German SPD ready to sacrifice its future and the future of the European project to be Merkel's flunkies in a Grand Coalition

The SPD bigwigs have indulged in the bare minimum of theatrics to reluctantly acknowledge that they base voters aren't thrilled with the SPD entering yet another Grand Coalition government as Angela "Frau Fritz" Merkel's junior partner. But Angie the Great has already declared that her SPD flunkies would fall in line by Christmas at the latest. Nikolaus Blome et al reported in the print edition of Der Spiegel ("Kleines Karo, großer Wurf" 42/2013 21.10.13) that she was already saying in October, "Weihnachten kommt schneller, als man denkt." ("Christmas is coming sooner than you think.")

It's a measure of the weirdness of German politics right now that Frau Fritz' European politicies have not been a significant issue in the coalition negotiations. Both the SPD and Merkel's CDU/CSU are determined to milk Germany's benefits that it gains in the eurozone at the expense of shoving Cyprus, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Portugal and Spain into prolonged depression. Blome et al explain that perspective pretty well:

Hintergrund der europaischen Visionen ist die glänzende wirtschaftliche Lage in Deutschland: Berlin braucht eine scharfere Haushaltskontrolle derzeit nicht zu furchten. Die Arbeitslosigkeit bewegt sich am Rand der Vollbeschäftigung, die Finanzlage hat sich, zumindest beim Bund, entspannt. Ach was, es herrscht Ūberfluss! Die neue Koalition kann aus dem Vollen schöpfen.

Und das wollen die Neukoalitionare auch tun. Als Erstes werden sie damit beginnen, Wohltaten zu verteilen und Geld auszugeben. Dank der guten Konjunktur werden dafür noch nicht einmal höhere
Steuern nötig sein. Bislang hat Finanzminister Wolfgang Schäuble in seiner mittelfristigen
Finanzplanung ab dem übernachsten Jahr zunehmende Überschusse im Bundeshaushalt eingeplant: Fur 2015 erwartet er ein Plus von 200 Millionen Euro, für 2016 eines von 5,2 Milliarden Euro, für 2017 schließlich eines von 9,6 Milliarden Euro.

[The background of the European visions is the sparkling economic situation in Germany: Berlin doesn't need to fear sharper budget control right now. Unemployment hovers on the border of full employment, the public financing situation has eased, at least at the federal level. Surpise, there's a surplus! The new coalition can scoop it all up.

And that's what the new coalition partners want to do. First, they will start to distribute good deeds and hand out money. Up until now, Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble planned increasing surpluses into his middle-range financial planning: For 2015 he expected an excess of €200 million, for 2016 €5.2 billion, eventually for 2017 €9.69 billion.]

That fashionably cynical characterization - "they will start to distribute good deeds and hand out money" - basically means they will spend money on stuff their voters want. Here we see how the neoliberal suspicion of all government expenditures except those than directly benefit Big Business seems even into the allegedly progressive-leaning Spiegel.

Any stimulus in Germany would be good, because it would help generate domestic consumption and some imports and thereby help bring down the German national surplus that now threatens not just the European economy but the whole world's. But the coalition partners aren't planning any serious stimulus for the European periphery, a shameless shirking of their responsibilities. For that, Germany would need to run significant budget deficits and deliberately generate higher inflation in Germany itself. Neither Frau Fritz nor her SPD poodles intend to do any such thing.

Blome et al call her goal for Europe, "Ein echter Umbau der Euro-Zone, ein Großer Schritt in Richtung ,Wirtschaftsregierung' - so wie auch die SPD sie gern hätte." ("A real reconstruction of the eurozone, a big step in the direction of a 'business government' - just like the SPD also would like it.") A "business government." It's a step backward for the CDU to accept a Calvin "the-business-of-America-is-business" Coolidge philosophy of government. It's even worse for the SPD to adopt it. How long will they even try to maintain an image as a center-left party at this rate?

If we assume that the SPD leadership suddenly starts displaying a brilliance of political craftiness far beyond what their recent records suggests that they possess, then maybe they will at least be able to get some credit for the "good deeds" they do and the euros they spread out. More likely is that Frau Fritz will take maximum credit for them.

