Angered by sniping from her allies the FPD, the Karlsruhe Court, and Bankfurt – and anxious to get a stable hold on power before the German people realise what they’re getting into – Bundeskanzlerin Angela Merkel is working hard behind the scenes to line up an early election…and a “grand coalition” with the Social Democrats immediately thereafter. German newspaper Bild led with a speculative story yesterday morning, but sources in Berlin and Frankfurt say the Chancellor has already formed a crack election planning centre.
Continuing her lifelong dedication to shafting everyone of no further use to her, Merkel is worried that the FPD may not even clear the 5% ‘hurdle’ to be jumped if the Party is to be allocated seats in the Bundestag after the next election. Following the establishment of an SPD/CDU Coalition in the small state of Saarland, the Fuhrerin now plans a snap election. It will be the sort she prefers: one where the result has been sorted out in advance, in that she and the Social Democrats will rule together….with a far more muted Opposition. I call it Ostimocracy. Certainly, it is a mockery of democracy as you and I would understand it.
Her decision to acclerate the process has also, I’m told, been influenced by the French election result, the shambles in the Netherlands, and the growing crisis in Spain. Key Party advisers have already warned her that the window of opportunity is small, but since the weekend she needs no further persuading.
The Big Two parties already govern together in Berlin city, Saxony-Anhalt, Mecklenburg Western-Pomerania and Thuringia, and earlier in the last decade they worked together in national government: there is no lack of precedents.
There are many devils driving her to this move. Respected economics professor Hans-Werner Sinn, head of Germany’s IFO, last week said German taxpayers are facing a dangerous rise in credit risk from a plethora of bail-out schemes. “The euro-system is near explosion,” he told Austria’s Economics Academy, as the Spanish crisis worsened. Sinn argues that Germany will get saddled with most if not all of the €2.1 trillion in rescue measures for ezone debtors.
His fears are similar to those of Bankfurt in general (and of course, The Slog’s Maulwurf) and personified in the robust opposition to eurozone debt commitments offered by Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Weidmann refused to back off from his repeated warnings that some of Mario Draghi’s Central Bank actions – especially Sovereign bond-buying and interlending scams built upon trnsmission systems – threaten financial instability and rampant inflation.
But Weidmann is only so much of a rebel: he shares the German obsession with inflation as a bogey-man, and debt as something which must be repaid come what may. He firmly rebuffed calls for the ECB to ease off on fiscal austerity.
“The crisis can only be solved by embarking on often-painful structural reforms and following up on fiscal consolidation,” said Weidmann. “If policy makers think they can avoid this, they will try to. That’s why the pressure has to be kept up.”
Earlier this week, the German small business foundation filed a criminal lawsuit against the Bundesbank, accusing the board of disguising the true scale of risk born by German citizens. If they knew all that Geli wants to sign them up for, the entire nation would have a fit of the vapours.
As you can see from all the above, thus far the inevitability of mutual debt forgiveness is not on the German radar. But that their policies will lead to the collapse of the eurozone (and eventually the EU) is not lost on the French. Writing in Les Echos this morning, Jean-Marc Vittori invokes yet more Titanic images by observing, ‘We could still avoid a shipwreck, but the iceberg approaches, and just as in James Cameron’s film Titanic, the lookouts are too late in giving warnings. The ship took less than three hours to sink’.
This is not Merkel consulting the German electorate: rather, it is the hardline Stalinist in Merkel putting the Opposition in a small and well-soundproofed box. As I posted last night, time is running out for action to stop the eurolunatics, the Troikanauts, the Bankers and the spineless politicians. We need to move from discussion to disruption. And we could do a lot worse than start in Brussels, where officials from the European Commission are expected to propose a controversial 6.8% increase to the EU’s 2013 budget this week.
Footnote: The first feral Wolf seen in the Rhineland for more than 120 years has been shot dead, it emerged on Monday. The screaming Wolfie was seen escaping on his solar-powered wheelchair, yelling “You von’t take me alife you Schweinhundehahahahahaha.” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schauble has not been seen in public for several days, but the Chancellery’s press office denied any connection between the two events.
The Slog 