German Austerity Still Quite A Rarity

March 12, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Debt Crisis, EU, Europe, European Fiscal Pact, Fiscal Discipline, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Humor, International Fiscal Pact, Satire, The EU, The Euro Leave a comment

Despite all the talk to the contrarity.

The German government didn’t reach even half of its planned savings in the federal budget in 2011. Only 42 percent of the spending cuts named by Merkel’s coalition government, comprised of the conservative Christian Democrats and the business-friendly Free Democratic Party, were actually not implemented…

The government is also falling behind on its targets for this year. Of the originally planned €19.1 billion in savings, less than half has been implemented…

This lapse (in reaching savings targets) is particularly embarrassing for the German government because the news comes just after 25 European Union member states agreed in early March to an international fiscal pact obliging them to adhere to greater fiscal discipline…

The aim of the pact is to make EU countries maintain binding austerity measures that leaders hope will contain the debt crisis and prevent countries like Greece from being able to pile up massive debts again.

And countries like Germany will show them how to do it, see? Next year, maybe. Or the year after that. Hard to say for sure.

“It (the pact) is a milestone in the history of the European Union.”

German Computer Clouds Don’t Stink

March 11, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, CeBIT, Cloud Computing, Data Protection, Data Security, Fear Mongering, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Marketing, Nationality, Paranoia, Satire, Technology 2 Comments

I mean float. At least not across the German border, they don’t.

Germans being pathalogically hypersensitive whenever it comes to data protection issues, whether they be actual issues or not, Deutsche Telekom has cleverly exploited these wildly popular fears during this year’s CeBIT technology fair by suggesting to “the 3.6 million prosperous German small and medium sized firms who have not yet taken the leap to storing their data using cloud computing” that their “German cloud” can offer them the safety and security that those leaky and toxic foreign clouds could never offer them – even if those foreign clouds wanted to offer them safety and security in the first place which, of course, they don’t.

Telekom’s cloud – some 30 datacenters spread across Germany – is, well, spread across Germany, so nothing can ever possibly go wrong, one Telekom spokesman tells us. “And we are not playing on peoples’ fears, either” another spokesman added. “It’s just that when servers are situated outside of Germany there is a risk that companies will use your data for commercial purposes or, worse, they will be spied on by the secret services.”

Let’s all sing together: Paranoia strikes deep. Into your life it will creep. It starts when you’re always afraid. You step out of line, the man come and take you away…

This will be “a cloud computer model for the German market and in the German language.” Made for Germans. By Germans. In Germany.

“Tax Advice Mission” Impossible

February 26, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking Tags: Athens, Berlin, EU, Euro, Euro Zone, Financial Criis, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Humor, Satire, Taxation, Taxes 1 Comment

How about a little more sensitivity here, Greece? Germans are only trying to help.

And it doesn’t look like they’re going to stop trying to help you anytime soon, either. That’s why if they can’t get that “budget commissioner” they proposed to help monitor the Greek government’s (lack of) management of its finances, some 160 German tax collectors have now selflessly volunteered for assignments in Greece to help gather Greek taxes more efficiently. And as you can imagine, when it comes to taxation and tax collection, German efficiency can really hurt.

A recent flurry of acrimonious exchanges between Athens and Berlin reflect deepening doubts among mainly northern members of the 17-nation euro zone about Greece’s ability and willingness to overhaul its economy to satisfy lenders’ demands.

Film Critics And Other Smart People Disappointed

February 19, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, High Art, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Berlin Film Festival#, Berlinale, Film, Film Festivals, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Intellectuals, Movies, Satire, The Golden Bear 1 Comment

This year’s winner of the Golden Bear for best film at the Berlinale was actually a real dog, German film critics and other intellectual thinking folks and artist types everywhere are saying.

It’s not that the Italian film “Caesar Must Die” was bad in a cinematic sense or anything. It just didn’t meet the standards that modern film-makers and their kind aspire to, that’s all.

It was, in other words, too “humanist,” not at all a “strong, political film from young, engaged film-makers” (the film-makers who made this non-political film are old, engaged film-makers) and, worst of all, “it was a very conservative selection.” Pfui (yuck)!

Geez. If they had wanted to watch human, uplifting drama they would have gone to some other film festival. I don’t know which one that would be, of course, but it certainly wouldn’t/shouldn’t be the Berlinale.

“The jury shunned almost all the contemporary films that were admired or hotly debated at an otherwise pretty remarkable festival.”

Unterdeckungen

February 16, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Home Cooking, Hysteria Tags: Atomic energy, Atomic power, Berlin, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Nuclear power, Renewable energy, Satire, The Green Shirts, The Greens 4 Comments

That’s German for deficient coverage. And German readers might be reading that word a lot in the weeks to come, at least when it comes to the electricity supply in Germany.

„We have been observing for weeks now that something with the system just doesn’t seem to be right,” one market expert said.

