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Minkmar, Nils
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2 articles of this author have been cited in the European Press Review so far.
Only more taxes can help overcome the crisis
Greece will need considerably more money than expected, the observers of the troika made up of the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank and the EU Commission have concluded. The conservative Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung calls on governments to finally admit that taxes must be raised if the crisis is to be overcome: "The BCG [Boston Consulting Group] reckons with a one-off tax of somewhere between twenty and thirty percent on property and assets. It would be unpopular, difficult to push through and so on - but at least better than any other approach. There is no policymaker today who has the guts to say what the Boston Consulting Group has written. The adjustment of the financial sector to the real world, the transaction tax, the legal prosecution of systems of fraud - all this will come. But first we will all get poorer together and we will all have to work longer and more for less post-tax income. Someone should say now what no one has dared say for decades: that taxes will rise, permanently and considerably, and that this is the price of our civilisation."
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More from the press review on the subject » EU Policy, » Fiscal Policy, » Europe
Betraying its ideals
The Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) has betrayed its ideals, writes the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung. This is seen for example in its handling of the Caucasus crisis and the visit of the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of the Tibetans: "If you take a sober look at the SPD today, you see anything but a cosmopolitan party. What you do see is an autistic obsession with personalities ... and systems of reference that are only understandable to insiders, all of which refer to our welfare state. ... Appeals not to offend the sensibilities of wounded party leaders are slowly becoming the hallmark of a party that was founded to protect the poor. ... It is hard to imagine that social democratic parties once wooed dissidents, convicts and opposition figures. ... A return to the tradition of cabinet diplomacy is never amiss for reasons of state, but for a mainstream party it is not enough."
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More from the press review on the subject » Domestic Policy, » Social movements, » Germany
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