That was thetenor of industry response to these weird ideologues. Theywanted a new face and new ideas. It can only be hoped that, with Lafontaine quitting, Schroeder now sees thelight, boots the greens out after him and forms a new coalition governmentwith either the opposition Free Democrats or the Christian Democrats, who are nowunder new management. But for such hope to be realized,Chancellor Schroeder will have to get on with drastic reform of Germany'slabor laws and tax and social security systems, reforms that are long overdue. Naturally, under such circumstances, few if any new jobs arebeing created in the country and unemployment stands at over 4 million or11 percent of the workforce.
Capital markets remain sadly underdeveloped and aredwarfed in size by banking assets.
Those banks, in turn, that dominatefinancial intermediation sorely lack that vaunted transparency in theirtransactions that the Switzerland-based Bank for International Settlements nevertires in preaching to the rest of the world. It was just playedout in Asia to a sad and bitter end. Without fast and determined reformaction in Germany and the rest of Europe, it will be replayed there on avastly larger scale. Only where large and open capital markets passjudgement on companies' policies and their worth are inefficiencies weededout and successful business strategies rewarded. So, Herr Schroeder, there is your agenda.