Truemors
is reporting from
Member
NP Rank:
NP Rank:
German Economy Faces Bleak 2009
Share:
by Jordan Yerman | January 14, 2009 at 09:26 am
65 views | 10 Recommendations | 1 comment
The current economic gloom has settled firmly over Germany, whose Chancellor, Angela Merkel, has prediced a bleak year ahead.
Germany's economy has been shrinking recently, though it's still in fairly good shape compared to other countries.
The contraction was in line with suggestions from officials in recent weeks, and underscored problems facing Europe's biggest economy.
"Germany is witnessing its worst economic period in decades. It is a situation in which economic textbooks serve no purpose," Chancellor Angela Merkel told the Bundestag, or lower house of Parliament, after the estimate was released.
The political fallout from the downturn has no doubt weighed heavily on the minds of those in power, since Merkel's tax promises are at stake.
“It’d be very difficult to decide on and implement a fundamental tax reform” after elections in September, Andreas Rees, chief German economist at UniCredit Markets & Investment Banking in Munich, said today in an interview. “There is a trade-off between debt reduction and tax reform. We shouldn’t kid ourselves.”
What is NowPublic?
NowPublic lets people work together to cover news events around the world.
Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (1)
at 09:31 on January 14th, 2009
If the German economy is shrinking and really so hard hit, then since it is the driving engine of the EU and Eastern Europe as well, that can only mean bad news for every one even for North America since Europe does import a great amount of good as well as it does export them. The global economy so it seems may become local again.