Merkels Bilanz ist schlecht
Früh – zu früh – habe ich mich kritisch mit der (wirtschafts-) politischen Bilanz der Ära Merkel auseinandergesetzt:
→ bto zieht die Bilanz von 13 Jahren Merkel im Cicero
→ Ende der Ära Merkel – endlich Chance für Wohlstandssicherung statt Vernichtung
→ Angela Merkel in Brüssel können wir uns nicht leisten
Und in vielem mehr. “Das Märchen vom reichen Land” aber auch “Ein Traum von einem Land”, wären wohl ohne die Politik von Angela Merkel nie geschrieben worden.
Bisher gab es dennoch, vor allem im Ausland, immer Lob. Doch diese Phalanx bekommt Risse. Der Telegraph rechnet ab: “We all love Mutti Merkel but she leaves a trail of wreckage across Europe” lautet der Titel. Nun ja, ob das mit der Liebe so stimmt? Kommen wir zum Inhalt:
- “The long unadventurous reign of Angela Merkel will go down in history as Germany’s Brezhnev era, a time of deceptive stability that masks the onset of slow structural decline. The country has clung to comfortable immobilism and a pre-digital business model. Beguiled by relative ascendency within Europe and the mercantilist advantages of an undervalued exchange rate, it seems only dimly aware of the dangers.” – bto: So ist es. Das Märchen vom reichen Land ist letztlich das Produkt der EZB-Politik und diese wiederum die der Eurokrise. Es ist so fatal, wir haben zehn gute Jahre geschenkt bekommen und diese nicht genutzt, im Gegenteil!
- “German outperformance compared to the rest of Europe – but not the world, which it lags badly – is mostly the fruit of an ‘internal devaluation’ within the closed eurozone system. This was made possible by the Hartz IV wage compression policies enacted before Chancellor Merkel took power. (…) Unit labour costs in German manufacturing fell 4.6pc in the single year of 2005.” – bto: Das stimmt. Die Regierungen von Merkel haben den Wohlstand verteilt, aber nichts getan, um Wohlstand zu sichern.
- “Angela Merkel inherited a regime in which German industry had acquired a competitive edge of 20pc to 30pc against the Club Med bloc, which was nigh impossible for the South to reverse without going into debt deflation and making matters even worse. (…) The other reason for German outperformance over the Merkel years has been the role of Deutschland Inc as chief supplier of engineering equipment and industrial goods to China, a phase of development that is waning as China moves up the ladder and pursues an autarky policy of import substitution under Xi Jinping.” – bto: Ja, da hätte man durchaus auf das Märchen verweisen können.
- “Merkel (…) bears much of the responsibility for Europe’s Lost Decade, a calamitous episode of monetary mismanagement and austerity overkill that set the stage for Brexit.” – bto: Das stimmt zu 100 Prozent. Sie hat die Eurokrise nicht gelöst, sie hat mit ihrer Politik der offenen Grenzen den Brexit befördert.
- “She allowed the eurozone debt crisis to fester for three years until it engulfed the Spanish and Italian debt markets in mid-2012 and threatened to set off a cataclysmic chain of sovereign defaults. Only then did she agree (after US intervention) to let the European Central Bank assume its critical role as a lender of last resort.” – bto: was auch eine Art von Verstecken ist! Denn sie hat dann so getan, als wäre es die EZB und nicht sie, die für die massive Vermögensverschiebung zuständig ist.
- “Her government used its control over the EU’s institutional machinery to impose austerity overkill on southern Europe, driving the whole region into a contractionary vortex that pushed debt-to-GDP ratios even higher and was largely self-defeating even on its own crude terms.” – bto: Und wie “self-defeating” es war, konnten wir im Jahr 2020 beobachten, wo wir mal eben so in eine Schulden- und Transferunion eingestiegen sind.
- “The Merkel austerity formula for Europe caused several hundred thousand economic refugees from Greece, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and even France at one point, to migrate to Britain in search of work. It also diverted large numbers of Eastern Europeans who would have worked in other EU states to come to Britain too.” – bto: Es ist richtig, dass der wirtschaftliche Niedergang der Eurozone das befördert hat, aber: Es war nicht Merkels Idee, den Euro einzuführen. Womit ich nicht sagen will, dass sie es nicht getan hätte.
