European Car Registrations In October

The automotive industry in Europe is rebounding. According to ACEA, the  registrations of new cars in the EU were 4.7 percent higher in October 2013 than a year earlier, reducing the gap to last years' sales over the first 10 months to "only" 3.1 percent (down from 6.6 percent for the first 6 months of the year). But make no mistake this was still the second worst October since 2003; and some of the improvement is due to very high rebates.

Industry, Real Wages, And Childish Managers

This weekend, the CEOs of several German car manufacturers decided to behave like three year old kids because they really want that chocolate bar low labor costs; and are against a minimum wage of €8.50 and for a huge amount of "temporary" workers. The CEOs of Daimler, VW, Opel and BMW were interviewed by the Bild Zeitung and Daimler CEO Zetsche even threatened Mutti* Merkel that the company would "have to think about a relocation of production".

Let's take a look at some of the firms and the overall situation in the German industry.

Economic Arguments on Airstrip One

Airstrip One, formerly known as United Kingdom, is headed towards political and economical irrelevance. British industrial products are for the most part nothing but the bread crumbs left over by important countries like the US, Germany, and India. All that seems to be left is the banking sector. Still economists and government officials argue as if the Island and a third still had some relevance. As if it mattered if they went for austerity or not. The small state doctrine has turned Britain into what it is today Still conservative journalists live in some kind of fantasy empire, and tend to blame immigrants (Jeremy Warner, Telegraph) for bad productivity performance. But there are only a few industrial bright spots left; and those are in part not even British anymore.

Unions vs Companies in Germany vs US

Today two very interesting stories about unions appeared in the newspapers, an US and a German firm and two very different approaches to worker representation. VW is is negotiating with the United Automobile Workers union (UAW) about representing workers at their US plant in Tennessee; and in Germany Amazon is fighting against Verdi (German union).