Mark Leonard — The Coming Franco-German Bust-Up

The partnership at the center of European integration is unraveling just when Euroskeptic forces are coming together. If French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel cannot start rebuilding the political center, next year's European Parliament election will produce the biggest victory yet for anti-EU populists.…

Entering the endgame?

Project Syndicate
The Coming Franco-German Bust-Up

Mark Leonard | Director of the European Council on Foreign Relations

'The U.S. President Is Destroying the American World Order' — Mathieu von Rohr and Christoph Schult interview Joschka Fischer

In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer talks about the danger of war against Iran, the deterioration of trans-Atlantic relations under U.S. President Donald Trump and the serious need for Germany to invest massively in the European Union's future. 

Spiegel Online
'The U.S. President Is Destroying the American World Order'
Interview former German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer conducted by Mathieu von Rohr and Christoph Schult

RT — Trump not Putin is greater threat to world peace – German poll

More than 90 percent of Germans want better relations with Russia, while more than three-quarters think US President Donald Trump represents a greater threat to world peace than Vladimir Putin, a new poll says.
Painting Russia as a boogeyman and a threat to the West has been the narrative of both the mainstream media and a number of Western states for some time. Now, a poll conducted by the Forsa Institute on behalf of the Wiese Consult group has revealed a substantial difference between the main narrative in the media and general public opinion.

It revealed that 83 percent of Germans said they weren’t afraid of Russia, while half of all respondents blamed American policy for creating a tense relationship between Russia and the West. Only a quarter of Germans believed that conflict was Russia’s fault. More than three-quarters of respondents (79 percent) said they considered US President Donald Trump to be a greater threat to world peace than his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin.
While Washington has been imposing sanctions on Russia under various pretexts, more than half of German respondents (55 percent) opposed tough anti-Russian restrictions. Germany already saw a considerable negative economic impact of earlier rounds of sanctions against Moscow.

Signal for the German political leadership. Adjust course.

RT
Trump not Putin is greater threat to world peace – German poll

Sputnik — Little Trouble in Big Bundestag: Sputnik's Guide to Merkel's Coalition Fiasco

Backgrounder on what's up in Deutschland.

Sputnik International
Little Trouble in Big Bundestag: Sputnik's Guide to Merkel's Coalition Fiasco

also

Strategic Culture Foundation
Germany"s Government Impasse: End of Merkel Era Is Within Sight
Alex Gorka

Ray McGovern — German Intel Clears Russia on Interference

Mainstream U.S. media only wants stories of Russian perfidy, so when German intelligence cleared Moscow of suspected subversion of German democracy, the silence was deafening, says ex-CIA analyst Ray McGovern

Consortium News
German Intel Clears Russia on Interference
Ray McGovern

Meanwhile the New York Times and the Washington Post are calling for investigation of Trump's "Russian ties."

The NYT and WaPo are inside the bubble media. They are widely regarded in the rest of the country as establishment mouthpieces and on the right they are regarded as the liberal "lamestream media." 

This is a huge plus for Trump, in that their opposition is an indication to his base that he is doing the right thing. Trump strategist Steve Bannon is well aware of this and welcomes the opposition as free publicity for his team.

Peter Dorman — The Euro, From Cash to Kesh

So on closer analysis the German position is as absurd as it looks on the surface. It is a weak play for intellectual legitimacy. What it’s really about, of course, is the fact that Greek maturities are spread out over the coming decades, and that restructuring their terms will postpone the reality of default to future politicians. A writedown is immediate and pins the loss on the folks currently in control. And you can’t have that in a currency union, can you?

This seems to be the case from German polling. German "taxpayers" (read the electorate) don't want Greece's unpayable debt dumped on them. Any kind of debt write-down would create that impression, which voters would most likely remember at the time of the next election.

Politics in European countries is becoming fractious, and politicians are getting nervous over growing uncertainty.

Econospeak
The Euro, From Cash to Kesh
Peter Dorman | Professor of Political Economy, The Evergreen State College

Mark Blyth — Ending the Creditor’s Paradise

Weekend reading.

What would you tell six hundred leading German social democrats about their party’s handling of the Eurocrisis?

Mark Blyth gives them what for.

Jacobin
Ending the Creditor’s Paradise
Mark Blyth | Eastman professor of political economy at Brown University and the author of Austerity: The History of a Dangerous Idea