Never has the popularity of a newly elected German government fallen so far, so fast.
Just two months after a re-election victory, Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats have angered voters by admitting the economy is worse off than they previously said and by responding with tax hikes.
"Chancellor Schroeder in crisis of confidence," read the top headline in this weekend's Sueddeutsche Zeitung newspaper.
The mood could worsen still. On Sunday night, the coalition of the SPD and Greens discussed the ailing 2002-03 budgets before presenting new tax and spending plans today.
Critics say Berlin has failed to use the bleak economic outlook to introduce tough reforms to the German model of high taxes to fund wide state benefits. They say the model risks becoming uncompetitive, with ever worse consequences.
"Neither the government nor opposition wants to speak the truth, which is that cuts are needed," one German official who once worked with an international bank said privately this weekend. "That's because it would hurt before it gets better."
Polls suggest Schroeder's charms are wearing increasingly thin for many Germans. A Forsa poll released recently found just 30 per cent of 2,507 Germans well disposed to the Social Democrats, compared to 48 per cent for conservatives.
"Gerhard Schroeder has lost something important: his feeling for the people," the Tagespiegel newspaper wrote in its lead Sunday editorial.
A song mocking Schroeder's broken election promises has quickly become a hit. Der Spiegel magazine portrayed Schroeder in its edition out on Sunday as a Soviet-style worker hoisting a huge red flag. One German lawyer has even gone as far as to sue Schroeder for lying in the campaign to win votes.
Record floods hit eastern Germany in August, allowing Schroeder to deflect attention from the economy. Schroeder's strong stance against a possible US-led war against Iraq further fuelled his come-from-behind win.
Angry conservatives, who failed to rally voters on the issue of the economy in the campaign, say Germany was fooled. They now ask: what did the government know about the shabby state of its finances and when did it know it?.
The man who had hoped to take over finances if conservatives won the September 22 election says Finance Minister Hans Eichel covered up the true state of the economy before the vote.
"Eichel was informed in detail about the catastrophic development in public finances by at least the early summer," Friedrich Merz, the shadow finance minister in the campaign, told the Welt am Sonntag newspaper published on Sunday.
"Eichel knowingly lied to the public for weeks and months before the election," said Merz. "Everyone may now openly call him a liar."
Before the September vote Schroeder promised not to raise taxes but has since upped levies on goods ranging from energy to flowers. On Friday, parliament approved a government-backed plan to make employers pay more for workers' pensions; some firms say they will now have to fire workers to cut costs.
The chancellor says worsening conditions discovered after the election forced the tax increases and spending cuts.
Schroeder's campaign manager, now leader of the Social Democrats in parliament, denied that the government was untruthful about its finances.
"We know that in May and June the economic institutes and advisers had far better figures for the second half of the year than they now have," Franz Muentefering told ARD television.
"Unfortunately over the past months we had determined that it is far worse than one had hoped and could hope. And so we have revised the numbers as fast as possible."