What Identity Do I Wear Today?

September 23, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Health, Heconomy, Hypochondria, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, Crisis, Debt, EU, Euro, Europe, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Humor, Satire Leave a comment

So what do you want, Germany? The Germans don’t even know themselves what they want with Europe and/or Germany: In a survey this September by Der Spiegel, clear majorities of Germans said that it wasn’t right to help Greece and other countries with the bailout fund and that Germany was not benefiting from the euro zone. But a clear majority also believed that European institutions should be given more power in a crisis. Classic German schizophrenia again or what?

Not that it matters or anything. In the final analysis nobody is asking you what you want: The European Union is a union not of peoples but of heads of state. “General Franco was a head of state, too.”

Nope, I still don’t know what “Europe” is supposed to mean here, but I keep getting the sneaking suspicion that I’m not the only one living in Europe who feels that way. It’s just that I, as a non-European, have the luxury of being able to admit that I don’t get it and that I don’t really care.

But as this latest crisis develops, one thing seems certain. Whatever Europe may be, it clearly has something to do with illusion. Illusion with an s on the end. With lots of illusions. One illusion after the next. Here’s one, for example:

Europe is founded on the illusion of German money without German control. And that bargain has worked, until now, because of the way Germany sees itself within Europe (which itself, as the polls suggest, is an illusion).

“As a good German one has to be a good European.”

Two Speeds for Saving Europe: Slow and Slower

September 6, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Helplessness, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, EU, Euro, Europe, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Merkel, Satire Leave a comment

Breaking up is hard to do. But it’s about freakin’ time already, don’t you think?

Now that it is becoming clearer and clearer that the euro crisis is not going to get fixed with the institutions at hand and the will that isn’t, Chancellor Merkel HERSELF has finally had enough and appears ready to do the one thing that will finally make everyone out there happy: Create new institutions and a “two-speed Europe” that won’t work either, but still.

What this means is, uh, I’m not sure really (can someone out there please explain this plan to me?), but I think it means creating something called a “core Europe” (the countries that haven’t filed for bankruptcy yet) run by Germany and then a “rotten to the core Europe” (all the other loser countries that nobody wants anymore) run by nobody. I mean, running on empty.

This won’t really solve anything, of course, but it’s an elegant European way of tossing in the towel and passing the buck on to someone else, in this case someone with absolutely no accountability who nobody out there has ever even heard of before: European Council President Herman Van Rompuy.

Are we having late Roman decadence yet? This divide and conquer stuff, I mean divide and save, makes me wonder sometime.

Van Rompuy doesn’t seek the limelight and enjoys writing haikus about nature in his free time.

Reality Bites Biting Again

August 29, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Hysteria Tags: Berlin, EU, Euro, Europe, Finance, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire 1 Comment

Are we having a mutiny yet?

The seething discontent in Germany over Europe’s debt crisis has spread to all the key institutions of the state. “Hysteria is sweeping Germany.” Uh, hysteria is always sweeping Germany. So what’s the big deal this time?

It’s not all that big, really. On September 7, a 440 billion euro EU bail-out fund (EFSF) package (empowering the EFSF to buy bonds pre-emptively and recapitalize banks) goes to the Bundestag and to the country’s constitutional court for a ruling on it’s legality.

German media reported that the latest tally of votes in the Bundestag shows that 23 members from Mrs Merkel’s own coalition plan to vote against the package, including twelve of the 44 members of Bavaria’s Social Christians (CSU). This may force the Chancellor to rely on opposition votes, risking a government collapse.

So? It will pass, of course, because it doesn’t really matter what the man on the street thinks, hysteria or not. This is just another case of what happens when political dreams collide with reality. When the dreamers aren’t held accountable for what they dream, I mean. Happens all the time. No accountability, no problem. Let’s face it: Everybody’s living in the Matrix here and everybody loves it.

“Behind Winston ‘s back the voice from the telescreen was still babbling away about pig-iron and the over fulfilment of the Ninth Three-Year Plan.”

Seven Years Of Famine Or Something

August 28, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy Tags: Berlin, Economics, Economy, EU, Euroe, Europe, Finance, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire 1 Comment

No short-term pain, no long-term gain.

“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.

Ain’t no “might” about it, Fareed

August 18, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Economy, Euro, Europe, Financial crisis, German, Germans, Germany 1 Comment

If push comes to shove over here, I mean.

Why Germany might let Europe fall

The old structure of Europe rested on an extraordinary degree of German abnegation of its own interests. The Germans believed their national interest lay in subordinating itself in every way to Europe’s broader interest. That was what Europe was built on.

Today what people are basically asking is: “Is Europe’s debt going to be centralized or not?” In other words, is Europe going to be willing to say, “All our debt is pooled together and theoretically, as a single entity, we’ll pay it back.”

The key to this commitment is Germany. Germany is the only country that can pay.

The key to Europe’s future is how Germany conceives of its interests.

So once it gets real ugly, and it’s going to get a whole lot uglier yet, the last guy out please remember to turn off the lights.

PS: This gives “Old Europe” and “New Europe” a whole new meaning, don’t it?

