Final Word from Thursday, April 24, 2025
Two weeks before CDU Chair Friedrich Merz vowed to do "whatever it takes" to defend freedom and peace on our continent, he told Politico's German-language Berlin Playbook podcast (starting at 12m) that the next financial crisis will be a government debt crisis. Germany is the anchor of stability in the Eurosystem, he said, and when Germany has a problem, all of Europe has a massive problem. Before the German elections on Feb. 23, Merz was hesitant to raise government debt; immediately after the elections he went all in. What remained constant is his prediction that another financial crisis is inevitable. The Czech government is now following Merz's lead by digging its own deeper financial hole and blaming it on Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. The wisdom of this is fodder for all the political debate shows, but generally missing from the discussion is the bigger picture. How prepared is the CR to deal with a government debt crisis of someone else's making. Germany's, for example? [ Czech Republic Russia United States chancellor Germany ]
Glossary of difficult words
all in - fully committed to a task or endeavor;
fodder - people or things that are used as the subject of something; food, esp. for animals;
of someone's making - caused by someone.