Category Archives: Heconomy

A New Currency Order

September 1, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , , 3 Comments

Are we having a Reichseuro yet?

“Conceived as a tool for integrating Germany into Europe, and preventing Germans from dominating others, it (the euro) has become the opposite.”

Germany’s neighbors and allies are growing increasingly concerned about Berlin’s foreign policy direction. Some even fear that efforts to export its fiscal ideas could mean the prosperous country has lost sight of the European idea. Or worse yet, that it wants to dominate the currency union.

You will save until it hurts, I tell you! Sign ze papers old man!

Speaking of taxes…

August 31, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

We have now reached the point where folks volunteer, plead to be taxed.

A group of 50 rich Germans has joined the ”tax me harder” movement by renewing their open call to Angela Merkel to ”stop the gap between rich and poor getting even bigger.”

Sure, these particular folks have money to burn. Unfortunately, the taxation never stops with them and does absolutely nothing to fill this “gap” they pretend to worry about. How does giving your money-to-burn to the state so it can burn it for you change anything?

”None of us are in Buffett’s or Bettencourt’s league, most of our wealth is inherited. But we have more money than we need.”

“Imagine that a genie magically appeared and offered to grant you one wish – and, being a decent sort, you wished that everyone’s income would be doubled. That could bring down on you the wrath of the political left, because it would mean that the gap between the rich and the poor had widened. That is basically their complaint against the American economy.”

We will tax them in the brothels, we will tax them on the street, we shall never surrender!

August 30, 2011 By in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech Tags: , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

This is yet another example of German Steuergerechtigkeit (tax justice) in action.

The city of Bonn has introduced a parking meter for prostitutes working on the street. They are now required to pay 6 euros in tax per night to carry out their trade. And they must show their tickets to tax inspectors sent to check (and some of these guys will check again and again and again). This is only fair or something as the girls in the brothels already have to pay.

Hmmm. Is this a progressive tax or a regressive tax? Is it a corporate tax or more like property tax? It’s not a pole tax, is it? An incum tax?

Es drohen Bußgelder bis zu 100 Euro.

“Egalitarians create the most dangerous inequality of all – inequality of power. Allowing politicians to determine what all other human beings will be allowed to earn is one of the most reckless gambles imaginable. Like the income tax, it may start off being applied only to the rich but it will inevitably reach us all.”

Reality Bites Biting Again

August 29, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hysteria Tags: , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Are we having a mutiny yet?

The seething discontent in Germany over Europe’s debt crisis has spread to all the key institutions of the state. “Hysteria is sweeping Germany.” Uh, hysteria is always sweeping Germany. So what’s the big deal this time?

It’s not all that big, really. On September 7, a 440 billion euro EU bail-out fund (EFSF) package (empowering the EFSF to buy bonds pre-emptively and recapitalize banks) goes to the Bundestag and to the country’s constitutional court for a ruling on it’s legality.

German media reported that the latest tally of votes in the Bundestag shows that 23 members from Mrs Merkel’s own coalition plan to vote against the package, including twelve of the 44 members of Bavaria’s Social Christians (CSU). This may force the Chancellor to rely on opposition votes, risking a government collapse.

So? It will pass, of course, because it doesn’t really matter what the man on the street thinks, hysteria or not. This is just another case of what happens when political dreams collide with reality. When the dreamers aren’t held accountable for what they dream, I mean. Happens all the time. No accountability, no problem. Let’s face it: Everybody’s living in the Matrix here and everybody loves it.

“Behind Winston ‘s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the over fulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan.”

Seven Years Of Famine Or Something

August 28, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

No short-term pain, no long-term gain.

“There might well be seven lean years ahead for the world economy,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a speech at a meeting of Nobel laureates at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.

What he really meant was seven years of fiscal consolidation (austerity measures) in Europe (and elsewhere?). This is the key to long-term growth, he says. My, how, uh, German or something.

