German (Carbon) Footprints in The Sand

June 2, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Atomic energy, Berlin, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Green Shirts, Greens, Humor, Nuclear energy, Satire, The Greens 2 Comments

What are we cheering about again? (This is another one of those Green Shirt terror posts.)

In a democracy, you can say A, but you can also say B, just as you can rely on the assumption that nothing has to last forever. Everything can be changed, amended, courses reversed. In short, the very life and soul of democracy is that there are always other options.

Germany’s federal government is now abusing that basic rule in a scandalous way. There can be no doubt that the country needs to be looking at a smart mix of different energy sources for the future, and that developing viable alternatives to atomic power is an urgent necessity. Yet the manner in which the federal government has rushed to its decision to put a definitive stop to the use of nuclear energy by 2022 runs counter to all rules of democratic procedure. It began when, for politically motivated and tactical reasons alone, the government went back on the agreement made last fall — just seven months ago — to extend the life span of nuclear power plants. After the Japanese plant Fukushima began leaking radiation, it felt compelled to cede to public pressure by making a rapid move away from atomic power. Backtracking in the blink of an eye, the government moved so quickly partly out of fear of the Greens, and entirely without discussion or reflection.

… Germany has shown no respect for the energy policies of other E.U. countries, and particularly no trace of consideration for the East-West split that exists in Europe over nuclear power. Instead, Germany has chosen to go it alone on this issue, assuming a kind of avant-garde, “moral high ground” role that is not always going to play well elsewhere.

Die Bundesnetzagentur schlägt Alarm: Wegen des Atomausstiegs befürchtet die Behörde bereits in der kommenden Woche zu Pfingsten Schwierigkeiten beim Stromtransport.

PS: And lest we forget…

Germans To End Opposition To New Overhead Power Lines Overnight

June 1, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hysteria Tags: Atomic energy, Berlin, Energy, German, Germans, Germany, Green Shirts, Greens, Humor, Nuclear energy, Overhead Power Lines, Phase-out, Power Lines, Satire, The Greens Leave a comment

As reported earlier, in order to avoid stunting the growth in Europe’s largest economy after its decision to shut down nuclear power forever, Germany must now carry out a massive expansion of it’s electricity-delivery network.

The overhead power lines which will be necessary to connect new offshore wind farms in the north to the factory-rich south and to allow the high-volume energy transfer from French nuclear reactors to cover the shortfall as Germany phases out its own reactors (they only provide a mere 23 percent of the country’s current energy demand) are, however, “unsightly and yucky,” as all Germans know. And they will also probably cause cancer, too (the next DANGER, but that will be another story later, guaranteed).

Fortunately for the German nation, it’s altruistic, selfless citizens have spontaneously decided to sacrifice their own petty personal concerns and grievences in regard to these power lines and win one for the collective common good by immediately ending all opposition to the construction of said yucky power lines and promising to never ever bitch or moan about them ever again, honest.

And if you believe that you can build your overhead power line on some prime Florida swamp land I’ve got for sale for you right here.

A grid upgrade is essential, and Germans must end their opposition to new power lines overhead, energy economics professor Christoph Weber said.

My Big Fat Greek Bailout II

May 31, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy Tags: Berlin, Debt, Debt Crisis, Euro, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Humor, Satire 1 Comment

Certainly not back by populist demand, the German government now seems prepared to stop the bitching and moaning long enough to support funding for the sequel to the first Greek Bailout box office flop and enable the EU to wrap up a second package of aid loans to help a struggling Greece or, to be more exact, the German banks that are now terribly exposed to a possible default there.

“Germany is considering dropping its push for an early rescheduling of Greek bonds in order to facilitate a new package of aid loans for Greece, according to people familiar with the matter. Berlin’s concession that it must lend Greece more money, even without burden-sharing by bondholders in the short term, would help Europe overcome its impasse over Greece’s funding needs before the indebted country runs out of cash in mid-July.”

But if you want any popcorn, you’re going to have to bring it yourself.

