Tough choices

This week, we look at media comment on Germany’s export success, on Ireland’s economic downturn, and the promised US aid package for Pakistan.

Export champions

Few can look at Germany’s export champions without admiring them. But the country’s economy is also a victim of its exporters’ success. Government policies have prevented the creation of a services sector that is now badly needed to create jobs, writes The Economist.

… In the past decade German firms, unions and politicians have set about making their export economy competitive, with spectacular results. Now the country needs to gear up the domestic economy. Politicians often protest that services are for dodgy financiers or downtrodden burger-flippers and that Germany deserves better. As September’s vote draws near, they should think again, if only for the sake of millions of their underemployed compatriots.

Irish Luck

The IMF reports that Ireland has been far more affected by the financial crisis than any other advanced economy. But it’s not time to write off the Celtic Tiger, writes the Financial Times.

… Ireland enjoys a good regulatory and tax regime. Its workers are well educated and its infrastructure is well developed. Those are among the most important reasons why it grew so consistently throughout the 1990s and early 2000s. … Dealing with the fiscal crisis will mean it will be difficult to protect the country’s most vulnerable people. But, as the wreckage of the boom is washed away, older, safer sources of growth will be uncovered.

Helping Pakistan

Before its summer recess, the US Congress failed to pass a promised bill to triple aid to Pakistan. The apparent killing of Taliban leader Baitullah Mehsud may help President Obama’s military policy for Pakistan, but it is aid that will really help to stabilize the country, writes The New York Times.

... During the 2008 campaign, Mr. Obama rightly criticized the Bush administration for overinvesting in Pakistan’s army while doing far too little to help build … the schools, courts, hospitals and roads that are essential to stability. Mr. Obama pledged to support legislation … that would provide Pakistan with $7.5 billion in development assistance over five years. … Many Pakistanis still accuse the Americans of using and then abandoning them after the Soviet defeat in Afghanistan. We fear that any more delay on the promised assistance would only reinforce that suspicion and bitterness.