With Germany's economy having stopped growing in the second quarter of this year, unemployment up for the last seven months in a row and the government's ratings slipping sharply, many Germans have begun to wonder whether their hitherto unstoppable chancellor might at last begin to falter as next year's general election approaches. Gerhard Schroder's mantra that he would use a "steady hand" to steer Germany through the gathering economic storms has begun to sound alarmingly like shorthand for doing nothing. Nearly two-thirds of Germans say they are unhappy with the government's performance.
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