Größter Garant der griechischen Zahlungsfähigkeit nach dem IWF mit 30 Mrd. ist Deutschland mit 22,4 Mrd.

Germans Go Home!

May 26, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Debt, Debt Crisis, Euro, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Humor, Privatization, Satire 1 Comment

“To Save the Euro, Germany has to Quit the Euro Zone”

“When the euro was launched, leading German politicians used to argue, with evident relish (and much to the chagrin of the British in particular), that monetary union would eventually require political union. The Greek crisis was precisely the sort of event that was expected to force the pace. But, faced with a defining crisis, Ms Merkel’s government is avoiding airy talk of political union – preferring instead to force harsh economic medicine down the throats of the reluctant Greeks, Irish, Portuguese and Spanish electorates. This is becoming both economically and politically unsustainable. If the objective is to save the currency union, perhaps policy makers are looking at this from the wrong end. In the end, paradoxically, to save the European Monetary Union, the least disruptive way forward would be for the Germans, not the periphery countries, to leave.”

And in a related story…

Everything must go! The Greek government is selling everything it still has its debt-ridden little fingers on so guess who is now interested in buying Athens International Airport? Fraport AG (Frankfurt Airport).

Germany’s Little Greece

May 24, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Debt, Financial crisis, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Humor, Satire 3 Comments

Or little Greeces, I guess I should say. Remember all that German finger-pointing at Athens and the indignant lectures about “financial responsibility,” “saving until it hurts” and “working harder?”

Well four of Germany’s sixteen state governments are so way out of control with their money (or lack of it) that they now face the distinct possiblity of sliding into a homegrown debt crises of their own.

This is the first time that the so-called “stability council” has put on its “debt-brake,” emergency procedures created by the federal government two years ago which is aimed at forcing all state budgets to be in surplus by the year 2020.

And the losers are (who else?): Berlin. Oh yeah, and Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein and Saarland. And just to stick with Berlin, how high is this city in debt? It’s only around something like sort of 62 billion freakin’ euros (17,140 euros per resident).

And how does this way cool debt-brake work? That’s easy. If the states promise to be good in the future (2011 to 2019) they will get an additional 800 million financial support from the federal government each year. You know, just like the way they do it down in Greece. I can’t wait to hear the next lecture.

In den betroffenen Ländern wurden bereits Sparmaßnahmen ergriffen. Im Gegenzug erhalten sie von 2011 bis 2019 Finanzhilfen von insgesamt 800 Millionen Euro pro Jahr, um die Schuldenbremse einzuhalten und ihre Defizite abzubauen.

German Vocabulary of the Day

May 23, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hi-tech, Hysteria Tags: Energy, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Nuclear energy, Satire Leave a comment

Alleingang: Going it alone.

Although every German knows that things go invariably terribly wrong whenever Germans do this (go it alone), they sometimes simply just can’t help themselves (think the recent UN Libya resolution episode, for instance) and let this atavistic throwback throw them back to behavior (misbehavior) they will bald (soon) regret. For the latest case in point see Ausstieg.

Ausstieg: This means to exit, phase-out. Germans are the born Aussteiger (exit-ers or escapists), but this is getting ever harder and harder for them to do. Executive Director Nobuo Tanaka of the International Atomic Energy Agency, IAEA (not IKEA), for instance, has warned Germany about going their nuclear phase-out alone (see Alleingang). Germany’s policies here affect all of Europe, he says, and “it’s not about a German problem, it’s an overall European problem.”

Blackout: This means blackout. German power companies are now warning that should the Ausstieg and Alleingang described above be implemented too quickly and too efficiently (a grave possibility in Germany), they will not be able to guarantee an uninterupted power supply for their customers in Southern Germany during the so-called “winter” months.

Die Netzfirmen warnten, wenn nur die im Zuge des Atom-Moratoriums stillgelegten Alt-Meiler weiter vom Netz blieben, fehlten an kalten Wintertagen in Süddeutschland etwa 2000 Megawatt Leistung.

