Why the U.S. isn't doing as well as Germany.

But Germany Didn't Even Have A Stimulus... Joe Weisenthal|Aug. 14, 2009
There's more chatter today about the nascent recoveries in France and Germany, both registered positive GDP growth in Q2, though as Barry RItholtz points out you can have positive GDP in the middle of a recession. Q3 could turn up for us here, but we could head right back down. ...Germany's Angele Merkel was chided hard over her opposition to stimulus earlier this year. Folks thought she wasn't a team player, simply because she didn't want to go into debt to pay for spending. And yet, here they are with the same results as France.
...it makes it even hard for Krugman to prove his non-disprovable statement about how big government saved us from another great depression. As we noted, we just have to take his word for it that the stimulus -- which ostensibly has barely gotten started for us -- has had such a big impact. There's no way know for sure, and now this casts some doubt on whether it was even that big of a deal.****What the seemingly superior performance of Germany (and France) shows is that a monochromatic Washington government can wreak havoc on an American economy. Germany has a steadfast boss in Merkel and letting the business cycle play out seemed (and seems!) like the proper course of action. The panicky TARP at the end of Bush and the similar (and worse) efforts to direct the American economy from Washington under Obama have misdirected resources, generated historically-mountainous piles of debt, and severely compromised business confidence about the future. Central planning is inefficient and combined with pork and a suddenly-implemented Leftist wish list is worse than a socialist tradition installed over decades.In that sense, the U.S. has recently been less laissez-faire than Germany and France and Merkel and Sarkozy more believers in capitalism and entrepreneurship than Obama.****
****Another confidence-destroying circumstance: ****
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