Merkel Plan Gives Germans Rare Sense of Economic Optimism, Promotes Growth

(Bloomberg) -- Chancellor Angela Merkel has helped
kick-start the German economy, not to mention her own political
prospects, by pulling off the equivalent of a conjuring trick:
banishing Germans' pessimism and convincing them the glass is
half full.

Merkel has restored a rare sense of economic optimism, a
prerequisite for corporate investment, hiring and consumer
spending, economists and psychologists say. It's not so much what
she's done that's important as what she hasn't done: Merkel has
deliberately discontinued the unpopular economic-policy changes
pioneered by her predecessor, Gerhard Schroeder. That's propelled
her personal-approval rating to a record, to the consternation of
her coalition partners.


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