NSA Hysteria Good For Business

IT business here in Germany, I mean.

NSA

Funny how that is. Makes a body wonder sometimes if helping to keep folks all hot and bothered like this about our latest “devastating crisis of confidence” is maybe sort of, I dunno, intentional or something? You know, as in profitable intentional?

I know, I know. German media and industry have higher standards than that and would never try to take advantage of a situation like this but look, if everybody else out there is going to keep going hysterical and paranoid  about this novel issue of ours then I can start speculating, too. Hmmm. Now Snowden isn’t a German name, is it? Eduard certainly is, though.

“Our best marketing employee is Edward Snowden.”

Germans Not Corrupt

Just kind of sleazy.

Corruption

Corruption across the European Union’s 28 countries costs about 120 billion euros ($162 billion) per year — a “breathtaking” sum equal to the EU’s entire annual budget, EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstroem said Monday.

But Germany gets top marks from the commission: “When it comes to fighting corruption, Germany is amongst the best countries of the EU.” But the country could benefit from introducing “strict penalties” on corrupt elected officials and “develop a policy” to limit the ability of government officials to go work for companies they previously were in a position to help.

Saudi A. (Yet Again)

Beautiful German weapon sale of the week.

Saudi A.

Because somebody has to admire them.

Despite it’s often pacifist positions on global security issues, Germany is also in the seemingly contradictory position of being one of the world’s largest arms exporters.

PS: At least none of those creepy postcards are involved here.

Where’s The Money?

All of a sudden. For all of that five-year-plan-renewable-energy-turnaround-ideology-project-like-stuff in Germany, I mean. She is gone, señor.

Gabriel

Or at least more and more German citizens are finally waking up and simply just aren’t prepared to keep on paying ever more for less and less of whatever it was that this so-called energy turnaround of theirs was supposed to be delivering.

That is why Superminister Gabriel (didn’t he used to sing with Supertramp?) is now urging (ordering) German parliamentary lawmakers to start cutting state subsidies for renewable energies – for German industry – because they are rich and capitalistic or something and are therefore evil (he’s an SPD Superminister) and haven’t really been milked properly for this one yet. And the po folks just aren’t willing to keep paying more and more, like I said [By the way, the S in SPD stands for “social” and everything with “social” in it means “free lunch.” Read Margaret Thatcher’s quote down there on the right if you want to learn more.].

Of course why the energy turnaround has to keep on turning around the way it does like this in the first place is the really interesting question here, I find, but certainly not one that anyone here in Germany appears to be willing to ask. At least not quite yet anyway.

Yup, renewable turnaround money has sure gotten tight around here these days. Not even a Swabian housewife can help out anymore.

“We need to break the dynamics of ever-rising electricity bills, while ensuring a stable supply of energy for all.”

German Comedy Engineering?

For Super Bowl Amerika, I mean?

They should have at least tried using a real German.

“Algorithm” isn’t VW’s official ad for Super Bowl XLVIII, it’s simply meant as a teaser. Artistically speaking, it’s designed to give viewers a sense of the tone Volkswagen will strike on February 2. Creatively speaking, it’s pretty lazy.

PS: Thanks for the funny Passat/Charger clip, Murph. Perfect intro to this.

Fade To Frack

The EU’s reputation as a model of environmental responsibility may soon be history. The European Commission wants to forgo ambitious climate protection goals and pave the way for fracking — jeopardizing Germany’s touted energy revolution in the process.

Fracking

The Commission’s move further isolates Germany. Merkel’s government, a “grand coalition” of her conservatives and the center-left Social Democratic Party (SPD), seeks to increase the share of renewables in the country’s energy mix to 60 percent by 2036.

Sunny, Windy, Costly And Dirty

What’s not to like here?

Super Minister

“Super minister?” I’d say this is more like a job for Superpenner.

The difference between the market price for electricity and the higher fixed price for renewables is passed on to consumers, whose bills have been rising for years. An average household now pays an extra €260 ($355) a year to subsidise renewables: the total cost of renewable subsidies in 2013 was €16 billion. Costs are also going up for companies, making them less competitive than rivals from America, where energy prices are falling thanks to the fracking boom…

Cost is not the only problem with the Energiewende. It has in effect turned the entire German energy industry into a quasi-planned economy with perverse outcomes. At certain times on some days, sun and wind power may provide almost all German electricity. But the sun does not always shine, especially in winter, and the wind is unpredictable. And “batteries”—storage technologies that, for example, convert power to gas and back again to electricity—on a scale sufficient to supply a city are years away. Nuclear-power plants are being phased out (this week’s court decision that the closure of a plant in Hesse was illegal will raise costs even more, as it may entitle the operator to more compensation). So conventional power plants have to stay online in order to assure continuous supply. 

I Think It Should Have Been Superpenner

Sozialtourismus has just been selected by the Brain Police as Germany’s Unwort des Jahres (non-word of the year). It means “social tourism” and is terribly cynical and politically incorrect as it refers to “unwanted immigrants from eastern Europe” who come to Germany to presumably milk all the wonderful social benefits here, something of course social tourists from eastern Europe or elsewhere would never, ever do.

Word

Non-word of the year? The year has just begun, hasn’t it? And there are way more cool non-words out there that are much more deserving, if you ask me (I know you didn’t, but I’m telling you anyway). How about Superpenner (Super Bum), for instance? Bum is totally politically incorrect, too (that is what they used to call the homeless) and super is, well, super. So there.

Anyway, in case you didn’t know, Superpenner is a new comic action hero who has now arrived to save Berlin. And it’s about freakin’ time, too. To save it from all of those Straßenfeger (street sweeper) newspaper salesmen who accost us with their sales pitches in the U-Bahn all day long. I can hear it already: “Now with the Supperpenner comic book!”

Berlins Straßen haben einen neuen Helden: Den Superpenner – wenn auch nur auf dem Papier. Der Comic-Actionhero soll den Absatz der Berliner Obdachlosenzeitung Straßenfeger steigern.