Wirtschaftsblunder

Andrew Sullivan linked to this article about Germany's economic woes from today's Guardian. It's an interesting piece, especially when you contrast it with the cover story from the August 18th issue of the Economist, entitled Germany's Surprising Economy. It's not that the two stories totally contradict each other, the Economist is comparing Germany's current economic situation with where it has been over the past five years, while the Guardian is comparing Germany's post-reunification economic situation with the heyday of the Wirtschaftswunder. Both articles do a good job identifying the challenges that the economies of Western Europe, and to a lesser extent, the US are or will soon be facing. The Guardian piece is summed up nicely by a comment from German journalist Arno Widmann:

...the generation of '68 had begun their political careers hating the bourgeois complacency of the old West Germany; then, just when they realised it was one of the nearest things to a workers' paradise the world has ever seen, it was over.