of their economy.
A stunning election triumph has left German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the apex of her power, humiliated foes and old allies alike, and rung in what one newspaper dubbed “the era of Merkelism”.
The strongest conservative poll result in two decades was a thundering popular endorsement for the leader who is dubbed “Mummy” at home and often called the world’s most powerful woman.
It followed a heavily personality-based campaign that focused on Merkel’s calm and prudent captaincy through the storms of the eurozone crisis, in which Germany’s economy came out unscathed with its triple-A ratings and low unemployment.
In its drive to stay in power, the conservative party “did not bet on a policy but on a person: the chancellor,” said the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung daily.
“The Merkel Republic,” ran the headline for a commentary on news site Spiegel Online, which declared that “Germany has finally become Angela Merkel-Land”.
Here in America – the land of “Obamaism”, it’s been a non stop spendathon for the past five years with the massive stimulus, bloated budgets, ObamaCare, expanded welfare, skyrocketing disability rolls, foodstamp rolls, and Obamaphone usage, Pigford settlements, Obama’s constant traveling and vacations – setting the US economy on an unsustainable course (a la Cloward/Pivan.) Our unemployment rate is distressingly high and millions have left the job market altogether for the greener pastures of government dependency. You can make a pretty decent living in ObamAmerica collecting all those expanded entitlements for doing absolutely nothing but filling out some forms.
We managed to hit some kind of awful tipping point in 2012 – perhaps (as Romney feared) the takers finally out numbered the makers. Or the lofos out-numbered the politically astute. And the Judeo-Christian values we used to hold so dear are becoming more and more scarce. Perhaps voter fraud played a part…
The number of hardcore leftists who openly endorse Socialist policies remains low. People who identify as conservatives far outnumber people who identify as liberal.
But he won – and believe me – Obama and his minions will be the first to remind you of that when they target conservative groups for abuse or cram their toxic policies down our throats. Obama won so suck it up.
Claire McCaskill appearing on Fox News Sunday, told Chris Wallace that people need to stop throwing temper tantrums about ObamaCare… Why? Because Obama won™. Charming, huh? They’ve been rubbing our noses in it for 5 years and will for three more. That’s why we call him, “the Won.”
Luckily, for Germany though – they have the “calm and prudent” Angela Merkel, who has somehow managed to resist Obama’s amazing “charm offenses” over the past several years.
In September of 2011, Obama lectured Europe on fiscal responsibility.
Nile Gardiner at The Telegraph says it best:
As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported, Germany’s finance minister Wolfang Schauble has launched a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration after Washington pushed for the European Union to boost its EFSF bail out fund. After Obama declared that the European financial crisis is “scaring the world”, Schauble shot back at the US president by warning: “It’s always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government.” He also made it clear what he thought of the idea of increasing the 440 billion euro lending limit, a position supported by US Treasury Chief Tim Geithner:
I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense.
It is rather ironic that Barack Obama, who has probably done more damage to the American economy that any president in modern US history, is now lecturing European leaders on their financial problems as well. The Obama administration’s track record of out-of-control government spending and borrowing, a $1.3 trillion budget deficit (the largest since World War Two), combined with mammoth bailouts, has been nothing short of disastrous. 14 million Americans are out of work, the housing market is in a state of collapse, and job growth is practically non-existent outside of the Washington Beltway. And the advice his flailing government is now giving across the Atlantic will inevitably prolong the huge economic turmoil in Europe, rather than help bring it to an end.
The administration’s entire approach to the European Union is fundamentally flawed, and is based on the underlying premise that the EU needs more integration, not less, with a greater pooling of national sovereignty.
– See more at: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/09/brits-blast-president-downgrade-for-lecturing-europe-on-debt/#sthash.HRwezXnc.dpuf
Nile Gardiner at The Telegraph reported:
As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported, Germany’s finance minister Wolfang Schauble has launched a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration after Washington pushed for the European Union to boost its EFSF bail out fund. After Obama declared that the European financial crisis is “scaring the world”, Schauble shot back at the US president by warning: “It’s always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government.” He also made it clear what he thought of the idea of increasing the 440 billion euro lending limit, a position supported by US Treasury Chief Tim Geithner:
I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense.
