Russian President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine has exposed Germany as Europe’s largest, strongest, and most globally connected economy in its dangerous dependence on the flow of Russian gas. Russia reduced gas supplies in June for the main pipeline Nord Stream 1 to below 40 percent, before cutting them altogether on July 11 to allow for routine annual ten-day … [Read more...] about Energy Idiocy
Did Germany Inadvertently Encourage Putin’s War?
Three days after Putin’s war against Ukraine started, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, in a special session of the Bundestag, proclaimed a Zeitenwende, in the sense of a historic shift. The Russian invasion of Ukraine shattered many fundamental convictions of German politics, including “change through trade” (Wandel durch Handel), which had prevailed for decades. In a … [Read more...] about Did Germany Inadvertently Encourage Putin’s War?
Cultural Change At the German Bundesbank
Some ten weeks after the German Bundestag elections, a traffic light coalition of Social Democrats, Greens, and Free Democrats took office on December 8, 2021. Olaf Scholz, who served in the previous coalition government as finance minister, was elected chancellor. Now a set of new politicians are in charge. The new year also brought another unexpected leadership change, this … [Read more...] about Cultural Change At the German Bundesbank
An Impressive Failure – Angela Merkel bows out
On October 29, 2018, a day after the Christian Democrats in the State of Hesse suffered double-digit election losses, German Chancellor Angela Merkel told a meeting of the CDU executive council that she would not stand again as candidate to head her party. “Angela Merkel is the first postwar German chancellor who managed to succeed where most politicians fail: to end her … [Read more...] about An Impressive Failure – Angela Merkel bows out
German Election Scorecard
The bursting of the Greens’ Baerbock bubble and the emergence of the CDU’s Laschet. But the Greens aren’t going away. Delegates to the Green Party conference, most connected digitally over a weekend in mid-June, adopted an election manifesto that calls for fast-tracking the switch to carbon neutrality over the next twenty years and vowing to turn Germany into a … [Read more...] about German Election Scorecard