Merkel Rebuffs Sarkozy's Populist Statism

German chancellor Angela Merkel attacks Nicolas Sarkozy over his calls for increased political influence over the ECB to force it to pursue an even more inflationary monetary policy, his plans to increase the budget deficit and his calls for more protectionist EU trade policies. It is good that at least some EU leaders are relatively sensible.

Sarkozy's performance so far underlines that he was merely a lesser evil than Royal and certainly not a positive character in any absolute sense.

Today's numbers from Eurostat, which showed that year over year growth in the Euro area was upwardly revised from 3.0% to 3.1%, while France's was downwardly revised from 2.0% to 1.9% again illustrates the failure of French statist policies. Well worth noting is that the 3.1% number includes France, which is 20% of the Euro area economy. Excluding France, growth was 3.4%.