Former US President Barack Obama has discussed his friendship with German Chancellor Angela Merkel in a new memoir, in which he praises the leadership qualities of the “outstanding political leader.”

From one leader to another

The former President of the United States, Barack Obama, reserved nothing but kind words for Angela Merkel in his new memoir, A Promised Land. The ex-president applauds Merkel’s organisational skills and “strategic acumen” when outlining her political career, writing that she demonstrated these attributes over the course of her rise to the top of German politics.

While she initially regarded him with scepticism, which Obama suggests may have been due to his “exaggerated rhetoric”, the former leader of America writes that Merkel warmed to him over the years, calling her “reliable, honest, intellectually precise and friendly in a natural way.”

Obama even took to praising the German leader prior to the book's release, saying in an interview, “I think very much of Angela Merkel. She has been an outstanding political leader, not only for Germany but for Europe and the world."

Obama discusses German politics

Despite his resounding praise for Angela Merkel, Obama criticised Germany’s managing of Greece’s debt after the financial crash, with Merkel and then-Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble turning to reduce public borrowing and austerity.

Obama writes that Merkel and former French President Nicolas Sarkozy “rarely mentioned that German and French banks were some of Greece's biggest lenders, or that much of Greece's accumulated debt had been racked up buying German and French exports — facts that might have made clear to voters why saving the Greeks from default amounted to saving their own banks and industries."