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Topic: Oskar Lafontaine


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In the News (Sun 29 Nov 09)

  
  Oskar Lafontaine -- Facts, Info, and Encyclopedia article   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
Oskar Lafontaine (born September 16, 1943) is a left-wing German politician who is a member of the (A political party in Germany and Britain (and elsewhere) founded in late 19th century; originally Marxist; now advocates the gradual transformation of capitalism into democratic socialism) Social Democratic Party (SPD).
Lafontaine is married to Christa Müller and has got one son Carl Maurice (born 1997).
It was reported in May 2005 by several papers that Lafontaine was planning to leave the SPD and join the new (Click link for more info and facts about Labor and Social Justice Party) Labor and Social Justice Party.
www.absoluteastronomy.com /encyclopedia/o/os/oskar_lafontaine.htm   (223 words)

  
 Economic Sovereignty in a Globalising World   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
Oskar Lafontaine and his wife, Christa Mueller, wrote a book on globalisation criticising it, but also seeing it as big chance for political change.
The problem is that the resignation of Lafontaine is a defeat for the popular movements as well as the traditional and the new left all over Europe, not only in Germany, for the "third way" of Tony Blair or the "new centre" (Neue Mitte) of the German social democracy.
Lafontaine tried with the help of his two secretaries of state, Flassbeck and Noé, to realise some kind of a national Keynesian project and to establish target zones in a completely globalised world.
www.ased.org /artman/publish/printer_308.shtml   (2379 words)

  
 Oskar Lafontaine Biography / Biography of Oskar Lafontaine Biography Biography
The German politician Oskar Lafontaine (born 1943) was prime minister of the West German Land of Saar and the unsuccessful Social Democratic Party (SPD) candidate for chancellor in 1990.
Lafontaine reached political maturity in the era of the SPD's history that was dominated by Willy Brandt.
Lafontaine was born on September 16, 1943, in Saarlouis, a regional center in the Saar.
www.bookrags.com /biography-oskar-lafontaine/index.html   (233 words)

  
 The resignation of German Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine--the end of Bad Godesberg
Oskar Lafontaine, the chairman of the SPD and finance minister in the government of Gerhard Schröder, abruptly resigned from both posts last Thursday and also relinquished his mandate as a parliamentary deputy.
Within the space of a few weeks Lafontaine's claim that it is possible to ameliorate the affects of globalisation with economic policies drawn from the sixties and seventies have proved to be a chimera.
Lafontaine placed the very same words at the end of his letter of resignation, writing: "I wish you success in your future work for Freedom, Justice, Solidarity." But his own resignation is the proof that such principles are no longer compatible with the methods of the SPD under conditions of globalisation.
www.wsws.org /articles/1999/mar1999/lafo-m17.shtml   (1479 words)

  
 Germany: What is Oskar Lafontaine up to?   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
Oskar Lafontaine, the prominent SPD (Social Democratic Party) leader who five years ago resigned as finance minister in the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, launched a media offensive last week.
Lafontaine’s history, his political conceptions, and his conduct demonstrate that his real aims are quite different from his rhetoric.
Lafontaine is a vehement and outspoken opponent of such a socialist perspective.
www.wsws.org /articles/2004/aug2004/lafo-a16.shtml   (1817 words)

  
 'Red Oskar' seeks the Left's revenge - (United Press International)   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
Oskar Lafontaine, a former candidate for the Chancellorship and party chairman who became known to the British tabloid press as 'Red Oskar' had floated a plan for a tactical alliance with the ex-Communist Party for Democratic Socialism (PDS) based in the former East Germany, to rob Schroeder of left-wing votes.
Lafontaine Tuesday told German public television ARD that he would leave the Social Democrats (SPD), his political home for 39 years, because of his opposition to Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's "anti-socialist" reform policies.
Lafontaine resigned from his posts as finance minister and party chairman in 1999 after a long and bruising rivalry with the centrist Chancellor Schroeder.
washingtontimes.com /upi-breaking/20050525-055802-8849r.htm   (1000 words)