This New-Fangled EBOOK Nonsense Ain’t Never Gonna Happen Here

May 22, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Hi-tech Tags: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Berlin, Books, eBooks, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire 3 Comments

Not in Germany it ain’t. No way. It’s, uh, I dunno. It’s just plain wrong. It’s too American or something.

Let Amazon & Co. sell all the damned ebooks they want to over yonder (currently 105 ebooks for every 100 printed at Amazon), we’re sticking to tradition and our traditional fixed book prices (this protects our culture somehow) and the unfair taxation and the measly 0.5 percent ebook sales of total volume of books sold in Germany (sure we only got around to introducing the Kindle here just a few weeks back, but still).

Remember this: Germans don’t read ebooks.

And remember this too: Television had no future (radio pioneer Mary Somerville) and the world only needed five computers at most (IBM president Thomas J. Watson).

Verlage und Buchhandlungen in Deutschland sind zögerlich, weil die Investitionen hoch und die Gewinnspannen niedrig sind und es außerdem mal wieder Streit um die Mehrwertsteuer gibt: Während gedruckte Bücher einem ermäßigten Satz von sieben Prozent unterliegen, sind es für E-Books 19. Und bis das ausdiskutiert ist, wird vermutlich auch Amazon.de mehr E-Books als Bücher verkaufen. Denn in Deutschland wurde der Kindle ja erst vor vier Wochen eingeführt.

World Vileness Crown Threatened

May 20, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy Tags: Berlin, DSK, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire, Sex, Sex Party, Strauss-Kahn 5 Comments

I finally found my Doninique Strauss-Kahn German connection, sort of.

A German insurance company has admitted hosting a decadent sex party at a Budapest bathhouse to reward its best agents for their work (this Spiegel article was appropriately placed under the Zeitgeist section).

Hey, why reinvent the wheel? Those guys up there (picture link) put it best: “Germans Threaten French Hold on World Vileness Crown with Stunning Budapest Salesmen Orgy.”

The responsible board member and other managers have since left the company.

What’s Mine Is Mine

May 18, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy Tags: Berlin, Financial Assets, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Money, Satire, Savings 2 Comments

And what’s yours we probably don’t even want to talk about.

German households have never had as much money at their disposal as they do now = Germans have never been as rich as they are now. Private financial assets are now valued at 5000 billion euros here (is that more than a bazillion?).

Like I always say:

A mark, a yen, a buck, or a pound
A buck or a pound
A buck or a pound
Is all that makes the world go around

Vermehrt wurde das Vermögen vor allem in Form von Bankeinlagen und Bargeld.

Green Eco Dictatorship

May 17, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, German, Germany, Green Shirts, Greens, Humor, Satire, Stuttgart 21, Terror 2 Comments

Green Types everywhere out there know that this Stuttgart 21 train station thingy cannot be allowed to be built, no matter what (the rest of us out there still don’t know just why that is but maybe we’ll figure it out yet).

And now that Stuttgart (Baden-Wuerttemberg) is Green politically, Green Terror Types are starting to come out of the woodwork and beginning to take matters into their own green hands (just like Oma und Opa used to take matters into their brown ones).

Or as Henryk Broder reports it in that provocative way he does:

The Federal Republic made a great step forward toward becoming a Green eco dictatorship yesterday. The project manager for Stuttgart 21, Hany Azer (migration background, by the way) has resigned from his post.

The reasons he named were “hostility and threats” from Stuttgart 21 opponents. Most recently he has only been able to work while under protection of the company’s personal security personnel. This news item should have caused great alarm (but it didn’t).

Oh I dunno. As long as they don’t start wearing green shirts and stuff like that everything will turn out OK… Won’t it?

Jeder Fall von sexueller Belästigung in einem Großraumbüro löst überregionale Schlagzeilen aus. Aber wenn einer der besten Ingenieure der Republik, der unter anderem Projektleiter für den Bau des Berliner Hauptbahnhofs gewesen ist, aus dem Job gemobbt wird, regt sich nicht einmal Frank Bsirske darüber auf.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Heconomy