Editorials.

BUSINESS enterprises; TAXATION; MONETARY policy; SMALL business; PUBLIC finance

German business has responded to Oscar Lafontaine's departure as if it were a millennial event. Large firms had met his tax plans with open threats to move abroad. The bankers had rallied around Wim Duisenberg, the obsessive monetarist who is president of the new European Central Bank--professing pious horror at "political interference" with an arcane matter of no concern to the electorate, monetary management. He demanded that the European Central Bank reduce interest rates to generate investment, proposed to shift much of the German tax burden from employees and small businesses to the larger firms and invited the other nations to join in regulating international capital movements.