Well they sure are here in Germany (see Greece).
“Germany’s heavy reliance on exports has already been controversial on the international stage, in a similar way to the Western world’s growing frustration with China over its dominance in cheap exports.”
“We can’t go back to the era where the Chinese or the Germans or other countries just are selling everything to us; we’re taking out a bunch of credit card debt or home equity loans, but we’re not selling anything to them,” Obama said.
Ever see Father Knows Best? Well over here it’s the state that always knows best, especially when it comes to dealing in stolen goods.
If Big Bruder wants to buy stolen secret Swiss bank account data on 1,500 alleged tax evaders from an informant, that’s OK here (Germans have always had a Herz für Informanten – a warm spot in their hearts for informers), but with Google, let’s say, by virtue of its very success here in Germany – having reached a substantially larger market share here over its rival search engines than it has elsewhere – this very success places it under immediate suspicion. Informants aren’t even necessary. Privacy is automatically in danger.
And then Big Bruder’s lawmakers, regulators and consumer advocates will invariably come in to “fix it” (fix what isn’t broken), all in the name of privacy of course.
With Google, nobody’s dealing in stolen goods – or are they? No, that’s eBay. But in both cases, whether it’s about Swiss bank accounts or Google’s success, one always has to play it safe here. It’s always guilty until proven innocent. Father knows best.
Google’s border-straddling scale and its brash ambitions raise alarms with some European politicians.
As everybody knows, everything that “goes wrong” in Iran is a direct result of actions carried out by outside provocateurs (the United States and Britain, in other words).
But in a refreshing new turn of events, Iranian officials are now slapping around Germany for once. Germany, of all nations.
No one knows why for sure, of course, but some speculate that “The accusations followed stronger statements against Iran’s nuclear program by German officials, including Chancellor Angela Merkel, who raised the specter of new international sanctions against Iran, and an announcement on Tuesday by the Munich-based engineering giant Siemens that it would seek no new business there.”
Damn. And that’s for just raising a specter, or maybe two. What would happen if the German government ever actually “did” anything to Iran? You know, other than sell them things, I mean.
Wir waren es nicht. Yogi und Ingo sind es gewesen.
Looks like Germans are finally going to participate in Iraq after all. Or at least Germany’s Lufthansa is going to. They may not have had any choice, however.
No, I don’t mean that they’re going there to do any heavy lifting or shoot ’em up or anything like that (how could I?). Lufthansa had 2.6% fewer passengers last year and they`re in desperate need of new ones and/or markets and, well, now that Iraq is finally opening up for the rest of us…
It’s time to act or something. So, German Abenteuerurlauber (adventure vacationers), book your flight to Bagdad or Erbil now. Or next year, maybe. Or maybe not at all.
Das Flugangebot wurde 2009 um 1,3 Prozent reduziert.
Normally quite fleißig (industrious) when it comes to things like preparing for creepy global threats like the imfamous YK2 bug – which of course they actually did some, let me think, ten freaking years ago – more than 25 million German bank card owners have nevertheless been hit hard by said bug since New Year’s Day (2010) and can’t like get their Geld (money) already. Plastic money, I mean = the only kind there is.
Why the Y2K bug hit ten years late, and only here in Germany of all places, is unclear at the moment. Germans like to keep their computers a long time you know so there are certainly bound to still be a lot of really slow ones out there and all… Like mine. But ten years? Just a thought.
Y2K10 oder wat?
On the top of Germany’s most wealthy list, I mean.
Cheapness is what Germany wants, especially these days. So that’s why the founders of the Aldi discount grocery store chain are once again on top of Manager Magazin’s annual list of the country’s most wealthy people.
The Porsche family is out, of course. They’re still not cheap enough. And this reflects a real crisis or something. The number of German individuals or families with at least one billion euros in capital fell from 122 to 99 since last year.
In the name of all things just and decent, won’t anybody out there do anything to help these poor folks out? Buy a Porsche already or something.
99 German billionaires on the wall, 99 German billionaires…
That’s right, Berlin is the capital, the capital when it comes to having the nation’s most welfare (Hartz IV) recipients.
Nearly 1 in 5 Berliners are receiving it.
“Berlin bleibt das Armenhaus Deutschlands”
“The German government has detailed financial support only for Magna, the more complex, controversial and higher-risk offer.”
“That has left GM suspecting that Germany is pandering to labor unions and seeking to curry favor with Moscow in preferring Magna.”
“The problem for Berlin could be that it has painted itself into a corner: damned if it pushes the high-risk Magna deal through, and damned if it doesn’t.”
Hmmm. Looks like the next big (German) government rescue plan might already be on its way.
“No wonder GM has revived ‘Plan B’ and may attempt to raise the $4.3 billion Opel needs to survive from other sources.”
“Germany’s statistics office said Tuesday that government spending and a slide in tax revenue had led to a 17.3-billion-euro ($24.7 billion) budget deficit in the first half of 2009, compared with a 7-billion-euro surplus ($10 billion) last year.”
“Ultimately Germany needs demand from its key trading partners–the United States and the rest of western Europe–to pick up. If not, all the government spending will mean its budget deficit will continue growing.”
“The German economy is still on a drip, getting infusions from policymakers. Some doubts remain whether the economy can stand on its own feet.”
It’s finally okay for us to start buying Japanese cars too!
Or at least that’s what German Green Party whip Renate Künast seems to think. With calls for “Buy hybrid cars from Toyota!” and other provocative German-car-industry-bashing and name-calling name calls, Künast is hurting her fellow Germans’ German car loving feelings right and left. Or maybe she isn’t, hard to say for sure.
Personally, I’ve always felt that Germans secretly want to own Japanese cars (you rarely see one here, you know), it’s just that their families would disown them and the neighbors wouldn’t understand. Not that they do now, the neighbors, but still.
So, who knows? Maybe this offensive Green offensive might be the final straw to finally break the back of German Japanese car resistance and mobilize the already highly mobile German population to finally get out there and buy some Made in Japan already.
Or maybe it might just get the German car industry to finally budge just this little itsy bitty bit and start making more environmentally friendly automobiles. Nah.
„Wenn die Deutschen zu blöd sind, moderne Autos zu bauen, muss man den Leuten empfehlen, Toyota Prius zu kaufen.“
