Merkel shows the international leadership that Brown can only dream of

Dear Angela Merkel,

Even though I am deeply suspicious of anyone who supports a Federalist European state, I take my hat off to you for the manner in which you have gone about resurrecting the struggling German economy. Recession has already tightened its grip on your nation and it may get worse still, yet you have remained strong throughout. As I'm sure you have noticed, Gordon Brown has been prancing around the globe pretending to be our saviour or Moses or whatever. Instead of chasing the limelight, you have simply stuck to your task and put together a fascinating set of proposals to get Germany back on its feet.

First and foremost, I applaud your decision not to get drawn into this farcical contest of government intervention. To the US and UK governments, it might seem ridiculous to inject just a few billion euros over the next two years into your economy while refusing to cut VAT. Although a further 500 billion euros has been put aside to guarantee bank savings, these funds will only be provided with tough restrictions. Compared to the $800 billion US bailout and the £500 billion UK bailout with accompanying VAT cut, your support package is relatively tiny. However, my respect for you rocketted when you said in your annual party conference speech yesterday that you are not prepared to take part in a "senseless" competition of spending billions of euros to boost your economy. Now that is what I call leadership. Only a few days ago, you let the Bush, Brown and Sarkozy bandwagon pass you by when you said that "excessively cheap money in the US was a driver of today's crisis [and] I am deeply concerned about whether we are now reinforcing this trend through measures being adopted in the US and elsewhere and whether we could find ourselves in five years facing the exact same crisis." Talk about brave! All of a sudden, I had a horrible thought. What if you're right? What if all these hundreds of billions spent around the globe sink the financial markets so low that we could be creating the next bubble as we speak?

Continued at Letters from A Tory




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