Germany: Merkel hosts experts at economic summit

German Chancellor Angela Merkel conferred with government ministers, business executives and labor leaders Sunday for talks she hoped would help chart a course through the financial crisis for the EU's biggest economy.

Merkel told reporters before the summit began at her offices in Berlin that she would press for "collective accountability" on any new plan her government might employ to avoid economic catastrophe in 2009.

"We, as the government, cannot shore up the economy alone," Merkel said.

She reiterated that any new plan would come only after a meeting Jan. 5 of the two parties that make up her coalition government.

Any action agreed to by the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats, which share seats in her Cabinet, would also need approval in parliament.

Merkel's critics at home and abroad say her response to the economic crisis has been far too cautious.

Paul Krugman, an American university professor and columnist who accepted the Nobel prize in economics Wednesday, joined that list of detractors this weekend in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel magazine.

"They are misjudging the severity of the economic crisis and wasting valuable time," Spiegel quoted Krugman as saying of Merkel and Finance Minister Peer Steinbrueck.

Merkel and her representatives have defended the government's existing stimulus package, which is expected to cost euro23 billion ($31 billion) and trigger investments of up to euro50 billion, as one of the strongest in the European Union.

The list of 32 participants scheduled to attend Merkel's summit Sunday included leading German economists and labor representatives as well as chief executives such as Josef Ackermann of Deutsche Bank and Peter Loescher of Siemens.

The German finance and economy ministers attended, as did Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is also Merkel's vice chancellor and the Social Democrat's candidate to challenge her for chancellor in federal elections next September.

"Every euro that we give out must be given out sensibly," Steinmeier said before the summit.

Merkel said it was the first in a series of meetings. She also plans to meet this week with governors from Germany's 16 states.