German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s coalition partners cast doubt on any European Central Bank plan to buy government bonds, underscoring her domestic difficulty in winning support for new measures to quell the financial crisis. “I’m very, very skeptical,” Horst Seehofer, the Bavarian prime minister who heads the Christian Social Union, sister party to Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union and one of three coalition partners, said in an interview with ZDF television yesterday. “It’s not the job of the ECB to provide state aid.” Economy Minister Philipp Roesler, who heads the Free Democratic Party, said the ECB’s central ... (full story)