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2 Views of Angela Merkel’s Legacy: Stoic Leadership, and Economic Malpractice

Peter S. Goodman, (2018), “2 Views of Angela Merkel’s Legacy: Stoic Leadership, and Economic Malpractice”, The New York Times, 1 November

But many economists take a less generous view of the German chancellor’s place in modern European history. Far from a hero who anchored the bloc under profound challenges, she played a leading role in amplifying an economic crisis, allowing it to erupt into an existential threat to the European Union and its shared euro currency. The resulting distress has undermined faith in the European bloc while fueling anti-establishment grievances across the Continent.

Like many national leaders, Ms. Merkel, time and again, catered to domestic political interests at the expense of broader European concerns, dismissing calls that Germany’s prodigious savings be put on the line to rescue debt-saturated members of the bloc. She impeded measures aimed at coordinating banking rules and public spending across national boundaries.

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