Robert Borosage explained Germany's economic model as did Robert Kuttner on CNN yesterday. If Newt Gingrich actually believes that's a model for good government he might want to inform his fellow Republicans and ask them to quit trashing unions at every turn and doing everything in their power to bust them.

He might also want to ask them to do something about our trade deficits, outsourcing and our tax codes which reward businesses for shipping jobs overseas. I'm not holding my breath.

Transcript via Clips and Comments below the fold.

GINGRICH: Now, as all of you know who have been here when I have been at CPAC over the years I almost always start by going back to the very 2nd CPAC, 1975, at a time when the republican and conservative prospects seemed at their very bottom, when the country seemed to have lost its way and when Governor Ronald Reagan, recently out of office, came here and said that we have to have bold colors, not pale pastels.

And he laid out a policy which, in a very short time, defeated the soviet empire, re-launched the American economy and rebuilt American civic pride and American exceptionalism.

20 years after that, I came to CPAC as the first Republican speaker in 40 years and I outlined a series of very bold ideas: welfare reform so people would go to work and school instead of being dependent on the government, a balanced budget, tax cuts for the first time in 16 years to stimulate economic growth, strengthening our intelligence capacity against terrorism… now I’m back. Here we are 16 years later and what’s happened? Well, just two stories from yesterday: the Germans are buying the New York Stock Exchange, and in fact the German exchange is bigger than the New York Stock Exchange so they will have 60% control of the exchange.

This marks a major decline of New York as a center of world finance; it is a fundamental blow to our capacity to lead the world and to create jobs and in fact what’s truly astonishing is that the German government, that Germany as a country, pays 50% more for manufacturing than we do. You earn more money in Germany and they have the lowest unemployment rate since 1992. So it’s not always cheap labor- sometimes it’s just terribly bad government. Let’s look at the case: the German government is pro jobs, the German government is pro manufacturing, the German government is pro worker training, the German government is pro exports. And now let’s look at the Obama government.

Why are we falling behind? Why is the New York Stock Exchange taken over by Frankfurt? Why are we in a mess? Why do we have over 9% unemployment? Well, the Obama administration is anti-jobs, anti-small business, anti-manufacturing, pro-trial lawyer, pro-bureaucrat, pro-deficit spending and pro-high taxes…What do you think is going to happen? My favorite political governing slogan for the next 20 years is 2+2=4. Simple, basic, honest facts. if you want to kill jobs you can and Democrats prove it all the time.