The first polls after the election already showed that the ruling Red/Green coalition was losing popularity. The votes the Germans cast in their shameful embrace of vile anti-Americanism are coming back to haunt them. At least quite a few of them are having second thoughts, as a further opinion poll shows. Shown on Bericht aus Berlin, a current affairs program on the German public television ARD network, the results for Chancellor Schröder are not pretty. The new government is losing credibility very quickly as confidence in its economic competence is fading. In the main question of "Whom would you vote for on Sunday?", the shift away from the SPD is a full 3%. Just six weeks after a very close election, the opposition parties of CDU/CSU and FDP would get a comfortble majority of the seats in parliament. In the election, the CDU/CSU and SPD came in about equal. Now the gap is 7 percent between them. That's a huge swing.

The poll also shows that the government's credibility is suffering. Asked whether the 14 billion euro budget deficit will get larger, 77% said yes. Moreover, the government's claims that the full extent of the budget crisis was only knowable after the election finds no support: a full 84% is not falling for it. The Germans feel cheated and lied to by the government.

The government's plans to reduce unemployment also inspire little confidence. Only 10% of those polled think that the plans are going to reduce unemployment substantially.

So there you have it. The government has made a disastrous start to its new term in office. Were the election re-run today, the result would not even be close. But do-overs only happen in the wet dreams of Democratic operatives; Germany is stuck with the Red/Green government until it implodes under the weight of the country's economic problems. They have no plan, no concept, no clue how to solve them. The German malaise is going to continue, and it's going to be a millstone dragging down other European economies as well.

The sad thing is that even had the election result been different, any hope for a significant change of course in German economic policy would still be far off. The specter of Japan is hovering ever more prominently over Germany. Since unification, Germany has already had something of a lost decade. Growth has been threadbare, and a second decade of stagnation looms. If they don't get serious about deregulating the economy, cutting taxes, introducing more flexible labor laws, disentangle the cross-shareholdings, reform the pensions system, overhaul the socialist welfare state... what was I saying again?

Never mind. It ain't gonna happen.