  
 New Statesman: The German who worries new Labour - German Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
The "new" reason is ideological; it sees Lafontaine as a man whose enthusiasms for general reflation and "tax and spend" policies are largely untouched by the Third Way debate.
Further, Lafontaine was instrumental in forcing the resignation of Jost Stollmann, the businessman whom Schroder had asked to be his economics minister.
Strauss-Kahn, speaking to mark the CEPR's 15th anniversary, noted that he and Lafontaine had launched a joint paper on reforming the International Monetary Fund which called for the Euro X group to elect a president and vice-president - one of whom would always be from France, Germany or Italy.
www.findarticles.com /p/articles/mi_m0FQP/is_4411_127/ai_53290576   (1039 words)

  
 'Red Oskar' launches plan to bring down Schröder
Oskar Lafontaine could hardly have picked a more politically correct venue from which to launch a personal campaign to topple Chancellor Gerhard Schröder from power in Germany's forthcoming general election.
By the summer of 1997, Mr Lafontaine and Mr Schröder appeared committed to a future of personal and political friendship and when the Social Democrats swept to power in Germany's 1998 election, Mr Lafontaine was given the job of Finance Minister.
Mr Lafontaine is reputed to have been reduced to tears on realising the futility of his efforts to impose his brand of 70s left-wing economics and politics on a government that at the time was trying to copy Tony Blair's New Labour.
www.ezilon.com /information/article_5737.shtml   (1100 words)

  
 [news] European press review   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
In Germany, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung believes that Oskar Lafontaine, the former finance minister and former leader of the Social Democrats, put his foot in it when he threatened on Sunday to help form a breakaway leftist party if Chancellor Schroeder's government continues with benefit cuts which have led to protests across Germany.
Mr Lafontaine's "patronising ultimatum to the SPD was nothing of the kind," the paper says, "because Oskar Lafontaine also knows that the chancellor would rather lose office than visibly change the direction of his social reforms".
Looking at the situation from further afield, the Spanish El Pais accuses Oskar Lafontaine of "disloyalty to a political project" as well as "intellectual frivolity" for, as the paper puts it, "suggesting a leftward split" and "according respectability to parties which remain attached to a totalitarian tradition in eastern Germany".
www.mail-archive.com /news@antic.org/msg06403.html   (991 words)

  
 Lafontaine, Oskar on Encyclopedia.com   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
Returned to parliament, he became (1998) finance minister in the government of Gerhard Schröder, but clashes over policy caused him to resign the ministry, his SPD leadership, and his parliamentary seat in Mar., 1999.
New tricks from an old dogma; The rapid rise of Oskar Lafontaine is a story of planning and waiting, says Dennis Ellam.
"Manifestation du lundi", le 30 août à Leipzig, en présence d'Oskar Lafontaine, ex-président du SPD Quelque 818.000 électe.
www.encyclopedia.com /html/L/LafontaO1.asp   (497 words)

  
 Project Syndicate   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
Lafontaine is bright, a schemer, and winner in Germany's struggle for domestic political mastery.
Lafontaine's agenda is a move backwards, as if the Continent's tentative moves on the road to a competitive market economy, beyond the welfare state, have reached a cul de sac for Europe.
Lafontaine now has claimed center stage and the first act of his drama may well be impressive simply because Europe is dying to have some growth.
www.project-syndicate.org /article_print_text?mid=188&lang=1   (900 words)

  
 Oskar Lafontaine - Speakers Biography - Celebrity Speakers International Limited   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
Former Prime Minister of Saarland & Federal Minister of Finance a.D. Oskar Lafontaine, born in 1943 and educated at the universities of Bonn and Saarbrücken, joined the SPD (Social Democratic Party) in 1966.
In June 1987 he was elected Deputy Chairman of the SPD and led the Commission "Fortschritt ‘90", which developed the party programme for the elections in 1990.
From May 1995 until January 1996 Oskar Lafontaine became Chairman of the Mediation Committee of the Federal Council (Upper House) and the ‘Bundestag’ (Lower House).
www.speakers.co.uk /Retro/5233.htm   (366 words)

