Normally.
Except when they invest here in Germany.
Germany news: Google plans data center in Hesse – Tech giant Google intends to build a data center just south of Germany’s finance capital Frankfurt am Main. This project is part of Google’s plans to invest €5.5 billion ($6.4 billion) in Germany.
Who doesn’t know what he’s driving at.
Germany was billed as Europe’s growth driver. Now economists are saying: Not so fast – Huge investment pledges and major fiscal changes had bolstered hopes that Germany could give the euro zone economy a much-needed boost, but economists are starting to question if — and when — that will happen.
“The actual spending is slower than many of the more excitable pundits had expected. In Germany, it takes time to spend money.”
Being that everything in Germany is already busted, I’ll go with boom.
Could German infrastructure be the next hot investment?
Germany’s newly minted government is looking to the private sector to help save the country’s ailing infrastructure.
Economy minister Katherina Reiche called for a cash injection earlier this month:
“We need speed and investments, and we need private capital,” she told CNBC. “Of all the investments we will do, 10% of them could be done with public money, we need 90% of private sector investments.”
That means bonanza.
Time to invest in the German defense industry. But you knew that already.
Germany eyes swift moves on defence, investors sniff bonanza – The prospect of a military spending boom by Germany unprecedented since the Cold War sent Europe’s defence stocks soaring after Reuters reported the likely next government was mulling a fiscal sea change for Europe’s biggest economy.
Germany’s likely next chancellor, Friedrich Merz, did not confirm that his conservatives and the Social Democrats were considering setting up special funds worth nearly a trillion euros to finance urgent defence and infrastructure spending.
But it’s not as risky as investing in Germany.
German Fortune 500 companies have announced over 60,000 layoffs this year, but the biggest employee cull is still to come – German companies in the Fortune 500 Europe have announced over 60,000 layoffs this year, in a sign of the country’s ongoing economic malaise that has left manufacturers reeling.
Major German employers, including Bosch, Thyssenkrupp, Deutsche Bahn, and Siemens, have this year announced plans to lay off thousands of workers in a bid to combat falling profits following a rocky post-COVID economic landscape.
That means to put on ice. As in put on hold.
Intel postpones construction of chip factory in Magdeburg – Haseloff against abandonment of the project.
The chip company Intel has put its plans to build a factory in Magdeburg on hold. According to company boss Gelsinger, construction will probably be delayed by two years due to cost-cutting measures. A total of 3,000 direct jobs were to be created on Magdeburg’s Eulenberg. Saxony-Anhalt’s state government assures that the semiconductor plant will nevertheless go ahead.
Or not.
Oh, sorry. Green energy already turned the lights off for you.
Germany in crisis: Intel and Volkswagen mull a multibillion-dollar withdrawal from the country.
For the first time in its 87-year history, Volkswagen is considering shutting down plants in Germany, where it employs around 300,000 people, as the company ramps up efforts to save €10 billion in costs…
Reuters reports that Intel will consider pausing or halting plans for its €30 billion ($33 billion) factory in the east German city of Magdeburg as the semiconductor manufacturer looks for cost savings. Germany had committed €9.9 billion ($10.9 billion) to the project when it was announced in June last year.
The Chip War Western Front.
EU approves German state aid for $11 billion TSMC chip plant – Taiwan’s TSMC (2330.TW), opens new tab on Tuesday launched a major new computer chip plant in Dresden, Germany, expected to be a key supplier to European industry and carmakers after the EU Commission approved 5 billion euros ($5.5 billion) worth of state aid.
The large aid award for the project, which will cost 10 billion in all, is the biggest approved so far under the EU Chips Act, and the first in Germany.
It is also the first project in Europe under TSMC, the world’s largest contract chipmaker, and is expected to improve Europe’s resiliency if a chip shortage of the type experienced during the COVID pandemic happens again.
Why should they be the only ones who don’t?
But…
German companies love America. According to the German-American Chamber of Commerce, around 5,600 of them have invested in the US market. As of September 2022, that’s an investment volume of almost $650 billion (€605 billion). And it’s not only big firms like Siemens, Volkswagen, or Linde that are currently looking to strengthen their commitment to the United States — in some instances, even building entire new production facilities.
Because they’re not the right shade of Green. They’re not European Green, in other words.
They’re more of a Greenback shade of Green. And this makes them Green with envy. Or maybe it’s more like Green about the gills.
German Vice Chancellor and Economy Minister Robert Habeck was holding talks in Washington on Tuesday focused on the controversial US Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which foresees huge investments in green technologies.
A large portion of the Inflation Reduction Act, somewhere in the region of $370 billion (roughly €350 billion at current exchange rates), is earmarked for spending and subsidies designed to support the green transition in the US.
For instance, it includes government incentives for consumers to buy electric vehicles, but only if the vehicles and batteries were produced either in the US or a country with a trade deal with the US.
Observing Hermann 