Merkel vs. Obama

I found this kind of amusing:

German Chancellor Angela Merkel directly contradicted US President Barack Obama on Saturday, saying spending cutbacks were now needed following the spate of throwing money at the global economic crisis.

Referring to the G20 summit in Canada next weekend, Merkel said in a videotaped message that "we are going to discuss when to quit the phase of short-term measures and go on to lasting budget consolidation."

Such a move was "urgently necessary, in the view of the Europeans and particularly of Germany," she said.

Obama, on the other hand, thinks governments should keep spending money they don't have, because the private sector clearly can't recover on its own.

Kind of crazy when our own president believes in socialism more than the Europeans.