Germans are snubbing Brown but maybe there is a way to pay for the deficit

Gordon may have saved the world but the Germans don't appear to be taking too kindly to his plans for world domination.

Chancellor Angela Merkel is none too happy about being snubbed on Monday by Brown,Sarkozy and Barossa and the German finance minister has let it be known that he thinks that our fiscal stimulation package.

In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Peer Steinbrueck singled out Prime Minister Gordon Brown for abandoning fiscal prudence and switching to policies that would saddle a generation with debt.

The finance minister seems particularly unhappy that having been lectured for 10 years by Brown about the need for fiscal prudence,our Prime Minister has engineered a complete about-face.

Over in the Times this morning,Anatole Kaletsky has a possible solution to the problem of paying for the increasing deficit

There is one type of tax crying out to be raised in the present environment because it would actually strengthen the economy. This is a tax on energy, carbon or fossil fuels.

According to Anatole

The simplest version of such a tax is the “escalator” whereby the Treasury committed itself in the mid-1990s to raising petrol duties by 5 per cent above inflation each year. In the past three years, this escalator has been suspended to offset the effects of soaring global oil prices.