It is rather ironic that Barack Obama, who has probably done more damage to the American economy that any president in modern US history, is now lecturing European leaders on their financial problems as well. The Obama administration’s track record of out-of-control government spending and borrowing, a $1.3 trillion budget deficit (the largest since World War Two), combined with mammoth bailouts, has been nothing short of disastrous. 14 million Americans are out of work, the housing market is in a state of collapse, and job growth is practically non-existent outside of the Washington Beltway. And the advice his flailing government is now giving across the Atlantic will inevitably prolong the huge economic turmoil in Europe, rather than help bring it to an end.
The administration’s entire approach to the European Union is fundamentally flawed, and is based on the underlying premise that the EU needs more integration, not less, with a greater pooling of national sovereignty.
Then again in the Spring of 2012 Obama formed an alliance with (surprise) France’s already grossly unpopular Socialist President to encourage more spending.
Nile Gardiner at The Telegraph says it best:
As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported, Germany’s finance minister Wolfang Schauble has launched a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration after Washington pushed for the European Union to boost its EFSF bail out fund. After Obama declared that the European financial crisis is “scaring the world”, Schauble shot back at the US president by warning: “It’s always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government.” He also made it clear what he thought of the idea of increasing the 440 billion euro lending limit, a position supported by US Treasury Chief Tim Geithner:
I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense.
It is rather ironic that Barack Obama, who has probably done more damage to the American economy that any president in modern US history, is now lecturing European leaders on their financial problems as well. The Obama administration’s track record of out-of-control government spending and borrowing, a $1.3 trillion budget deficit (the largest since World War Two), combined with mammoth bailouts, has been nothing short of disastrous. 14 million Americans are out of work, the housing market is in a state of collapse, and job growth is practically non-existent outside of the Washington Beltway. And the advice his flailing government is now giving across the Atlantic will inevitably prolong the huge economic turmoil in Europe, rather than help bring it to an end.
The administration’s entire approach to the European Union is fundamentally flawed, and is based on the underlying premise that the EU needs more integration, not less, with a greater pooling of national sovereignty.
– See more at: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/09/brits-blast-president-downgrade-for-lecturing-europe-on-debt/#sthash.HRwezXnc.dpuf
Nile Gardiner at The Telegraph says it best:
As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported, Germany’s finance minister Wolfang Schauble has launched a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration after Washington pushed for the European Union to boost its EFSF bail out fund. After Obama declared that the European financial crisis is “scaring the world”, Schauble shot back at the US president by warning: “It’s always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government.” He also made it clear what he thought of the idea of increasing the 440 billion euro lending limit, a position supported by US Treasury Chief Tim Geithner:
I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense.
It is rather ironic that Barack Obama, who has probably done more damage to the American economy that any president in modern US history, is now lecturing European leaders on their financial problems as well. The Obama administration’s track record of out-of-control government spending and borrowing, a $1.3 trillion budget deficit (the largest since World War Two), combined with mammoth bailouts, has been nothing short of disastrous. 14 million Americans are out of work, the housing market is in a state of collapse, and job growth is practically non-existent outside of the Washington Beltway. And the advice his flailing government is now giving across the Atlantic will inevitably prolong the huge economic turmoil in Europe, rather than help bring it to an end.
The administration’s entire approach to the European Union is fundamentally flawed, and is based on the underlying premise that the EU needs more integration, not less, with a greater pooling of national sovereignty.
– See more at: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/09/brits-blast-president-downgrade-for-lecturing-europe-on-debt/#sthash.HRwezXnc.dpuf
Nile Gardiner at The Telegraph says it best:
As Ambrose Evans-Pritchard reported, Germany’s finance minister Wolfang Schauble has launched a stinging rebuke to the Obama administration after Washington pushed for the European Union to boost its EFSF bail out fund. After Obama declared that the European financial crisis is “scaring the world”, Schauble shot back at the US president by warning: “It’s always much easier to give advice to others than to decide for yourself. I am well prepared to give advice to the US government.” He also made it clear what he thought of the idea of increasing the 440 billion euro lending limit, a position supported by US Treasury Chief Tim Geithner:
I don’t understand how anyone in the European Commission can have such a stupid idea. The result would be to endanger the AAA sovereign debt ratings of other member states. It makes no sense.