  
 German Government: The Chancellor's Shadow   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
The indisputable protagonist of the coalition-negotiations was not the new chancellor, but SPD leader, Oskar Lafontaine who rejected all requests for more incisive changes proposed by Schröder's radical reformers and the more liberal Greens.
Lafontaine's conflict already in course with the Bundesbank could be only a prelude to another one with Chancellor Schröder.
The indisputable protagonist of the coalition negotiations, besides Schröder and the Green leader, Joschka Fischer, was Oskar Lafontaine, who entered the cabinet as finance minister.
www.suite101.com /article.cfm/european_politics/12773   (500 words)

  
 Put ethics before corporate sponsorship - Tess Kingham MP   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
‘Red Oskar’ was not out of tune with the rank and file of the party he led successfully from 1995 until his resignation last week.
Schroder and other modernisers in the leadership may have been at loggerheads with their finance minister from the outset, but the SPD is a party which remains ‘unreformed’.
He did not share the SPD modernisers’ desire for a Grand Coalition with the Christian Democrats, which was only scuppered because of the scale of the latter’s defeat in the general elections last autumn.
www.poptel.org.uk /scgn/articles/9904/page8c.html   (698 words)

  
 Front Page / The Irish Times on the Web / ireland.com   (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-07)
Mr Lafontaine gave no explanation for his decision to resign, but it follows reports of a bruising clash with the Chancellor, Mr Gerhard Schröder, over the direction of economic policy.
Mr Lafontaine, who also stepped down as chairman of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), left Bonn for his home in Saarbrücken before his resignation was announced in a terse official statement.
Mr Lafontaine's sudden resignation came a day after Mr Schröder berated ministers for their poor performance during a cabinet meeting and warned the finance minister his policies were damaging the German economy.
www.ireland.com /newspaper/front/1999/0312/fro1.htm   (629 words)

  
 CNN - German Finance Minister Lafontaine resigns unexpectedly - March 11, 1999
Lafontaine also stepped down as chairman of the Social Democratic Party, which swept to power in elections in September in coalition with the Greens Party.
That warning was clearly also addressed at Lafontaine, who has been widely criticized -- also outside Germany -- for his policies and the impact on the European Union's single currency, the euro.
Lafontaine, for instance, had proposed heavy new taxes on nuclear utilities -- a move that prompted strong criticism from Germany's nuclear lobby as well as Schroeder, who called it a "strategic error."
www.cnn.com /WORLD/europe/9903/11/germany.01   (239 words)

  
 TIME INTERNATIONAL: The Minister's Heresy --PAGE 1-- November 16, 1998
The outcome of that long night, which saw Duisenberg allegedly agreeing to retire early to make room for a French successor, was condemned in Germany as a dangerous departure from the model of a wholly independent Bundesbank.
Against that background, the shrill conflict between Germany's new Social Democrat Finance Minister, Oskar Lafontaine, and Frankfurt central bankers at both the E.C.B. and the Bundesbank has an air of irony, even heresy, about it.
Lafontaine made the point last Thursday to Bundesbank president Hans Tietmeyer, who will retire next August--making way, Lafontaine hopes, for a less austere successor.
time.com /time/magazine/1998/int/981116/business.euro_watch.the16a.html   (579 words)

  
 BBC News | Europe | Resignation rocks German Government
Mr Lafontaine wrote his resignation in a three-line letter which simply thanked the SPD's membership for their "trust and friendly co-operation".
Green MP Frieder Otto-Wolff said he was shocked and surprised as Mr Lafontaine had been one of the fathers of the red-green coalition.
Mr Lafontaine was branded "the most dangerous man in Europe" by one British newspaper when he outraged UK eurosceptics by suggesting that the country should lose its power to decide its own tax rates.
news.bbc.co.uk /hi/english/world/europe/newsid_295000/295096.stm   (662 words)

  
 Lafontaine savages SPD under Schroeder
Lafontaine for the first makes public in his book, whose excerpts continued to be published Thursday by the Bonn daily Die Welt that the NATO aggression on FR Yugoslavia was also one of the reasons he decided on March 11 to tender his resignation on all political functions.
Lafontaine was at the time also finance minister in the government of Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder.
Lafontaine called it the typical zeal of turncoats — of people who once were fervent pacifists, and now are even more fervent advocates of war.
www.agitprop.org.au /stopnato/19991008spd.htm   (265 words)

