PRAGUE - The Czech government collapsed yesterday after losing a parliamentary no-confidence vote over its handling of the economic crisis.
It was a huge embarrassment for Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek, coming just days before a planned visit by President Obama and midway through the Czech Republic's six-month European Union presidency....
It was the first time a government has been ousted by Parliament since the country came to existence after the 1993 split of Czechoslovakia.... The government has struggled to resolve deep divisions within Parliament over whether to allow components of a US missile defense shield on Czech territory, and whether to adopt EU reforms to streamline decision-making in the bloc.
In recent months, opposition lawmakers also said they became frustrated with the government's response to the global economic slowdown. Before the crisis, the export-oriented Czech economy had been growing fast, but the country is expected to enter a recession this year.
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Update: He's finally free to tell the truth....
BERLIN - The president of the European Union yesterday ripped the Obama administration's economic policies, calling its massive deficit spending and bank bailouts "a road to hell."
Related: Geithner's Arrogance Destroys Dollar
The comments by Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek of the Czech Republic, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, startled some US and European officials, who are preparing for President Obama's visit next month to several European cities, including Prague, the Czech capital.
In an address to the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, Topolanek abandoned diplomatic niceties and blasted Washington for approving a $787 billion economic stimulus package, which he said encouraged "protectionist" trade policies. He said the overall US strategy for ending the recession would flood global markets with too many dollars and lead to bigger problems.
See: The Ron Paul Platform: Money
"All of these steps, these combinations and permanency, is the road to hell," Topolanek said. "The United States did not take the right path."
They took the globalist path -- on purpose!
Topolanek's critique came one day after his government was toppled by a no-confidence vote by opposition lawmakers in the Czech Parliament. Although he will remain prime minister for the time being, his shaky position at home raised questions about whether he could remain effective as the EU president until his country's six-month term expires at the end of June.
"I think this was just an attempt to show he's a force still to be reckoned with and not a walking-dead politician," said Katinka Barysch, deputy director at the Center for European Reform, a London research organization. "For him to come out with his guns blazing does seem a bit odd."
Not here on this blog, hmmm? :-)
Topolanek's words, however, underscored a fundamental divide that persists among the United States and many European countries over the best way to respond to the global financial crisis.
US officials have pressed their European counterparts to spend substantially more public money in an attempt to revive economic growth and global trade. Some countries, led by Germany, have strongly resisted, predicting that such a path could lead to unsustainable debt and runaway inflation.
The Germans know where we are going! They BEEN THERE, DONE THAT!!
Obama gonna be the HITLER of AmeriKa, with Muslims as the Jews?
Luxembourg's prime minister, Jean-Claude Juncker, who heads a coordinating body of countries that use the euro currency, said European countries had already spent enough to jumpstart their economies.
Yeah, THAT'S RIGHT! Spent TOO MUCH already!
"The European stimulus plans are muscular, they are demanding, they are important in volume and in quality," Juncker said yesterday in an interview with France's Europe 1 Radio. He said there was "no question" that the European Union would reject requests from Obama to spend more.
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