Germany has been making documented bad decisions since at least December 2022, actually it has been far longer than that. When Chancellor Merkel came to power in 2005, the race to the bottom probably began. This from Drieu Godefridi at the Gatestone Institute written on Friday, “Today, Germany embraces the ideologies of “green energy” and a zero-carbon society — a society that no longer emits CO2. Germans seem serious about ideology; they seem serious about everything. Once they buy into an ideology, it might be hard to change their mind.
This is how Chancellor Angela Merkel came to power (2005-2021). Many forget that she did not emerge from the extreme green left, although judging by her record, one might think so. She came, in fact, from the CDU/CSU, Germany’s “center-right” party.
Merkel’s record is clear: 1) the demographic Islamization of Germany by opening its doors to a flood of migrants alien to German culture, and apparently with less than no interest in absorbing it; 2) the subordination of Germany’s energy to Russia, 3) the destruction of Germany’s nuclear heritage. If Merkel had have been an agent of the Russian regime — which trained her — she might have acted no differently.
With Merkel gone, Germany finds itself on an accelerating trajectory of impoverishment. According to the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the German Economy Ministry now projects a 0.2% GDP contraction for 2024, reversing its earlier prediction of 0.3% growth. Germany also faces industrial annihilation.”
Annihilation is a strong word, and I hate to break up the party and the great journalism, but we need to consider what is happening. Germany is the industrial engine of Europe, and it is facing annihilation. We often quote Doomberg, Energy is life.” Doomberg writes a Substack and does excellent work regarding just how important energy and the availability it is to every single business market there is. It drives the economy. In fact, I think you could pin the American success in the late 100s to their direct ability to harness lamp oil/ kerosene/ oil refining and make it their specialty industry. Germany lost their cheap faucet of energy with the Russian sanctions which we wrote was a huge mistake following the American play and now they seem to be surprised that solar and wind aren’t the answer to their energy woes. Shutting down nuclear was a huge mistake. Having to open up coal plants should tell you all you need to know, but these Germans are committed to zero carbon emissions at their peril. This has caused friction amongst the commonwealth and they have voted their interests and now Germany has another problem.
On Saturday, The New York Times put out an article by Steven Erlanger and Christopher Schuetze, “Germany’s three-party coalition government, wracked by infighting and policy paralysis over a stagnant economy, is teetering on the brink of collapse.” Friday Annihilation and Saturday collapse. This is a bad weekend for the first month after Oktoberfest no? The article continues, “The German economy shrank last year and barely escaped recession this year. Consumer and business confidence is low, and the German export model has been severely challenged by China’s own slowdown and by sanctions on Russia.
What may keep the coalition together is the American presidential election.
If former President Donald J. Trump is re-elected, he is likely to pose formidable challenges for European security and trade. It would be a bad time for Germany, a central player in Europe, to be run by a caretaker government with little ability to make major decisions and preoccupied with its domestic politics, analysts warned.
Elected in 2021, the coalition was immediately confronted with the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
It managed the initial crisis well, but is increasingly split over policy. Mr. Scholz’s Social Democrats have been trying to preserve the country’s generous welfare state even as the economy slowed; the Greens are pressing to fight climate change despite the financial costs; and the Free Democrats are demanding adherence to Germany’s strict constitutional limits on budget deficits and debt.
The three key leaders of the coalition, Mr. Scholz; Robert Habeck of the Greens, the economic minister; and Mr. Lindner, the finance minister, are barely speaking to one another, according to local media reports. Germans have reasons to be concerned about their slowing economy, whether it is the crisis over Volkswagen’s plans to shut factories, the break with Russia over energy after Moscow invaded Ukraine, or China’s declining imports. So even if Germany’s economy is in reasonable shape compared to neighboring France or even Japan, that may be little consolation.”
How did Germany, once so revered economically, well after World War II you know. The answer lies with Doomberg. Energy. All roads point back to the attempted substitution of energy sources and the malinvestment of green energy. If southern California or Arizona wants to dabble in solar fine, but Germany at scale? Come on, there is no easily available baseload substitute of power and the price of energy has reflected this. That price is an input cost of Germany’s manufacturing, and it has become uncompetitive.
This was what David McHugh wrote in September of 2023, and it has only worsened. “For most of this century, Germany racked up one economic success after another, dominating global markets for high-end products like luxury cars and industrial machinery, selling so much to the rest of the world that half the economy ran on exports.
