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Germany the Vampire Squid of Europe
Herr VAMPIRE SQUID revisited and affirmed-
Germany is in it for Germany, not for united Europe. When you look at Europe and see that Germay is a success and no one else is, there is a reason for that.
Germany, after 'trapping' many countries in the e-Zone ignored their situation while Germany continues to post increasingly lower-than-required rates of inflation as many in EMU ahve run higher rates. As a result of this, there is a huge competitiveness conundrum in the Zone. It seems to have been engineered by Germany-and they are great engineers.
see http://robertbrusca.blogspot.com/ for a previous discussion of this toipic.
How are we to view Germany's actions?
Now I do not 'blame' Germany alone but as you know in our financial system the low inflation Balance-of-payments-surplus countries rule. The others are forced to adjust. Germany has persisted in growing slowly, running a high rate of unemployment while others wanted to grow faster. Germany helped them to do that by lending to them. Germany was not mindful of the consequences of their excesses but there were consequences as they all were/are in the Zone together. the Zone was not a Bento box divided into various walled-off compartments; it was like bowl of soup and poison one place circulates to another place.
As the 'adult,' or fiscal conservative, Germany did nothing constructive. It held back and watched until the others were in trouble then it dropped the hammer. Am I supposed to view Germany kindly for this sort of behavior? Did Germany really 'behave' any better or did it simply spring its trap?
Why did it neglect the growing imbalances in the Zone? Not just the fiscal ones that might have been hidden, but the inflation differences that were reported month after month after month. I have been haranguing about EMU inflation differences in the zone for years.
Did Germany smirk and know that it was gaining competitiveness? Did it not realize this disparity would benefit its exporters but come back to haunt it politically and financially?
Now that it has... does Germany disavow itself of any responsibility?
What allows the US to to maintain a union that has areas of vastly different real income, property values, etc, is its fiscal transfer system. Germany instead of dealing with today's issues, and assisting with development (instead of just bail-out bucks) wants to roll the clock back and set up what I have called a Bento-box view of Europe in which GERMANS will be made safe as each member of EMU will have its own mandated balanced budget and will be put in a Germanic-like straight jacket of fiscal responsibility. Hey that sounds like fun!
The Euro zone is NOT the German Zone. It was not formed and does not exist for the benefits of Germans. But as Germany is in a position of power it is now trying to bend every EMU nation to its way of doing things. This widespread use of austerity is foolishness. You may denigrate 'Keynesianism' a term that is such a cartoon and straw-man that it has no meaning, but austerity in the midst of recession is tomfoolery!
Germany waited until other EMU members got in trouble then, as I said, sprung THE TRAP. While the Germans think they have been virtuous they are among the TWO COUNTRIES that are the farthest out of equilibrium with respect to the Euro-average.
Look at the EU Commission indices and everyone else is weak and only Germany still has strong readings. I can understand wanting to glorify Germany for this success. But if we view Europe as a team, then Germany is not a team player. It is a high scorer on a team that is losing all its games! Germany has created a game of 'economy' and set the rules of EMU to benefit itself and to impoverish everyone else.
I know this is not a popular way to look at it. We should glorify the best performing economy but why is it best performing? Because it has the fiscal policy and national work ethic and social policy that works with the monetary policy that is being run.
Suppose the US were to play Germany in 'Football.' Suppose the US sent NFL guys in their pads and the Germans sent their 'soccer' team. Now if they played soccer instead of NFL football and the Germans wiped us out would that really make them 'the best?" Suppose we played NFL football instead?
What I am trying to do is to suggest that Germany wins at this game because it is a German game. Germany did not have to change anything to join EMU. Everyone else SHOULD HAVE been made to change a lot but they did not. Yet the game continued under 'German rules' NO WONDER THEY DO BEST... and there has been no one out there 'blowing the whistle' on those counties that have been building excesses; they have been left alone until WHAM! Crisis time.
The Germans have not swerved one iota to help their neighbors nor has this idea of what macro policy should be been broached. The 'Mass-Trick' was supposed to be a constraint on that policy that was never agreed to but the Germans and French broke the rule first and ruined it. Macro policy cannot be every man for himself with a fixed currency.
