EADS-BAE SSA OK?

September 24, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: BEA, Defense Industry, EADS, EU, France, Germany, Mergers, Military, Military Industrial Complex, UK, USA, Weapons Leave a comment

BAE Systems has warned it will walk away from its proposed €35bn tie-up with EADS if the deal waters down its special relationship with the Pentagon.

This SSA, specifies that BAE’s senior leadership in the US is made up of Americans, among other things, and has allowed the UK’s biggest defence company to work on many lucrative US national security projects.

“The [US] military would rather have a BAE than a combined BAE-EADS. BAE has been very successful in managing its US relationship. EADS is not in the same bucket, and a combined EADS-BAE is going to be treated a lot more like EADS than BAE.”

Oompah, Oompah, $12.30, Please

September 23, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, High Art, Higher Education, Home Cooking Tags: Beer, Berlin, Drinking, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Munich, Oktoberfest, Partying, Rituals, Satire, Tradition 2 Comments

€9.50 ($12.30) for an Oktoberfest beer? And that in September?

Damn that must be good brew.

Before long, even the most hard-bitten cynics can’t help but climb up on a bench (dancing on tables is frowned upon) and belt out the lyrics of newly learned folk song.

Egalitarian German Society Does It Better

September 18, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Equality, Fairness, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Rich and Poor, Satire, Society, Wealth, Wealth Distribution Leave a comment

Or wasn’t that the impression you always got? It’s certainly the one you’re supposed to get.

Take wealth distribution, for instance: The gap between the rich and poor continues to grow in Germany. A report commissioned by the German government on poverty and wealth indicates that private net assets have risen sharply and are up to €1.4 trillion ($1.83 trillion), with the upper 10 percent of German households possesing more than half of the country’s wealth.

Crisis? What crisis? Boy I tell you, it’s a damned good thing that Germans are always there ready to pass on their valuable wealth distribution advice to us (as U.S.). I mean, it’s not like they’re ever going to need it or anything.

So asozial ist Deutschland.

What Are 20,000 Jobs?

September 17, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Coal-Burning Power Plants, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Ideology, Nuclear energy, Renewable energy, Satire, Solar energy, The Green Shirts, Wind Energy 1 Comment

If they are being offered for the sake of Germany’s beloved Energiewende (energy turnaround), I mean (and if you’re not one of the 20,000, of course)?

There is a certain logic here. I think. First you phase out German nuclear power plants because of the Fukushima disaster in Japan (I still haven’t figured out this part yet), then you phase out thousands of Japanese jobs due to the loses incurred by the energy companies due to this hasty (as in immediate) phase-out.

Oops, sorry. I just took a closer look at the article. Those are German jobs that are about to be phased-out, of course. Duh. Look folks, I’m not a German energy turnaround expert here you know. Forgive me for the confusion. Technically, it’s not even mine. I’m just trying to pass it on as best I can.

Branche verliert durch Atomausstieg Geld – Eine Reihe von Studien hatte in früheren Jahren bereist festgestellt, dass der Netto-Effekt der Ökostrom-Subventionen auf dem Arbeitsmarkt bestenfalls Null ist.

Berlin Air Show To Be Held At Creepy Unfinished Ghost Airport

September 10, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hysteria Tags: Air Shows, Airbus, Aircraft, Airports, Berlin, Boeing, German, Germans, Germany, Ghosts, Government spending, Haunted Airports, Humor, ILA, Planning, Projects, Satire 2 Comments

In a move meant to liven up the world’s oldest and perhaps stodgiest air and space trade fair, organizers of Germany’s ILA have decided to hold this year’s show on the grounds of Berlin’s infamous haunted Berlin-Brandenburg Ghost Airport.

Local legend has it that the abandoned ghost airport, originally planned to actually be completed one day and used as a real airport with real airplanes and passangers and the whole bit, fell under the curse of a group of disgruntled Brandenburg witches protesting potential Fluglärm (fly-over noise) and can never be completed until Berlin’s city government presents its first balanced budget or hell freezes over, whichever comes first.

A spotless new runway, so far unused for commercial flights, will finally feel the burn of rubber.

