Germans have been dying off faster than they can replace themselves for over forty years now. It’s just what they do.
And here are last year’s numbers: 2.2 percent fewer German babies were born in 2011 then in the year before. Strangely, though, the number of inhabitants actually grew last year (them damned durn foreign immigrants again).
It’s the demographics, stupid.
Schon seit 40 Jahren sterben in Deutschland mehr Menschen als Kinder geboren werden.
For the Pirate Party in Germany, I mean?
Sheesh. Even I thought it would take them longer than this to roll over and die. But the latest Emnid poll shows that their popularity (or lack of it?) has rapidly dropped to the lowest level since March (8 percent compared to their all-time high of 12 percent).
But hey, what can you expect from a party with an ex-boss who advises voters not to vote for them anymore.
Auf die Frage „Sollen wir die Piraten wählen?“ würde er inzwischen mit „Nö, lassen Sie es lieber bleiben“ antworten. Er sei von der Bilanz der Fraktion „immens enttäuscht.“
Is this the end of “the European way of life” as we know it?
European leaders have been muddling through instead of properly tackling the debt crisis. Now it threatens the very foundations of the European Union and could destroy a lifestyle that millions of Europeans take for granted.
Funny. I thought taking things for granted was what the European lifestyle was all about.
“We need fiscal discipline because we have a debt problem… No euro bonds as long as I live.”
German government debt keeps climbing relentlessly higher and reached an all-time high during the first three months of this year. The federal, state and local governments then reached a debt to the tune of 2 trillion euros.
That was 2.1 percent or 42.3 billion euros higher (deeper?) than in the previous year’s quarter, reported the Federal Office of Statistics in Wiesbaden on Monday.
Now if only Greece and Co. could learn to control their government spending like the Germans do. Oh, wait. They already have. Or do. Or whatever.
Deutschlands Staatsschulden auf Rekordhoch gestiegen
Is it termination time yet? For the booming German economy, I mean?
The Spiegel says: German manufacturing activity has hit a three-year low and export orders have also seen a big drop. This data suggests that the crisis is starting to hit the previously robust German economy.
Hasta la vista, baby? Maybe.
This time for real, though.
Berlin officials say the 20-year-old Dutchman who posed as a “forest boy” caused some $25,000 in unnecessary public expenditure during his nine-month hoax and are so pissed off about it that they are booting him out of the cushy public housing scam he had going.
“This was welfare fraud,” said one irrate municipal official. “Which is perfectly normal here, of course, but not when it’s such a big deal in the news like this. It makes us look like, I dunno, fools or something. So I’d say it’s time to hit the road, Ray. And never come back no more.”
The man arrived in Berlin in September, speaking English and claiming to be a 17-year-old teenager named Ray who had lived in forests with his father for five years, sleeping in caves or a tent, after his mother died in a car crash.
What a perfect title for a graphic novel about the Bundeswehr‘s mission in Afghanistan.
German illustrator Arne Jysch has completed his first graphic novel. Congratulations. I’m sure it’s fantasy comic material at it’s finest (in some scenes German soldiers are actually seen doing some fighting, for instance).
“The advantage of fiction is that you can combine real experiences that different people have had (in other armies?) and mix them all up,” he explains.
Jysch has never been to Afghanistan.
PS: I read recently that German soldiers in Afghanistan, being frustrated about having to be German soldiers in Afghanistan, have their own definition for ISAF: I saw Americans fighting.
Nothing. Other than “tectonic shifts” made me think of “Teutonic shifts” (which don’t happen nearly as regularly). And this article I’m writing about was originally in German and published on Spiegel Online. And of course that Germans are all so terribly concerned about how South Pacific islands are sinking due the disastrous effects of rising sea levels caused by climate change.
Or are they?
And I also just felt like pondering hype and hysteria again, so popular here and everywhere else around the world and how folks just want and need to be scared and alarmed and in crisis mode all the time even when (especially when?) they don’t need to be. Anyways, said article starts off like this:
Environmentalist organizations have used images from South Pacific islands to illustrate the disastrous effects of rising sea levels. But a group of French researchers has found that the problem is much more complicated: The islands are also being pulled under by shifting tectonic plates.
Things are more complicated than we think, you see. Or more simple, I mean. There, that was it. I feel better now.
“Momombo wako (the white man from the big island)!” Or “Momombo wackos (environmental terror mongers from elsewhere)!” if you prefer.
That’s the thing about a crisis: There’s always a winner, too. Take the euro crises, for instance. And the demand for German bonds these days.
Demand for German bonds, seen as the safest haven in the euro zone, has pushed Berlin’s borrowing costs so low that some investors are effectively paying Germany for the privilege of lending it money.
Damn. This gives German bondage a whole new meaning.
Low interest rates on German bonds are translating into billions in savings. Now economists have calculated that the country should be able to balance its budget by next year — something that is likely to increase criticism of Germany’s crisis management.
…The perception that Germany is benefiting financially from the crisis while imposing strict austerity measures on countries in southern Europe is unlikely to win many friends for Chancellor Angela Merkel, who is already highly unpopular in countries such as Greece.
Well, there’s disillusion and there’s disillusion.
A new survey indicates that German disillusionment with the US president is “widespread.” Wow, like what a surprise or something. Even the Germans catch on eventually.
But wait, please look a little closer. The real news story has to do with the numbers behind this so-called disillusionment. “Disillusionment with Obama” over here means:
Nevertheless, they (the Germans) still have overwhelming confidence in Obama’s overall international leadership. In fact, at 87 percent, Germans are the most supportive in Europe… And nine out of 10 Germans want to see Obama re-elected.
Huh? OK. Unbelievable as usual. It never ceases to amaze me. In a nation so openly sensitive to the concept of Gleichschaltung (enforced political conformity, as in the Third Reich kind), how can you get more gleichgeschaltet than that?
In retrospect, hopes for an Obama presidency were unrealistically high, especially among Europeans.
Observing Hermann 