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.
I call it Hurt Feelings Burnout Syndrome (HFBS). With an emphasis on the BS. Oh man, I had to laugh out loud while reading the latest on the poor, misunderstood German front.
It appears that many German intellectuals are very concerned about how their European neighbors think of them (Germany) these days. Needless to say, it isn’t very highly at all. And some have come to the stunning conclusion that they are so disliked at the moment because, now get this, they are so big and strong. Imagine that.
Germany is the USA of Europe – only with a different history.
You don’t need to puzzle for very long about the question of why so much Nazi name-calling is going on at the moment: For the first time since 1945, Germany has appeared in full strength again. Not because anybody wanted it, but because the European debt crisis has made the most economically powerful country the most politically powerful one, as well. Germany is now intervening in the internal affairs of others in a big way.
Slowly but surely, the country is taking over a role for Europe that the USA has played for the rest of the world for so long, as being the country that uses (and sometimes misuses) its power, the country that is to blame for everything, the country that is supposed to save everything and is reviled for the way it does it. What has America not been accused of? The CIA has always been behind everything and American imperialism has always been the motivation.
How moving. Or something. And the rest of the story? Now folks are calling Germans Nazis again (as if they had ever stopped). Boo-hoo-hoo already. Come on, Germany. Wake up and smell the coffee. You’re the big kid on the block. Run with it. Enjoy. It comes with the turf.
And in a related story (I find), it turns out that Germans are also now “burning out” like flies (it’s hard to carry on when nobody likes you, I guess). This imaginary disease (yet another American import – are we having irony yet?) is currently running rampant among Germany’s workforce, with nearly 1 out of 10 sick days in Germany in 2010 being attributed to it (tendency rising). Another connection to US-Amerika? Oh my God. No wonder so many Germans are getting sick. Please note: The high-brow daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung questioned why burnout was being written so much about in Germany, while in France, which is economically a lot worse off, “it’s hardly a preoccupation at all.”
Remember: HFBS is incurable, but there are many effective treatments. One of them is shutting the #!?#! up.
Man braucht wirklich nicht lange an der Frage rumzurätseln, warum die Nazi-Vergleiche im Moment so oft gezogen werden: Zum ersten Mal seit 1945 tritt Deutschland wieder mit voller Macht auf, nicht weil man das gewollt hätte, sondern weil die europäische Schuldenkrise das ökonomisch stärkste auch zum politisch mächtigsten Land gemacht hat. Deutschland greift nun tief ein in die inneren Angelegenheiten Dritter.
Allmählich bekommt das Land für Europa eine ähnliche Funktion, wie sie die USA lange Zeit für die ganze Welt hatten. Als jene Macht, die ihre Kraft gebrauchte, manchmal missbrauchte, die an allem schuld war, die alles retten sollte und sich dafür beschimpfen lassen musste, wie sie es tat. Was wurde den Amerikanern nicht alles Übles angedichtet, immer steckte die CIA hinter allem Bösen, stets wurden die Amerikaner des Imperialismus geziehen.
PS: I hate to admit it, Germany, but I guess we’ve got more in common than we would like to admit (thanks for the idea, Old Phat Stu).
After all, what are draconian measures against Chinese civil rights activists, state censorship and unrest in Tibet compared to all those trillions of dollars of Chinese currency reserves just waiting to be invested in debt-ridden euro zone countries like, well, her own? And waiting and waiting and waiting, I might add.
Who says grovelling will get you nowhere? Maybe I did. But at least it’s worth a try.
“Chinese investments are expressly welcome. They will be sought, used and appreciated — both in Germany and in the rest of the euro zone.”
Europe’s largest economy, may slow to a near standstill next year as the region’s debt crisis saps demand for exports.
You know that scene in Austin Powers when Dr. Evil says an evil funny and he and his evil cronies start laughing loudly in a sinister fashion and just laugh and laugh and laugh and then finally stop laughing because, well, you just can’t keep on laughing like that forever, no matter how evil the joke?
Well it’s the same thing with German Schadenfreude about being fein raus (off the hook) and everybody else out there doing the suffering, economically speaking. You can only enjoy that Schadenfreude for so long, folks. So like export a few more good chuckles out of this while you can.
“The global economic recession triggered by the international financial crisis will be long-term.”
And it’s November now, too. Ever spent a November in Germany?
