Germany’s Stimulus: More Politics than Punch

Chancellor Angela Merkel’s center-right Christian Democrats party was scheduled to meet with its allies, the conservative Christian Social Union and the left-of-center Social Democrats on Monday about a second fiscal package worth 25.0 billion euro ($34.2 billion), to be announced later this month. The government launched a 31.0 billion euro ($42.5 billion) stimulus package last year, which has since been criticized for being inadequate–economists are widely reported to have said that only a third of that figure represents new spending in 2009.