So here is a restatement of the Zone and a new accounting of who is most out of whack:
Currently Germany is the low inflation country in the Zone since it was formed. It has done this by averaging inflation of 1.7% per year while the GDP-weighted EMU average was 2.12% per year. Only FOUR EMU nations among the first 12-members average inflation at the EMU average or less (Germany, France, Finland, & Austria). They are the strong countries and they are the outliers -too. Of course Germany and friends are closer to the EMU average because Germany is such a large country and it carries a large weight in making up the EMU average. If we look at the simple unweighted average for inflation for the EMU first-12 members, average inflation among these countries goes up to 2.35%. Viewed that way the most normal country since EMU was formed is Italy in terms of inflation followed by Ireland. Next most normal is Belgium. Germany ranks 11th out of 12, and guess what? Greece ranks 12th! Germany and Greece rank right next to each other as outliers- on different ends of the spectrum, of course. .
Isn't that amazing?
If policy were geared for the average EMU country the Zone would be quite different. But it is not; it is geared for Germany making everyone else much worse off relative to Germany. Instead of having a zone with most members tightly clustered around the average with Germany and Greece as outliers we have a policy that is being run for one extreme of the Zone - Germany!
Typically the Germans think everyone else is wrong.
...and before you side with Germans let me note here that the US has had a good inflation performance over this period averaging a CPI of 2.5% (PCE even lower) . So before you go, "Ugh! Italy's the the average - are you crazy!!!" remember that US inflation has been relatively well contained during this period and Italy has done BETTER than us. But Italy is stuck in Zone with Germany and policy is being run for German inflation at 1.7% not for Italian inflation.
Yes, the Germans are extremely successful in EMU especially compared to everyone else. They know how to work, how to engineer - there is no doubt about that. But they do not know how to share; they know how to dominate militarily, economically etc. Now they want to dominate EMU by by setting macro policy and social policy as well as having a German monetary policy.
If Germany is going to be in a single economic zone with everyone else, it must fit as well as they must fit. Germany and France were the first to break the Mass-Trick rules and once that was gone they could not expect discipline from others.
Germany wants every other nation to sacrifice a generation's worth of growth to get their competitiveness back in line to and to defend Herr Euro. Why should any of those countries do that to perpetuate a game where the Germans win?
The two important questions to ask are (1) how did this happen so we (Europe) can stop it from continuing and (2) what do we (Europe) do about the huge competitiveness gaps that each EMU member -EACH MEMBER- took part in letting develop? NOT What does GERMANY want to do...
Can EMU be saved? Should everyone devalue and re-form a new currency unit? Should the new unit be renamed? What are the new rules? Who makes compromise in the next system? Say it UP FRONT.
Certainly you can't expect whole countries to sacrifice a generation of growth to protect a currency!
That puts economics backwards. Currencies are there to serve economic efficiency, to replace barter and to augment growth not to enslave a nation..
...unless you are German of course.
In that case it works for you and you can enslave everyone else.
ergo,
Germany, the VAMPIRE SQUID of Europe
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"Typically the Germans think everyone else is wrong."
I AM GERMAN, and I regret to say it: He is right.
Until today , German politics has not learned the lesson of the great depression.
They think they can continue to export the rest of the world into the ground until
paradise on earth is there (only for them of course). Not for a second do they think
of balance sheets and the underlying economic relations.
As sad as it is, I have come to the conclusion:
MY PEOPLE ONLY LEARN IT THE HARD WAY!
You wish you were German. Then you could write a post that makes sense.
You are a idiot self hating German, but do not worry there are about 80+ million more of you sorry lot.
Maybe he's a German Jew, I mean after all: "Who hates the Jew more than the Jew?" --Henry Miller
Whatever happened to great Spirits like Miller anyway?
No, maybe just a Green, or member of the SPD, or other useless parasite.
I am so tired of this shit. Get a skill and learn a trade. Try to produce the best quality that is possible.
But stop complaining all the time. It's annoying, you know? The World is not Lala-Land. Sorry. I know it may be hard to leave the socialist paradise you had, but the real world is not working like that. Be responsible. I know it's hard if you have been pampered by the state all your life. But your state can't do that any longer. Now is the time to grow up.
