Category Archives: Heconomy
Another Shocking New Revelation
“Germany is a nation of grumblers.”
Wow. And this guy should know. He’s a German himself.
I mean, I knew that they were a nation of moaners and whiners and that they liked to complain and gripe and lament a lot and that they regularly deplore things and eat their hearts out bemoaning matters while greiving and bitching and moaning (as opposed to just moaning without the bitching part), but I honesly had no idea that they were grumblers, too. Hey, live and learn.
“Anyone who follows all the daily debates in Germany that are critical of capitalism and growth could come to the conclusion that we Germans don’t want to be successful anymore.”
This Gives Hairenrasse A Whole New Meaning
Would you buy shampoo from this guy?
He’s big in Turkey, I guess.
“Why are you using woman’s shampoo if you’re not wearing a woman’s dress? Now there’s the hundred percent men’s shampoo Biomen. A real man uses Biomen.”
We’re Only Taxing You For Your Own Good
To protect the climate. And while we’re at it we’ll tax you Americans even more.
A “departure tax?” Then I’ll just stay here. Germany’s Air Transport Tax – somehow meant to save the climate but no one can explain to me just how this works – is penalizing American carriers by taxing them the maximum amount of 45 euros per passenger.
These carriers are now suing the country on the grounds that “Germany cannot arbitrarily close its budget gap on the backs of US airlines and their passengers, who already pay taxes at excessive rates. This is a short-sighted cash grab.”
Of course it is. But they’re going to keep on taxing us anyway. Americans don’t vote here.
Die kurzsichtige Maßnahme werde der deutschen Volkswirtschaft größeren Schaden zufügen als möglicherweise an Steuereinnahmen wieder hereinkomme.
Just Say No
As usual, I mean. Berliners in Kreuzberg (or at least that active, left-wing kind) aren’t interested in finding new solutions for urban living, thank you. And they’ll even threaten you with violence if you try to establish “temporary cultural space” to attempt to do so (go ask BMW Guggenheim Lab). Kreuzbergers don’t do culture. Temporary or otherwise.
And speaking of resistence… The rest of the country is pretty much Kreuzberg all over again (only on a much larger scale) when it comes to saying no to the Internet (some call it the Internetz).
This isn’t really a news item or anything, but now certain German businessmen types are actually starting to get worried about their country “sleeping through the Internet” age like it does.
They have come to discover that their fellow Germans provide “too few qualified professionals, suffer way too much from risk aversion and are caught up in a tightly structured regulation frenzy.” Like I said, this isn’t anything new. But the real question is: What are you going to be able to do about that? Not a damned thing, of course.
Das Internet ist ein globaler Treiber für die Wirtschaft. Doch in Deutschland bremsen Fachkräftemangel und hohe Anforderungen an den Datenschutz die Firmen aus.
Germany’s Energy Turnaround Rocks
They never promised you a rose garden (actually, they did). It looks like Germany’s Energiewende (the energy turnaround = shutting down nuclear power and waiting for solar and wind energy to pick up slack) is going to have its price, too.
And it looks likes the first installment will by about a seven percent increase in energy costs for private housholds. But Germans pay these increases gladly, I think. At least for now (seven percent is just the start, of course). It’s back to the future. It’s for the common good. Or it’s for saving the planet or something.
Uh, like why don’t they just have “the state” pay for it. Oh, that’s right. They already are (the taxpayers are, that is).
Stromtrassen, Umschlagwerke oder intelligente Stromzähler kosten den Staat Milliarden. Draufzahlen muss am Ende oft der Verbraucher – offenbar bis zu sieben Prozent in den kommenden Jahren.
German Austerity Still Quite A Rarity
Despite all the talk to the contrarity.
The German government didn’t reach even half of its planned savings in the federal budget in 2011. Only 42 percent of the spending cuts named by Merkel’s coalition government, comprised of the conservative Christian Democrats and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party, were actually not implemented…
The government is also falling behind on its targets for this year. Of the originally planned €19.1 billion in savings, less than half has been implemented…
This lapse (in reaching savings targets) is particularly embarrassing for the German government because the news comes just after 25 European Union member states agreed in early March to an international fiscal pact obliging them to adhere to greater fiscal discipline…
The aim of the pact is to make EU countries maintain binding austerity measures that leaders hope will contain the debt crisis and prevent countries like Greece from being able to pile up massive debts again.
And countries like Germany will show them how to do it, see? Next year, maybe. Or the year after that. Hard to say for sure.
“It (the pact) is a milestone in the history of the European Union.”
German Computer Clouds Don’t Stink
I mean float. At least not across the German border, they don’t.
Germans being pathalogically hypersensitive whenever it comes to data protection issues, whether they be actual issues or not, Deutsche Telekom has cleverly exploited these wildly popular fears during this year’s CeBIT technology fair by suggesting to “the 3.6 million prosperous German small and medium sized firms who have not yet taken the leap to storing their data using cloud computing” that their “German cloud” can offer them the safety and security that those leaky and toxic foreign clouds could never offer them – even if those foreign clouds wanted to offer them safety and security in the first place which, of course, they don’t.
Telekom’s cloud – some 30 datacenters spread across Germany – is, well, spread across Germany, so nothing can ever possibly go wrong, one Telekom spokesman tells us. “And we are not playing on peoples’ fears, either” another spokesman added. “It’s just that when servers are situated outside of Germany there is a risk that companies will use your data for commercial purposes or, worse, they will be spied on by the secret services.”
Let’s all sing together: Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away…
This will be “a cloud computer model for the German market and in the German language.” Made for Germans. By Germans. In Germany.
Gazprom Gerd Strikes Again
Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder (SPD) is always good for popping a cork or two.
This time he’s ruffled a few German feathers by getting all warm and fuzzy about his good old buddy Vladimir Putin again. More specifically about Putin’s stunning (not) election victory over the weekend, praising him for being the “flawless democrat” that he is.
But this is nothing new. Schroeder has always been generous with praise for Putin. Especially since landing that 1 million euro-per-year consulting job from him at Gazprom’s Nord Stream consortium – just a few months (weeks?) after having left office.
Wes Brot ich ess, des Lied ich sing.
We’re Helping Greece To Help Ourselves
It’s undeniable that Germany has great interest in helping Greece. Why just look at the great interest they’re getting back by doing so.
Despite all the perpetual bitching and moaning about having to foot the bailout bill for their bankrupt buddies in the bottomless pit, German tax payers raked in some 380 million euros on Greek aid interest payments in 2011 and are likely to pull in a whole lot more this year. It’s good to be the king, I mean lender.
Geez. With generosity like this, who needs extortion?
Im Rahmen des ersten Griechenland-Hilfspakets hat die Bundesrepublik dem Euro-Partner Darlehen von insgesamt 15,17 Milliarden Euro gewährt, um das Land vor der Pleite zu retten. Der Zinssatz habe zwischen 3,423 und 4,528 Prozent gelegen.
Observing Hermann 