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.
Germany’s real estate market took a deep hit in the fourth quarter as investors shied away from deals on the back of soaring financing costs.
Total investments in the country’s commercial property sector only reached €9.9 billion ($10.6 billion) in the last three months of 2022, a decline of 50% compared with the five-year average for the period, according to a report released by BNP Paribas’ real estate unit on Monday. The development is largely due to soaring interest rates, a weakening economy and record inflation, it said.
It starts with a “nu” and ends with a “clear” but you didn’t hear that from me because the Green Brain Police here in Germany demand strict adherence to the ideological tenets of environmental dogma. Or something along those lines.
Germany to reject EU green investment label for nuclear power – Germany will oppose European Union plans to include nuclear energy as a sustainable investment in its “taxonomy” policy for labelling green investments, the government said on Monday.
Brussels is seeking approval from EU countries and European Parliament for its plan to label gas and nuclear as climate-friendly investments, which has split opinion among states who disagree on the fuels’ green credentials.
“The Federal Government has expressed its opposition to the taxonomy rules on nuclear power. This ‘no’ is an important political signal that makes clear: Nuclear energy is not sustainable and should therefore not be part of the taxonomy.”
To pretend you would stand up to China when it comes to trade. Even if it was just for a few media moments like that.
Impressive. Not. As usual.
Experts Demand Suspension of EU-China Investment Deal – More than a hundred experts are demanding an end to the EU-China investment agreement, DER SPIEGEL has learned. They name serious human rights violations and the suppression of democracy movements in China as the reasons.
“Despite evidence of ethnic cleansing, forced labor, and other gross human rights violations, the leadership of the European institutions have chosen to sign an agreement which exacts no meaningful commitments from the Chinese government to guarantee an end to crimes against humanity or slavery.”
You know it’s going to get washed properly. Germans have this squeaky-clean reputation to live up to, after all.
It’s the easiest place in Europe to do this kind of thing and everybody who’s anybody in the crime and terror world knows it. I’m sure that will soon change though. Not.
Germany sees record spike in money laundering cases – Germany’s Financial Intelligence Unit says suspected cases of money laundering and terrorist financing jumped by 50% in 2019. The real estate market is especially vulnerable when it comes to suspicious transactions.
“One problem for us is that the prosecution of money laundering in Germany isn’t traditionally well established.”
And zero is what you get if you purchase the world’s first 30-year bond featuring – zero income. Not much of an outcome there. What a steal. In more ways than one.
Germany Regrets Size of Bond That Pays Nothing as Auction Flops – The world’s first 30-year bond featuring zero income struggled to find buyers, prompting Germany’s debt agency to admit the sale may have been “too large.”
The nation failed to meet a 2-billion-euro target ($2.2 billion) for the auction of notes maturing in 2050, signaling that negative yields across Europe may finally be taking their toll on demand. It’s another sign that the global bond rally may be coming to a halt now that more than $16 trillion of securities have negative yields.
“The broader conclusion is that this is an ominous sign for cash bonds.”
Good luck with that. Honest. It’s great that big industry finally wants to pump some money into Berlin again but keep your pants on already, Siemens.
The German engineering giant has unveiled plans to build a huge innovation campus in Berlin, harking back to its early days in the German capital and aiming to rival Silicon Valley in the United States.
Investment in a new campus to be called Siemensstadt 2.0 (Siemens City 2.0) will come in at €600 million ($680 million) on offices and residential accommodation, as well as laboratories and production plants, according to an agreement signed by Berlin Mayor Michael Müller and Siemens executive member Cedrik Neike on Wednesday.
The plan is to transform the historic Siemens site in Berlin-Spandau into a location for research and startup centers by 2030.
Der Weltkonzern baut in Berlin für 600 Millionen Euro seinen Zukunfts-Campus. Mit 2000 Wohnungen, Forschungslabors, Geschäften, Schulen und eigenem S-Bahn-Anschluss
I’m gonna buy a mess of these. But like what will be my German Bund’s 10-year yield at -0.030 percent? I mean, will there still be any of my investment left?
“Nobody buys bunds at these yield levels thinking they are attractive. Demand for haven assets is being driven by fear of Brexit and growth concern. Investors are buying bunds as a hedge against uncertainty.”
More than half of all German government debt with more than one year maturity is now trading negative.
Investors have been warned of dangers of holding German government debt, as unprecedented central bank easing sends the country’s 10-year borrowing costs towards zero.
“If you look at bunds in anything other than the shortest possible timescale, the risk becomes very clear.”
In case you didn’t know it, Germans are sitting on a big honking tremendous pile of money.
The Bundesbank thinks that German private households are in posession of ein paar tausend Milliarden or “a few thousand billion” euros (stick with that, believe me: Billion is Milliarde in German, trillion is Billion). They’ve got more set aside now then ever before, in other words; some 4.7 trillion euros.
And the punch line is that they seem to have invested most of it at those awful horrible dreadful banks they like to despise so much (they make big banks even bigger, you might say). Investments in real estate haven’t even been calculated here, by the way. Rereading this is starting to make my stomach hurt.
Observing Hermann 