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WORLD> Europe
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Germany criticises 'crass' economic rescue plans
(Agencies)
Updated: 2008-12-11 11:43 LONDON -- German Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck has criticised countries for rushing through what he called crass and untested economic rescue packages at a "breathtaking and depressing" pace.
In an interview with Newsweek magazine, Steinbrueck urged governments to pause before pledging to spend billions of dollars on plans to try and help their economies emerge from the global credit crunch. A recession was unavoidable and governments should stop trying to outdo each other with ever bigger stimulus measures, said Steinbrueck. "The speed at which proposals are put together under pressure that don't even pass an economic test is breathtaking and depressing," he said in the interview, published on the magazine's website on Wednesday. Steinbrueck singled out British Prime Minister Gordon Brown for particular criticism, accusing him of switching to economic policies that would saddle a generation with debt. "The same people who would never touch deficit spending are now tossing around billions," he said. "The switch from decades of supply-side politics all the way to a crass Keynesianism is breathtaking." German Doubts German Chancellor Angela Merkel's government has expressed doubts as to whether ever-increasing fiscal boosts are the cure-all solution for every country's economic ills. "For a while the position in Brussels and a few other places has been, 'We're now very much for setting up large-scale spending programmes, but we're not really going to ask what the exact effects of those might be. And since the amounts are so high, well, let's get the Germans to pay because they can'," said Steinbrueck. "Ms. Merkel and I are trying to calm them down a bit just now, and understandably that's getting us criticised." |