  
 March 17
Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder replaces Lafontaine as chair of the SPD, though he "has never been as warmly embraced by the party rank-and-file as Mr Lafontaine," not to speak of the Greens.
Lafontaine was an "unreconstructed Keynesian," the FT observes, an "old-style taxer and spender" -- not a "new-style" borrower and spender of the preferred Reaganite variety.
Lafontaine who could muster discipline on that level" -- Times-speak for the observation of the Financial Times that Lafontaine is "warmly embraced by the [SPD] rank-and-file," unlike Schroeder, and is of course far more popular among the coalition partner of the SPD, the Greens.
www.zmag.org /chomsky/articles/9903-oskar.htm   (883 words)

  
 BBC News | Europe | Oskar Lafontaine: Power behind the throne?
When Chancellor-to-be Gerhard Schröder and Finance Minister-elect Oskar Lafontaine stood in turn before a Social Democratic Party gathering at the weekend to deny reports of rivalry, they were rewarded with long applause from the party faithful.
Until Mr Lafontaine stepped aside as candidate this time round, he and Mr Schröder were reputed to be bitter rivals.
But it could be precisely the presence of "Red Oskar" in the Finance Ministry that exacerbates the tensions between himself and the more economically conservative chancellor, especially since Germany faces key decisions on financial policy as the European Central Bank and the Euro establish themselves.
news.bbc.co.uk /hi/english/world/europe/newsid_201000/201843.stm   (669 words)

  
 CNN.com - Analysis: The new 'Left Party' in Germany - Jul 21, 2005
Similarly in the East German state of Brandenburg, Karl Ness, head of the local SPD party called Lafontaine "a preacher of hatred," and said that the new left party was nothing but an extension of Lafontaine's ego.
Oskar Lafontaine, too, has had his share of farewell parties and comebacks.
While Germany prepares for elections, the impact of Lafontaine and Gysi and their new "Left Party" is likely to have more impact on Germany's political direction than either of the two main parties would like to admit.
cnn.com /rssclick/2005/WORLD/europe/07/21/germany.cooke/?...   (661 words)

  
 11/23/98 GERMANY'S LAFONTAINE TALKS, BUSINESS TREMBLES (int'l edition)
The very same day, the chief aide to Finance Minister Oskar Lafontaine had issued a stern warning: If Europe's central banks don't cut interest rates to spur economic growth, he warned, governments might open the spending spigots--even if that means relaxing the rules for monetary union.
Lafontaine's aim is to move economic policy in Germany and the rest of Europe considerably toward the Keynesian left.
Lafontaine and Strauss-Kahn are worried that the euro will be born too strong, potentially killing export growth.
www.businessweek.com /1998/47/b3605179.htm   (1052 words)

  
 Germany's Lafontaine quits; bonds surge - Mar. 11, 1999
LONDON (CNNfn) - Controversial German finance minister Oskar Lafontaine resigned late Thursday, in a move that sent shockwaves throughout Europe.
     "Lafontaine was seen as the arch-exponent of the hard left in Germany," said Holger Schmieding, an economist with Merrill Lynch in London.
The greater power given to Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, once a rival with Lafontaine for the leadership of the SPD party, "will be seen as good for business," added Schmieding.
money.cnn.com /1999/03/11/europe/lafontaine   (381 words)

  
 Schroder exerts control in Germany - Mar. 12, 1999
LONDON (CNNfn) - German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has moved swiftly to stamp his authority on the ruling SDP party and is set to nominate a relatively unknown regional leader to replace Oskar Lafontaine as finance minister, according to party sources.
ECB president Wim Duisenberg had been determined not to bow to Lafontaine's intense lobbying for a cut as he seeks to establish the bank's credibility as an independent force.
     Lafontaine's calls for international currency bands are also likely to disappear with him and pave the way for a period of improved unity within the European Union's council of finance ministers, which is also due to meet next week to discuss EU budget reform.
money.cnn.com /1999/03/12/europe/eichel   (525 words)

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