The German Muddle
John Fund essays Germany’s split vote.
He has it exactly right, in just about two paragraphs:
The muddled result, with neither major party able to form a stable parliamentary majority, means that Germany will not be taking decisive action anytime soon to reform its unwieldy welfare state, which has helped bring it 11% unemployment and zero economic growth That will not be good for the world. Germany, the third-largest economy in the world, represents 30% of the output of the European Union. The “sick man of Europe” is likely to remain bedridden for a while longer.
Most voters and nearly all of the business community wanted a decisive result. Instead the peculiarities of Germany’s parliamentary system delivered a complete mess with the most likely government an unwieldy “grand coalition” of the conservative Christian Democrats and the left-wing Social Democrats. Yoking two such bitter rivals together will likely lead to gridlock, confrontation and ultimately new elections within two years….
The grand coalition would be a pushme-pullyou contraption. That won’t cut it. Germany needed a clear political decision in order to implement reforms. As Fund says, the best bet is a new vote inside two years.
Sig Who? I think it’s important to us, and so I’ll continue to try to make some sense out of the recent German election. But it’s obviously not going to be easy, as The Captain points out: Angela Merkel may not be the only casualty of the latest round …
Trackback by Everyman — 9/20/2005 @ 8:52 am