Comrades no more
Why German bosses are increasingly furious with their government
IT TAKES effort to recall that Gerhard Schröder, Germany's chancellor, was once dubbed “Genosse der Bosse” (“comrade of the bosses”). In its gut, his Social Democratic Party sides with trade unionists rather than business, yet in his first term Mr Schröder often won cheers from the capitalists, especially for cutting corporation- and income-tax rates and exempting from capital-gains tax sales of German companies' still-widespread shareholdings in one another.
This article appeared in the Business section of the print edition under the headline “Comrades no more”
From the October 26th 2002 edition
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