Greek finances and British budgets

This week, we look at press comment on Germany’s response to the financial crisis in Greece, and find out what issue has been strangely absent in the British election campaign.

Tough job

On 27 April, the international rating agency Standard & Poor’s cut Greece’s long-term credit rating to junk status. This will not make it any easier for Chancellor Angela Merkel to convince Germans that their country should lend the Greeks €8.4 billion — or even more. The German public’s anger is understandable, writes the Financial Times.

… [Germany] did not adopt the euro lightly: Germany is scarred by the hyperinflation and the catastrophic end of the Weimar republic. The post-war Deutschmark and the trustworthy Bundesbank were the twin pillars of the Wirtschaftswunder and the country’s political rehabilitation. … Proposed reforms to Greece’s generous pensions — a particular source of fury in Germany — do not go far enough. …

Budget blues

“It’s the economy, stupid,” said Bill Clinton as he campaigned for the US presidency in 1992. The economy was also the subject of this week’s final leaders’ debate in Britain. The Daily Telegraph says this important topic has not received the attention it deserves.

… The budget deficit presents the greatest threat to our economic wellbeing in 80 years, yet it has barely featured as an issue. … Prime — though not sole — responsibility for this rests with Labour, which has successfully rigged the economic argument with the wholly specious claim that it will carry on spending (or rather “investing”) while the opposition parties are hell-bent on cutting. So rattled have both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats been by this ploy that they have not dared venture into any serious discussion of the deficit and how they intend dealing with it. …