I don't think Berlin should hook up with Brussels.
Maybe Vienna.
Ja, that's the ticket.
This is just great.
It wasn't enough that the German Finance Minister said the plan advanced by Secretary Geithner was "stupid".
Now this, from the Los Angeles Times:
The Obama administration’s unsolicited advice to Europe on its government-debt debacle isn’t playing well in Germany, which will end up bankrolling any solution to the crisis.
The popular response, in a nutshell: Mind your own business, Amerika.
President Obama scolded Europe on Monday, saying its inability to contain the crisis was “scaring the world.” He continued to hold European policymakers’ feet to the fire on Wednesday, saying “we haven’t seen them deal with their banking system and their financial system as effectively as they needed to.”
Over the weekend, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner called on policymakers to “create a firewall against further contagion,” and supposedly has urged the European Union to commit trillions more euros to its bailout fund for member states and their banks -- an idea that German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble called “stupid.”
Spiegel Online on Wednesday published a collection of German media commentaries firing back at the U.S. Most biting was this one from the financial daily Handelsblatt:
Barack Obama governs a country where, despite billions in state aid, the economy is stagnating, companies refuse to invest despite calls for patriotism, and which gets embroiled in one political trench war after another … Now this country is dispensing advice, suggestions and finger-pointing....MORE