Don't make any debt, try to reduce your debt. Find a job, work hard, create a business, try to compete. Do something. But stop crying. Crying won't help you. Blaming us won't help you. Copying us won't help you (but you can try).
I am German. I never had any debt. I happen to own a house that I paid with my own money. I worked until my ass was bleeding to finance it. I hate debt more than anything else in the world. And I hate inflation. I hate to be taken as a hostage to this ruined economic model. And I am really angry about that. So why do you want to provocate me? Does it make you feel better? Not feeling guilty for being not responsible?
And before you start - no, Germany is not a paradise, not perfect, it has many ills and we need to be better. Stop living in the past. This is not WWII-Germany anymore. The majority of Germans want to live and prosper in peace.
Ask not what Germany will do for you, but what together we can do. For the freedom of man, more democracy, peace and prosperity.
But stop complaining all the time. It's annoying, you know? The World is not Lala-Land. Sorry. I know it may be hard to leave the socialist paradise you had, but the real world is not working like that. Be responsible. I know it's hard if you have been pampered by the state all your life. But your state can't do that any longer. Now is the time to grow up.
Don't make any debt, try to reduce your debt. Find a job, work hard, create a business, try to compete. Do something. But stop crying. Crying won't help you. Blaming us won't help you. Copying us won't help you (but you can try).
___________________________________________________
Living in tralalala land? So why coming up with the idea of living with no debt?
Anyone, even people who live in tralalaland, knows that when you live in a society supporting a non sustainable way of life, everything is non repayable debt.
It is not because your bank account shows no debt you do not burden the environment with unrepayable debt.
It is a matter of sustainability. Not debt.
AnAnonymous said:
So you are now applying this principle to people who live in Tralalaland Province of PR of C? Isn't a funny quote indeed? Funny how Chinese citizenism citizens jump on their high horses, and display that openly their deep troubles of self perception.
Ah, ah, relativity perspective perceptionism of Chinese citizenism. Pollution in Yellow River and Yangtze River is gift to environment and not burden? Modern weird twist on fabled past of gift giving. Chinese citizenism systemics at work.
Germany got too much guilt hammered into them, they really should learn to tell people to shut up and fuck off.
See below
Yes, that would be a nice start. Sadly, the Occupiers would quickly turn the Krautland into a pile of rubble.
Massoud starts walking faster as the shadows lengthen. He glances at the scratched display on his mobile phone. It's 7:15 p.m.
The sun is setting behind the large apartment buildings on Patission Street, disappearing behind the few remaining classical facades where the plaster is beginning to crumble. "For Rent" and "For Sale" signs are posted on boarded-up windows or behind sheets of opaque glass.
Massoud is in a hurry. He wants to get home before dark, because that's when the people who are out to get him come out.
The gangs of right-wing thugs, sometimes up to 20 at a time, approach their victims on foot or on mopeds, carrying clubs and knives. They are masked, faceless and fast. They appear suddenly and silently before striking.
The neo-fascists are hunting down immigrants in the middle of downtown Athens, in the streets north of the central Omonia Square. They call it cleansing.
They hunt people like Massoud, a 25-year-old Afghan from Kabul. He has been living in Athens for five years without a residency permit, even though he speaks fluent Greek. He studied geography in Kabul, but in Athens he works as a day laborer.
The gangs also hunt the dark-skinned man pushing a shopping cart filled with garbage and scrap metal through the streets. Or the woman with Asian features, who now grabs her child and the paper cup with which she has just been begging in the streets.
Social Bankruptcy
The area around Patission Street used to be one of the most upscale parts of Athens. Maria Callas lived there, but that was a long time ago. Today there is a shoe store on the street that sells patent leather ballerina shoes from China for €5 ($7) and sneakers for €8. The columned structure of the National Archaeological Museum, which houses the largest collection of art from Greek antiquity, is also on Patission Street. A section of Aristotle Street frequented by prostitutes, who are getting ever-younger, is only 50 meters (165 feet) from the museum.
The Greeks may have come to terms with the fact that the luster of antiquity is long gone. But the notion that Athens, a once-proud city, has now become synonymous with political failure and mismanagement is difficult to take. The consequences of decades of mismanagement are most glaringly evident in the center of the Greek capital.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,824011,00.html
I took a taxi down Patission Street on a weekday night, and was floored. It's a ghetto: Dark, filthy and foreboding.
