And there was a long thread on PARF discussing that article with mostly approving comments.
http://forums.pelicanparts.com/off-topic-politics-religion/1043475-merkel-admits-german-multiculturalism-has-utterly-failed.html
As for MMT, my views on that are evolving and I'm not sure they've crystalized enough to articulate them fully. I think that my opinion is that MMT is not as wrong as I originally thought but that it misses the point. Governments can print as much money print as long as they want until they can't. As long as there is confidence in the economy, printing money will not have an effect.
We used to think that big trade deficits and budget deficits starved the economy of capital and depressed business activity. The poster child for that argument was the sclerosis of Europe in the 1970s, and especially Great Britain. Once they got their taxing and spending policies in order, their financial markets stabilized, manufacturing recovered and their Balance of Payments evened out. It seemed at the time that balancing the budget stabilized the currency which lead to economic growth. That correlation was taken as causation and taught as gospel to young undergraduates of the time, including products of the great University of Wisconsin System.
In retrospect, I think we got it backward. When Thatcher privatized government-owned industries, slashed regulations and gutted the trade unions, she restored the economy to functionality, which lead to broad confidence. As a result, the currency appreciated, which helped the BOP, revived manufacturing and boosted exports, which helped the government gets its spending under control and the budget came back in line. Confidence in the government and economy lead to a stronger currency and balanced budget, not the other way around.
Europe followed Britain's lead and slashed regulations, privatized state-owned industries and got the trade unions to back off far enough to end their stranglehold on the industry. As with Britain, their individual currencies strengthened, manufacturing recovered, and eventually they were able to form the Eurozone, which now equals the US, after almost 50 years' post-war in which all of Europe's economy was between 25% and 50% the size of the US.
At the same time, governments are running huge budget deficits, but capital has not been starved, not in the US, not in Europe. Where capital is starved, it is in areas where there is political instability, which often times correlates with poor fiscal policy, but it is now apparent that it is the political instability that causes the poor monetary and fiscal situation, not the bad fiscal and monetary policy that leads to political instability.
So, after all that rambling, I guess I would say that MMT gets the easy part of the equation right (free money!) but it still misses out on understanding the dynamics that allow loose monetary policy and profligate spending, until the dynamics change.
re is confidence in their economy. The amount printed doesn't affect the soundness of the economy, so to that extent I think MMT is on the right track.