A Dose of Its Own Medicine: Schäuble's Secret Austerity Plan for Germany

[sysop]

The German government and opposition are pledging higher benefits for pensioners, families and the long-term unemployed ahead of elections next year, but Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble is secretly planning cutbacks to prepare for a weakening economy and possible fallout from the euro crisis.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/...-a-874377.html

[Inglenda2]

Hello everybody,

I hope you all have a happy Christmas!
With the bandits we now have in the Bundestag, it may be our last happy one!
Even the President in his yearly Christmas address, seems to have lost all contact with the common community. I wonder what these dreamers in Berlin would do, if they had to live from 500 Euros a month. Germany is certainly better off than many other countries, but 90% of the people have little from the wealth about which so much is said.
Good luck to everybody in the New Year, let us hope the 13 on the end does not turn out to be an omen.

[kogiks]

The lessons of economic history such as the Great Depression in the 1930s notwithstanding, one only has to look at the devastation that austerity has wrought on the economies of the UK and of the struggling EU economies such as of Greece and Spain to conclude that Schauble is about to make a terrible mistake in Germany. In contrast, Iceland nearby and the US across the Atlantic have both demonstrated that the way out of a looming or actual recession is to spend your way out of it. Budget deficits may easily be dealt with when the economy is kept growing and tax revenues are kept coming.

[Johan Amsterdam]

It looks like it is the same everywhere. The ruling classes are selling out, take the revenues and leave the empty store rooms for the people. Telling them to work harder, earn less and pay more taxes and social insurance. Guess the elites have given in to finance and given up the population. It is good for them there is no democracy, only the option of consent.