Sure, one has to be extremely careful when citing a sitting chancellor’s opinion that things are going well. But when Gerhard Schroeder opened today’s Bundestag debate by saying that “Germany is willing to change [economically], Germany is on the move” he is right.

It wasn’t his reform “Agenda 2010” in the sense that people think it contains the only possible measures to economically get this country back on track. They don’t know. And let’s face it, the government itself isn’t too sure about the specificities either.

What changed is the climate, the feeling that “this time, it’s for real”.

Suddenly, as I said about a month a ago, Germans seem to be willing to accept that the future is essentially unpredictable and that the governmentally created illusion that it were predictable was wrong all the time. Suddenly, the Jürgen Peters of this country are finding themselves on the wrong side of public opinion.

I don’t really know what caused the change in public opinion just now. But I am grateful that it finally did change.