Greeks Don’t Work Enough

July 28, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Europe, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire, Travel, Vacation 1 Comment

Talk about your vacation nation. No, not Greece. Germany.

This isn’t really news, of course. “Germans may accuse spendthrift euro zone southerners of too much play and not enough work, but they enjoy the most generous annual holiday time in the European Union, a study released on Wednesday showed.”

Hey, it’s nice to be the king.

Keine anderen Europäer haben mehr freie Tage im Jahr – insgesamt sind es jeweils 40.

Pirouettes and Unpredictability

July 5, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, Heconomy, Helplessness, Hypocrisy Tags: EU, Europe, Germany, Greece, Leadership 1 Comment

We Germans call the shots here in Europe, sort of.

It’s just that we don’t know what we’re going to be calling next.

“Anybody out there still think Germany is running Europe — or for that matter can or will dominate it in time?

The question fits the moment after the German refusal to vote in favor of allied military intervention in Libya, the government’s pullout from nuclear energy largely for reasons of emotion and domestic political calculation, and its willingness last week to put off possibly decisive steps to end Greece’s debt misery.

Over a period of just about three months, that is a lot of unpredictability and policy pirouettes for allies who might have thought German leadership, on the upside, would be rational, competent and closely bound to the West.”

Germans Meant “Work Harder”

June 5, 2011 By Hermann Observer in Hard Facts, Heconomy, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, Debt Crisis, Employment, Europe, German, Germans, Germany, Greece, Humor, Satire, Statistics 2 Comments

Down south (in battling the Greek debt crisis, for instance). Not longer. A study based on OECD and Eurostat figures has determined that Germans work less annually than their no good and lazy Southern European neighbors.

The study indicates that “a German’s average annual work duration (1,390 hours) was substantially lower than for a Greek (2,119), an Italian (1,773) a Portuguese (1,719) and a Spaniard (1,654).”

But at least for that the Germans work more intensely, right? Not according to that study, they don’t.

But at least they mean well, or something?

“Germany’s productivity per head remains close to the average of southern European countries. Its hourly productivity rate is above average but not better than France or Greece,”

Remember when it was European Germany?

December 21, 2010 By Hermann Observer in Heconomy, History, Hypocrisy Tags: Berlin, EU, Euro, Europe, German, Germans, Germany, Humor, Satire Leave a comment

Now it’s German Europe.

Huh? Where did this come from all of a sudden? Out of the blue like that?*

It was another “good day for Europe” when, as usual, nothing was actually resolved during the latest EU summit the other day, other than the fact that that nothing had a big Made in Germany stamp on it. The times they are a changed. The country that used to moan about being the paymaster for so long (and still does, of course, don’t get me wrong) is now “the taskmaster of the entire community” and doesn’t even have the decency to make a secret about it anymore.

But don’t complain about it, my (as in Germany’s) fellow Europeans. This is only what the “fathers of Europe” had envisioned right from the start. Think of what Jean Monnet had to say about the plan, for instance:

He wanted to guide European countries into a super-state “without their people understanding what is happening. This can be accomplished by successive steps, each disguised as having an economic purpose.”

I admit that this wasn’t quite the purpose he had envisioned but, well, now you “have the salad,” as the Germans like to say (the fat is in the fire). It doesn’t really matter that Berlin has a lack of vision when it comes to dealing with the current euro crisis, Germany calls the shots now and doesn’t need a vision if it doesn’t want one. So get used to it already.

“This is all about Germany, and it’s all about the end of the German appetite for writing checks to the periphery of Europe.”

*Have any of you ever read Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle? Germany and Japan win World War II. This is kind of like that.

“Good European pieties and delirious anti-American phantasms”

December 20, 2010 By Hermann Observer in Habitudes, High Art Tags: Berlin, Europe, Film, German, Germans, Germany, Hollywood, Humor, Oscar, Satire 4 Comments

It’s all here. Ya gottcha European Film Academy Awards, your European Director, your European Screenwriter, your European Actor, your European Composer, your European Production Designer and even your European Oscar, all right here in Europe. Financed primarily by Germany, of course (where all the shots get called these days), but still. Germany is part of Europe too, you know.

Now all you need is your appropriate inappropriate European Film with your suitably anti-American fantasy exposing that country for the “fundamentalist totalitarian state” it is (as put so diplomatically by European Film Academy Presidente por Life Wim Wenders–he’s a European too, by the way) and the recipe is complete.

So this year’s wiener (or is it weiner or even whiner?) is: Roman Polanski for “Ghost Writer.” It’s the heart-warming story of an Iraq War-related assasination of a CIA-controlled US-Amerikan imperialist Tony Blair robot or puppet dude, take your pick he’s both (I knew I always liked that guy for some reason).

Gee, I wonder who got the Best Foreign Language Film Language European Oscar Award this year? I’m going to go way out on a limb on this one and say German.

German-funded “European” film prize goes to German-funded anti-American film.

Thanks for the link, Joe.

Observing Hermann

“Was interessiert mich mein Geschwätz von gestern?”

Tag Archives: Europe