Klaus Stuttmann in this 11/10/2013 cartoon illustrates on of the Business Government measures that Frau Fritz and her SPD pals have agreed on, a cutback in subsidies to renewable energy development:

Angie the Great is saying: "It's not bad! It's renewable!"

In what may be a Freudian slip, Blome et al characterize Frau Fritz' position in a new Grand Coalition this way:

Merkel verfügt zu Beginn ihrer dritten Kanzlerschaft in Deutschland und Europa über eine Machtfülle wie kein Kanzler vor ihr. Seit der ersten Großen Koalition vor einem halben Jahrhundert stand nie mehr eine so satte Mehrheit im Bundestag hinter einer Regierung. In Europa ist Deutschland in der Krise zur unbestrittenen Führungsmacht geworden.

Gerade die Große Koalition beschert Merkel nun die Mehrheiten, die sie nutzen könnte, um Deutschland und Europa nachhaltig zu prägen und die ganz großen Fragen anzugehen: von den Reformen in Deutschland über eine Neuordnung des Föderalismus bis zur Reform der EU-Institutionen.

Merkel will have at her disposal at the beginning of her third Chancellorship in Germany and Europe power like no Chancellor before her. Since the first Grand Coalition {CDU/CSU/SPD coalition} a half century ago, there has no been such a large majority in the Bundestag behind a government. In Europe, Germany has become the undisputed leading power in the crisis.

It is precisely the Grand Coalition that now brings Merkel the majority that she can use to shape Germany and Europe in a lasting way and to take on the big issues: from reforms in Germany to a new arrangement of {German internal} federalism all the way to the reform of the EU institutions. {my emphasis}

This reads like kiss-up journalism to me. But "her third Chancellorship in Germany and Europe" is a telling phrase. Germany as "the undisputed leading power in the crisis" has real and immediate responsibilities for all of the Eurozone, in particular. Germany is not primarily a national economy, it's part of the eurozone economy. That's part of what being part of a currency union means. The euro as a cheaper currency than what a separate German national currency would be is the reason that Germans can plausibly (if myopically) view themselves as being sitting pretty in comparison to the eurozone periphery.

And we have to keep in mind what terms like "reforms" mean in AngieSpeak and in the neoliberal vocabulary more generally.

Robert Misik characterizes the situation this way (Ist EU-Europa noch zu retten? Misik.at 08.11.2013) and also gives a good picture of what "reform" means in AngieSpeak:

Nun sind die Pläne durchgesickert, die Angela Merkel für Europa hat. "Mehr Europa", aber das heißt vor allem: noch mehr Troika, noch mehr Austerity, noch mehr Verschiebung von Macht zu schwach legitimierten Experten- und Technokrateninstitutionen. Dabei ist klar: Mehr europäische Integration ist notwendig, wenn die Krise der EU überwunden werden soll. Auch gemeinsame Haushaltsregeln sind notwendig, wenn die Währungsunion funktionieren soll. Aber noch mehr Austerity und noch weniger demokratische Legitimation werden Europa kaputtmachen.

Und eines ist auch klar: Einerseits wäre mehr Integration notwendig, aber aufgrund der katastrophalen Politik, die Europas Eliten in den vergangenen Jahren gemacht haben, gibt es dafür kaum mehr Legitimation durch die Bürger und Bürgerinnen.

[Now the plans that Angela Merkel has for Europe have leaked out. "More Europe," but that means above all: still more Troika, still more austerity, still more transferring of power to weakly legitimized institutions of experts and technocrats. With that it's clear: More European integration is necessary, if the EU crisis is to be survived. And common budget rules are necessary if the currency union is going to function. But still more austerity and even less democratic legitimation will do Europe in.

And one thing is also clear: On the one hand, more integration would be necessary, but on the basis of the catastrophic policy that Europe's elite have made in the past years, there is hardly any legitimation to be had from the citizens.]

One necessary element of a successful currency union and combined EU financial market would be a genuine "banking union," as explained in this Euronews Real Economy report, which also has some background on the current crisis, What a European Banking Union could do for the future of Europe 11/06/2013:

But Frau Fritz is committed to a banking union in only a limited sense, and she can be expected to keep her German nationalist perspective first in priority in constructing the banking union. What she desperately wants to avoid is having to recognize the weakness of the German banking sector and to undertake the expensive job of recapitalizing and better regulation of German banks.

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, neoliberlism, spd