We Don't Need No Stinkin' Reforms

What does the recent German election mean, in which the two main parties, the SPD and the CDU/CSU basically
ended in a dead heat?
Anatole Kaletsky reckons it means that the three great nations of Europe, Germany, France,
and Italy, are checking out. First in France with the rejection of the EU constitution and now
with the German rejection of reform, the Europeans are saying that they don’t want any stinking
reforms. They just want to go on as they are. According to

Wolfgang Münchau, a German commentator in the Financial Times: “The
German electorate has launched a new era in European economic policy — the post-reform era.
After ten years of
economic reforms, the Germans decided they had had enough.”

I know, I know. What planet are these Germans on? What reforms? From this side of the Atlantic
there is no sense that the German government has been enacting bold reforms. What they have been
doing is avoiding reform, talking about the noble European “Social Model” and making rude
remarks about the Anglo-Saxon economic model. (By the way, where do the Irish with their world-beating
Celtic Model fit in all this?)

Well, it’s a shame. For all their rascally behavior over the centuries, we owe a lot to the French
and the Germans. Montesquieu taught us how to write our constitution, and the Germans invented the
research university. And Hitler thoughtfully ripped the brain out of Germany and sent it over here.

But still, it’s a shame.