Category: Germany

The Economy: How Bad Does It Suck?

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The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 236.17 points Wednesday, closing at 11,257.5. Since Nov. 11, the Dow has lost 896.13 points (7.4%), and the forecast is ominous:

Stocks suffered a sixth straight day of losses on Wednesday as frustration over the euro zone’s debt crisis, coupled with weak Chinese factory data, further dented investor sentiment.
A weak German bond sale sparked fears the debt crisis was even beginning to threaten Berlin, with the leaders of France and Germany still at odds over a longer-term structural solution.
The poor demand for German government bonds showed that investors viewed investing in the euro zone as being too risky.

Here’s a cheerful headline:

“Disastrous” bond sale shakes
confidence in Germany

Megan McArdle explains at the Atlantic:

A year ago, Germany and France could probably have saved the euro–at least for a time–by stepping in to guarantee all the debts of the peripheral euro zone nations. To be sure, this would have created quite a lot of other problems, but it would have saved their banks and their currency union.
However, a year ago, governments were nowhere near ready to take such drastic action: the French and German governments didn’t want to put their credit rating behind Greek profligacy, and their voters wouldn’t have stood for it if they’d tried.
At this point, however, with the panic in full flight, it’s not entirely clear to me that even a 100% guarantee would staunch the bleeding for more than a short time. Do the Germans really have enough to guarantee the debts of most of the rest of the euro zone?

After two “recovery summers,” it’s all gloom and doom this fall:

Dexia Bailout On Verge Of Collapse, Threatens
To Take France AAA Rating Down With It

Euro on ‘Death Watch’ After
Investors Spurn German Bonds

Sarkozy: Europe’s “Liquidity Run” Has Begun
Because There Is An Unsolvable $30 Trillion Problem

So: Stocks suck and bonds look shaky. Which means . . . gold?

Gold and silver futures declined for the second time in three days as the dollar’s rally muted demand for precious metals as an alternative investment.

Wait — what?

Gold fell further on Thursday as declines in equities blamed on the euro zone crisis prompted investors to sell bullion to cover losses, while a firmer U.S. dollar also put pressure on prices. 

In other words, the economy sucks so bad right now, rich people are being forced to sell gold in order to make up for money they’re losing in every other area of investment. But perhaps there are financial opportunities in international catastrophe.

Egypt Slips Deeper Into Crisis on Sixth Day of Protests
—

Unrest stirs fears inside Israel
—

Kuwait arrests activists for storming parliament  
—

MILITIA GROUPS RUN WILD IN LIBYA

Investing in oil futures might work, but maybe it’s time to panic?

Survival Shop Reports Jump
In Sales To People Preparing
For “Possible Collapse”

Let’s face it, folks: The economy sucks real bad, and it’s only going to get worse. And you know what that means? It’s time for you to start shopping our Amazon’s “Black Friday Deals Week” specials: Great savings for you, commissions for me, and that way we’ll have enough money to stock up on freeze-dried food, Coleman lantern fuel and ammunition. Lots and lots of ammunition.

Kinder, Küche, Kirche

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Perhaps I should leave this one to Smitty — Frau Smitty ist Deutsch — but our gallant hero is probably too busy saving the world from Taliban terrorists to notice that the New York Times has decided that Germany is insufficiently feminist:

[W]hen it comes to empowering women, no Teutonic drive or deference seems to work — even under one of the world’s most powerful women, Chancellor Angela Merkel.
Many leaders in business and politics profess to want to employ and promote women. But a decade of earnest vows from the corporate sector has not dented male-dominated Deutschland AG.
“Germany is good at structural reforms, but not at cultural reforms,” said Thomas Sattelberger, human resource chief at Deutsche Telekom, which in spring 2010 stunned fellow members of the DAX 30 index by announcing a voluntary goal of 30 percent female managers by 2015.
“There is a very traditional image of women and men that was taken to an extreme in the Third Reich: female mother cult and male fraternity. These mental stereotypes have not yet been culturally processed and purged.”
Alice Schwarzer, founder of the magazine Emma and perhaps Germany’s best-known feminist, likens this mindset to “a leaden blanket across all of German society.”
Despite a battery of government measures — some introduced in the past year or so — and ever more passionate debate about gender roles, only about 14 percent of German mothers with one child resume full-time work, and only 6 percent of those with two. All 30 DAX companies are run by men. Nationwide, a single woman presides on a supervisory board: Simone Bagel-Trah at Henkel. . . .

Read the whole deranged thing. Germany has suffered much in the past century having been defeated in two world wars, and then divided by the Iron Curtain. Politically correct feminist nonsense, however, may be too much even for the most stout-hearted Germans to withstand.

Germany Thwarts Terror Plot

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Eric Dondero at Libertarian Republican reports:

Early Friday morning Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA)in Dusseldorf and Bochum arrested three young men who had allegedly planned an attack with homemade bombs. They are attributed to the terrorist organization al-Qaida.
An attack had been imminent…

CNN has more. Speaking of Germany and the Religion of Peace™, you will recall the video of the courageous woman who stood up to Islamic radicals in Frankfurt. It has been revealed that her name is Heidi, she is a Christian, and she has been interviewed by a German blog:

Hatred is the wrong answer in any case. . . . We have to go back to our Judeo-Christian roots, which are a blessing for our country to this day.
We not only had two world wars. Germany is the land of poets and thinkers. It is the land of the Reformation. Here was the Bible of Marin Luther translated into German. Then the printing press was built. Many inventions, progress were caused by our people. We should remember this is important. I love my country. I love Germany. . . .
I know that we need to have a spiritual as well as a political response to Islam. The Christians in Germany and Europe need to wake up!

