The good news? Germans still have schlechte Laune (they’re still in a bad mood).
The bad news? They’re not in as bad a mood as they ought to be.
German consumer morale slows down on path to recovery – German consumer sentiment is set to nudge up in April as energy prices have relented somewhat from record highs, though a full recovery is not in sight anytime soon, showed a GfK institute survey on Wednesday.
The institute forecast its consumer sentiment index to improve to -29.5 heading into April from a revised reading of -30.6 in March, slightly below the expectations of analysts polled by Reuters of -29.0.
When prices rise, people buy less. Who would have expected that?
German retail sales post surprise plunge in December amid rising prices – German retail sales unexpectedly fell in December as a Christmas shopping period weighed down by high inflation and the energy crisis revived fears of a more marked slowdown in Europe’s largest economy.
Retail sales decreased by 5.3% in December compared with the previous month, the federal statistics office said on Tuesday. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a 0.2% rise in price-adjusted terms.
This is a brilliant new German invention (both the word and the concept) meaning that energy providers must first explain why they will be raising prices before going ahead and raising them anyway. Thanks German government (the ones who created this energy crisis in Germany in the first place), German citizens are most certainly saying, we wouldn’t be able to sleep soundly at night without you.
Germany to force energy providers to justify future price hikes – The German government plans to allow energy providers to raise prices next year only if objectively justified, the economy ministry said on Saturday, denying a media report that Berlin planned a ban on all energy price hikes for consumers.
That means immeasurable. You know, like die Preise steigen ins Unermessliche. Prices are going through the roof.
German Power Price Soars, Hitting 700 Euros for First Time Ever – Europe’s benchmark electricity price jumped more than 25% on Monday to pass 700 euros per megawatt-hour for the first time. The level is about 14 times the seasonal average over the past five years.
European gas and power prices surged as panic over Russian supplies gripped markets and politicians warned citizens to brace for a tough winter ahead.
Benchmark gas settled at a record high, while German power surged to above 700 euros ($696) a megawatt-hour for the first time. Russia said it will stop its key Nord Stream gas pipeline for three days of repairs on Aug. 31, again raising concerns it won’t return after the work. Europe has been on tenterhooks about shipments through the link for weeks, with flows resuming only at very low levels after it was shut for works last month.
That means to put under pressure, or to feel the squeeze.
Germans feeling the squeeze over surging food, energy prices – Middle- and low-income families say they’re struggling to make ends meet amid high inflation, soaring energy bills.
Inflation has soared in recent months, hitting 7.5% in June, and according to the latest German central bank estimate, it is likely to rise further this fall, reaching double digits.
That means existential threat. Like: “The existence of many companies is being threatened by the increased prices.”
German companies are supposed to save gas. But the switch to oil, for example, is being held back by bureaucracy and legal uncertainty.
The German government is calling for gas savings, with the Federal Minister of Economics leading the way – and yet, from the point of view of companies, the government is preventing exactly what it is calling for. Several associations say that it is very difficult for companies to obtain approval for retrofits.
The German Greens reassure their voters. To save the planet and all that.
But their voters are finally starting to get restless. Even Good Green Germans may stop doing what they’re told at one point.
Not easy voting green: Germans wary of getting climate bill – Climate change is among the top concerns for Germans going into this month’s national election, which will determine who replaces Angela Merkel as chancellor.
“They don’t say enough where the money is going to come from.”
The great German beer crisis? Demand is falling, people. And I can only drink so much on my own.
Demand is falling in a country where there are more than 6,000 different brands of beer. The theory goes that you could drink a different one each day for more than 16 years without having to taste the same one twice. In fact, today fewer Germans regularly drink beer at all. Since the early 1990s, domestic consumption has dropped by more than a quarter. Consumption per head peaked in 1976 and has been falling ever since. The result has left mass-market brewers suffering from overcapacity and fighting a long-running price war. More than two-thirds of all the beer sold in supermarkets is offered at a discount.
“How is it that one of the world’s biggest export nations, and one so obsessed with beer quality, fails to woo international drinkers?”
The expansion of German discount chain Lidl into US-Amerika is turning out to be less successful than hoped, to put it mildly. Sales are disappointing and the two billion euros planned to cover investment and start-up losses will not be enough. Management apparently chose too many wrong locations and built stores that were much too big. Instead of the 100 stores planned for last year only 47 actually opened.
This puzzles me a bit. You can’t walk a quorter of a mile in Germany without running into one of these places. And when I read how Lidl prices in the US seem to be just as low or lower than they are here, how could they possibly fail? Well, if they do, there’s still Aldi, right?
Die extrem jungen Expansionsteams haben in Amerika oftmals falsche Standorte ausgewählt. Zudem wurden zu große und zu teure Märkte gebaut. Die Umsätze sind enttäuschend. Die ursprünglich kalkulierten zwei Milliarden Euro für Investitionen und Anlaufverluste werden nach Informationen vom manager magazin nicht ausreichen.
Verblüffender Befund (an amazing finding)? I don’t see how it could amaze anyone here – anyone who has ever gone shopping in Germany and then compared those prices to those you would pay in other European countries, that is.
Germans apparently aren’t aware of the fact that they have some of the lowest Lebenshaltungskosten (living costs or cost of living) in all of Europe. Of their immediate neighbors, it’s only cheaper to live in Poland and Czechia.
What is really amazing I find, however, is the fact that the Germans are able to enjoy these cheap prices while still having a higher per capita GDP than a lot of the European countries with a higher cost of living (Belgium, Denmark, France).
Beats the hell out of me. Hey, es darf eben nichts kosten here.
Verbraucher in Deutschland bekommen für ihren Euro mehr als die Menschen in den Nachbarländern. Lediglich bei den Nachbarn in Polen und Tschechien sind die Lebenshaltungskosten niedriger.
Observing Hermann 