"Dude, where's my recovery?" Answer: Germany

“Dude, where’s my recovery?” Glenn Reynolds rightly asks, referring to the anemic growth and employment figures in the US of A.

Answer: Germany, which has just recorded its LOWEST unemployment rate since 1992! From Reuters:

German unemployment fell more than expected in April to a near two-decade low, adding to signs of strength that contrasted with worsening data from other euro zone countries.

The seasonally adjusted figures from the Federal Labour Office showed the number of jobless fell by 37,000, bringing the total to 2.97 million, its lowest point since June 1992.

Why are the Germans doing so well while we and many other Western countries are screwing up? Think back to this report from 2009 – Merkel spurns Obama stimulus plan:

Forget Nicolas Sarkozy. Ignore Gordon Brown. Angela Merkel, taking advantage of Germany’s economic heft, is now the European Union’s dominant figure. And leaders from Warsaw to Washington had best not forget it.
Just as the German chancellor vetoed a bailout for eastern Europe on March 1, she is now leading European opposition to US President Barack Obama’s call for a global pump-priming package. She’ll determine the fate of a $6.4 billion infrastructure proposal at an EU summit in Brussels later this week. “It’s Merkel who holds the key to the cashbox, and she doesn’t want to give it up,” says Jean-Dominique Giuliani, chairman of the Robert Schuman Foundation, a research center in Paris.

Merkel’s rejection of more stimulus touched off the first trans-Atlantic clash of the Obama administration and led critics to say she risks deepening the global recession.

Well, who was right – Merkel or Obama? How many more days of this stuffed-shirt, nitwit?