Wolf Richter

PROST! Germany lost the beer war, And China won.

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Germany, country of the Reinheitsgebot (Beer Purity Law), and cradle of beer as we know it, where, at the age of fifteen, I regularly drank a few Helle too many at any pub I wanted to, well, that very country not only has failed to export its beer, but now, Germans have stopped drinking it themselves, apparently.

The Landmine in the GDP Report

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There is a landmine buried in today’s 2Q GDP report, and Congress is about to step on it while engaging in its debt-ceiling pissing match.

We Should Give them a Calculator

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The raw numbers are ugly. The federal budget deficit is nearly 40% of total spending; that is, for every $1,000 the government spends, it collects $600 in taxes and borrows $400. Doesn’t anyone do any math in Washington?

Not What You’d Expect from a Topless Beach in France

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French beaches, best known for their topless female sunbathers, have been afflicted with a disgusting and deadly scourge: floods of green algae. 

The latest victims were eighteen young wild boars, whose cadavers were found on July 26 on a beach of the Bretagne. Ten cadavers were found nearby the prior two days.

Your Dollar

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…is falling off a cliff again, hitting ¥78 and €0.69. You can sit idly by and watch it get demolished, or you can do something about it.

Our Chinese Bay Bridge

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The high-speed train fiasco in China makes us worry about our San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge whose gigantic one-tower landmark suspension segment was fabricated, you guessed it, in China. In return for some paltry savings, if any, California gave up enormous economic opportunities.

Love Cherries

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My twin eggs (posted July 15) aren’t the only twins around here: California cherries. Once again, I wonder why I haven’t seen twin cherries before. I should go talk to the guys at the Diablo Canyon nuke facility. Maybe they’re starting to look funny, too.

A Modest Proposal

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What galls me the most in this entire imbroglio of our debt ceiling is the hypocritical approach of our politicians: A Congress that authorizes every dollar that gets spent, gleefully accumulating a pile of debt so vast it’s hard to wrap your brains around it; and administrations who have been eager to borrow and spend as directed by Congress.

Explosive Food

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We get some of our harder-to-find Japanese foods directly from Japan by mail, though we have some good Japanese stores in the Bay Area. And normally, we don’t run into problems. Well, except once, when we were living in Belgium.

Deadly Disconnect

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The human brain is an amazing organ. The San Francisco Chronicle and our local radio stations reported that three young hikers were swept over Vernal Fall in Yosemite National Park yesterday afternoon.