I have nothing against people like Massoud. I wish him the best, I hope he moves on to a better life. And I don't blame him for being here. I understand his plight. I blame the politicians and the bankers.
I support Golden Dawn. If that makes me a racist and a nazi I don't give a shit. For many Greeks stuck in bad places they are the only ones that help them, and not just in these newly-formed ghettos. In Keratea where the populace rebelled against the state and the elite jackass who wanted to destroy their neigborhood for some fat profits, it was Golden Dawn who stood with them fighting the militarized police force until the state backed off.
What I witnessed that night is violence against the soul. I can't imagine what it is for the Greek who lives it every night, and neither him or I are required to live with it no matter how much I sympathize with the plight of Massoud or the Africans on Patission Street.
The huge population transfers and the conflicts that follow are the fault of a certain pestilence called the NWO. Not to mention the ineptitude of the politicians and central bankers they own.
Not to mention the vile parasitism of the bankers and politicians they own.
There, fixed it for ya. ;-)
good catch!
Fiscal transfer system in the US? Really? Ermmmm.....no.
This shows what was collected from each state
http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/article/0,,id=206488,00.html
This shows what went to each state (see table 13)- gross numbers and further breakdowns for retirement/disability, grants, procurement, salaries, and an "other" that Im still not sure about.
http://www.census.gov/prod/2011pubs/cffr-10.pdf
Unfortunately the Obama adminstration has decided to discontinue the Consolidated Federal Funds report showing what states get how much, guess it was too much useful info for the public.
Anyhow, when you compare taxes paid vs, gross $ received for FY 2010, there are only a few states that take a net loss (rounded to nearest .1 bill).
New Jersey: -38 billion
Minnesota: -23.6 billion
Delaware: -7.3 billion
Nebraska: -1.1 billion
Illinois: -1 billion
Ohio: -34 million
Everyone else gets more then they send, and its a helluva lot more then the chump change above. Biggest gainers are
Virginia: +78.1 billion
Florida: +75.3 billion
California: + 60.5 billion
Maryland: +48.6 billion
Pennsylvania: +44.1 billion
Thats the reality of it, there is no transfer at all- only Uncle Sugar sending out vast numbers of checks written with nothing but advance payday loans taken against kids still in elementary school.
Your article is horrible! You hate Germans, don't you! Did you grandfather get killed by the Nazi's? Or perhaps your Jewish!
The man teaches at the Baruch School of Economics in New York, what are the odds?
Robert
You are weclome to your opinion
I think however your opinion stinks
This means that most others who agree with me may not be reading many your articles in future. Unless of course we want a laugh.
Article is so bad it is not even entertainig and thanks for the other posters who tried to bring reason into this. Interesting approach to waste credit money unproductively (e.g. housing in Spain), then to whine about the nasty creditors wanting their money back, and then to suggest to debase the currency and to inflate out of responsibility.
Maastricht laid our criteria of fiscal responsibility. If they would have been adhered to, where would a problem today? No one forced southern contries to completely ignore the treaty whereas Germany through the Agenda 2010 tried at least to stick within the limits. Those years laid the basis for the current problems, exploiting the lenience in the original pact for trespassing. Some contries did creative things with Goldman in those years, yes they did. Pacta sunt servanda - no one was forced to sign, everyone did.
As an aside: With Italy the prime question is why the rest of Europe should bail out the overindebted Italian government to the benefit of the little indebted Italian populace. Maybe the author has some funny ideas why this is reasonable, too.
one of the most racists posts by someone who clearly has the iq lower than my shoe size and more baggage in transit than JFK airport. there are people just like brusca in germany i am sure. which country does not want to improve and which country knows that once foreign aid exceeds 2% of gdp you make that nations populace odiously poorer. this guy would blame the neighbors of a murder for the crime and let the perpetrator go free. shame shame shame. there are differences in europe, the cirme is transferring money to those who can't afford to pay it back. brusca, you can choose to be a dumpster diver by all means, but not one with hand-made italian suits and gucci shoes while you are doing it. get your mind out of the gutter.
