German Chancellor Angela Merkel still doesn't even realize that she cost Germany and Europe even more money by dragging out the Greek bailout negotiations. Now she wants to deny reality yet again by making the outrageously false claim that chopping spending (rather than increasing spending) will somehow solve the crisis. Not possible. What part of the collapsing eurozone is Merkel missing?
Stubbornness can be a good thing but when it's not possible to admit a mistake and move on, there's a serious problem. People across Europe are fed up with austerity since it just makes everything worse. If pro-austerity politicians like her weren't so tone deaf, they might hear the complaints and reevaluate. Germany has done a lot of things right to keep their own economy moving but the eurozone is much more than Germany.
What Europe needs now is spending and without government intervention, the next few years will be painful. Is being flexible really so bad?
Since the election of Socialist Francois Hollande as French president on Sunday, Merkel has come under pressure to relax the austerity measures that, as leader of Europe's biggest economy, she has prescribed as the remedy for the euro zone debt crisis.
But Germany's center-right leader, standing her ground, told the Bundestag (lower house of parliament) in a speech that reducing debt and encouraging growth were "twin pillars" of European policy, rather than two alternative paths.
"Growth through structural reforms is sensible, important and necessary. Growth on credit would just push us right back to the beginning of the crisis, and that is why we should not and will not do it," she said.
