Thanks for visiting this blog, created in July 2012 out of great concern for the fate of the €uro currency area, once again on the verge of collapse due to the economically ill-advised and heartless austerity policies imposed on Greece, Spain and other heavily-indebted €uro area countries by a christian democratic German chancellor impressed with the budgeting skills of Schwabian housewives. Meant to reduce the public debt and put the countries back on a path to economic growth, these macro-economically idiotic policies are doing anything but cause "pointless misery" as Paul Krugman so aptly describes it (Bloomberg, July 23-29, 2012).

Instead of reducing public debt, the austerity measures set in motion a vicious cycle of economic contraction, rising unemployment and poverty, lower tax revenues, private capital flight, and rising public debt shares as the economy declines faster than the public debt. What’s more, the austerity-driven ‘blood, sweat and tears’ policies recommended to the European periphery derive from the same economic doctrine that brought us to the brink of disaster in 2008. These policies are not only misanthropic and counterproductive to economic growth and debt reduction in Europe, but will prove explosive for the €uro currency area unless a drastic change of course takes place - and soon.

While I do not pretend to have ‘the’ solution for the €uro crisis, I would like to offer alternative economic perspectives and views on current events, and hope to chart a more humane path toward a balanced, socially fair, and sustainable economic future for the €uro area.

On the origins of the 2008 Great Financial Crisis:
“90+% of traders are men, and they bet all of our bank deposits on liar loans which froze credit leading to 40% average losses passed on to ordinary taxpayers; then begged for trillion-dollar bailouts upon which they paid themselves 50% higher boni.”


Sunday, September 8, 2013

Depressed in Germany


Having watched last Sunday's debate and the debate in the German Bundestag the following week, I am convinced that Germany's current chancellor Merkel will also be the new one. Not because she has more convincing arguments than her challenger, but simply because she comes across as more trustworthy, modest, and less aggressive than her challenger, Peer Steinbrueck. 

While the ma(i)nstream press is convinced that Steinbrueck caught up to Ms. Merkel thanks to his strong performance during the debate, the gentlemen of the press neglect the preferences of the largest voter group that holds the key to this national German election:  women over 50 ! These are women born before 1963 who experienced or actively participated in the women's movement of the 1960s and 1970s. These women - many of them highly educated, professionally successful and financially independent - do NOT appreciate overly confident, arrogant, and borderline aggressive alpha males like Mr. Steinbrueck who openly threatened Ms. Merkel during both debates. Plus, as noted in my post of last Sunday, Steinbrueck is acting childish and undemocratic by refusing a coalition with the LINKE, a democratic party supported by roughly 10% of the voters.

For all these reasons, women over 50 will most likely not vote for Mr. Steinbrueck's party, and that, Mr. Steinbrueck, is a huge loss as women over 50 make up 28.1% of the German voting population (see the data on the German voting population compiled by the Bundeswahlleiter here). These women will either vote for chancellor Merkel or for the LINKE, not for the SPD, nor the Greens due to their most recent pedophile scandals. My prognosis is all the more likely as the largest voter group has been completely ignored by Mr. Steinbrueck's party and the Greens: driving through a major city in central Germany one can observe that SPD campaign posters display almost exclusively middle-aged white men while the Greens focus on young women and children. Only the campaign posters of Ms. Merkel's party, the CDU, depict smartly dressed middle-aged and older women. Well, if the largest group of women voters in Germany is being ignored by the SPD and the Greens, why should these women vote for them ? 

So, we probably end up as I predicted last September:

"....knowing the Angst-ridden Germans, they will probably support a party combination that seems safe: either Merkel's CDU + the conservative wing of the social democrats, or Merkel's CDU + the conservative wing of the Greens. Both combinations would mean a continuation of the current austerity policies for Europe, albeit with a stronger focus on investments and growth."





Now you know why I'm depressed.
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