The once “model company” Roth & Rau is the latest victim of… Was eigentlich (of what)?
“Solar companies have relied on tax credits or other forms of subsidy for their customers to buy and install the product.” These subsidies are now drying up in Germany. Hmm. Might there be a connection here?
“The logic was that as the price of oil goes up it generally benefits the oil companies but also creates more perceived need for solar products. When oil prices went down it generally hurt oil companies but created less urgency for solar products.” Well, that dynamic doesn’t seem to apply anymore.
Die Solarbranche steckt in einer schweren Krise: Die Nachfrage ist nach Förderkürzungen in mehreren wichtigen Märkten wie Deutschland und Italien eingebrochen. Gleichzeitig steigt das Angebot, weil vor allem in Asien etliche neue Fabriken eröffnet wurden.
Although the Obama administration has taken the time and effort to officially announce that the US government currently has no credible evidence backing up the claim that aliens have secretly colonized our planet, other sources point to a secret economic colonization of Europe now taking place by Germans, like currently already, as we speak so to speak.
These sources say: What we are witnessing is the economic colonisation of Europe by stealth by the Germans.
Once, it would have taken an invading military force to topple the leadership of a European nation. Today, it can be done through sheer economic pressure: it might be that within a few days the Germans — along with their French allies — will have secured regime change in the two most tiresome countries in the eurozone (Greece and Italy).
Perhaps the Germans, as the new masters of Europe, have been lulled into a false sense of security by Ireland’s response to the savage austerity measures imposed upon it in return for its bailout.
But there’s more: “Opinion polls now indicate more than 50% of the American people believe there is an alien-like German presence secretly taking over Europe and more than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about this phenomenon. The people have a right to know. The people can handle the truth.”
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.
We have now reached the point where folks volunteer, plead to be taxed.
A group of 50 rich Germans has joined the ”tax me harder” movement by renewing their open call to Angela Merkel to ”stop the gap between rich and poor getting even bigger.”
Sure, these particular folks have money to burn. Unfortunately, the taxation never stops with them and does absolutely nothing to fill this “gap” they pretend to worry about. How does giving your money-to-burn to the state so it can burn it for you change anything?
”None of us are in Buffett’s or Bettencourt’s league, most of our wealth is inherited. But we have more money than we need.”
“Imagine that a genie magically appeared and offered to grant you one wish – and, being a decent sort, you wished that everyone’s income would be doubled. That could bring down on you the wrath of the political left, because it would mean that the gap between the rich and the poor had widened. That is basically their complaint against the American economy.”
“There might well be seven lean years ahead for the world economy,” German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble said in a speech at a meeting of Nobel laureates at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland.
What he really meant was seven years of fiscal consolidation (austerity measures) in Europe (and elsewhere?). This is the key to long-term growth, he says. My, how, uh, German or something.
Jiminy Crickets. As if the ten plagues of late hadn’t been bad enough already, now the Germans themselves (they own Europe, you see, and are recreating it in their own image) are going to inflict the Pharaohs of the EU with seven years of boils, hail, locusts and darkness. In the form of austerity measures, I mean. Or maybe they won’t. Hard to say for sure. Could be that monkeys will fly out of their butts instead.
Muddy Waters knew the deal:
On the seventh hour, of the seventh day,
on the seventh month, the seventh economic witch doctor say:
“He’s born for good luck, and I know you see;
Got seven hundred euros, and don’t you mess with me.
Hidden behind the so-called German economic miracle is an underclass of low-paid employees whose incomes have benefited little from the country’s stability and in fact have shrunk in real terms over the last decade.
Despite Germany’s renowned inflation-fighting efforts, which kept consumer price increases at an average of 1.7 percent a year from 2000 to 2010, more and more low-income Germans report that they cannot make ends meet despite having a job and that they must rely upon state aid to supplement their income.
Nowhere is this deepening chasm more visible than in Berlin-Mitte, the prosperous center of the capital, full of handsome government buildings and fine restaurants that cater to officials and lobbyists.
On a rainy summer morning here, only a 10-minute walk from the glamorous Unter Den Linden boulevard, hundreds of poorly dressed men and women lined up inside the district employment office. Some of them had come to look for work, some were applying for state help and some just wanted to accompany a friend.
“They cannot live off their income. Their wages are just too low. They have no choice but to receive help from the state.”
Observing Hermann 