Some Chicago Boyz know each other from student days at the University of Chicago. Others are Chicago boys in spirit. The blog name is also intended as a good-humored gesture of admiration for distinguished Chicago School economists and fellow travelers.
Ralf Goergens I saw this in the comment section of another blog and it’s just too good to pass up:
The will of maybe 50 million Germans does not make a majority against more than 300 million US-Americans. So Germany should subordinate themselves to the USA and execute the US-will, if the Germans are real democrates.Interesting concept. China would love it.
The losses for the Social Democrats were expected to be severe and turn out to be even worse, downright catastrophic. Schroeder’s power is strongly diminished, he won’t be able to do anything without the say-so of the opposition parties, as I expected. In my opinion this is great news. The trade unions’ ability to block reforms via their hold over the Social Democrats will be much reduced and at the very least this should shut Schroeder up, even if he won’t support the war on Iraq. With any luck he might get sick of being heckled at home and irrelevant abroad and step down voluntarily. More on that tomorrow, I’m off to celebrate.
So far I only know predictions but it is already clear that the Christian Democrats have won the elections in both Hessen (Hesse) and Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony). They also achieved the historically best results ever, while Schroeder’s Social Democrats suffered the worst losses and results ever. It seems that the CDU can form both state governments without a coalition partners if they want to. Update with numbers from 6:30 PM: Lower Saxony: CDU 48,0 SPD 33,2 Greens 7,5 FDP 8,4 Others 2,9 Hesse: CDU 49,9 SPD 27,4 Greens 9,9 FDP 8,3 Others 4,5 For clarification: The Greens are the smaller coalition partner in the federal government, FDP are the socalled Free Democrats, a party that stands for free market policies. “Others” are mostly extreme right-wing and also various communist parties. Another update: The numbers from 7 PM are almost the same as those from 6:30 PM Last update Changes in results are minimal, the numbers from 6:30 are pretty much the final ones.
The outcome of the two state elections today will strongly influence German politics for years to come. Schroeder’s Social Democrats (SPD) are set to lose them by a wide margin; as a consequence the Christian Democrats (CDU) will have a decisive majority in the upper chamber, so that Schroeder will need their explicit approval for almost all new legislation. Even more interesting is that Angela Merkel, Christian Democratic chairwoman and parliamentary whip, has stated bluntly that she too, would have signed the letter in support of GWB’s policy published by the eight European statesmen. Being Chancellor is going to be even less fun than before. If Schroeder’s popularity deteriorates any more his supporters might start looking for a replacement, the usual fate for Chancellors. What might save him is the lack of strong contenders; good for him, but very bad for the party. I’ll post election results as they come in this evening. Voting will stop at 6 PM Central European Time (noon EST, 9 AM PST). The first real results should come in about half an hour later.
I’m very sorry. My condolences.