It is rather ironic that Barack Obama, who has probably done more damage to the American economy that any president in modern US history, is now lecturing European leaders on their financial problems as well. The Obama administration’s track record of out-of-control government spending and borrowing, a $1.3 trillion budget deficit (the largest since World War Two), combined with mammoth bailouts, has been nothing short of disastrous. 14 million Americans are out of work, the housing market is in a state of collapse, and job growth is practically non-existent outside of the Washington Beltway. And the advice his flailing government is now giving across the Atlantic will inevitably prolong the huge economic turmoil in Europe, rather than help bring it to an end.
The administration’s entire approach to the European Union is fundamentally flawed, and is based on the underlying premise that the EU needs more integration, not less, with a greater pooling of national sovereignty.
– See more at: http://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2011/09/brits-blast-president-downgrade-for-lecturing-europe-on-debt/#sthash.HRwezXnc.dpuf
Obama again lectures EU to ease up on austerity
Obama is aligning himself with the new French Socialist president on increased spending. Notice the one country that has controlled spending the most has been doing the best. From Reuters:
U.S. President Barack Obama will press European leaders to ease up on fiscal austerity and focus on economic growth at a summit on Saturday that will discuss ways to stem turmoil in the euro zone and head off the risk of global contagion.At the wooded Camp David retreat in Maryland’s Catoctin Mountains, Obama and leaders from other large economic powers will try to forge a common approach to tackling a crisis that threatens the future of Europe’s 17-nation single currency.
Though no major policy decisions are expected from the Group of Eight summit, leaders hope they can bridge enough of their differences to soothe rattled financial markets after worries about the risk of a Greek exit from the euro zone sent European stock prices to their lowest level since December.
“Hopefully we’ll get some stuff done,” Obama told Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti as he and other summit participants arrived for Friday evening dinner at a lodge at the secluded presidential retreat.
Obama earlier in the day aligned himself with Monti and new French President Francois Hollande by urging a solution to the euro zone crisis that combines fiscal belt-tightening measures with a “strong growth agenda.”
On the other side of the debate is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has pushed fiscal austerity as a means of bringing down huge debt levels that are burdening European economies.
June 2013 Obama warned that Europe must adjust its economic policies (austerity) to tackle youth unemployment.
BERLIN — President Barack Obama raised the prospect Wednesday that Europe might need to adjust its economic policies to tackle high youth unemployment and make sure that some countries don’t “lose a generation.”
Obama warned during his visit to Berlin that, while he was confident the euro area’s leaders will resolve their debt crisis, austerity and structural reforms must not cause policymakers to lose sight of the main goal: Improving people’s lives.
Unemployment in the group of 17 European Union countries that use the euro, which is stuck in recession, has shot up to a record 12.2 percent. Youth unemployment in southern Europe’s crisis-hit economies, such as Spain and Greece, is now well above 50 percent.
Obama spoke at a news conference alongside German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has championed Europe’s focus on budget cuts and structural reforms to tackle the crisis. Some analysts say, however, that the insistence on belt-tightening has worsened the eurozone’s recession and that stimulating growth is now needed to overcome the crisis and create new jobs.
“We have to make sure that in pursuit of our longer-term policies, whether it’s fiscal consolidation or reforms of our overly rigid labor markets or pension reforms, that we don’t lose sight of our main goal, which is to make lives of people better,” Obama said.
“And if for example we start seeing youth unemployment go too high, then at some point we’ve got to modulate our approach to ensure that we don’t just lose a generation who may never recover in terms of their careers,” he added.
The unemployment rate among those aged 15-24 in the eurozone is 24.4 percent. That compares to 16.1 percent in the U.S, where the age range is 16-24.
Germany itself, Europe’s biggest economy, enjoys low unemployment and has avoided recession.
A survey released Sunday showed a stunning 80 percent of German respondents believe the chancellor is doing a good job, while only 17 percent said she isn’t.
“The citizens gave Merkel not just a victory but a triumph,” judged the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily, adding that “she has won it as a person, as chancellor, with popularity ratings that are unique in the history of the federal republic”.
“This election has turned the Merkel government terms into an era — the era of Merkelism.”
Obama’s approval ratings have wavered between 39% and 47% in the past month.
*The original headline mislabeled Ms. Merkel’s name Andrea instead of Angela.
Nice Deb 