Well Banks Are Bad, Aren’t They?

September 9, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Heconomy, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Bad Banks, Banking, Berlin, Debt, ECB, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Merkel, Satire, The Debt Crisis, The Euro Crisis Leave a comment

So what’s the big deal? Now all of ze Europe officially has a bad bank, too.

It’s called the ECB and is the “bad bank for all the junk debt of Europe.”

“Blank cheque for the indebted states,” was the headline of the top-selling Bild newspaper, a harsh, populist critic of the bailouts for Greece and other struggling euro zone nations, adding that the ECB move could render the euro “kaput”.

“Financial markets cheer the death of the Bundesbank.”

Germans Just Love The ECB’s New Bond-Buying Program

September 7, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Hate, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Angst, Berlin, Debt, Fear, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Polls, Satire, Spending, Surveys, The Euro Crisis, The Euro Zone, Waste Leave a comment

Not.

Which brings us to our next topic: The latest greatest German angst survey. A new study by R+V Versicherung (insurance) has just found out what Germans loved to be scared of most these days: The climbing cost of living (63 percent of those asked).

Außer den “Standard-Ängsten”, die die R+V Versicherung seit zwanzig Jahren bei 2500 Deutschen abfragt, stehen alljährlich auch aktuelle Themen zur Debatte.

German Teflon

September 5, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, High Art, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: Airports, BER, Berlin, Corruption, German, Germans, Germany, Government spending, Humor, Planning, Political Parties, Projects, Satire, SPD, Waste Leave a comment

Or Berlin Teflon, if you prefer. Whatever you want to call it, it’s way more teflony or teflonodelic than other kinds of Teflon out there.

Just ask Berlin’s mayor Klaus Wowereit (SPD) after the opening of the city’s new airport has been postponed yet again (no joke) and now won’t be ready nearly two full years later than planned. It’s his baby, you see.

“Not to mince words, Klaus Wowereit can pack his bags as Berlin mayor. Anyone who recklessly gambles with the future of a whole region, wasting hundreds of millions of euros (…) and covers up instead of looking into mistakes is not qualified to be managing a metropolis. Wowereit is not the only one who has failed in relation to the BER project, but he is the main culprit. People are not going to forget that. No matter what he does, his time is up.”

But what do you think will happen, meine Damen und Herren? Not a damned thing. This is Germany. And worse still, some politicians are just never held accountable for what they do, no matter what what they do, or don’t. But not just here. I know of this one guy from another country, for instance (the president of the something or the other) who could get caught robbing a 7-Eleven at gunpoint and nobody would care. It just ain’t right, I tell ya. But it’s da way of da woild.

German commentators are outraged over the postponement, with one (the key word here is one) calling on Berlin Mayor Klaus Wowereit to resign.

German Wind Offensive More Offensive Than The Rest Of Us Thought It Was

September 4, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Green energy, Humor, Ideology, Renewable energy, Satire, Solar energy, The Green Shirts, Wind Energy 1 Comment

Well that didn’t take very long. Now it’s “Germany’s offshore fiasco.”

Germany wants to pepper its northern seas with offshore wind turbines as part of its ambitious energy revolution. But strict laws, technology problems and multiple delays are turning the massive enterprise into an expensive fiasco. Investors and the public are losing patience.

The Latest Radical New Concept

September 2, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Justice, Law, Satire, Tax Collectors, Tax evasion, Taxation Leave a comment

After years of deliberation, the German Justice Department has finally decided to take a bold leap into uncharted legal waters and official declare that theft should be punishible. OK, in this case it’s “data theft.”

Wow. Talk about a great leap forward for German Gerechtigkeit (justice) or something. The background: Like junkies in need of their next fix, German tax officials (usually from SPD led state governments) have been regularly purchasing stolen goods in recent months; data CDs containing lists of German tax evaders with Swiss bank accounts. Needless to say, the SPD & Co. are unhappy about this rather belated juristic revelation.

Is this the beginning of the end of the means justifying the end? Or was it vice versa?

“Datendiebstahl soll strafbar sein.”

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Heconomy