PJ Media

The customary “left/right” political divide in the American sense has little to do with contemporary Germany, where parties from all across the ostensible political spectrum excoriate free markets and chat up the supposedly “protective” powers of the state. In case any further evidence was needed for this proposition, consider the speech given by German President Horst Köhler on Monday to the German Trade Union Association (DGB). (For some earlier evidence, see here.)

The occasion was the 60^th anniversary of the founding of the DGB. Dismissing the decisions taken at the recent G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh as inadequate, Köhler described financial markets as a “monster” that needs “taming” and he chastised bankers and traders for what he implied was their personal responsibility for the economic crisis:

In fact, in the financial markets we can observe yet again a déjà-vu [sic.] with shell-games in shadow-banking, with opaque derivative transactions and speculation in raw materials markets — and all of this on orders of magnitude that are completely unimaginable. Yes, what I see is that the monster is not yet on the way to being tamed. Above all, I do not yet notice any more profound self-reflection on the part of global financial actors: this is to say, a reflection on the crisis in their own houses, on the crisis of values in their own thought and action. It seems that the branch has left the public authorities in the cold.

In a May 2008 interview with the German weekly Stern, Köhler had already described international financial markets as a “monster” that had to be “shown its place.” The German president’s own website presently features his DGB speech under the title “The Untamed Monster” [Das ungezähmte Monster].

Köhler is a long-time member of Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU). (In keeping with the “non-partisan” character of the German presidency, his party membership is suspended during his term as president.) His speech to the DGB was repeatedly interrupted by applause.