Jobs were plentiful, the government’s financial coffers grew as other European countries drowned in debt, and books were written about what other countries could learn from Germany.
No longer. Now, Germany is the world’s worst-performing major developed economy, with both the International Monetary Fund and European Union expecting it to shrink this year.
It follows Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the loss of Moscow’s cheap natural gas — an unprecedented shock to Germany’s energy-intensive industries, long the manufacturing powerhouse of Europe… The loss of cheap Russian natural gas needed to power factories “painfully damaged the business model of the German economy,” Christian Kullmann, CEO of German chemical company Evonik Industries told The Associated Press. “We’re in a situation where we’re being strongly affected — damaged — by external factors.”
After Russia cut off most of its gas to the European Union, spurring an energy crisis in the 27-nation bloc that had sourced 40% of the fuel from Moscow, the German government asked Evonik to keep its 1960s coal-fired power plant running a few months longer…
One hotly debated solution: a government-funded cap on industrial electricity prices to get the economy through the renewable energy transition.
The proposal from Vice Chancellor Robert Habeck of the Greens Party has faced resistance from Chancellor Olaf Scholz, a Social Democrat, and pro-business coalition partner the Free Democrats. Environmentalists say it would only prolong reliance on fossil fuels.
Kullmann is for it: “It was mistaken political decisions that primarily developed and influenced these high energy costs. And it can’t now be that German industry, German workers should be stuck with the bill.”
The price of gas is roughly double what it was in 2021, hurting companies that need it to keep glass or metal red-hot and molten 24 hours a day to make glass, paper and metal coatings used in buildings and cars.
And relying on Russia to reliably supply gas through the Nord Stream pipelines under the Baltic Sea — built under former Chancellor Angela Merkel and since shut off and damaged amid the war — was belatedly conceded by the government to have been a mistake.”
I do enjoy how clearly businessmen can articulate problems, yet politicians can spend an entire speech meandering around the fundamental issue, the root cause, or the obvious solution. Germany is paralyzed by diverging priorities. The public has been so brainwashed by green speech that anything other than achieve carbon neutral is unacceptable, even at the cost of the collapse of the nation.
Godefridi makes an excellent point on the shrinking importance of Europe altogether on the global stage or regarding its priorities, “The elimination of fossil fuels and nuclear power is to be replaced by the “renewable energies” — mainly wind and solar — which are intermittent, often unaffordable and of limited practical use. Wind and solar are massively impacted by weather conditions. Solar panels produce less on cloudy days, and wind turbines generate less during calm periods. This variability makes it difficult to ensure a consistent energy output.
The center-right CDU supports the market economy, the Atlantic alliance and German industry — but also adheres to environmentalists’ ideology. That view helps to explain why the European People’s Party (EPP), the largest political group in the European Parliament — in which the CDU is a member party — appointed Ursula von der Leyen as head of the European Commission. Under her leadership of the European Union, the economy is collapsing, industry is disappearing and Islamism is proliferating. Supposedly, all of that does not matter because Europeans have the Holy Grail: the “energy transition” to a “zero-carbon” Europe, and more regulations than all the other civilizations combined.
Unfortunately, that policy is an absolute myth. “Zero-carbon Europe”, a physical impossibility, will never happen. Even if it did, it would make no difference to the global explosion in CO2 emissions. Europe accounts for just 8% of global CO2 emissions. Even if Europe ceased to exist, it would make little difference to global CO2 emissions. They would continue to grow on all five continents. The destruction of European industry by the German right would have no effect on the climate — zero.”
We’ve been saying since the beginning of this cooperative that these climate goals are malinvestment. This is a scam at worst or misguided policy at best. What I didn’t realize is how little it actually matters. I realize that Europe is becoming irrelevant, but I had no idea it was that irrelevant. Germany is the engine behind Europe and if Europe is only 8%, then Germany becomes even more irrelevant. I think the old saying is becoming true. Europe is a place you vacation, but you can’t live there.
I wonder when the people will wise up, kick the immigrants destroying their culture out, and attempt to become competitive globally again. There is too much technical prowess for me to believe that they will give in to windmills and solar panels and a currency that could begin to have troubles should the individual nations begin to fail. If the EU’s biggest nation begins to fail and join its second biggest country, France, which is already failing, the entire continent could be very very fragile. Fragile as Murano glass you might say…
Sincerely Yours,
C Thomas Printer
On this date in history… 43 years ago to be exact, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat was assassinated.
Also born on this date, Elisabeth Shue and Carole Lombard.
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