Last week, the German Parliament passed a resolution that asked Chancellor Merkel to needle Russian President Putin about the resurgence of repressive, antidemocratic tendencies in Russia. It did not go unnoticed at the Kremlin. And it paved the way, so to speak, for her trip to Moscow on Friday—to re-cement their “strategic partnership.”
Europe
The Curse Of The “Irreversible” Euro
by Wolf Richter • • 4 Comments
Young educated Greeks face a wall of unemployment. With little chance of finding a job in their field, they’re competing for any kind of job. Wages have plummeted. The economy has shriveled by 19.4% since 2007. Promises that education would open doors to a better future have evaporated. And Germans march around, telling Greeks how to run their country. Because the euro has become a religious dictum.
Bundesbank Slaps Fed In The Face
by Wolf Richter • • 2 Comments
“Yellen and Cisco lift US stock futures,” the headline read enticingly in the morning. Priceless. Their pronouncements were driving up the markets. But by the time the markets closed, the manipulative power of Fed Vice Chairman Janet Yellen had dissipated; the DOW was down 1.45%. And across the Atlantic, the German Bundesbank issued a tough warning about the very policies Yellen was propagating.
French Minister Whines: “Le French Bashing” Is Terrible
by Wolf Richter • • 4 Comments
Unintended Consequences Of Bailouts: Greece Gets Slammed
by Wolf Richter • • 6 Comments
Bailouts have become known for their so-called “unintended consequences”—however intended they might have been. And now, unintended consequences strike again. The ECB’s purchase of decomposing Greek debt—an under-the-radar bailout of banks and insurance companies—are making the favorite solution to the Greek crisis, namely another deep haircut, legally impossible, says Bundesbank President Jens Weidmann.
Germany’s Fear And Desperation Leak Out
by Wolf Richter • • 20 Comments
A hullabaloo erupted between France and Germany that both are trying to silence to death: it seeped out that the German Finance Minister broached an unprecedented topic with Germany’s Council of Economic Experts. Could they produce a reform concept for the troubled French economy? It revealed a threat that terrorizes the German government.
Merkel Has A Dream
by Wolf Richter • • 11 Comments
On Wednesday, German Chancellor Angela Merkel set foot in the European Parliament for the first time since 2007 and addressed the only democratically elected European institution—by design, an emasculated one. There, she laid out her plans to bring European nations together to where their budgets and other matters would become part of her “domestic policy.”
The Art Of Siphoning Off EU Money
by Wolf Richter • • 5 Comments
In pursuing its dream, the EU has created a ballooning superstructure of governance manned by 41,000 bureaucrats and mostly unelected politicians. In 2011, they spent €129 billion of taxpayer money. But now, the European Court of Auditors released its audit report for that year—a damning document that outlines how up to 4.8% of the EU budget seeped through the cracks and disappeared.
The Bailout Of Russian “Black Money” In Cyprus
by Wolf Richter • • 4 Comments
Timing couldn’t have been worse. Or more opportune. A “secret” report by the German version of the CIA, the Bundesnachrichtendienst, bubbled to the surface, asserting that the bailout of Cyprus would use money from taxpayers in other countries to bail out mostly rich Russians who have over the years deposited their “black money” in Cypriot banks that are now collapsing.
Nationalizing Companies Is Part Of The French DNA
by Wolf Richter • • 6 Comments
In France, socialism isn’t a political movement that swept the elections this year, and it isn’t an economic philosophy that moved once again to the forefront, but it’s part of the DNA of much of the population. And it produces classic knee-jerk reactions to the current economic morass—such as the nationalization of tottering automaker Peugeot.