STOCK MARKET WATCH -- Wednesday, 18 September 2013

[Ghost Dog]

22. Merkel Says German Vote Is Decision Time for Euro’s Future

...Merkel, speaking at a rally of her Christian Democratic Union party in the eastern city of Magdeburg, cast the national vote on Sept. 22 as a decision between her policy of conditional bailouts for weaker euro countries and what she portrayed as plans by Germany’s opposition to pool the currency bloc’s debt...

... “As we stabilize the euro -- and that’s one thing you are deciding about on Sunday -- there are different approaches,” Merkel told the crowd of several thousand yesterday, some of whom held aloft orange “Angie” signs. “We offer aid when we get something in return.”

The Social Democrats led by Peer Steinbrueck and the Greens, which aim to unseat Merkel and form a coalition, advocate a joint debt repayment fund and other options that would “throw all of the debt into one pot,” she said. “That is why your decision is also about Europe’s future path.”...

... Steinbrueck, Merkel’s first-term finance minister turned main election challenger, says her austerity push has divided Europe and advocates more emphasis on growth. At home, she has neglected Europe’s biggest economy, showing “guidelines but no direction,” he said yesterday at a separate rally in Wuppertal, in the SPD-controlled state of North Rhine-Westphalia. “The gap between rich and poor has clearly grown in Germany,” Steinbrueck said, defending SPD plans to raise the top rate of income tax to 49 percent from 42 percent and to impose a “wealth tax.” Banks must “finally’ be called upon to pay for the crisis they spawned, and his party would ban “speculative trades” on commodities and foodstuffs, he said...

/... http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-09-17/merkel-says-german-election-is-decision-time-for-euro-s-future.html