Meet your complex web of Corperate masters:
http://media.adamdodson.org/var/resizes/Control-Structures/4%20Corporations%20own%20the%20world.jpg?m=1276768174
Meet your complex web of Global Masters:
http://media.adamdodson.org/var/resizes/Control-Structures/Illuminati%20Flow%20Chart.jpg?m=1276768186
The article is totally off-base. The Germans are just muddling through like everyone else - they just happen to prefer a solid currency.
National Socialism meets muppets. Robert Brusca you are one smart guy.
Robert, I've got to give you props for outside-the-box thinking. Most pundits think that the PIIGS are the Eurozone's problem. When all along, it's been the captain of the team! If all nations band together, retire everyone at age 50, cut the workweek, fire up inflation, stiffle exports and productivity, then the weak don't look so bad. Brilliant. It's no wonder you worked for the FED.
Asking Germany to economically dumb itself down to the poorly performing levels of its neighbors is preposterous. It's entirely up to slower countries to improve their game. It's also up the the U.S. to improve our game in productivity and competitiveness, rather than whine and beg the rest of the world to join us in the quagmire or bureaucracy, foolishness, and sloth.
Is this guy Robert a Lagarde clone? The assumption that if everyone adjusts to the lowest level /e.g. Spanish) than everything is OK since the EZ countries are balanced is pretty ignorant. It only works if you build a wall arounf the Eurozone, like around the communist block. But maybe this is what the Europhiles have in mind!
In addition Germany is a sovereign country. If you read the constitution you will see that there is no way that a government can sign up to a transfer union without public referendum. the result when you ask people "Do you want to transfer your hard earned money to countries that were too stupid to collect tax from their rich people?" is pretty clear. You can also ask "Do you want to transfer your hard earned money to countries that have 10 weeks of vacation and 35h work weeks", the result is the same.
If you want to destroy the EU, please introduce fiscal transfers, this is the surest way to get radical parties in all parliaments of the North. That the South has had socialists in power for decades and now has problems is the problem of the South.
What, a public referendum on the EU ? The German constitution you are referring to must be the Weimar or Nazi one...
doppelgänger post
Never let a good "crisis" go to waste.
The New World Order demands great crisis in order to be implemented.
The German elite admits it up front, "crisis" is required in order to achieve "political union."
I.E. the peasantry will be made to suffer until they accept the loss of national sovereignty to the New World Order.
New World Order, bitchez.
There was not one shot fired on German soil during WW1 because they were used and abused by the NWO. They needed the formidable German army to put down everyone else's.
Max Warburg was head of German Intelligence, his brother Paul Warburg wrote the charter for the Federal Reserve. Is it just me or does anyone else think that's a conflict of interest?
William Wiseman was in charge of British Intelligence and after the war he went to work for the Warburg bank. Turns out Warburg and Wiseman were buddies all along. Any guesses as to which family owned the whole thing?
The German bad guy story is no good.
And if the German people unwillingly commit to paying hundreds of billions of their hard-earned fiat, then they of course have no right or place to expect a quid-pro-quo or accessory arrangements in their benefit, because that would plainly be unreasonable of them ... right?
It seems a rather one-eyed and dubious view of the German power-dynamic that you espouse Roberto.
I was in germany in 1987 and remember reading that germany absorbed 200,000 hugonots. I also read that germany's population during the 30 years war was reduced by some 70 or 80 percent. The morganthau plan was mentioned above. Whatever it is to be german is not the popular view that they are all bent on dominating others. The germans have and will thru hard work and education reinvent themselves and rise from the ashes of their destruction by others who seem to hate the germans because they just keep rising up from the dead. The british seem to hate the germans because they could never really defeat them. Would the british have been defeated sooner by the americans had they not employed hessian mercnaries.
And been defeated by the Germans eventually had they not employed Americans. It is a curious thing though that NS Germany was supposedly bent on world domination- yet never built a surface navy and Germans have rarely been accused of being poor planners.
If you look at English foreign policy over the centuries they have done a masterful job of playing one country against the other and shifting alliances.
That's because the English are owned by the Rothschilds. They even have their own city inside London called "The City." From there they create one mess after the other.
Liberia for banks.
