On July 11, German Chancellor Angela Merkel praised Indonesia as a model of government debt management. In absolute terms, though, Indonesia’s government spending and government debt has steadily increased. Indonesia’s robust fiscal standing comes first from economic growth with some help from controlling fuel subsidies. Indonesia’s government debt declined from …
Former Representative Bob Barr’s (R–GA) criticism of the Medium Extended Air Defense System (MEADS) anti-aircraft and missile program is understandable but misplaced. Representative Barr, quite reasonably, points to the Obama Administration’s plan to continue spending money on this cooperative program with Germany and Italy despite an announcement early last year …
After budget-stricken Spain eliminated subsidies for new renewable energy this year, Germany is now following the example by making significant cuts to its solar subsidy program. Bloomberg reports: Incentives for solar units pushed capacity past government targets, prompting Merkel to cut subsidies even as she seeks to wean Germany off …
Germany has elected its 11th president: Joachim Gauck (72), a Lutheran pastor and internationally renowned human rights activist. The position of President of the Federal Republic of Germany is merely ceremonial, but several German presidents have used it as a bully pulpit over the past decades. The new German president …
This month marks the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. declaration of war on Japan, Germany and Italy. December 1941, according to historian Craig Shirley, transformed America in ways that might be unimaginable today. In a new book called “December 1941: 31 Days that Changed …
The visit of German Chancellor Angela Merkel to Washington has attracted little attention in the US media, perhaps further proof that Berlin barely ranks as a world power these days, and consistently punches under its weight in international affairs. Compared to both David Cameron and Nicolas Sarkozy, Merkel is a …
Speaking to the media this weekend, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told CBS’s Bob Schieffer that at NATO’s Lisbon Summit this weekend, many European states including Germany, Poland and the Baltic states had pressed the Administration on the ratification of New START. During one of the summit’s many news conferences, …
Speaking to younger members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party about Germany’s 16 million foreign worker population, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said this past Saturday: We kidded ourselves a while, we said: ‘They won’t stay, sometime they will be gone’, but this isn’t reality. And of course, the …
In 2007, the director general of Britain’s internal security service described al-Qaeda and its associated groups as, “the main national security threat that we face today.” Revelations that al-Qaeda linked terrorists planned to carry out Mumbai-style attacks in Germany, France and Britain once again underscores this fact. The capture and …
