President Obama will head to the G20 Summit with a high international approval rating of his person, but his socialistic spending plans are being met with resistance.
He may have the support of radical protesters waving signs saying "Tax The Rich, Make Them Pay", but Europe's political leaders are speaking out against both Obama and Britain's Gordon Brown.
Times Online reports:
Gordon Brown's carefully laid plans for a G20 deal on worldwide tax cuts have been scuppered by an eve-of-summit ambush by European leaders.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, last night led the assault on the prime minister’s “global new deal” for a $2 trillion-plus fiscal stimulus to end the recession.
“I will not let anyone tell me that we must spend more money,” she said.
The Spanish finance minister, Pedro Solbes, also dismissed new cash being pledged at Thursday’s London summit.
“In these conditions I and the rest of my colleagues from the eurozone believe there is no room for new fiscal stimulus plans,” he said.
Nicolas Sarkozy, the French president, has insisted that “radical reform” of capitalism is more important than tax cutting.
I don't quite get Sarkozy's point; then again the French have a skewed definition of "capitalism".
I think part of the problem is that Europeans still see themselves as Germans, French etc. For example I think most Americans feel that, say, the victims of Katrina were Americans too and don't begrudge support. However the problem in Europe is that the Germans dont feel like spending lots of money to bail out say Austrians or Poles. Also some parts of the Eurozone, like Ireland Greece and Spain are much worse off than say France and Germany. I think this intra-European disagreements is what we are seeing.
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