Debacle, Disaster, Fiasco…

November 7, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria Tags: Electricity, Energy, Energy Turnaround, German, Germans, Germany, Government Subsidies, Green energy, Nuclear energy, Renewable energy, State Control, Subsidies, Taxation, The Green Shirts 1 Comment

Just a reminder here again: “There is no free lunch.” Honest.

Government intervention at its best (again). Germany’s deliberate attempt to make its energy greener using price guarantees and mandatory quotas for green energy IS NOT WORKING.

Try and remember: The whole idea was to make renewable energy more competitive and, therefore, in the end, cheaper. Well this attempt is so not working right now that German consumers pay higher prices now than ever before and German industry is soon to follow. And this, even though there is actually an oversupply of power. In essence, an energy bubble has been created because Germany’s renewable energy producers get a guaranteed minimum price for what they produce (this now includes farmers and communities and anybody else who can still get into the ponzi scheme).

Imagine you have various consumers going to a grocery store. Some of them want to buy a bottle of beer for 1 USD. Others would like to buy a bottle of champagne for 30 USD. In normal life people would just pay 1 USD for the beer and bubble-lovers would pay 30 USD for champagne. The German energy market is different. People who want the champagne pay 2 USD for it and those who want beer have to pay 2 USD. It’s a good deal for the champagne drinkers, getting subsidized by the beer buyers.

…Perhaps the least fair part of the whole scheme is how these prices disproportionately impact low-income households, who are forced to subsidize green energy for richer families to support politicians’ green energy visions.

Time To Say Goodbye

November 6, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Alternative Energy, Berlin, Electricity, Energy Turnaround, EU, German, Germans, Germany, Power Grids, Regulation, Subsidies, Taxation, The Green Shirts Leave a comment

To “clean power rebates” for German industry, that is.

Germany collects surcharges from power users to help fund operators of solar and wind power installations. Heavy electricity users such as cement, steel and some chemical plants are exempt to keep them from being priced out of the global market.

The EU now wants to change this. And that should make almost everybody happy. Now many of these German industries will get priced out of the market or maybe moving their production facilities to other countries altogether.

MEHR ALS DIE HÄLFTE DES INDUSTRIESTROMS VON UMLAGE BEFREIT

PS: Grid nationalisation in Berlin? Close but no cigar. Nice try but now you’ll just have to grid and bear it.

Germany Suddenly Causing Global Economic Instability Again Or Something

October 31, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Approval Ratings, Berlin, Cellphones, Currency, Economy, Europe, Exports, German, Germans, Germany, Merkel, Obama Leave a comment

The United States reprimanded Germany on Wednesday, saying its exporting prowess was hampering economic stability in Europe and hurting the global economy…

The criticism comes at a tricky juncture in relations between Washington and Berlin. German envoys met the White House national security adviser in Washington on Wednesday following reports the United States monitored German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s cellphone.

Germany’s economic policies causing global instability? That would be nice and all but I smell a rat here somewhere. Although I must say that when it comes to instability, global or otherwise, I would certainly always take our current administration’s recommendations very seriously. They sure seem to know what they are talking about these days.

“Die Kritik ist nicht nachvollziehbar.”

Berlin Finally Beats Paris And London

October 28, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Alternative Energy, Berlin, Electricity, Energy Prices, German, Germans, Germany, Green Revolution, Green Shirts, Humor, Satire Leave a comment

And every other major city in the European Union, too. By a long shot. When it comes to paying the most for electricity, that is.

Hot damn. No more provincial image here! This German Green Revolution rocks so bad that ich kann nicht soviel fressen wie ich kotzen möchte (I can’t eat as much as I want to barf about it).

In September, Berliners paid an average of nearly $0.40 per kWh of electricity they purchase from the local power grid. To put this in perspective, the highest average electricity price in the continental United States is about $0.18 per kWh in Connecticut, according to the Energy Information Administration.

Speaking Of Ausländer…

October 22, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypochondria, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: EU, Europe, Foreigners, German, Germans, Germany, Immigration, Xenophobia Leave a comment

Who cares about a few thousand Brits? Germany has more foreigners than you can shake a stick at and, well, more than they did back in 1993 (that’s bad, right?).

Some 7.2 million total there be. Not bad. For a xenophobic, racist, narrow-minded Volk living in a contemptuous and chauvinistic country still suffering under a living-dead Nazi past, I mean.