And in a letter from Germany’s Federal Network Agency to the power traders it deals with, it makes clear its concern about the rather volitile situation going on at the moment and has even warned of the collapse of the German power network. It almost happened on Febuary 6, already, they wrote, as “substantial undercoverage continuing over several hours” nearly brought the system to its knees.

Hmmm. Last year at this time, during one of the coldest winters ever, there wasn’t any problem with the German electricity supply at all. What on earth could have possibly happened since then and now to have caused this disturbing situation?

Nach dem Reuters vorliegenden Schreiben stand das Stromnetz in den vergangenen Tagen mehrfach vor dem Kollaps.

Not With This Chancellor

February 14, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Home Cooking Tags: Berlin, Children, Demographics, Demography, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Politics, Satire, Taxation, Taxes 1 Comment

Five minutes of excitement is better than no excitement at all.

A group of young conservative politicians, concerned about Germany’s catastrophic demographic development (or the lack of it), received less than a warm welcome by their very own Chancellor Angela Merkel herself today: They’re pushing for a tax on the childless, you see.

Although most politicians are normally crazy about raising taxes or introducing new ones, Frau Merkel made it quite clear that the buck (the euro?) stops here. Like practically everybody else in Germany, she doesn’t have any kids, either.

„Ich glaube, die Diskussion der Einteilung in Menschen mit Kindern und ohne Kinder ist hier nicht zielführend.“

This Is An Anglicism

February 13, 2012 By Hermann Observer in High Art, Higher Education, Home Cooking, Humor Tags: Berlin, English, Expressions, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Language, Satire, Science, Words 4 Comments

Not an Americanismcism, OK?

Those filthy-mouthed British. “Shitstorm” just won Germany’s Anglicism of the Year award (2011). Wow. I wonder if “Crap Tornado” came in second?

The punchline: “The jury’s decision is meant to emphasize the positive influence of English on the German language.” I don’t make this stuff up, people.

Mit der Wahl will die Jury den positiven Einfluss von englischen Ausdrücken auf die deutsche Sprache hervorheben.

Berlinale Predictably Boring

February 11, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, High Art, Home Cooking, Hotness, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Berlin Film Festival#, Berlinale, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Hollywood, Humor, Movies, Satire 1 Comment

As usual. But at least we get to look at Angelina Jolie for awhile this year.

She and her husband what’s-his-name have been here for days now and refuse to go home, giving the notoriously anti-Hollywood Berlin Film Festival that all important Hollywood touch.

But as for the movies, the only Lichtblick (bright spot) I have heard about so far is a film called Barbara, “a harrowing reminder of what life was like two decades earlier behind the Iron Curtain and Berlin Wall that stood just a few meters to the east of theatres where the Berlinale is based.” You know, it’s a film about how suffocatingly horrible communist East Germany was. But who wants to see that? Here in Berlin of all places, I mean.

That and that flick about the Nazis on the dark side of the moon, of course.

“It’s not a film about East Germany, it’s a film about how people survive in a country that was on its way out.” – Hmm. Sounds like a film about Syria.

A Life Sentence?

February 10, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Hard Facts, Hate, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Extremism, German, Germans, Germany, Islam, Islamic Terror, Islamists, Justice, Law, Murder, Parole, Terrorism, The Legal System 1 Comment

In Germany? I don’t think so.

“An Islamic extremist who admitted killing two U.S. airmen at Frankfurt airport last year has been convicted of murder. The state court in Frankfurt found 22-year-old Arid Uka guilty Friday and sentenced him to life in prison for the March 2 attack on Afghanistan-bound servicemen as they boarded a bus at the airport.”

Well, that simply isn’t true. You may have known that there is no death penalty in Germany, but don’t be tricked by that ridiculous “life in prison” misnomer that Germans like to use all the time (lebenslänglich). Nobody spends life in prison here.

What Germans mean with a life sentence (in Germany) is 15 years. After that the convict gets paroled. Or, as in this terribly severe case, paroled and then “threatened” with possible deportation.

Uka droht nach seiner Haft die Abschiebung.

Speaking Of The Dark Side

February 8, 2012 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Heconomy, Helplessness, Home Cooking, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Economy, Employment, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Jobs, Satire, Unemployment, Wages Leave a comment

Here’s a little tidbit about the dark side of “Germany’s jobs miracle.”

“BEST LOW WAGE SECTOR IN EUROPE”

Job growth in Germany has been especially strong for low wage and temporary agency employment because of deregulation and the promotion of flexible, low-income, state-subsidised so-called “mini-jobs”.

The number of full-time workers on low wages – sometimes defined as less than two thirds of middle income – rose by 13.5 percent to 4.3 million between 2005 and 2010, three times faster than other employment, according to the Labour Office.

Germany can only hope that other European countries do not emulate its own wage deflationary policies too closely, as demand will dry up: “If everyone is doing same thing, there won’t be anyone left to export to.”

PS: Like I noted on a post the other day, the USA and Germany have more in common than they think. Now the Greeks are burning German flags, too.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

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