An example to be studied by the Bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform?

From Der Spiegel, “German Government Agrees on Historic Austerity Program“:

The German government put together the largest austerity package since World War II on Monday, with spending cuts and new business levies aimed at saving 80 billion euros by 2014. Chancellor Angela Merkel says Germany, as Europe’s largest economy, must set an example.

The German government on Monday announced plans to reduce spending by €80 billion ($95.7 billion) by 2014 in the largest package of cutssince World War II. The austerity program aims at reducing the budget deficit and helping to protect the euro as it continues its slide.

“We have to save €80 billion by 2014 to put our financial future back on a solid footing,” Merkel told a press conference on Monday afternoon. She said the budget cuts for Germany, Europe’s largest economy, were a “unique show of strength” that signalled her government’s commitment to tackling the European debt problems that have plunged the euro single currency into crisis.

“Germany as the largest economy has a duty to set a good example,” she said.

The CDU/CSU’s governing partners, the more market-oriented Free Democrats, have been calling for tax reductions.

Der Spiegel has a good map of the government debt in each of the Eurozone countries as percentage of GDP. Germany’s is 78.8 percent, Greece’s is 124.9 percent.

Total outstanding U.S. debt was approximately 88.9% of GDP as of June 1; debt for the first time exceeded $13 trillion.

Looks like Slovakia is the best model — 40.8 percent.

A bit beyond the usual fare, but this is so overwrought, the pure essence of the “America is bad” reporting that Der Spiegel takes such delight in, “Crisis Plunges US Middle Class into Poverty“:

The financial crisis in the US has triggered a social crisis of historic dimensions. Soup kitchens are suddenly in great demand and tent cities are popping up in the shadow of glistening office towers. Even drug dealers are feeling the pinch.

Business is poor in the New York banking district around Wall Street these days, even for drug dealers. In the good old days, they used to supply America’s moneyed elite with cocaine and crack. But now, with the good times gone, they spend their days in the Bowery Mission, a homeless shelter with a dining hall and a chapel.

Alvin, 47, is one of them. His customers are gone, as is the money he earned during better times.

That’s right. As its first illustration of America’s collapse, the German news magazine cites a coke dealer’s new impoverishment. Then there’s this:

The crisis is also making itself felt in posh Georgetown, a historic residential neighborhood in Washington D.C. which is home to many politicians, lobbyists and attorneys. Anyone who forgets to lock his car at night can expect to see unwanted guests sleeping in it by the next morning.

When one local woman, who works at a Middle Eastern embassy in Washington, opened her car door one morning, she was astonished to find a woman holding a purse and wearing a pearl necklace sitting on the seat. The humiliated woman covered her face, apologized politely and quickly left her sleeping quarters.

News to German reporters: That’s a drunk woman who found a place to sleep it off, not evidence of the newly homeless wealthy.

The whole story, translated from the German, includes the standard cliches: America as a land of economic extremes, riven by gun violence. But the story is over the top, it’s worth a read and a thought about how the United States is portrayed in the foreign media. (See Davidsmedienkritik for more on Der Spiegel’s quatsch.)

We know that some European elites revel in Schadenfreude everytime things go awry in America, but this is ridiculous.

From the reliably predictably smugly lefty Der Spiegel, “The End of Arrogance“:

The banking crisis is upending American dominance of the financial markets and world politics. The industrialized countries are sliding into recession, the era of turbo-capitalism is coming to an end and US military might is ebbing. Still, this is no time to gloat. [Editor: The Spiegel opined, gloatingly.]

There are days when all it takes is a single speech to illustrate the decline of a world power. A face can speak volumes, as can the speaker’s tone of voice, the speech itself or the audience’s reaction. Kings and queens have clung to the past before and humiliated themselves in public, but this time it was merely a United States president.

Or what is left of him.

George W. Bush has grown old, erratic and rosy in the eight years of his presidency. Little remains of his combativeness or his enthusiasm for physical fitness. On this sunny Tuesday morning in New York, even his hair seemed messy and unkempt, his blue suit a little baggy around the shoulders, as Bush stepped onto the stage, for the eighth time, at the United Nations General Assembly.

Geez, talk about arrogance. Almost makes you want to have a financial crisis to just show them who’s boss.

UPDATE (3:45 p.m.): Worth a visit to Davids Medienkritik for a look at Spiegel over the years.

A special issue of Germany’s top news magazine…

Made in Germany

How the German economy wins with globalization

The lead story is not online, but it starts with:

Prosperity Thanks to World Trade
Exports give Germany a certain profile…and remarkable power. Even the financial crisis and the energy price shock can hardly hold it back. Why such success?