Jiminy Crickets. As if the ten plagues of late hadn’t been bad enough already, now the Germans themselves (they own Europe, you see, and are recreating it in their own image) are going to inflict the Pharaohs of the EU with seven years of boils, hail, locusts and darkness. In the form of austerity measures, I mean. Or maybe they won’t. Hard to say for sure. Could be that monkeys will fly out of their butts instead.

Muddy Waters knew the deal:

On the seventh hour, of the seventh day,
on the seventh month, the seventh economic witch doctor say:
“He’s born for good luck, and I know you see;
Got seven hundred euros, and don’t you mess with me.

“Germany hasn’t been a reliable power for several years”

August 26, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking Tags: , , , , , , , , , Leave a comment

“Neither domestically nor abroad,” Mr. Kohl said.

“I have to ask myself, where does Germany actually stand today and where does it want to go?”

Merkel’s UN abstention was popular in German polls. And as the Libya NATO operation proved indecisive and messy, with rebels in pickup trucks taking towns and then retreating, and with talk of quagmire, some German officials were telling French colleagues, “We told you so.”

Germany Just Wants To Help

August 25, 2011 By in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

To help itself to a piece of Libya’s reconstruction pie, that is.

And they will get it, too. They always do, although they may have to squirm and grovel around for a bit first. Damn. If this were the US we were talking about here I’d have to say that they are only in it for the oil.
 
Hey, you win a few, you lose a few (nobody’s keeping count in the end, right?): The biggest loser — beside Gaddafi and his soul mates, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez — may well be Angela Merkel of Germany. She looks timid and vacillating beside Sarkozy, on Libya as well as on the European debt crisis.

That result could be ephemeral. But Merkel’s determined effort to dissociate Germany from any alliance role in Libya meant that the European Union lost a historic opportunity to create a leadership role for itself on a foreign-policy crisis that was strategic for Europe. France and Britain had to work within NATO, not the E.U., when their forces went into harm’s way.

How Miraculous

August 19, 2011 By in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness Tags: , , , , , , 2 Comments

Hidden behind the so-called German economic miracle is an underclass of low-paid employees whose incomes have benefited little from the country’s stability and in fact have shrunk in real terms over the last decade.

Despite Germany’s renowned inflation-fighting efforts, which kept consumer price increases at an average of 1.7 percent a year from 2000 to 2010, more and more low-income Germans report that they cannot make ends meet despite having a job and that they must rely upon state aid to supplement their income.

Nowhere is this deepening chasm more visible than in Berlin-Mitte, the prosperous center of the capital, full of handsome government buildings and fine restaurants that cater to officials and lobbyists.

On a rainy summer morning here, only a 10-minute walk from the glamorous Unter Den Linden boulevard, hundreds of poorly dressed men and women lined up inside the district employment office. Some of them had come to look for work, some were applying for state help and some just wanted to accompany a friend.

“They cannot live off their income. Their wages are just too low. They have no choice but to receive help from the state.”

Ain’t no “might” about it, Fareed

August 18, 2011 By in Heconomy, Hypocrisy Tags: , , , , , , , 1 Comment

If push comes to shove over here, I mean.

Why Germany might let Europe fall

The old structure of Europe rested on an extraordinary degree of German abnegation of its own interests.  The Germans believed their national interest lay in subordinating itself in every way to Europe’s broader interest.  That was what Europe was built on.

Today what people are basically asking is: “Is Europe’s debt going to be centralized or not?” In other words, is Europe going to be willing to say, “All our debt is pooled together and theoretically, as a single entity, we’ll pay it back.”

The key to this commitment is Germany. Germany is the only country that can pay.

The key to Europe’s future is how Germany conceives of its interests.

So once it gets real ugly, and it’s going to get a whole lot uglier yet, the last guy out please remember to turn off the lights.

PS: This gives “Old Europe” and “New Europe” a whole new meaning, don’t it?