Die Zahl der in Deutschland registrierten Ausländer ist 2012 so kräftig gestiegen wie seit fast zwei Jahrzehnten nicht mehr. Sie erhöhte sich um 4,1 Prozent auf gut 7,2 Millionen, teilte das Statistische Bundesamt mit.

PS: Damn. Claudia made it. Weren’t they even allowed to vote against anybody during that vote?

Benefit Tourism Booming

October 21, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Government Waste, Handouts, Public Funds, Unemployment Benefits, Waste, Welfare Leave a comment

More than 10,000 Britons are claiming unemployment benefit in Germany because they are not “hassled” in to finding work there.

I dunno. What’s worse? The folks who abuse a system or a system that invites you to abuse it?

“In Britain I had to put up with patronising officials, some of whom tried to get me to accept a job as a cleaner despite my degree.”

Franz-Peter Tebartz-van Bling

October 17, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy Tags: Chruch and State, Churches, Corruption, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Money, Religion, Satire, Taxation, Waste Leave a comment

I mean Tebartz-van Elst, of course.

“I got your church and state for ya right here, pal.”

What’s all the excitement about? Religious Germans contribute freely to their churches. It’s not as if the money this guy burned had been levied by taxation or anything. Uh, wait a second. OK. So I guess it had been.

Germany separates church and state much less clearly than does America but more explicitly than Anglican Britain or Orthodox Greece. Its post-war constitution, in a clause carried over verbatim from the Weimar constitution of 1919, favours no particular faith but lets all churches levy taxes on their members through the income-tax system (8% or 9% of a taxpayer’s bill, depending on the state).

No Private Sphere Here

October 14, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hideology, High Art, Humor, Hustle (Hoax), Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Data Privacy, Facebook, German, Germans, Germany, Google, Humor, Internet, NSA, Paranoia, Privacy, Satire Leave a comment

Fed up with having their personal privacy abused by Facebook, Google and the NSA all the time, many Germans have decided to give up their personal privacy altogether and now actively and gladly publish online practically ever damned freaking boring imaginable thing they do like ALL DAY/EVERY DAY/ALL LIFE LONG.

Actually, I thought they were all doing that already.

And in a related story, the Deutsche Telekom is planning to introduce “a vast computer network linking smaller computer networks worldwide,” or at least German-wide. They are then going to call this innovative and highly original new invention of theirs the Internetz. Or they sure ought to.

Or how about the Inner-Netz?

“My philosophy is that information is more useful when it’s out in the open.”

Whoopee! The Electricity Prices Are Going Up Again!

October 10, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hideology, Home Cooking, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Electricity, Energy Turnaround, German, Germans, Germany, Green energy, Renewable energy, Taxation Leave a comment

Seven percent in the coming year! For starters.

Hot dog. And all because of the The German Renewable Energy Act.

And this act kind of goes like this: Every kilowatt-hour that is generated from renewable energy facilities receives a fixed feed-in tariff. Renewable energy plant operators receive a 20 year, technology specific, guaranteed payment for their produced electricity. Anyone who produces renewable energy can now sell his ‘product’ for a 20-year fixed price.

And who pays this tariff? You guessed it.

Die EEG-Umlage steigt im kommenden Jahr voraussichtlich um einen Cent je Kilowattstunde.

Next Troubling Demographic Development Stuns Germany

October 9, 2013 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Humor, Hurt Feelings, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Millionaires, Money, Satire, Switzerland, Wealth 2 Comments

As if Germans did not have enough to worry about already, a study from Credit Suisse has just confirmed that more than 1.7 million German citizens are now living above the millionaire line.

In fact, despite the so-called financial crisis, the amount of personal wealth has nearly doubled here since the year 2000.

German experts are grappling to find a sufficient explanation for this troubling development, as the causes of excessive German wealth were hitherto thought to have been fully understood and firmly under control.

With the release of these new findings, however, it appears as if some sources of this disgusting German wealth may be attributable to certain socio-demographic characteristics or other social, political, economic and cultural factors that may not have been fully comprehended up until now.

“This is absolutely shameful,” one grudging expert said. “It is an absolute outrage that wealth like this could exist in such an advanced and envious society as ours. We will not tolerate it and we shall never cease our efforts until the causes for this injustice are found and alleviated.”

Seit Mitte 2012 seien 221.000 Menschen hinzugekommen; insgesamt lebten in Deutschland nun gut 1.735.000 Dollar-Millionäre.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Heconomy