The key message from the International Monetary Fund annual meeting in October 2022 was that Germany would fall into recession in 2023 with the worst ecomomic growth among the major countries. This did not come as a surprise. It showed how difficult it would be for the world’s leading export country to preserve its international competitiveness without access to cheap Russian … [Read more...] about Dragging Down Europe
Europe
Heat Pump Fiasco
Berlin’s focus has shifted. German Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s “tank battle” and the insufficient German military support for Ukraine’s defense against the Russian invaders are no longer the major issues. Germany’s new defense minister, Boris Pistorius, is now the country’s most-liked politician. And Germanyapproved a new €2.7 billion worth of arms for Kyiv—the largest amount so … [Read more...] about Heat Pump Fiasco
Energy Idiocy
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?
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