{"id":192594,"date":"2009-03-16T17:21:00","date_gmt":"2009-03-16T22:21:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/16\/angela-merkel-simultaneously-stupid-and-wise\/"},"modified":"2009-03-16T17:21:00","modified_gmt":"2009-03-16T22:21:00","slug":"angela-merkel-simultaneously-stupid-and-wise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2009\/03\/16\/angela-merkel-simultaneously-stupid-and-wise\/","title":{"rendered":"Angela Merkel Simultaneously Stupid and Wise"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>First, it appears that she <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.co.uk\/news\/uk\/home-news\/merkel-tips-browns-grand-plan-into-crisis-1645350.html\">continues to buy into Hoovernomics<\/a>, refusing to implement a new stimulus package, and then, shockingly, she mentions the elephant in the room, noting that the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.reuters.com\/article\/worldNews\/idUSTRE52F4Z420090316?feedType=RSS&amp;feedName=worldNews\">EU expanded too quickly, and needs to get its sh%$ together before adding more countries<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>I think that the first opinion comes from two places, her early days as a citizen of the DDR (East Germany) makes her dubious of anything that sounds remotely like socialism, and also the institutional German memory of hyperinflation 1919-23, which afflicts Germans on both sides of what was the Berlin wall.<\/p>\n<p>As to her statement that the EU needs a &#8220;consolidation phase&#8221; before any new members join, which is both correct, and a significant departure from the conventional wisdom in Europe, this is something that is easy for an outsider to recognize, like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2009\/03\/16\/opinion\/16krugman.html?partner=rss&amp;emc=rss&amp;pagewanted=all\">Paul Krugman<\/a>, but not for members of the European equivalent of the &#8220;Beltway villagers&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>So props to the Chancellor on getting this right.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>First, it appears that she continues to buy into Hoovernomics, refusing to implement a new stimulus package, and then, shockingly, she mentions the elephant in the room, noting that the EU expanded too quickly, and needs to get its sh%$ together before adding more countries. I think that the first opinion comes from two places, &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[973,984,964,985],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economy","category-europe","category-foreign-relations","category-regulation"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192594"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192594\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}