Running the country with the fourth largest gross domestic product in the world is reason enough to be deemed one of the most prominent women in the world. But as the European Union struggles to contain its debt crisis, German Chancellor Angela Merkel has also become the de facto leader of the eurozone. Because of Germany’s economic strength, no eurozone decisions can be made without her support.
Le Monde reports that in a November 2011 poll in France, 46 percent of people reported having more confidence in Ms. Merkel’s leadership and ability to avoid a future financial crises than they do in that of their own president, Nicolas Sarkozy (33 percent).
In 2011 and into 2012, several EU member countries faced the collapse of their financial institutions, high government debt, and rapidly rising borrowing costs. Merkel was faced with the challenge of finding a balance between pressure from within Germany not to fund future economic bailouts and calls from other EU countries to provide further assistance. Throughout the crisis, Merkel has urged fiscal discipline and demanded leadership changes and austerity measures in countries like Italy and Greece.
If the eurozone survives this turbulent period, Merkel will be lauded as the heroine that saved the European Union.
Mark Sappenfield
Dear Reader,
About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:
“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”
If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.
But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.
The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.
We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”
If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.
