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Italy's prime minister, Mario Monti put it best when he said in a speech in Brussels in April 2012: "If a country becomes more productive and competitive, but there is no demand for its products domestically or around it, growth will not materialize." There is a new shift in opinion towards a balance of fiscal discipline with growth measures to get Europe back on track. The feeling in different parts of Europe is that the German view of austerity alone will not work for Europe. And the view is coming from the far right to the far left, from Marie Le Pen, far right presidential candidate in France, to the far right leader whose move to withdraw support to the government in Netherlands on the issue of austerity measures led to its collapse. Geert Wilders, leader of the Freedom Party in the Netherlands, said: "we don't want our pensioners to bleed just to meet the dictates from Brussels." The IMF has put out research that questions what is now called "the German hypothesis." The "German hypothesis," is based on the unique experience of Germany with the Hartz reforms under chancellor Schroeder which were based on wage restraint by workers, the German "kurzarbeit" program of government support for retaining workers with lower pay during cyclical downturns, improving competitiveness of German companies, and conservative budget practices. There appear to be two exceptions to this. One is that demand has to be strong outside or domestically for a country to reduce unemployment and improve productive capacity utlilization as it increases competitiveness. This was the case as Germany made the Hartz reforms under Schroeder. Wage restraint acts as a form of devaluing currency for reducing the cost of its products to improve exports. All leading parties and the unions are now in favor of wage restraint and lowering wages to preserve jobs to improve France's competitive position. Germany had the benefit of a decade to implement these reforms to reduce unemployment, because demand was not declining domestically or around it during its reforms. The situation is different in Spain where in all likelihood demand would shrink further with unemployment rising from 25% to higher levels, and higher sales taxes. This is why Francois Heisbourg, special advisor at the Paris based Foundation for Strategic Research, says about the current situation in Europe, that destroyiing Greece with strict austerity alone wasn't something the EU can look back at with the sense of having done the right thing, for Spain it appears misguided and lacking careful thought. The editors of the Wall Street Journal expressed the same sense when they described the March 2012 bailout of Greece as a tragic sideshow, because the main purpose was to buy time and insulate the other larger economies in the EU by giving the French, Spanish and German banks time to improve their financial position. The Journal called it bad for Greece leaving it with debt at 120% of GDP till 2020 and no economic growth, and bad for democracy as it was done against overwhelming Greek public opinion- The Tragic Greek Sideshow, Feb. 22, 2012. Volker Perthes, director of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin think tank, says the Germans have always viewed German leadership in Europe with discomfort, and would prefer a leadership where several states, France, Italy, Spain, and other countries in the EU coalesce around consensus positions. This is historically true for the German position since chancellor Adenauer. With the Free Democrats in decline, and the Social Democrats and the Pirate party doing well in recent German elections and favoring consensus in Europe, Merkel's Christian Democrats need to rethink their policy to give greater weight to economic growth for a consensus position in Europe. ...

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The local elections in Ankara and Istanbul in March 2014, with the AKP's continuing hold on power by winning over half the vote. The CHP and other parties split the remaining vote.

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Mira Kamdar provides this first hand account of life in Pantin, France, in March 2015, a banlie on the northeastern outskirts of Paris, postal code 93. She describes the exceptional effort of Mayor Kern to bring the community together for a brighter future, and the plans to better integrate Paris with the suburbs.

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Chancellor Merkel's now widely quoted words were made in Munich on May 27, 2017, after a NATO summit meeting in Brussels and a Group of 7 meeting in Italy, in which she was disconcerted by U.S. president Trump's positions on NATO, Russia, climate change, and trade. These words "the times in which we could rely fully on others - they are somewhat over." Merkel added "This is what I experienced in the last few days." After the election of Emmanuel Macron in France, Merkel expressed great relief at the outcome of the French election with Macron winning about two thirds of the vote, setting the stage for the election in Germany after several months of difficult watching and waiting. Now there is new confidence in Germany shaping its own future, with France and the rest of the European Union without Britain. Merkel says she "experienced this" meaning that she had undergone a transformation in these few months, and visibly in the last few days. She was also sending a message to Germans and people of the European Union - "we have to know that we must fight for our future on our own, for our destiny as Europeans." This also complements tactically to form the approach of Germany and France at the leadership of the EU, as French president Macron said at the end of the Group of 7 conference that multilateralism was intact, and the U.S. and EU shared many common goals.   ...

