Merkel sets her stall ahead of the G20

There is an interview in this morning's FT with the German chancellor ahead of the G20 in which she rejects the advice that Germany like China should try to boost its internal demand to correct the world's economy.

Merkel believes that her country

is an over-indebted, export-oriented economy with an ageing, shrinking population. It cannot boost consumption at the expense of exports. “The German economy is very reliant on exports, and this is not something you can change in two years,” she said. “It is not something we even want to change.” Instead, it will try to sit through the turbulence while taking care not to lose too much industrial muscle so that it can ride the upturn when it comes.

However she is firmly of the opinion where the root for our troubles lies

misguided efforts in the US, both by the government and the Federal Reserve, to re-start artificially the economy after September 11 by pumping ever-cheaper money into the financial system.

and is certain that the way out is not to spend more

“The crisis did not take place because we were spending too little but because we were spending too much to create growth that was not sustainable.

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.

Some tips for Labour

It might be a good idea if the Labour party doesn't pick up its copy of the New Statesman this week again.

Fisrtly Martin Bright has been to a morning star fringe meeting at the TUC conference and heard Derek Simpson of Unite, Mark Serwotka of the Public and Commercial Services Union and Bob Crow of the RMT,conclude that

The Labour government has alienated the party's core supporters by adopting a neoliberal, pro-business agenda of privatisation, deregulation and low taxation. It is no surprise that it is proving difficult to get the working-class vote out for Labour, they said, when the government has allowed the gap between rich and poor to widen so greatly. In times of growing economic uncertainty, ministers need to demonstrate that the Labour Party is still prepared to look out for those people who stand to lose most from the economic downturn.

and then looks forward to the next conference where Nick Clegg

will argue at his party's annual conference in Bournemouth that Brown's version of new Labour is the last throw of the social-democratic dice.

Meanwhile Dennis McShane look to the continent to see how the left are dealing with the crisis of socialism where in Germany

In a fit of despair at its slumping popularity, the main centre-left party in government decided to replace its burly party leader, whose poll ratings hovered around 25 per cent. A cerebral member of cabinet - best known as a staffer for the previous leader, a proven election-winner - was chosen in his place

Votes for nappies?

Here is a novel proposal from Germany via Slate

More than 40 German deputies on Tuesday proposed that the voting age be lowered to birth to give children a say in the country’s political future, the parliamentary press service said.
“At the moment some 14 million Germans are denied the right to vote, purely because of their age,” the 46 members of parliament said in a discussion document tabled in the legislature

.

But it gets better

They proposed that parents be allowed to vote for their offspring, until such time that the children felt they were ready to cast ballots themselves.

In case you were wondering,the current voting age is in fact 18