this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2026
106 points (94.9% liked)

News

39662 readers
3166 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious biased sources will be removed at the mods’ discretion. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted separately but not to the post body. Sources may be checked for reliability using Wikipedia, MBFC, AdFontes, GroundNews, etc.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Clickbait titles may be removed.


Posts which titles don’t match the source may be removed. If the site changed their headline, we may ask you to update the post title. Clickbait titles use hyperbolic language and do not accurately describe the article content. When necessary, post titles may be edited, clearly marked with [brackets], but may never be used to editorialize or comment on the content.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials, videos, press releases, or celebrity gossip will be allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis. Mods may use discretion to pre-approve videos or press releases from highly credible sources that provide unique, newsworthy content not available or possible in another format.


7. No duplicate posts.


If an article has already been posted, it will be removed. Different articles reporting on the same subject are permitted. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners or news aggregators.


All posts must link to original article sources. You may include archival links in the post description. News aggregators such as Yahoo, Google, Hacker News, etc. should be avoided in favor of the original source link. Newswire services such as AP, Reuters, or AFP, are frequently republished and may be shared from other credible sources.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 8 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

Merkel was reasonably decent at foreign policy. And she did know how to carry herself. Her domestic policy was questionable, though, and her reign was the time of the "black zero", aka the brilliant economic policy of cutting infrastructure spending to save money because surely highway bridges can do without maintenance for a couple decades. Actually, they sacrificed many things on the altar of reducing new debt at all cost, including a buildout of the power and data grids and the East German economy.

In my opinion the biggest contributor to our current problems is the CDU's economic incompetence, which has thoroughly undermined the stability of the country for a twenty year vanity project.

All in all she wasn't entirely shit, which is pretty good for the CDU these days. She was vastly more competent than Merz but that's not a tall hurdle to clear.

[–] nexusband@lemmy.world 1 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

You people do realize we don't have neither dictatorship, nor monarchy in Germany? And don't be smart about her being the head of the party and therefore being able to tell everyone what to do. The CDU did a lot of shit even back then where Merkel was opposed to.

[–] Jesus_666@lemmy.world 3 points 2 weeks ago

Oh, absolutely. But I do believe that the chancellor can't be fully separated from their party. There has to be a certain level of agreement or the party wouldn't put them up again next election.

By her own behavior she was relatively decent but still rooted in the CDU. And to my knowledge she didn't really oppose her party's spending policy much. Given that this spending policy was a gigantic exercise in shortsightedness I'd say that yes, I can factor that into my appraisal of her tenure.