There is definitely a conscious effort on the parts of Chancellor Merkel and her cohorts like Jörg Asmussen, Member of the Executive Board of the ECB and a fellow German, to impose their ideological approach to the European crisis. However, it is increasingly looking like a failure of leadership.
She is working hard to lower the expectations ahead of EU summit later in June. But when the conservative PM of UK, David Cameron joins the US President Barack Obama, a Democrat, in demanding immediate action to resolve the euro-zone crisis then it becomes clear that the pain is felt globally by both the left and right.
During a Wednesday evening visit to Oslo, Cameron repeated the message. “Speed is of the essence,” he said. “Clearly the euro-zone crisis is the biggest threat to the world economy today.”
At the moment, Chancellor Merkel and ECB have most of the strong cards in regards to dealing with the euro zone’s troubles. But they are neither giving any grounds nor are they showing any signs of urgency.
Merkel said on Thursday morning that expectations of a complete plan to emerge at the late June summit are likely to be disappointed.
“I don’t think that there is a single summit at which the big design will appear,” she said on ARD.
When powerful and influential people refuse to see and feel the suffering of masses and would rather sit on their hands then it is time for the Captain – of Cool Hand Luke fame – to say “What we’ve got here is failure to lead (communicate)”.