There was a kurdish guy who told me 6 months ago that he is convinced that Hitler was a "Agent Provocateur" in multiple ways. There are plenty of instances of stupidness in the planning of WWII from german leaders which make you speechless when you think about what Germany has usually been capable of....But the whole problem lies rooted in the late 19th/early 20th century I guess - only that I dont yet know enough about it.
By the way, has anyboby read "Zur Kritik der Zeit", by Walther Rathenau. Its a very interesting figure in german history, and he had made some quite controversial statements on world politics on several occasions. Then he was killed by "Organisation Consul", who were supposedly backed/financed by radical german industrials and military brass....
+1 on Rathenau. He was taking Germany out of the abyss.
As for Hitler, the industrials and bankers that backed him intended to control him and the Nazi party, to achieve their own goals, no doubt. It's a shining example how a very rational cultural mindset can be partially manipulated to serve highly non-rational goals.
Planning failures? Cant agree. Poor execution when a certain politicians injected themselves? Yes.
I can reccomend Gehlen's book. The title eludes me. Head of military intelligence on the eastern front. He warned that the bolshies were massing opposite the worst units on the german front near stalingrad. classic pincer movement and no retreat do not surrender orders from above. wtf
If you go back and look at the history, you will see that French fear of a resurgent/united Germany drove the political process just as much if not more than German designs on conquering the rest of Europe. At the time, and I remember it well because I was there and listened to it constantly, the Germans were overwhelmed by the daunting prospect of swallowing and rebuilding East Germany. The European quid pro quo for letting the German's rebuild was surrendering their monetary sovereignity.
So are we now seeing evil designs by the Germans (the selfish Germans who arenow paying through the nose to bailout the European Union) or fear, stupidity and delusions of grandeur by the latter?
Whatever you conclude, the squid metaphor is reserved exclusively for Goldman Sachs. Goldman Sachs, Germany is not.
Of course. and France's desire was so strong that it and others joined Germany in a union with rules set so they cannot succeed.
Goldman helped create the illusion of less debt for Greece, Italy may have used the same 'magic.' Goldman has been part of this game filled with illusions and false promises.
Germany is playing the role of the vampire squid that sucks the life out of the rest of Europe. It should be plain. Juts look at how the Zone is performing, who is in charge and who is subservient and struggling. If Germany had been interested in making the Zone work it would have worked harder to that end. It has not. It has worked to exaggerate the inconsistencies in the Zone. If the Zone fails Germany gets reunification and independence and it go back to having its own currency.
The label is quite appropriate.
Let's say that the Germans were more prone to be fucked by their homegrown Goldmanites than everyone else.
"Rebuilding" of east Germany was a theft of the decade, effective transfer of money ended 1993, and every fuckin' dime went to the pockets of GTBTF.
Now, german Total Liabilities/GDP count 140% minus, with a potentially biggest shitbombs( Allianz & Münich RE ), industrial basis went Shenzhen, not counting the full blown military complex ( 110% increase from 2005 ), wich implodes 'cause "customers" flat broke.
German media united in FUX-News franchise, and 82 millions full retards still live in the "Wirtschaftswunder". As long as Bier & Schnaps cheap, and DSDS ( American Idol in german, but much dumber ), nothings gonna happen, and the plutocrats wich r the enemies of german ppl PER DEFINITION, will continue to squeeze the last dimes out of the gsheeple.
Pretty much the same shit as in Kalifat of Wall Street. So, plz, don't bash the merikan sheeple, Germany much better in it.
Yes, that is a fair statement. Hook line and stinker ;-)
nailed it, Sir...! absolutely nailed it...!
sad to witness as a 28 year old german, but this is whats true!
From a grander design, conspiracy deconstruction perspective, Germany should stop the potentiality of a relentless cycle of maniplulation, conquest and immolation by a certain creepy death cult.
They, more than anyone, have been a target over the last century...used as a wheelhouse for European and world chaos and the profitable fruits of its re-order. The cycle must be stopped and the shadow criminals prosecuted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_9_in_German_history
(European convention for date references is day/month/year making all of the above 'coincidences' designated 9/11)
Things that make you go Hmmmmmm
Nazi Zombies!
Trick or Treat
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRhXMmffYKc