Consulting the population? Are you crazy?

November 2, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helections, Helplessness, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, EU, Euro, Euro Zone, Financial crisis, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Humor, Satire 4 Comments

German politicians everywhere were shocked at Greek prime minister George Papandreou’s shocking decision yesterday to call a referendum on the latest greatest financial rescue package just put together by EU bureaucrats after marathon summit talks held in Brussels.

“One can’t help but think that the Greeks should be more grateful to selfless Europeans like ourselves who are only trying to help,” said one distraught Berliner politician. “Everybody knows that if you’re dumb enough to actually ask the people what they think about our grand European rescue visions they are very likely to speak their minds.”

A poll at the weekend showed nearly 60 percent of Greeks had a negative or partly negative view of the rescue.

What would Bernie Madoff do?

November 1, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Economy, Euro, Euro Crisis, Financial crisis, Frankfurt, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire 2 Comments

Circular commitments lead to a Ponzi economy.

If the ECB announces that it is willing to lend, in unlimited amounts, to peripheral governments and to the European financial stability facility then the immediate crisis is at once “solved”. But at what cost?

If governments stand behind banks and banks stand behind governments and the central bank lends freely to both and also underwrites financial markets, then financial asset prices become completely detached from economic reality.

American Dream Dying In German Publication For 4387th Time

October 30, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hysteria Tags: 99 Percent, Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Protest, Satire, The 99 Percent, The American Dream, The Financial Crisis 4 Comments

This just in from Hamburg: The US has entered a second Gilded Age, but one in which hedge fund managers have replaced oil barons — and it is killing the American Dream.

And not even the 99 percent (nor Triumph, their Insult Comic Dog) can do anything about it.

Here are a few of the article’s more fascinating, never-yet-revealed-before mysteries behind America’s unsolved perpetual decline and fall:

“We are the 99 percent” is a development that has shaken the world’s most powerful nation to its core (and here I thought it had been the subway line underneath our street).

Inequality in America is greater than it has been in almost a century (wow, I had no idea that inequality was that much worse now than it had been back in 1911, had you?).

Wealth disparity is greater in the US than in Tunisia or Egypt (but our disparity has a much longer democratic tradition or something).

The major economic expansion under President Ronald Reagan benefited only a few, and the problem only grew worse under George W. Bush (but those Clinton and Obama years really rocked though/still rock, don’t they?).

Although the productivity of the US economy has increased considerably since the beginning of the millennium (despite everything having grown worse under George W. Bush?) , most Americans haven’t benefited from it.

The United States has developed into a winner-take-all economy (can they take all our debts with them while they’re at it?).

The extreme deregulation of today’s financial and economic system makes it impossible for individuals’ self-serving behavior to ultimately contribute to the prosperity of society as a whole (that Adam Smith was like such a dolt).

Differences between rich and poor are tolerated as long as the rags-to-riches story of the dishwasher-turned-millionaire remains theoretically possible (so if it stays practically possible toleration time is over or what?).

“In the first Gilded Age, the streets were flooded with protest movements.” Manhattan hasn’t yet quite reached that point.

Has America become an oligarchy!?!

Evil Internet Giant Now Within City Limits

October 26, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Higher Education, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Espionage, German, Germans, Germany, Godzilla, Google, Humor, Paranoia, Satire 1 Comment

Google Inc., that highly mistrusted and ruthlessly vilified corporate world dominator and spy on all things German (I got two words for you here: Street View), has just done an end-run around sleeping data privacy officers stationed at Berlin’s city gates and bought its way into Humboldt University itself by funding a new so-called Institute for Internet and Society, supposedly “based on a philosophy of openness and open access” which will “explore the impact of the digital age.”

Yeah, right. We all know what they’re really up to (or at least you do, I assume). Just don’t come crying to me later and say that I didn’t warn you. The next thing you now Googlezilla will be “approaching the power plant.”

Google Inc. has committed €4.5 million ($6.26 million) to the institute for the first three years as part of its recent push to invest in Germany, which has often been critical of the Internet giant’s practices.

Revolutionary Masses (Yearning To Be Seen)

October 23, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hysteria Tags: Banking, Berlin, Finance, Financial crisis, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Occupy Berlin, Occupy Wall Street, Satire 1 Comment

Hampered by nice weather and apathetic compatriots who actually have to work for a living, a massive crowd of some 300 (three hundred) global democrats and worldwide social revolutionaries nevertheless managed to occupy the city of Berlin over the weekend again already.

Denouncing banking and financial industry practices and other unspeakable injustices of the new century – and possibly having been inspired by something called the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in New York (the weather there is less nice at the moment I’m told) – the German revolutionary masses doing the occupying this week were notably smaller than the already rather puny ones amassed at German protests a week ago, but still.

“Derweil will die OccupyBerlin-Bewegung nach eigenen Angaben ihre täglichen Mahnwachen vor dem Bundestag fortsetzen. Seit Sonntag vergangener Woche kämen zwischen 100 und 200 Teilnehmer.”

ROSAT Soon To Become ROASTSAT

October 21, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Higher Education, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, ROSAT, Satellites, Satire, Science, Space Leave a comment

The defunct and smashingly successful 2.7-ton German ROSAT satellite will finally be making its fiery, uncontrolled and less than successful re-entry into our planet’s atmosphere sometime within the next 48 hours.

Important questions to answer here are (there is actually only one): What are the odds that a piece of ROASTSAT debris will hit someone?

Unless you are a German, the likelihood of getting injured as a result of ROASTSAT’s re-entry is extremely low. The probability of a non-German speaker somewhere on Earth getting hit is about 1 in 2,000. Those odds are for any one of the nearly 7 billion people (minus 80 million Germans) on the planet.

The odds that debris will hit you in particular — or your dog, say, unless he or she is a German Shepherd — are still just one in several trillion.

Experten warnen: Teleskop-Spiegel wird zur Bombe.

Germans Puzzled By Rising Electricity Prices

October 20, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Hysteria Tags: Atomic power, Berlin, Fukushima, German, Germans, Germany, Nuclear power, Renewable energy, The Greens 4 Comments

They are also puzzled about the increased number of “mini-blackouts” taking place across the land.

And no one can properly explain these mysterious phenomena, although the Internet portal Verivox gave it a halfhearted try: The increased share in the costs for renewable energy and the ten percent wholesale energy price increase which resulted after the shutdown of eight nuclear power plants this sommer are responsible.

To be fair, electricity prices rise here very year. To be unfair, most German media and the poltical elite refuse to admit that the price increases now taking place are a direct result of their hysterical nuclear phase-out Aktionismus (politicking).

Als Grund gab Verivox die gestiegene Umlage für die erneuerbaren Energien sowie die Erhöhung der Großhandelspreise an, die für rund 15 Euro Mehrkosten im Jahr verantwortlich sein werden. Die Großhandelspreise waren nach der Abschaltung von acht deutschen Atomkraftwerken im Sommer um rund zehn Prozent nach oben geschossen.

The Scam That Keeps On Giving

October 18, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Hard Facts, Health, Heconomy, Helplessness, High Art, Hustle (Hoax), Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Early Retirement, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Hypochondria, Retirement, Satire, Scams, Shams 6 Comments

Word has clearly gotten out now. What used to be a Geheimtipp (insiders’ tip) has now become a full-fledged and nationally recognized Volkssport (national sport): Early retirement due to mental illness.

Up some 6,000 from the previous year, more and more Germans (71,000) are now being “forced” to retire early each and every year because they suffer from things like anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, multiple generalized anxiety disorder, mega ultra super mulitple generalized really really bad anxiety disorder and other such imaginary diseases.

In fact, being mental is now the number one main excuse used to have to go into “involuntary retirement” in Germany, with the average age of these hapless victims being 48, by the way.

Fear industry profiteers, I mean experts, are happy to report that the increased number of diagnosed cases is due to a greater willingness of sufferers to openly admit their problems, although none of these experts are able or willing to explain where this sudden willingness comes from.

Über das Thema werde jetzt “offener geredet und deshalb diagnostizieren Ärzte jetzt eher psychische Ursachen von Leiden.”

Germans Mobilizing For World Financial Revolution

October 16, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Financial crisis, Financial Industry, Frankfurt, Germans, Germany, Humor, Occupy Frankfurt, Occupy Wall Street, Satire 1 Comment

Man oh man is this country ever ripe for revolution again already.

Literally a dozen or two protesters took part in the “Occupy Frankfurt” campaign a week or two ago and some reports indicate that a few of them even stayed there to continue protesting overnight. And that was just the start of it, folks. There were surely even dozens more occupying Frankfurt during protests now being held against the ECB this weekend although I’m having trouble finding news reports covering them because most Frankfurters leave Frankfurt over the weekend, it seems, as nobody here really seems to care.

One has to stop for a minute and consider the dreadful conditions under which the German people have to live in order to really understand why “casino capitalism” opponents will soon be taking down the financial world as we know it (or at least the German one). Unemployment is drastically lower here than in the US, for instance (and the unemployment rate keeps on dropping), but still. Obama is still Mr. Clean over here and always will be (so he can’t be the ineffectual disappointment that many of his compatriots are now taking to the street about). And despite the fact that “the ECB is one of the most powerful democracy-free zones in the EU and has acted in accordance with the interests of the financial industry for years,” many a thinking German financial expert can’t understand “why the ECB, of all financial institutions, should be declared the root of all evil rather than, say, Deutsche Bank or the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.”

No matter. This revolution is another in a long line of historical necessities and it is time for all of us to prepare for the coming cataclysmic change. It will not be televised, however. The ratings are simply too low.

One other important element is lacking in Germany: disappointment over Barack Obama, the man many Americans had pinned their hopes on to improve their society.

Legalistic Republic Deutschland

October 13, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habeas Corpus, Habitudes, Helplessness, Hi-tech, Hypocrisy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Crime, Criminals, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Legalism, Satire, Spyware Leave a comment

Outraged Germans everywhere are demanding to know why the German state of Bavaria is admittedly using spyware in at least five investigations (all judicially approved) to gather evidence on suspected drug dealers, dopers, Internet criminals and fencing suspects.

“This is completely unacceptable,” one enraged civil liberties activist said. “What will this lead to next? The next thing you know they’ll be using programs like these to gather evidence on suspected rapists, child molesters, murderers and terrorists.”

Bei den Verfahren in München, Landshut, Nürnberg und Augsburg ging es um Doping, Drogen, Hehlerei und eine Bande von Internet-Betrügern, die geschätzt 80.000 bis 120.000 Menschen um eine Summe von insgesamt 10 bis 30 Millionen Euro geprellt haben soll.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Category Archives: Hysteria