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Angela Merkel and David Cameron are for sacrifices and tougher measures to deal with the crisis, including bondholder haircut, and austerity steps.

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Arun Jaitley is Finance Minister and minister for corporate affairs in the new Modi cabinet. He is a lawyer who practiced before the Supreme Court of India and has represented foreign companies. Under the Vajpayee administration (1999-2004), he was minister of commerce and headed the disinvestment ministry. Jaitley believes in removing bureaucratic hurdles for business and improving governance. He emphasized creating a climate of predictability for business as a priority, and said during the election campaign that the results would send a strong signal to the world business community and domestic investors. The new cabinet is much smaller and brings together related ministries under one minister to improve speed of decisionmaking, coordination and accountability. Piyush Goyal, is the minister in charge of the power and coal ministry. This ministry brings together power, coal and renewable energy under one minister. Goyal is one of the younger ministers with advanced education in American universities. He has a CPA and a law degree, and is a member of the Board at the State Bank of India and Bank of Baroda. Other ministers are Sushma Swaraj as foreign minister, and Rajnath Singh as Home Minister....

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The lack of jobs is a major problem for Tieling New City in Liaoning province in China. Liaoning provincial leaders started the plan to build a new city in 2005 to help revive the local rust-belt economy. The new city was planned for 60,000 residents in 2010 and 180,000 by 2015. Today because of few job opportunities most of the new city is empty. The business park is also empty. The original plan was to create growth in the province by creating 7 such urban centers and building highways and high-speed rail lines to connect them to Shenyang, a 90 minute drive south of Tieling. Rural residents would take up homes in the new urban areas with affordable homes, and businesses would be attracted to these smaller cities because of lower labor and land costs, but this has not happened. Credit Suisse property analyst Du Jinsong, says there are better job opportunities in higher tier cities, so that lower tier cities are seeing a net outflow of population. He found that in two thirds of 287 mostly small urban centers there were fewer residents than people registered to live there. ...

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France's Le Monde newspaper reports that the U.S. NSA agency collected 70 million digital communications under codenames "Drtwater" and "Whitewater" during December to January 2013. Communications of Brazilian president Rousseff were intercepted according to other reports about the spying by NSA. This has affected U.S.-Brazil relations. The NSA spying has also included the European Union delegation to the UN, drawing German protests.

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The German government says the U.S. intelligence agencies may be monitoring Chanceller Merkel's mobile phone and finds such surveillance completely unacceptable.

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The lack of trust in negotiations on the terms of spending cuts between Greece and EU ministers in February 2011. In difficult exchanges between German finance minister Schauble and Greece's finance minister Venizelos, Schauble criticized the Greek government for not beginning negotiations for reduction in the minimum wage. EU ministers at a meeting with Venizelos on Feb 10, 2012, showed a distrust of Greece's figures on austerity cuts and asked for an additional $428 million in cuts to make up for the refusal of Greece to cut supplemental pensions. In Greece five ministers in the Greek cabinet resigned in protest over the conditions set by the troika of the EC, ECB and the IMF, just as unions launched a 48 hour strike in Athens. Greece is in the fifth year of a recession with unemployment at over 20%, making sharp cuts more painful. A shrinking economy makes achieving budget defict targets even more difficult and worsening the debt situation.

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By June 10, 2010, the Democratic Party of Japan has recovered in poll ratings with 60% ratings for the new premier Naoto Kan and the DPJ. Ratings for Mr Hatoyama had dropped to 20% by the time he resigned. Hatoyama resigned June 2, 2010.