That’s a rough computer-assisted translation from the original German.

STUNNING VIDEO: German Woman Confronts Radical Muslims: ‘Never Again! I Am Ashamed! … Rise Up, Germany!’

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Eric Dondero obtained and translated this video from Frankfurt, Germany, in which a woman encountered a group of Muslim men who were evidently engaged in hateful anti-Jewish rhetoric. She decided she had to speak out:

“Never again! Never again! I am ashamed that he is allowed to speak here. I feel ashamed! I am German, and I am so sorry that someone like him can stand here and speak like Hitler! I am so ashamed! Where is everybody? Why are people not standing up in this country of ours? Why are you all keeping your mouths shut? Do you want Germany to be like those countries from which they all came? Do you really want that? You have to speak out! . . . Germany, you have to rise! Rise up, Germany!”

Wow. Just freakin’ wow. This encounter apparently was connected to a Muslim rally in Frankfurt called “Islam, the Misunderstood Religion,” which was addressed by a Jamaican-Canadian imam who advocates sharia law, including the stoning of homosexuals. This video has also been posted at Atlas Shrugs, My Pet Jawa and Bare Naked Islam.

UPDATE: Linked at The Underground Conservative, Left Coast Rebel and Da Tech Guy — thanks!

Jews Attacked in Germany

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The Religion of Peace:

Arab youths threw stones at a Jewish dance group during a street festival in Hannover, injuring one dancer and forcing the group to cancel its performance, German police and dance officials said Thursday.
The teenagers also used a megaphone to shout anti-Semitic slurs during the attack Saturday, Hannover police spokesman Thorsten Schiewe said. . . .
Six suspects have been identified — five Arabic immigrants and one German — and police are looking for the other three, police said. . . .
Stephan Kramer of the Central Council of Jews in Germany condemned the attack.
“This latest incident shows something we have not experienced before: A growing radicalization of young Muslims, which affects not only the Jewish community but the entire German community,” Kramer told The Associated Press . . .

Via Jihad Watch.

Obama to Europe: ‘Double-Dip,’ Anyone?

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The headline is “Obama Urges Europe Not to Drop Stimulus Measures Yet,” but to understand what the president is actually trying to say, you have to read this New York Times story very carefully:

President Obama signaled on Friday that countries in Europe should not withdraw their extraordinary spending programs too quickly.
In a public letter to other leaders of the Group of 20 nations in advance of a summit in Toronto next week, Mr. Obama wrote, “Our highest priority in Toronto must be to safeguard and strengthen the recovery.” . . .
Mr. Obama also wrote, “We must be flexible in adjusting the pace of consolidation and learn from the consequential mistakes of the past when stimulus was too quickly withdrawn and resulted in renewed economic hardships and recession.” . . .
American officials are concerned that fiscal retrenchment by too many countries at once could imperil the global recovery.
Mr. Obama warned of the risks of a double-dip recession, which most economists consider unlikely but not impossible.
“In fact, should confidence in the strength of our recoveries diminish, we should be prepared to respond again as quickly and as forcefully as needed to avoid a slowdown in economic activity,” he wrote.

People who haven’t been paying close attention might not understand why Obama is saying all this. Obama, his advisers and the Democrats in general are firm believers in Keynesian economics, which prescribes deficit “stimulus” spending. But Germany isn’t buying that baloney. Bloomberg News explains:

While Obama endorsed restoring order to public finances in the “medium-term,” his focus on growth is at odds with that of German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s preference for budget cuts amid Europe’s debt crisis. Each strategy carries risks. Continued stimulus risks bondholder revolt over rising debt burdens, while spending cutbacks could tip the global economy back into recession.. . .
Merkel, the head of Europe’s largest economy, said June 11 she expects to have a “hard time” at the summit and that she will respond that “there is no alternative” to cutting the fiscal deficit.
Germany’s Cabinet this month backed budget cuts worth more than 80 billion euros through 2014, while French President Nicolas Sarkozy this week raised the retirement age and increased taxes.

Pay close attention to this part of the Bloomberg story:

Chinese officials said in Beijing today that they plan to use the Toronto talks to discuss responses to Europe’s sovereign debt turmoil while keeping the yuan’s value off the agenda. The yuan has been held at about 6.83 yuan to one U.S. dollar since mid-2008 to help protect China’s exporters, drawing threats of tariffs from among U.S. lawmakers.
Obama doesn’t mention China in the letter but maintains his position that China’s currency value should be determined by the market. “I also want to underscore that market-determined exchange rates are essential to global economic vitality,” he said.
Obama is facing domestic pressure from his own party to lean on China to raise the value of its currency. Lawmakers such as House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sander Levin and New York Senator Charles Schumer, both Democrats, say a weak currency gives Chinese exporters an unfair advantage over their U.S. competitors and costs U.S. jobs.
Levin said yesterday that the value must be increased by the end of the summit. After the G-20 meeting, “if China does not act and the administration does not respond promptly thereafter, the Congress will act,” Levin said yesterday at a hearing.

The Bloomberg reporter doesn’t connect the dots here, but mention of a potential “bondholder revolt” and this trade issue with China are in fact connected.

China owns a lot of U.S. debt, and there seems to be an implicit bargain here: China will keep funding Obama’s deficit spending spree, so long as the U.S. keeps its markets open to Chinese goods. Under pressure from U.S. labor unions, however, Schumer and Levin are starting to talk like Smoot and Hawley, which would undo that bargain.

So we’ve got high unemployment with mind-boggling deficits as far as the eye can see, and the whole thing could unravel if China ever gets tired of buying U.S. debt. 

Gold just hit $1,262 an ounce. Mere coincidence, I’m sure.