- “Chancellor Merkel’s decision to throw open the doors to the vast refugee caravan from the Mid-East (mostly economic migrants, and not from Syria, as it turned out) fed the mood that Europe was out of control.” – bto: Ich erinnere mich gut an die Plakate von UKIP mit den Bildern der Karawanen von Migranten nach Europa. Da war mir klar, dass es den Brexit wohl geben könnte. Bei uns war ja Diskussion damals unerwünscht.
- “If that had been the only problem, Brexit would never have happened. But Angela Merkel rammed through a series of EU initiatives that successively undermined British consent for the EU project. She revived the European Constitution after it had been rejected by the French and Dutch people, repackaging it as the Lisbon Treaty and expediting it by executive fiat without fresh referenda. (…) The effect was to transform the EU from a confederacy of treaty states into a quasi-federation with Germany constitutionally established as primus inter pares. It greatly extended the writ of the European Court and made the Charter of Fundamental Rights legally binding, subverting the Common Law system and allowing euro-judges to rule on almost any matter, such as UK intelligence sharing with the US, or Swedish tax policy. It created a de facto supreme court for Europe.” – bto: Ich denke eher, sie war hier der dumme Erfüllungsgehilfe einer französischen Agenda, die zu 100 Prozent durchgesetzt wurde. Zum Schaden der EU und gerade auch Deutschlands.
- “Mrs Merkel circumvented David Cameron’s veto of the EU Fiscal Compact when he requested safeguards for the City, pushing through a separate treaty that isolated Britain and created a very nasty atmosphere. Mr Cameron was right as it happens: the Compact was economic vandalism, and has proved unenforceable. She ignored him when he tried to stop the appointment of arch-federalist Jean-Claude Juncker as Commission president, breaching an EU tradition that no large state should ever be overruled on this choice. The broad British public may not have followed these episodes but political, media, and financial opinion did take note, and that was to tip the fine balance.” – bto: Ich denke allerdings, es war für die breite Öffentlichkeit die Migration, wo sie keinen Deut von ihrem Kurs abwich.
- “(…)Brexit (…) has deprived the EU of its second biggest net contributor, its financial hub, and a leading defence and security power. It has deprived Germany of a blocking minority against the French-led protectionist states in the EU Council, and jeopardised its captive export market in the UK. In short, it brought about a diplomatic reverse of the first order for Germany itself.” – bto: Es ist ein Desaster für uns und wird uns in der EU Billionen kosten und zum absoluten Niedergang führen. Schwer vorstellbar, dass Deutschland dies verkraftet.
- “Public investment has been negative for most years since the early 2000s, even though borrowing costs were zero and the economic multiplier on infrastructure spending is known to be high. The result of this flat-earth policy has been predictable. (…) Germany has had one of the slowest growing economies in the advanced bloc over the last 20 years. The OECD says productivity growth has averaged 1.2pc annually since 1995, compared to 1.7pc in the US, or 3.9pc in Korea, which has spent its money pulling far ahead in G5 coverage and artificial intelligence.” – bto: Wir wissen das. Das Spiel steht nicht gut für Deutschland und das Problem ist, dass die Nachfolger allesamt nur eine beschleunigte Verschlechterung versprechen.
- “Germany has sought to future-proof itself against its coming ageing crisis by controlling debt rather than modernising the economy. The Bundesbank says the old-age dependency ratio will rise to 39.3pc by 2025, reaching 50pc by mid-century.” – bto: Das wäre noch okay, wenn wir wie Norwegen unsere Ersparnisse global angelegt hätten! Haben wir aber nicht. Wir haben TARGET2 …
- “There is of course much ruin in a great nation, to borrow from Adam Smith. Nothing is foreordained and it would be a mistake to underestimate the resourceful German people. But it is hard to see how anything of substance is going to change as long as the Merkel mentality holds its suffocating grip on Germany. We all love Mutti and wish her well. But long survival in office is not the same as statesmanship.” – bto: Nein, es ist ein Desaster. Ich bezweifle, dass wir die Sanierung noch schaffen. Wie sollten wir das auch? Bildung, Demografie, politische Stimmung sprechen dagegen. Abgesehen von den Kandidaten für die Nachfolge.
